CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE #2
“No. She hadn’t.” He pulled back from me and hugged himself, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. “Did I hurt you?” he asked again.
I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a deep breath. “No.”
He nodded. “After you saved me that night, after the chimera and the lake, you ran.”
“You know why I did. Why I had to.”
“I do. But what I don’t know is … Gods. Was any of it fucking real?” he asked, his voice trembling.
“Yes. Everything that could be between us was real. As real to me as anything ever was.”
“I was falling in love with you,” he said quietly.
“Which me?” My heart thundered.
“Both.”
“Brennan.” My heart split in two.
Just then, someone pounded on the door.
“Pardon, Your Highnesses,” shouted a guard. “Princess Olivay’s lady-in-waiting and the healer Symona are here to see her.”
“One moment,” he roared back, and rushed toward me, taking my hands in his, his green eyes wild with fear. “Change,” he commanded. “You must change. Before they see. Now! Be Olivay. Be Olivay again.”
“I-I can’t,” I said. “It’s not that easy to just shift.”
“You need to,” he hissed. “Now.”
I closed my eyes, but my nerves were jumping. I wasn’t used to being watched as I changed, and I’d already shifted so many times tonight.
“What do you need?” he asked. “This?” He brushed his lips against mine, freely offering me his energy, his lifeforce. And I sucked it down, connecting to his mind, just enough to see a clear image of Olivay in his head. I took one final taste of his lips, and pulled back, my chest heaving.
I squeezed my eyes shut, conjuring her image for myself, remembering the details I’d memorized when I first saw her, remembering the way I’d looked as I saw my reflection these last couple of weeks.
And then I began to feel the changes take place, the tweaks and turns to my body, my eyes, my hair length, color, and texture. Even my height difference.
Brennan’s eyes widened even further, his mouth falling open as sweat beaded on my forehead, the transformation complete.
I’d taken a huge hit to my reserves. All the magic and energy I’d collected from feeding tonight was gone.
All of the lifeforce I’d just stolen from Brennan had been for nothing.
Even maintaining Olivay’s form felt ridiculous. But what other choice did I have?
He swept Olivay’s black curls off my shoulder, and I shivered.
I’d replaced my wet gown, and the rips and stains from the attack outside.
His fingers brushed against the sensitive skin of my neck.
“No cut.” He shook his head. “I have to go now,” he said.
“There are things I need to take care of. And it must be done tonight.”
“Do you hate me now?” I asked.
“Should I?” He shook his head. “Gods. That you would even ask that of me?” He sucked in a breath.
“I don’t–I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know what to do.
I thought I did, I thought I knew right from wrong, thought that the answers were simple.
But they’re not. I know that those men were telling the truth tonight, and yet they still deserve death.
And I know that you can’t be here for any good reason.
I know you’ve lied to me for weeks, and yet, I feel as though I’ve seen your heart.
You’ve saved my life. Twice. Nothing makes sense right now.
I just need to get out of here. Away. But you should know, I’m going to have guards stationed outside your window, as well as your door, all night long.
No one can come in without my say. So you’ll be safe. ”
I nodded, almost hopeful.
“But no one can come out either. Especially you.” He grabbed his cloak, and retrieved his knife from the ground, and resheathed it.
Then he turned on his heel, and opened the door.
A moment later he was gone, leaving me with the healer, Abigail, and a distraught Queen Noemay, who was desperate to see that her daughter was okay.
I burst into tears. And for once, I didn’t have to hide them as I was bathed, tended to, and examined.
Until finally, finally, I collapsed into my bed.
Alone. Rain pelted against the windowpanes, thunder roared, and after enough time, enough hours of waiting for him to knock on my door, to tell me he didn’t hate me, to tell me he still loved me, that I hadn’t fucking ruined everything, I fell asleep.
Iwas running through the woods, frantic and terrified, a chimera growling. It was an adult. And it was coming closer. It was going to kill me.
Another approached nearby. Someone was screaming in pain, in need of help. A woman. She had long, golden-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes. She was a queen.
One I recognized, and knew, and loved. My heart swelled.
But she was fuzzy. Her features reminded me of my mother.
The same look, the same regal way she held herself.
But as I got closer, and closer, I realized it wasn’t her, not exactly.
The features were similar. But they weren’t her features, nor were they my aunt’s.
