8
Celestine arrived late to dinner.
She hissed as she sat beside me, “I told you to come fetch me.”
“I thought you were just being dramatic.”
She huffed and drained half her water. The tin cup was put down with a clang that conveyed her annoyance. “She’s still in there, babbling to her poor sister. None of us have bathed.”
I set my spoon in my bowl. “Now I feel a bit guilty.”
“As you should,” she said, but with a smile.
It wilted when she finally dared to look at Prince Darcen, who’d ceased using his spoon to eat his vegetable stew. His throat bobbed as he swallowed and swallowed before lowering the bowl. He swiped at his mouth, then gave us a less-than-sincere smile and promptly left the table.
Celestine watched him walk to the stairs.
Meront watched me.
And I ignored the male watching me from the table behind ours for as long as I could before making my own escape.
Only then did Meront finally say a word to me. “You haven’t finished your dinner.”
“I’ve had quite enough,” I said, and hoped his answering frown meant he understood that I wasn’t simply referring to the stew.
He could either tell me what was so clearly bothering him, or he could cease the stubborn silence whenever I was near. I’d heard him during training—laughing and jesting as always. He was his typical roguish self with everyone else.
My small room offered little solace.
I paced until I felt as if I might sleep. When that failed, I reached beneath the bed for one of the books Celestine had snuck into my room a few mornings ago. It became a much-needed distraction. One that kept me awake for most of the night.
A knock on the door woke me.
The book responsible for my tardiness dug into my armpit. As the door opened, I quickly slipped it down the side of the bed. What I’d stayed up late reading would have any priestess confiscating the book and putting me on dish duty. Or worse.
Priestess Renisha stuck her head into my room. “Princess Ayla?” Her brown eyes narrowed when they found me half asleep in bed. “Are you unwell?”
Until females started getting their bleeds, we were never unwell. She likely assumed I’d yet to lay with anyone, and therefore bleed. So the question had been a polite way of asking why I was being disrespectful.
“Apologies, Priestess Renisha.” I pushed onto my elbows. “Worries plagued me until the early hours. I’ll head straight to the gardens.”
She sighed. “See to the herb garden today. Lady Tyressa is more hindrance than help, I’m afraid.”
Tyressa was barely old enough to sense life beneath the soil, but I didn’t argue. I nodded and waited for the door to close, belatedly realizing I hadn’t locked it.
I’d missed breakfast. So after readying for the day, I went to the kitchens for some water.
The scent of burning venison made my empty stomach rumble. But Sessenya and Haynes, who were given kitchen duty when they’d arrived on the isle, couldn’t be persuaded into feeding me with Priestess Yla overseeing their every move.
Perched on a stool in the doorway between the two stuffy rooms, she licked her finger and turned the page of her book without shifting her dark blue gaze from me. I smiled and set the cup by the sink, then dawdled out into the hall.
A single sconce revealed the door to the cellars and infirmary beneath the fortress and guided the way to the stairs ahead. The weathered door atop them opened to the path leading to the gardens.
I trailed my fingers over the vines lacing the stone fortress.
Paphin and Resenda ceased playing with beetles and pretended to feed their magic to the soil surrounding the carrots. When they realized it was only me, they slumped onto the vegetable garden’s rocky perimeter but greeted me with inclines of their heads.
To her credit, Tyressa was at least trying to help the herbs. Relief softened her features when I took a seat beside her. “Priestess Renisha doesn’t seem very happy with me.”
Smiling, I whispered, “Between us, I don’t think Priestess Renisha is very happy very often.”
Tyressa grinned crookedly.
I sank my fingers into the soil. I beckoned the sleeping heat within my blood to awaken and seep through my fingertips. Sometimes, I still struggled to make it obey—the gift all highborn in Cloverleaf were blessed with.
Anxious thoughts and stress became blocks. The only way past them was to trick the magic by thinking of something comforting or exciting. Anything good, really.
Since arriving on the isle, I’d needed to trick it almost every day with thoughts of market-walking, perfumed baths, new gowns, balls, and visits from Sunspray—my mother’s wyvern.
So it shocked me to feel the soil instantly warm around my fingers.
