Chapter 15
The training yard had become my personal hell of smoke and uncontrolled destruction, where the black fire lived like a rabid animal I couldn’t cage or kill.
A week of dawn sessions with Shaelith and Brynelle had left me bruised, exhausted, and no closer to understanding the inferno that wanted to devour everything I touched.
“Stop,” Shaelith barked as another wave of shadow fire erupted from my hands, turning three practice dummies to ash and leaving scorch marks across the stone. “You’re fighting it like it’s the enemy.”
“It is the enemy,” I snarled, shaking out my hands as the flames finally died. My skin was unmarked, the fire never hurt me, but everything else in a ten-foot radius looked like it had been through a war zone. “It does what it wants, when it wants, and I’m just along for the fucking ride.”
Brynelle winced from her position well outside my blast radius, those whiskey eyes filled with sympathy. “Magic isn’t meant to be controlled, Isara. It’s meant to be partnered with.”
I wiped sweat from my brow, the flames dying to embers along my skin. “It’s like trying to have a conversation with a hurricane.”
“Most powerful magic is,” Shaelith said, sheathing the blade she’d been using to deflect my more wayward strikes. “The trick is learning its language instead of imposing your own.”
A shadow fell across the training yard, and I didn’t need to look to know who it was. The air itself seemed to hold its breath when Varyth was near, magic recognising magic in a bone-deep way that made my teeth ache.
“Impressive,” he said, his voice carrying that familiar note of assessment. “Though you might want to work on not incinerating the furniture. We’re running low on practice dummies.”
I turned to face him, trying to ignore the way my pulse jumped at his presence. A week of careful avoidance had done nothing to dull the hard-edged awareness that flared whenever he was near. If anything, the distance had only made it worse, like a hunger that grew the longer it went unfed.
He looked as untouchable as ever, silver hair caught by the morning light, taking in the destruction I’d wrought with something that might have been pride. Or hunger. With Varyth, it was impossible to tell the difference.
“I’ll try to contain my devastating power to appropriate targets,” I snapped. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally level your pretty castle.”
His lips twitched. “How considerate.”
Shaelith cleared her throat.
Varyth ignored her. “Actually, I came to extend an invitation.”
“An invitation?” I raised an eyebrow.
“There’s a situation developing at the western border. Nothing dangerous,” he added quickly, probably catching the way my entire body went rigid. “A territorial dispute with one of the smaller courts. I’m riding out to handle the negotiations personally.”
“And you want me to come along because...?”
“Because you might learn something.” His gaze held mine, steady and unreadable. “And because you’re going stir-crazy in this castle.”
The glint in his eyes told me my outing with Cindrissian last week probably hadn’t escaped his notice.
“When?” I asked, hating how eager the word sounded.
“Within the hour. It’s only a day’s ride, and we’ll be back by tomorrow evening.” He paused, something almost vulnerable flickering across his features. “Unless you’d prefer to stay and incinerate more furniture.”
It was an olive branch. Clumsy, wrapped in his typical arrogance, but an olive branch nonetheless. After a week of him avoiding me like I carried plague, of stilted conversations and distance, he was offering... what? A chance to see his world? To be something more than a weapon in training?
“My children—”
“Will be perfectly safe with Lira and the others. I’ll leave extra guards, ward the entire wing myself if it makes you feel better.” His voice dropped, becoming almost gentle. “They’ll probably enjoy having the run of the place without you hovering.”
“I don’t hover,” I said automatically, then caught Brynelle’s snort of amusement. “I’m appropriately cautious.”
“You follow them to lessons and lurk outside until they’re finished,” Shaelith said dryly. “That’s hovering.”
Traitors. Both of them.
But they weren’t wrong. I had been… protective. Bordering on obsessive. The attack in the courtyard had left me paranoid and watchful and probably driving my children mad with my constant presence.
Maybe some distance would be good for all of us.
“Fine,” I said, the word escaping before I could second-guess myself. “But if anything happens to them while I’m gone—”
“I’ll personally hunt down whoever’s responsible and feed them to the kraken,” Varyth said solemnly. “The decorative one. It’s surprisingly vicious when motivated.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “You’re all insane.”
“Probably,” he agreed, and for the first time, his smile looked real. “Pack light. We leave soon.”
