Chapter 31
SOUNDTRACK: Little Girl Gone by CHINCHILLA
~ brEN ~
My brows shot up.
Voski leaned back and looked over his shoulder before leaning in again. “There’s no one in the corridor. You give him a few minutes to precede you, then you’re going to the banquet hall and pretending you were never here.”
I desperately wanted to search Ruin’s rooms with him, but I knew I didn’t have the skill and I’d slow him down. Plus, I was in this stupid gown. So, I reluctantly nodded.
Voski took another moment to ensure there was no one in the corridor, then beckoned me out ahead of him and followed me, whispering as I passed. “You walk and I’ll follow like your servant, but I’ll slip into the alcove as you pass, as long as the hallway remains clear.”
I nodded and started down the hallway, letting my line take me casually to the other side of the space so we’d be close to the alcove when we passed his door.
“Tell Donavyn,” Voski breathed at the last second, then the presence at my back was gone, and I walked alone. Slowly. Heart pounding. Because something about this felt… uneasy.
I looked behind me—had there been servants behind us Voski didn’t see, who watched him enter?
But the corridor remained empty. I slowed my pace, but kept moving—just a woman casually walking through the castle. Yet, something had me on edge. I slowed even further as I moved beyond Ruin’s alcove and turned to look behind me again, considering my options.
When I entered this wing, I’d felt Voski’s eyes on me and it had raised my hackles. Was there someone else watching now? The feeling wasn’t the same, but perhaps—
A shadow appeared from the corridor ahead, someone approaching from the adjoining hallway. I only had time to take two steps before the form was silhouetted, and every alarm in my body sang, every inch of my skin pulled into tight goosebumps, and my heart slammed against my ribs.
Ruin. Returning to his room.
His face was tight and dark with frustration—he’d obviously forgotten something and was hurrying back—but the moment he turned into the corridor and my movement caught his attention his expression smoothed… then sharpened when he focused on me.
I stopped dead, staring—probably paling. My cheeks felt cold. Along with my hands. Because here we were…
Standing in empty corridor.
With Ruin Galdec.
And I was in skirts. Carrying no blade.
Help me, God.
His brows rose and his smile pulled up as he opened his mouth, no doubt about to say something disgusting. I had no cohesive thought except that I needed to give Voski time to get out—somehow—and a warning. He needed to hear me.
So, I lifted my chin, along with one brow, and planted my fists on my hips. “Ruin Galdec,” I said in a normal voice, praying it was loud enough to reach through the door—and that Voski’s hearing was sharp enough to catch it.
His smirk sickened me—but there was also something satisfying in seeing him drop into all the things that used to make my stomach flutter—that easy saunter he’d always had, arms loose at his sides, the smile pulling up his lips, eyes sparkling and hair sticking out because he’d run his fingers through it—and feel nothing but revulsion.
My skin crawled when his eyes dropped to my toes, then raked up my body. I wished, with volcanic levels of frustration, that Donavyn was the first one to have seen me in this dress.
But I smiled. I knew I looked good—and his gaze said he knew it too.
Ruin wasn’t just putting on the saunter for me. His eyes told a story they’d told since I was fifteen years old: He wanted me.
“Well, this is a surprise,” he said in that low, deep voice he always used when he was flirting.
God, he made me sick. “Are you following me?” I asked flatly. “What are you doing here?”
His brows rose skeptically. “That’s my room behind you—but you knew that.”
I didn’t answer him.
He smirked again.
Then he said, “You look good, Brenny,” in a quiet rasp that used to make my heart sing, and now made my bowels clench.
I narrowed my gaze at him and didn’t move closer. “I don’t answer to that name anymore.”
“I think you will, though,” he said, then his tongue slipped up to just barely flicker under his lip and disappeared again.
Fear sang in my chest, a shrill alarm that sent my senses to high alert. But I caught it. Caught my body’s tension and my heart’s pounding and made myself breathe.
My brothers did things I couldn’t do. And I was here to do things they couldn’t.
Like distract Ruin fucking Galdec from finding my brother searching his room.
I took a deep breath and let my head sink back far enough to look down my nose at him. “I did know it was your room,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to catch you for days.”
“I’m sure you have.” His smile curled higher on the right, a lopsided grin that used to make me ache. Now it turned my stomach. I nodded.
“God, you really have grown more arrogant, haven’t you?”
He shrugged. “Is it arrogance when it’s true?”
I huffed as if I was laughing, then looked up and down the hallway, always keeping him in my peripheral vision in case he moved quickly.
There was several feet of carpet between us, and I needed to close that space. So, I let my arms fall to my sides and started towards him, leaning in and whispering as I closed the gap. “I have a message for you.”
“Oh?”
I nodded, then looked at his chest and hesitated with one hand raised, as if to touch him.
The truth was, I knew the form of that chest. Knew its warmth.
Where it was firm, and where soft. Knew the lines between muscle and where the bone stood proud.
I knew the sound of that heart—beating quickly with want, or slowly in the languid rest after release.
I knew the sound of laughter in that chest. Also, my name. And the low rasp of desire.
I wished I didn’t. I wished I couldn’t conjure any of it.
And when I forced myself to lay my palm softly at the center of that broad chest and slide it up, towards his neck, it made me want to grip his throat and stop his breath
And when he caught my wrist, stopping my progress, I smiled.
But my heart pounded. I was in skirts. And I didn’t have a blade.
And Voski was in his room.
His eyes flashed and his smile gained an edge. “What are you doing, Brenny?”
I glanced over his shoulder and he took the bait, snapping his head around to look for the sneak.
In the same second I grabbed his cravat with the other hand and twisted, tightening it around his neck so that he gave a strangled grunt and grabbed for both my arms in a hold I knew he could use to flip me.