To see the parsley Tyressa had wilted return to life.
The youngling clapped. “Your magic does better when you sleep too long, Princess.”
I wished that were true.
Knowing why it had awakened so easily, I plucked my hands from the soil. Bone-melting shame caused my eyes to sting as I stared down at them.
I’d been able to forget my worries because of the male responsible for them.
A crimson-and-black fyrefowl feather shone within the blueberry bush.
I pulled it free and added it to the basket of berries.
Leaning against the tree behind me, Celestine said, “I cannot believe it. I just…” She exhaled heavily. “I never thought they’d actually succeed.”
I had.
I hadn’t wanted to, but given the power Valadorn possessed, even without wyverns, I’d known it was simply a matter of time.
I’d known it was why I was here. Why heirs from all kingdoms had been sent here. Yet I understood not wanting to believe King Raxon could take so much so soon. Some tiny part of me had hoped—just like Celestine—that with the combined forces of Coraldeen, Moongold, and Cloverleaf, we would prevail.
King Cidon had sent word to Meront. Days ago, apparently. But Celestine had overheard her brother speaking about the contents of her father’s letterleaf with Darcen and Haynes after breakfast.
Of course, I’d still been in bed.
Before I’d completed my time in the gardens, Celestine crossed the courtyard with a foraging basket. The tense set of her shoulders and the watery sheen in her eyes had warned that something more than her kiss with Darcen was upsetting her.
But no amount of bracing and expectation could have prepared me for such news.
The crossover between Cloverleaf and Valadorn had been claimed by King Raxon’s forces, as well as the northern woods within the wyvern spawning grounds.
That this news had come some days ago, and that King Cidon could have waited days before sending it, and that it could’ve taken days for the wind to carry the messenger leaf to the isle…
It was safe to assume that Valadorn had now taken many more miles of those northern woods.
“Your silence is almost as unnerving as what’s happened,” Celestine said. “Aren’t you scared, Ayla?”
Scared.
I didn’t think any words could adequately describe what I felt. But scared didn’t come close to doing so.
Collecting the basket of berries, I straightened. “I’m beyond scared,” I admitted. “They’ve all but claimed the spawning grounds, and they’ll soon march inland.”
“They cannot take Castle Cloverleaf.”
“They can,” I said with a soft smile. “To take the Scale Crown from my father, they’ll likely have to.”
Horror paled her features. “But—”
“Celestine.”
At the sound of Darcen’s voice, we both looked through the trees.
Celestine blinked repeatedly, as if leaving a world of fear and heartbreak for one of hope and excitement. She looked back at me, a smile held at bay wriggling her lips. “I wonder what he wants.”
I tipped a shoulder. “Maybe you should find out.”
Trekking deeper into the woods, Darcen slowed when he spied us. He swept a hand into his dark hair, making it stand askew, and grinned. “Princesses.” His hand fell. As did his smile when he asked Celestine, “Can we talk?”
I knocked her leg with the basket and whispered, “Go.”
She went.
I watched them walk side by side back through the trees, then waded toward the eastern slopes of the isle. There, I could exit the woods without disturbing Celestine and Darcen, in case they stood in the clearing.
Lost to thoughts of what might happen to my kingdom, I dawdled through the foliage. I was in no rush to return to the gardens. I also thought about Meront, his sullenness, and if he’d ever intended to share the information his sister had overheard with her.
With me.
Anger bloomed because he probably hadn’t. He’d likely wished to shield us from such knowledge, or perhaps even punish me.
A rustle drew my gaze to a cluster of trembling wildflowers.
The priestesses had warned us about the creatures in these damp woods. Glowing green and yellow serpents had been seen hanging from tree branches, as long as we were tall and capable of coiling their prey within seconds.
A spiked toad had chased Meront while he hunted for turkeys. Although his retelling of the ordeal had been comical, the amphibians were more venomous than most serpents. One encounter with the spikes adorning their boulder-sized bodies would render a faerie unconscious in a mere few minutes.
Long ago, it had happened to a priestess, and birds of prey had swooped in to take chunks from her flesh. A cautionary tale, Haynes had said.
I didn’t care to find out.