No, they were … they were … Gods. They were mine.
My face, my body. My original birth form.
I was running toward myself. Toward Princess Shamhira. I only knew one thing.
She would die if I didn’t reach her.
I ran faster, needing to get to my body, to save myself. To fight off the threat. But instead of shifting fingers to claws, or transforming my arm to a blade, I reached for a sword, sheathed in a scabbard at my waist, and I gripped the hilt firmly in my hand.
No, no, this was wrong. I never reached for a sword. I became the sword.
And yet as I looked down, checking my grip, I realized that my hand wasn’t mine.
Not one I ever possessed as Shamhira, Alyra, Samara, or Olivay.
Because the hand I had was a man’s, with a man’s golden sigil ring, a moonstag etched across it, and silver steel cuffs covering my wrists.
The steel of a knight. Brennan’s steel. Brennan’s sigil ring. But why?
Why would I have shifted into him? And why, when there was a chimera near, wasn’t I shifting into the thing that could kill it?
But there was no time to think about it.
The chimera was drawing closer and closer to the girl—to Princess Shamhira.
To me. It breathed fire, though I didn’t see it.
Only the result. By some miracle it had missed her, and two trees on either side erupted in flames, the reaching branches were full of fire and smoke, appearing almost like wings.
She looked at me, her ice-blue eyes widening with absolute terror before she screamed, “Brennan!”
Another chimera came, racing out of the woods with a growl, ember ashes flaring in both sets of nostrils.
It stopped in front of me, two sets of jaws snapping. Both heads were wolves.
“What do you want?” I asked, my voice deep and masculine. Male. Brennan’s.
“We’ve already given our warning,” the chimera spoke, both mouths moving. Its black snake tail shot out, snapping its jaws and revealing its fangs. “We said more would come,” it rasped. “And we’ve given our demands.”
“Which are what?” I snarled, lifting the blade in my hands, feeling deep layers of muscle that I’d never grown or experienced before wrap around my arms. “Tell me!”
“We want the prince.”
I stepped back, my heart thundering. Some flash of memory moved like a gust of wind through my mind. Something I couldn’t hold, couldn’t grasp,
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s what he wants,” the chimera said, and then stepped aside, revealing a dark shadow in the woods.
A man, no, a God. He stepped forward into the sunlight, two horns protruding from his head—and black, steel armor covering his entire body.
Armor I knew well.
“We meet again,” the God said to me.
Batrir.
Iwoke with a start, my body covered in sweat, the images of the dream racing through my head.
They felt distant and strange, all at once, almost like the dream wasn’t mine, like there was a glass wall between it and my memory of the images I’d seen, and yet, I had seen it, experienced it, felt it.
Felt my hands on the sword, my heart pounding. My fear awakening as I saw Batrir.
By the Gods, Batrir. I’d dreamt of fucking Batrir himself, in all of his glory.
And more than that, he was wearing Jaron’s armor.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that. In every image across Eskalon and even Azeal, he was always depicted in the shadows, in the dark.
Appearing like that in the fairy tale books, in the temple paintings, even in the art that Geoffrey had kept.
But it wasn’t shadows that darkened his steel.
It was the steel itself. His armor was black.
Which meant—either King Tirian didn’t know the truth, or he’d lied to me.
The armor passed down through the royal line of House Lafir, the armor he’d called witch armor, was ancient, and it was forged long before the Doom.
I knew all of my suspicions were correct.
I had felt a sense of familiarity I didn’t understand the first time I saw it.
But I understood now. The steel had come from the realm of the witches themselves.
The land of my ancestors before they migrated to Azeal.
It was armor that had been forged before the Doom.
But it was more than that. It was the armor that belonged to Batrir himself.
I sat up in bed, my heart racing, the chimera’s warning coming back to me again and again.
We warned you more would come. We want the prince.
I rushed to one of my traveling trunks, opening it and pulling out everything in heaps until I found a small blue satin bag, buried at the bottom.
Thunder cracked outside, the storm still raging, and I began tossing everything back into the trunk, sealing it shut and rushing back to my bed, pulling out the contents—the items I’d hidden in the vase.
The torn pieces of parchment of Alyra, and my mother’s locket.
I opened the necklace, staring down at the image she’d drawn of Orsete.