Chapter 65 One Month Later
One Month Later
Huntyr
“How are you sleeping?” Cal swings his blade sharply towards me, no mercy in the force of his blow.
I twist out of the way and send a rush of magic to my hand, lighting up the small field we’re training in so brightly that he has to back away and cover his eyes.
I’m getting better at that, short bursts of blinding light.
My next goal is to find a way to warm the light, find a way to make it hot enough to burn an enemy.
That would be cool.
I’ve been practicing with it constantly.
Using bursts of light to illuminate the bathing chamber in the mornings when I clean my teeth rather than lighting candles.
Using it as a second weapon on the sparring fields when I train during the day.
Using it to create tiny sparks that fall around us when Derian and I make love at night.
I never want to feel the way I did that day in the Wastelands when I couldn’t grasp onto it cleanly enough.
“I hate when you do that!” he barks at me, just as a vine twists itself out of the ground and pulls my legs out from under me.
I fall heavily, wincing as my back takes the brunt of the impact. Now it’s my turn to blink at the uncomfortable brightness of the sun beating down on me. At this point in the day, it’s at its hottest, and sweat has already started dripping down my back under the leather of my protective vest.
“And I hate when you do that,” I groan, rubbing at the back of my head.
He doesn’t bother lending a hand to help me up, a gesture I actually appreciate.
Cal and I have been sparring nearly every day since Luceron left, headed back to Bridgemond.
We’re due to follow after him soon, but somehow, Derian convinced his brother to give us a few more weeks of wedded bliss before I have to be introduced to the rest of the drooling court fools.
His words. Not mine.
My sentiment, though.
Cal doesn’t go easy on me, not like the rest of the guards in Springhallow do. These men didn’t see me fight in the Conclave. They don’t know me as the assassin from the Mortal Kingdoms or the woman who killed her own sister to defend their prince.
I’m just his wife to them.
It drives me mad.
“I’m sleeping fine,” I mumble, staying on the ground as I catch my breath.
Cal has been sleeping in a room down the hall from us, which means he’s undoubtedly been woken up by my screaming in the night.
Always at the same time.
Always from the same dream.
The nightmares started shortly after our wedding, a thankfully simple occasion.
Derian insisted that with our mating being officially claimed, there was no need for the two of us to make an elaborate show of our relationship.
The ceremony was kept small, with our immediate friends, his brother, and a Fae priestess.
We’d celebrated afterwards with dancing and a ridiculously enormous cake—chocolate and vanilla swirled together.
Everything had been perfect for the first few days until I started having these unbearable nightmares.
I see Tyla standing in front of me, reaching for me, but when I take her hand, the ground fractures beneath her.
She falls into a pool of darkness while the world shakes beneath my feet and those shadows begin to grow.
They crawl out of that hole in the ground and slither around me like serpents closing in.
And then I hear it.
A simple whisper, so quiet I can’t quite understand it at first.
But it repeats. Louder and louder and louder.
“Huntyr,” it calls to me.
Until I launch out of bed screaming.
“Princess Silverthorn!”
I groan. Right on time.
My new lady’s maid, Sheryn, waits by the door to the manor, wiping her hands on her apron and staring at me expectantly.
Sheryn also sees me as Derian’s wife more than anything and has no qualms reminding me that wearing gowns would be more appropriate for my new station.
“I’m a Conclave winner,” I mumble under my breath to Cal. “You’d think they would remember I quite literally murdered people to become his bride and stop insisting on having me act like a lady.”
Cal rolls his eyes. “You? A Lady?”
I climb to my feet, smacking his arm as I do, all while carefully avoiding the expectant gaze of Sheryn.
“Prince Silverthorn has requested your presence, ma’am. He is in his office.”
Gods, if Kristona could see me now.
“Ma’am,” I hiss the word like it’s poison. “I hate that.”
