Chapter 14
fourteen
I knew the ceiling of the room I woke up in. I knew the three horizontal windows on the opposite wall, and the wooden door just past the edge of the twin bed I lay in. The door that was now half open.
The sky was blue beyond the windows, a deep blue, which meant the day had already started—and it was about to end, too. The sun would begin to set any moment now, if I had to guess.
For a moment there, I was calm. Quiet. My mind blank. No fear and no anxiety. No memory of what had happened the last time I was awake.
Then I heard the footsteps.
Somehow, when I blinked, I was standing. Somehow, in the second it took my heart to skip a beat, I was on my feet next to the bed, wearing a pale pink nightgown that most definitely didn’t belong to me. No pain in my body, and I was ready to fucking run for another full day if I had to.
Because I remembered.
The sorcerers and those men who’d shifted into wolves and Maera and those howls and? —
“Raja.”
The name slipped from my lips when she stopped by the threshold, unsurprised to find me awake and standing. Her cold dark eyes took me in slowly, scrolling down my body like I was a ticking bomb she expected to go off any second.
She hadn’t changed a bit. Her dress was still black, made mostly out of soft leather, and her hair was tied behind her head in a tight bun, and her pointy ears were perfectly visible.
Just as striking as the last time I saw her—and she hated me with the same strength, if the look in her eyes was anything to go by.
“Aren’t you full of surprises,” she said passively, and she most definitely did not expect a reply, only came in and dropped what she was holding on the edge of the bed—clothes.
The same clothes I’d had on when I came here.
The velvet pants and jacket I’d stolen from the queen’s palace, except they looked clean now. And dry.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t. My hair was full of dirt and my skin was brown in most places, too. I’d even stained the sheets I’d been lying on a little.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself. None of this mattered.
“Rune.” My voice was stronger now and it filled the room. “I need you to send a message to Rune with your shadows, Raja. Please.”
She flinched at my pleading—actually flinched before she said, “I already have.”
My God, those words.
They put the entire world in the palms of my hands.
The tears came, hard and fast and all at once.
My eyes closed and two slipped down my cheeks, and now I was shaking, like I suddenly had no more strength left in me.
Like my body suddenly remembered that I hadn’t eaten in a long time, that I’d gone through a lot.
“I’d ask you how dare you show up at my door the way you did, but I have a sense you won’t mind. After stealing from me—I doubt you have any scruples in you, mortal.”
It didn’t surprise me in the least. “I didn’t steal from you. Rune took your boots so I could get through the tunnel easier.”
She arched a brow but didn’t say whether she believed me or not.
And that didn’t matter, either.
“I didn’t come to stay, Raja. I only wanted to send a message to Rune so he knew where I was. I’ll be leaving right away, but I will stay close to wait until he comes.”
The woman would kill me right where I stood if eyes had that kind of power. “You’re certain that he will.” Again—not a question, just a statement.
“I am.” I stepped forward, begged my legs not to let go of me. I needed to get those clothes, put them on, and then get out of this house asap.
“And how exactly do you plan to explain this to him—or to anyone at all?” Slowly, she crossed her arms in front of her chest and walked deeper into the room, to the other side, as if she was deliberately trying to keep as much distance between us as possible.
“You come to me before dawn, brimming with moon magic, with an alpha wolf who threatens me in my own home.”
Fuck. “No, no—she wasn’t threatening you. They were just howling. They?—”
“Don’t try to make a fool out of me, mortal.
” She said that word like it was the most disgusting, vile thing she could imagine—and believe it or not, I couldn’t have cared less.
Right now, my life was far too complicated to be bothered by that name or to take offense at anything said by anyone I met on this fucking continent at all.
“I’m not trying to do anything. It was just a howl,” I said through gritted teeth, hands pulled up in fists as warmth spread all over me, starting from my chest.
Not going to lie, it scared me a little because it was unexpected. I knew what it was. I knew what came with it—the light in my hands. The energy, the magic that made things float on air—or threw them off me like it had done those men before they shifted into wolves.
And it had never come at me so suddenly before, so fast, at just a hint of anger.
“It was a threat ,” Raja insisted, speaking slowly now. “They threatened to come back for me if I harmed you. They threatened me.”
Well, damn, Maera…
I closed my eyes, took in a deep breath. “They were just trying to watch out for me, that’s all. It’s nothing personal,” I ended up muttering because I absolutely believed her now.
“And that simply begs the question why, doesn’t it, mortal?” I was sure she threw that word at me to piss me off because she knew I hated it. The joke was on her, though. She was about to find out just how much that had changed since the last time we saw each other.
“I saved her life,” I said because I had nothing to hide and I had nothing to lie about.
Raja was Rune’s friend. She cared about him a great deal, even if she couldn’t stand me.
I believed in that, at least. So, I said, “We made it to the Seelie Court, Raja. I healed the prince. I walked out of the room, and the next thing I know, they’re shouting murder, pointing their fingers at me.
I saw Lyall’s body on the ground with a knife sticking out of his chest. Rune helped me escape. ”
“How?” she demanded, and she gave no hint of what she thought about anything I was saying yet, which was fine.
“The river that’s around the queen’s palace. He told me to jump in it, then his shadows took me to this irrigation canal near these fields just outside the palace.”
For a moment, Raja only stared at the floor, the wheels in her head turning.
