Olwen
The scream came from the courtyard.
High and sharp, it cut off too quickly, the sound of terror silenced mid-breath. It echoed off the stone walls, bounced down the corridor, filled the alcove where we still stood tangled together.
Cador’s head snapped up.
His body went rigid against mine. Not with desire anymore, but with something else. Something predatory.
His nostrils flared. His glare narrowed, and I watched the color drain from his skin. Not pale anymore. The smoke of storm clouds.
“Killing intent,” he said. “Breaching the wards.”
He pulled away from me. I saw the muscles of his back shift beneath his shirt…and then the shirt tore.
Wings.
Erupting from his shoulder blades. Massive. Dark. He was through the doorway before I could see more.
“Stay here.”
Then he was gone. Moving faster than any human could move, his wings folding tight against his back as he disappeared into the dark corridor.
The clan scattered. I could hear them, the thunder of feet, the shouts of alarm. Cador’s orders echoed down the corridor, guards pulling guests away from the courtyard, creating a perimeter. The attack had come too fast for organized response.
I stood alone in the alcove, piecing together the chaos from sound alone.
My heart was silent again. My skin was cold. The petal had spent itself completely, leaving me hollow and still and obviously, undeniably wrong.
If anyone saw me now, if any of those sharp-eyed shifters caught a glimpse of me in this state…
I fixed my dress. My fingers were clumsy, numbed by the cold creeping back into my limbs.
The laces were ruined; I tied what remained in a loose knot that would hold the bodice in place, barely. My hair had come undone during our coupling; I left it. No time.
I should stay here. Should hide in the shadows until whatever threat had breached the wards was dealt with, until it was safe to creep back to my chambers and pretend none of this had happened.
But the scream had come from outside.
And Cador had gone alone.
And something in my chest, something that shouldn’t have existed at all, some ghost of feeling that death hadn’t quite managed to kill, pulled me toward the courtyard.
I ran.
The corridor was dark. I navigated by memory, by instinct, by the distant sounds of chaos echoing from the great hall. Shouts. Running feet. The clang of metal against metal.
The banquet had dissolved into panic, guests scattering, guards mobilizing.
I slipped past them all.
My bare feet made no sound on the stone floors. My cold flesh cast no shadow in the torchlight. I was a ghost in a borrowed gown, moving through the castle like I belonged to it, like I was part of its ancient stones and cobwebbed corners.
The main doors stood open.
I burst through them into the night.
The courtyard was dark. The torches that normally lined the walls had been extinguished. Whether knocked over or snuffed out, I couldn’t tell.
Glass crunched beneath my feet. Oil pooled on the flagstones, slick and dangerous. The only light came from the moon, pale and cold above the mountain peaks, casting silver shadows across the black stone.
And in the center of the courtyard, I saw him.
Not the man I’d danced with. Not the king who’d kissed me in the alcove, whose skin had been pale and almost human beneath my fingers. This was something else. Something other.
Cador stood with his wings spread wide, a wall of feathers that caught the moonlight and iridescent in the gloom.
Feathers traced the line of his jaw, crept up his temples, threaded through his wild dark hair.
His eyes were black pits in that inhuman face, and when he moved, the wings moved with him, mantling, spreading, a threat display that made every instinct I had left scream I should cower, should hide.
A man was trapped between his wings and the well at the center of the courtyard.
Human. Dressed in leather armor, dark and well-worn. A cloth mask covered the lower half of his face. A crossbow hung at his belt, and a curved dagger gleamed in his gloved hand.
He was pressed against the stone, surrounded by ravens that circled but didn’t attack, held back by their king’s silent command.
“Who sent you?” Cador’s voice was different. Deeper. It resonated in my chest, in my teeth, in the cold hollow where my heart used to beat.
The man laughed.
It was an ugly sound. The laugh of someone who knew he was going to die and didn’t care.
“The aunt,” he said. “The one whose inheritance you’re sitting on. She’s getting desperate. Told everyone you had a breakdown. Loss Recovery’s been looking for you for three months. Then someone spotted you at a Bride Market, very much alive, and suddenly her whole story falls apart.”
His masked face turned toward me, finding me in the shadows by the door. “She sent her Lawkeeper friends to drag you back legally, but they move too slow for her taste. I’m the faster solution.” A wet laugh. “And you, little bride... you’re the girl who won’t stay buried.” The ravens shrieked.
Cador’s wings snapped forward.
But the assassin was faster.
He ducked under the sweep of feathers and ran, not toward Cador, toward me. The crossbow came up. I saw the bolt leave the bow, saw it spinning toward my chest, and I knew I should move, should dodge, should do something.
Wings wrapped around me, blocked my vision, blocked everything.
I heard the bolt strike.
A dull thunk, then a hiss of pain that wasn’t mine.
Cador stood in front of me, breathing hard, a crossbow bolt embedded in the meat of his left wing. Black blood dripped down the feathers, spattering the flagstones.
He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were fixed on something behind me.
I turned.
Too slow.
The assassin was already there. He’d circled while Cador shielded me, moved through the shadows like he’d been born to them.
His gloved hand closed around my throat. His dagger pressed against my carotid, the same spot where Cador’s thumb had rested earlier, searching for the pulse I didn’t have.