Cal takes my sword with a sympathetic smile, and I make my way back inside, taking the towel that Sheryn hands to me as I go and using it to wipe away the sweat from the back of my neck.
She trails me as I walk through the polished foyer and take the spiral staircase two at a time.
“I’ve laid out some new gowns to consider packing for your trip to Bridgemond ma’am. They’re in your chambers.”
My chambers.
Not the chambers I share with Derian.
Because apparently, royal Fae have separate bedrooms.
Which makes absolutely no sense because Derian is my mate, proven by the little white scars on both of our wrists, and I spend every night in his bed, anyway. Still, Sheryn refuses to acknowledge that.
“I already packed for my trip to Bridgemond,” I say sweetly over my shoulder.
There’s a pause, long enough to know that she’s thinking carefully about how to respond. “You packed leather.”
“I like leather,” I remind her. “Prince Derian likes me in leather.”
“He most certainly does,” Derian’s voice rings out.
I can’t help the way my blood sings when I reach the top of the staircase and lay my eyes on him. He waits in the doorway of the office at the end of the hall, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the frame.
His dark eyes scan down my body, from the top of my head where my hair has been tied back out of my face, to the sweat-streaked tan skin visible above my vest, to the expanse of my hips and thighs. Each place his eyes touch is left feeling impossibly hot.
I keep waiting for it to fade, the insatiable need for him. I thought it would after that first time I gave in to temptation during the Conclave, but it’s only gotten stronger every day since.
“Wife,” he greets me, holding out the door.
I duck under his arm to step into the office, and he closes the door behind us. His expression turns positively wicked once we’re alone.
“You needed me?” I ask innocently, propping myself up on his desk.
Derian stands in front of me, resting his hands on either side of my hips as he leans down and breathes me in. “Terribly so.”
“I thought you had work to do? Correspondences to send? Plans to make? War to prepare for?”
“Oh, I do.” He dips toward my neck, trailing his tongue up the delicate skin there until I shiver.
“Won’t I be a distraction?”
“Some people would argue that you’re more productive when you take breaks to reward yourself.”
A kiss to the space where my throat meets my jaw.
A kiss to the space right under my ear.
“And you would like me to reward you?”
I can’t stop the tiny whimper that escapes when he tugs my earlobe between his teeth.
“Mhmm, I would.”
A tug on the laces of my vest.
A squeeze on my hip.
“Huntyr…”
I jolt, jumping so sharply that Derian steps back, concern evident in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
That voice.
That voice in my mind that’s so distinctly different from Kaia’s or anyone else’s.
I stand slowly, taking careful steps towards the window.
Nothing looks different. The sun is still high in the sky, sending warmth and brightness down upon the full grass and shrubs covering the estate. Cal still stands on the lawn, talking to one of the guards. Horses still graze in the distance.
Everything is the same.
And yet, I know it’s not.
“It’s not over yet,” Derian agrees, sensing my thoughts as he comes to stand by me, his hand tracing soothingly up and down my back.
“No,” I sigh. “It’s just beginning.”
He rubs my shoulders, trying to work out the building tension there as I keep staring out the window. Staring in the direction of that dead land, infested by the monsters who ruined my life.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
I know he’s desperate to help. I know that every nightmare is like a stab to his heart.
But there’s nothing to be done. Not yet, at least. We have to travel to Bridgemond first. We have to have our marriage formally acknowledged by the King and the court.
Afterwards, though? Well then, I’ll do whatever it takes to find answers about what happened to Tyla—to find out what hold the Mother had on her, and why.
And once I’ve done that, once I have every bit of knowledge I can find and I’ve mastered this magic inside of me, I’ll kill the Mother once and for all.
I turn to face Derian. My husband. My mate.
“Be a distraction for me?”
If he were anyone else, he might have protested, but Derian knows who I am. He knows how I think and how I cope. He knows what I need better than I do.
“I’ll be anything you need.”
He smiles and brings his mouth to mine.
Thank you for reading Shadows and Secrets.
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