As he walked away, I caught Shaelith watching me with those knowing violet eyes.
“What?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” she said, but her smirk was sharp enough to draw blood.
I fled before either of them could say anything else.
Careful who you trust here, Cindrissian’s voice whispered in my mind.
But as I threw clothes into a travel bag, my hands shaking with something that definitely wasn’t fear, I wondered if the person I should be most careful of was myself.
I emerged from the castle twenty minutes later, pack slung over my shoulder and my hair still damp from the hasty attempt to wash the soot from my skin.
A set of travel leathers had mysteriously appeared in my chambers, and the brown leather hugged my figure comfortably.
I’d strapped the moonsilver blades to my thighs, and could only hope Varyth didn’t pry about where I’d gotten them.
Varyth waited in the main courtyard, and the sight of him stopped me cold.
Gone was the formal court attire, replaced by dark leather riding gear that clung to his frame like a second skin. His silver hair was pulled back, revealing the lines of his face, and there were weapons strapped to his body with the kind of casualness that spoke of a man who knew how to use them.
He looked dangerous. Predatory. Like something that hunted in dark and left no survivors to tell the tale.
And gods help me, my traitorous pulse quickened in response.
Beside him, Darian was similarly outfitted, though somehow he managed to make leather armour look like he’d thrown it on for a casual stroll. His sandy hair was tousled by the wind, and that insufferable grin was already plastered across his face.
“Ready?” Varyth asked, as his gaze raked over me far too slow.
I tried to summon some cutting remark about his staring, but the words died in my throat as I caught my reflection in the polished bronze of a nearby shield.
Fuck.
The leathers fit like they’d been made for me. And knowing this place, they probably had. But it wasn’t just the craftsmanship that made my breath catch. It was the body wearing them.
The weeks of proper meals, of fae magic working through my system, had done what months of human recovery never could have. Where starvation had carved away every curve, leaving me thin and hollow, my fae transformation had restored what I’d lost with brutal speed.
My breasts filled the leather bodice in a way that made me acutely aware of every breath. My waist curved in before flaring to hips that the fitted pants showcased with almost indecent precision. Even my face had filled out, cheekbones less hollow, lips fuller.
I looked... alive again. Healthy. Like a woman instead of a scarecrow held together by spite and desperation.
Before—gods, before the running, before the year of terror and hunger—I’d been built like this. Soft where it mattered, strong where it counted. Navaire used to trace these curves with reverent hands, used to tell me I was built like a goddess of plenty.
Now here I stood, wearing a body that felt both familiar and foreign, under the burning stare of a High Lord whose silver eyes were molten.
“The leathers...” Varyth started, then stopped, his usual eloquence abandoning him entirely.
Darian whistled low under his breath. “Well, fuck me.”
Varyth’s head snapped toward his second with a look that could have melted steel. “Shut. Up.”
But the damage was done. Heat crawled up my neck as I realised I’d been standing there like an idiot, cataloguing my own body while they waited.
“They fit,” I said stiffly, shouldering my pack with more force than necessary.
“They... yes.” Varyth cleared his throat.
Was that a flush creeping across his pale cheekbones?
“The leather. It’s well-crafted. Quality. The cut is... it suits your...” He gestured vaguely at my general existence, then seemed to realise what he was doing and dropped his hand like it had caught fire.
Sweet bleeding gods. The High Lord of Luceren, master of political intrigue and casual murder, was stammering.
“My what?” I asked sweetly, because if he was going to suffer, he could do it properly.
His jaw worked for a moment, gaze darting everywhere except directly at me. “Your... form. The proportions are... architecturally sound.”
Darian choked on a laugh. “Architecturally sound? Did you just compare her to a fucking building?”
“It’s a compliment,” Varyth said defensively. “Not that you’re... I didn’t mean to imply...” He dragged a hand through his silver hair, destroying its perfect arrangement. “You look—”
“Deadly in leather?” I suggested, taking pity on him.
Relief flooded his features. “Exactly. Deadly.”
But the way he said it, low and rough around the edges, made dangerous sound like something else entirely. Something that had nothing to do with weapons and everything to do with the way his focus kept drifting to the curve of my waist, the leather that hugged my thighs.
Something that made my own pulse quicken in response, magic stirring restlessly beneath my skin like it recognised the heat building between us.