“If you harm me, I will scream,” I hissed. He froze, but didn’t break the grip. “And we both know when I do, the entire castle will come running. They’ll all want to know why the great Furyknight would attack a woman in the halls of the castle. I suspect Donavyn would have answers for them.”
His eyes narrowed to slits, but his face was turning a bright red and his voice rasped with the effort to breathe because of my grip on his tie. “What the hell are you—”
“I don’t give two shits if Donavyn believes you’re loyal to the crown—I do not.
I don’t believe you’re hunting a mole, and I’m more than happy for this entire kingdom to learn the truth about your perverted ass.
So, hear me, Ruin: Donavyn may have honor, but I’m just a simple woman, ruled by her emotions.
I will burn this mission to the ground if it means making sure you’re revealed for what you truly are. Donavyn’s honor be damned.”
Ruin choked once, but his grip on my wrist was so tight I was starting to lose feeling. I wouldn’t be able to restrict his air for much longer.
“If I see you touch one servant, one maid, one noblewoman who looks even hesitant, I will tell all of them. The king. Hanson. Everyone. And I will tell them everything.”
His upper lip curled back in a sneer. “You’ll tell them that you, a commoner, took a Furyknight squad like a she-boar lays down for her piglets?” he rasped.
The blow landed, but I didn’t let him see it. I smiled. “Do you know I have the ear of our queen, Ruin? Diaan sat me at her table and introduced me to her friends. I gathered evidence of her husband’s infidelities. Alexi may like you, but Diaan will not. Not when I tell her what you are.”
His expression didn’t change, but that only meant he didn’t want me to see what he felt.
I smiled wider and leaned closer. “I’ll tell them you raped me.
I'll tell them your entire squad was filthy and criminal and utterly dishonorable. I’ll tell them why the dragons called judgment on their own riders.
And even if the king still tries to stand in your stead, he will have to choose between keeping you as his pet, or keeping his powerful wife. Trust me. You will lose.”
He sneered, but his throat jumped against the twist I had on his cravat. “You’re just a jealous, emotional woman who has no business being in the field. The king doesn’t just like me, Brenny. He trusts me—”
“The king didn’t tell you that he’d raised a woman, did he?” The words just tumbled out—and were immediately followed by a wave of fear. He wasn’t supposed to know! But then I caught how still he’d gone, and the question in his eyes, though he didn’t respond.
I smiled and inspiration struck. We needed this man to send another message. And I thought I knew how to be certain he would. “Did the king tell you that he personally raised me to First Rank? That the queen attended my pinning to Furyknight?”
Ruin snorted his skepticism. “You aren’t a Fury—”
“I am the silent breath, the unseen flame. My loyalty is to Shadowfang—above blood, above name, above love…” It was with breathless satisfaction that I recited the Shadowfang vow to him and watched his eyes widen first in shock, then horror, as I did so.
Because he knew, no one knew the vow except those who’d taken it.
And Donavyn was far too honorable to have shared it, even with a mate.
“I forsake comfort, favor, and the weight of my past. I bind my will to the mission, my heart to the cause, and my soul to the Creator’s flame that forged us.
“I will serve where others cannot, and walk with those I do not trust, if it leads to the truth that must be claimed. I will protect my brothers to the death, and carry what they learn to the good of the kingdom.”
He started to struggle, trying to pull out of my grip, and I wouldn’t be able to hold him off long, so I hurried to get the rest out. “I am weapon and whisper, watcher and wraith. No duty shall hold me tighter, no oath but this shall try me.
“Sworn in the darkness, witnessed by the Divine. Bound to my soul… Until I am ash, under the eyes of God, I am Shadowfang.”
Finally, he ripped my grip free, both hands, burning my palm with the friction of the slick material pulling too quickly through my hands, and shoved me back two paces.
I caught myself, but I was smiling genuinely now, while Ruin stood there, trying not to bend over and cough, red-faced and panting, glowering at me in disbelief.
“No one told you, did they?” I whispered. “Maybe they don’t trust you as much as you think they do? Or… maybe you aren’t as important to them as they’ve implied? Maybe… maybe you aren’t the only one the king… enjoys?”
God, I hated leaning into that angle, but I knew that if Ruin had an in with either the king or queen, believing that I held the same grip on them would make him question his security.
Sure enough, his gaze turned dark.
“Donavyn’s a controlling bastard. He’d never share a woman, even his whore—”
“Ask your contacts about me, Ruin,” I whispered, grinning wildly, though I felt nauseous.
“Whoever gives you information from back home, ask them. And when you find out that I’m not telling a single word of a lie, then you take this very, very seriously: If you so much as touch a woman’s hair without her permission, I will cut your dick off in your sleep.
And then I will disappear, and they’ll think it was some upset servant that you raped instead. ”
I made myself lean up and pat his face. Ruin jerked away, his eyes blazing with rage—but I saw the flash of doubt behind that anger and it made me smile more.
He opened his mouth. My guts quivered at what he might spew at me, but just then a servant darted into the hallway and called for me.
“Lady Brennan, the General sent me to find you. He is angry, my lady.”
I didn’t take my eyes of Ruin.
Fuck. Fuck. Voski was still in his room.
But if I didn’t go, he’d think I’d done more than wait for him outside his locked room.
“Fare thee well, Ruin Galdec,” I said as I sauntered away, using the growing distance as an excuse to raise my voice in the hope that Voski had enough time to either find a secret passage, or to hide well.
Then, hands gripping my skirts so he couldn’t see them tremble, I stepped past him with my heart pounding in my ears.
I couldn’t help smiling though.
The expression on his face was… priceless.