“Don’t move, Raven King.” The man’s voice was calm. Almost pleasant. “The aunt wants proof she’s dead. One little slice, and I’ve got all the proof I need.”
The ravens fell silent.
Cador stood frozen, his wounded wing hanging slightly lower than the other, his face unreadable, eyes fixed on the blade at my throat, on the man’s gloved hand, on my face.
“Let her go,” he said.
“I don’t think so. She’s worth a lot of money dead, you know. The aunt’s offering double if I bring back the head.” The assassin’s grip tightened on my throat.
“Now, I’m going to walk back toward that wall, and you’re going to stay right where you are, and when I’m over the top, you can have whatever’s left of her.”
I grabbed his wrist.
Not the hand holding the dagger. The other one. The bare one, the hand that had closed around my throat, the hand that was touching my cold, dead skin.
And I pulled.
The sensation was a door opening inside me, a hunger uncoiling.
Heat rushed out of his body and into mine.
Not slowly. Not gently. A torrent of stolen warmth that flooded my veins, poured into the hollow aching space beneath my ribs.
His eyes bulged above his mask.
“What—” he gasped. “What are you—”
I couldn’t stop.
The hunger was too strong, too desperate. Months of cold and stillness and fading, months of stealing scraps of warmth from petals and borrowed touches. And here was life.
Pure, hot, living life. Filling the empty vessel of my body.
I drank.
His knees buckled. The dagger clattered to the stones. His grip on my throat loosened, fell away, and still I didn’t release him.
Still I drank, pulling heat from his muscles, from his bones, from the blood that was slowing in his veins.
His face went slack.
His eyes went empty.
His body went cold.
A hand closed around my arm.
Wrenched me backward.
I stumbled, released the man, watched him crumple to the flagstones. He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t breathing.
His skin was the color of old ash, papery and stretched too tight over his bones. Not dead. Not quite, but close.
So close.
I looked up.
Cador was staring at me.
His wings were still spread, still bleeding from the bolt wound.
His expression…
Not fear. Not disgust.
Recognition.
“Guards.” His voice was steady. “Coming from the hall. They heard the commotion.”
I heard them too. Boots on stone, shouts echoing off the walls. Getting closer.
Cador moved.
His hands closed around the assassin’s neck. One sharp twist, and the man stopped breathing entirely. Dead. Fully dead now, not the half-death I’d left him in.
Then he reached over his shoulder, yanked the crossbow bolt from his wing with barely a grimace.
Black blood dripped for a moment before the wound began closing, shifter healing sealing flesh and feather. He tossed the bolt aside.
He straightened. The wings dissolved into smoke that soaked back into his skin, leaving only the torn shirt as evidence they’d been there.
His skin faded to pale, the feathers along his jaw receding until he looked like the man I’d danced with again.
“So.” His voice was calm. Controlled. But his eyes held something I couldn’t read.
“You eat heat. Not food. Not wine. Heat. Living heat, stolen from living bodies.”
I couldn’t speak.
My cheeks were flushed. My skin was warm. Genuinely warm, not petal-warm but blood-warm, life-warm. The stolen vitality was singing in my veins, making me feel more alive than I had since I first woke in the dark.
“And you lied to me,” Cador continued. “About everything. The food you didn’t eat. The warmth you didn’t feel. The heartbeat that wasn’t real.”
The guards burst into the courtyard. A dozen of them, armed with swords and crossbows, their faces hard, battle-ready.
They took in the scene. The dead man at our feet, the king standing over the body, the bride with pink cheeks and wide eyes.
“An assassin,” Cador said. “Dealt with. Return to your posts.”
The captain hesitated. His eyes moved from the body to me, noting the torn gown, the disheveled hair, the impossible flush in my cheeks.
Then his gaze dropped to the corpse. Shriveled, desiccated, obviously drained. He paled, his hand twitching toward his sword hilt.
“My Lord,” he stammered. “The body... it looks...”
“Remove the filth,” Cador said, his voice ice. “Do not look at it closely. Burn it.”
The captain nodded once, sharply. “Yes, my Lord.”
“Now.”
They went.
We stood alone in the courtyard.
The ravens had settled on every available surface, walls, well, flagstones. They watched us with their ageless eyes, silent and patient, waiting to see what their king would do.
“The petal,” Cador said. “The thing you took. It makes you seem alive.”
I nodded.
“How many do you have left?”
My hand moved to the pouch at my belt. The bone box inside. The two dried flowers that remained.
“Two.”
His jaw tightened, then he took my arm, his grip firm but not cruel, and pulled me toward the keep.
“Come. You need to use it. The guards will have questions, and you need to look human when you answer them.”
I stumbled after him. “Why are you doing this?”
“Later.” His grip was iron, his voice ice.
“We’ll discuss what you are later. For now, you’ll play the shaken bride, and I’ll play the protective husband, and we’ll both pretend this night was nothing but a failed assassination.”
He paused at the door. Looked back at me over his shoulder, his face pale again, almost human again, but I’d seen what was underneath now.
The wings. The eyes. The predator that lived beneath the king’s cold mask.
“And then,” he said, “you’re going to tell me everything. Or I’ll find out myself. And you won’t like my methods.”