I continued. “I made it to Mysthaven, and I found Maera, the alpha you saw, in a cage, almost dead because a sorcerer had used her for… stuff . I thought she was a dog, so I fed her and I freed her, and then…” My eyes closed once more.
“She saved me back. Saved us both from the sorcerers, and then they…brought me here. Used the scent of your boots to find you.”
There. That’s all anybody really needed to know—except for Rune, of course.
A step closer, and Raja locked her jaws so tightly I heard them snap.
“She scratched you.” Her cold eyes dropped to my naked arm because the nightgown I wore was sleeveless.
I raised my arm to see it myself, only to find the faintest red lines remaining on my skin, barely there, so easy to miss if you didn’t know where to look.
Those scratches that had been so deep and raw were gone, just like that. Within a couple of days.
“She was trying to save my life,” I said. “She did.” The skin wasn’t even raised—I ran my fingers over it to confirm it.
“By the stars—she scratched you, a wee bit of an alpha, and you’re brimming with moon magic.” Another step forward, this one purely menacing, yet I didn’t even consider moving back. Instead, the heat in my chest intensified, and it fucking shocked me and scared me shitless at the same time.
When those sorcerers had been after us, I hadn’t even considered reaching for it, had forgotten it existed, but now that I’d remembered it was there, this happens.
What the hell is going on with me?
I’d glowed. My skin had had this glow to it—not the golden glow my hands took on, but a different glow. Almost ethereal. Why? What exactly had that scratch done to me?
“Have you shifted?” Raja demanded.
“No, no—of course not.”
“Have you, by any chance, died as you should have?”
Fuck, it was really hot in this room all of a sudden. In my skin. “I haven’t.” Even my voice came out different this time.
“You wouldn’t happen to know why , would you?” Those wide eyes. I could have sworn she could see right into my soul.
“Lyall,” I whispered. “He transferred his magic to me when he created the life-bond.”
Her brows shot up. “So, you’re also a liar.”
“I—”
“I asked you at my table what the bond did to you. You looked me in the eye, and you lied to me.”
“I…” Fuck! “I can’t really explain it to you, Raja.
But I can assure you I meant no disrespect.
I was trying to survive. I still am.” Because it would take forever to explain to her what my life had looked like, what I’d had to go through for telling people the truth.
How much I hadn’t believed my own self because of it.
I would rather keep that story to myself .
“There’s something wrong about you, mortal,” Raja said. “You shouldn’t have been able to carry?—”
“Lyall’s magic, and the moon magic, and I should have died from the scratch—yes, yes, I know all of it!” I snapped, and my cheeks heated up, and the palms of my hands were on fucking fire.
Raja noticed first that they were glowing, and the way she looked down at me made me wish I could start running already.
I scared her.
I scared her.
Moving back, I didn’t stop until my back hit the wall and I hid my hands behind me.
“Look, Raja, I don’t know why any of this is happening. I came to you because I had nowhere else to go, and no way to tell Rune where I am. Thank you for taking me in, for calling for him. I am not your problem, okay? I will be on my way.”
A moment of silence that stretched to eternity.
Finally, Raja stepped back, folded her hands in front of her, raised her chin. “And where do you think you can go to get your answers, mortal?”
This time, her voice didn’t have as much bite as usual.
“I…I don’t know. I’ll talk to Rune about it.”
“Rune is the bastard son of a king, banished, unimportant to those imps at the Seelie Court. Forcing him to look for answers will only put him in danger.”
“And then you’ll be coming for me—yes, I remember. Except I won’t force anyone to do anything. Rune will have a choice.” I stepped forward, confident that my hands weren’t glowing anymore. I went to the bed and grabbed my clothes, praying that my body held me.
“Stay,” Raja said. “Don’t move. ”
Just like that, she turned around and walked out of the room.
What the hell just happened?
I had no clue, but I was going to put those clothes on and get the fuck away from here as fast as I could, go to the lake—or anywhere at all where Rune could find me. Where I could be safe until he came.
Will he, though? A voice in my head whispered, and shivers broke down my entire body. Would Rune come for me?
“He will. ” I said it out loud to the room, the empty walls—myself. Rune would come. Regardless of the cloud of doubt that snuck in my mind, I believed that with all my heart.
Except before I could get my body to move fast enough, to take off that nightgown and put on the suit, I heard the footsteps again.
I stopped, waited, and Raja came back with a plate in her hands. Cucumber. Cheese. Bread. Two grilled fish.
Every instinct in my body screamed at me at the same time.
“Eat. Bathe. Then you can leave.” She put the plate on the other edge of the bed, gave me a look that was pure, raw hatred, if I wasn’t mistaken, then turned on her heel and walked away, leaving the door wide open.
I couldn’t even tell you how I sat down on the floor, put the plate in front of me and ate.
I stuffed my mouth with so much food it could have been funny, and I didn’t taste anything at all, but my body adored it.
My stomach got to work, and my eyes were open and my body was no longer shaking even before I’d finished the entire plate.
My God, I had been starving worse than ever before. The difference shocked me just like every other time. I licked the plate clean, and the fish bones as well, and if I had another full plate like that, I’d have eaten that, too.
As it was, I put it away and stood up, and everything had more color. The room looked bigger and the darkening sky outside more alive. I breathed in through my nose and I could smell the wood and the sheets, even the dust in the air for a second. Definitely strange—but what in my life wasn’t?
Grabbing the clothes from the bed, I made my way to the bathroom feeling brand new.