I halted but didn’t sense or see anything. My heartbeat slowed as I listened. There were only leaves swished by the breeze and the ever-present hum of insects. Before I walked on, the rustling came again. Harsher this time.
I looked back—just as silver winked between ferns. Not a spiked toad or serpent.
Prince Voran.
I crept closer, careful not to tread on twigs and old leaves, until I realized he was on the ground and once again shirtless and…
Digging.
Again, I halted. Dirt sprayed the wildflowers surrounding him. His hair was bound in a loose braid that he tossed over his shoulder. Muscle clenched and bulged in his broad back. Sweat misted his skin, as did flecks of soil.
Breath dried in my throat.
I shouldn’t have watched. I shouldn’t have been tempted to learn what he was digging for with his bare hands. I should have turned back. Yet I stayed right where I was, intrigued and scarcely breathing and fearing he’d sense me.
When he did, he ceased digging. But he didn’t look at me.
He remained on his knees as he warned, “Curiosity can be fatal, Princess.”
Then he turned.
I blinked and retreated a step, now knowing I’d found him doing something he didn’t want anyone to see. Certainly not the princess of the kingdom that his uncle was currently trampling.
Before I could promise him that I hadn’t seen anything, not really, there was a violent thrashing in the trees ahead.
The wolf prince looked that way. “Friends of yours?”
“N-no,” I stammered, then frowned. “At least, I don’t think so.” As far as I was aware, no one was hunting this morning, and Celestine and Darcen had left the woods.
Voran rose to his feet—a muscular wall blocking my view of what came barreling through the foliage.
And a giant distraction that kept me from noticing the male leaping over the brush beside me.
“Run,” Voran growled.
Too late.
I hit the ground with lung-cinching force, unable to breathe, let alone scream, as a male with missing teeth and soiled skin grabbed my throat. He sneered. “What’s a pretty little thing like you doing on this wretched island?”
A curse came from somewhere behind us, followed by a thud, as I bucked beneath the male and tried to scratch his face. He evaded me with laughter as hoarse as his voice. Then his copper gaze slid to the right, and he went still.
I rammed my knee into his groin.
He grunted, eyes closing as he groaned in pain.
But before I could shove him off me, he backhanded me across the cheek. My sharp, shocked cry was cut short. He squeezed my throat so hard, black spots began to invade the corners of my eyes.
Then he was airborne—slammed onto the ground with force that crunched bones.
Voran lifted his booted foot and stomped on the male’s chest.
My eyes widened as it deflated. A horrid noise gurgled from the male. Followed by blood. It trailed from his lips as his head turned my way, panic ablaze in his bloodshot gaze, then…
His eyes seemed to dull. To empty of all he’d been.
Breath returned to my lungs too fast. I sat up, trembling and panting and staring at the other male who had charged through the trees at Voran. A stick jutted from his bloodied chest.
He’d killed them.
Voran kicked off his boots. Tonelessly, he said, “More come.”
He’d…
He’d saved me. Me. The daughter of the king rumored to have murdered his father. The daughter of the king his uncle sought to overthrow.
Unable to process that right now, I swallowed and tried to listen for signs of another assailant. But all I could hear was my roaring heartbeat. “Who are they?”
No one could enter Avyshla’s sacred isle unseen.
Accessing this northern end was nearly impossible—unless they’d scaled the deadly cliffs.
Should someone moor at the rocks below them, they would then need to swim to the beach at the southern end of the isle, which was in full view of the fortress and the priestesses within.
Fussing with his pants, Voran didn’t respond.
Berries from my dropped basket sprinkled the grass around me. The prince’s giant leather boots stood askew between the dead faeries. Unwashed males. Reed thin. Clothing in tattered strings. No shoes.
My mind and stomach churned.
Voran’s head turned west, then north. Steps, rapid and crushing woodland debris, came from both directions. “You’ve proven adept at fleeing,” the prince said quietly—strangely as his back seemed to ripple. “So unless you have a weapon and the ability to use it, you should do so now.”
As he pushed his pants down his muscular thighs, I scrambled to my numb feet. A shadowy mist shrouded his legs, climbing to his smooth ass, and I understood what he was doing. What I needed to do.
As he shifted, I ran.