Chapter 26
Just as I’m sure my brother has fallen for his wife, I find her in bed with a Zem nobleman. Dagen’s out leading our army against the horde of Skeeves breaking through our continent’s borders, and it”s taking all my self-control not to kill her while he”s away. It’s going to tear him apart, but I’ve got to tell him. He’s due back for the King’s Duel in a month, which I’m worried about. He’s a badass in the duel ring, but I know how dirty the other kingdoms fight.
The image of Palko and his wife being separated at my command burns behind my eyes, and I let the tears fall as I run back to my tower. No one is here to see. At least, no one who’ll punish me for it.
Dae is utterly silent behind me. His darkness grows around me, making the night air seem bright and warm in comparison. I slink in and out of shadows and past waterless fountains. I sneak behind a single line of perimeter guards, a fraction of what normally patrols here because of the rave.
“You’re lucky the visibility is shit tonight, otherwise those guards by the royal cars would’ve spotted you. They’re carrying pistols tonight, you know.”
I scoff. “Because you’d be so torn up if something happened to me?” I dart around the corner and press my shoulders against the black stone on the other side.
“Yeah, because then I’d be stuck with the brat from Zo.”
I laugh. “You could always pretend she’s me.” I begin scaling my way back up my tower.
“He’s a boy, so I’d rather not.”
My fingers are so raw from the cold, it hurts to bend them. As I climb, the stiffness only worsens. I slip and catch myself many times, and try to reason with my hands, begging them not to shake, but they don’t get the message.
They tremble harder the higher I go, and I don’t look down, because I will not hand my fear over to this tower so easily. It’s just a tower. Lifeless. Unmoving. I reach for a ledge near the top. But my fingers are so useless, and the ledge has grown an extra layer of ice in my absence. I lose my grip and slide down the wall until my arm hooks around a spike, jerking me to a stop and slamming my body into the cold hard wall.
A growl comes from Dae. Or up here, it might just be the wind.
I compartmentalize, saving my emotions for the top. Looking up, I force my throbbing arm to stay locked around the spike. A big, black bird with green-slivered wings watches from my balcony. It tilts its head as if it’s somehow annoyed with me.
I begin the scramble up again. Finally, my fingers curl around the top edge, and when I heave myself over, the bird is gone.
I heave out the breath I’ve been holding and punch the black stone of my balcony rail much harder than I should. Some more tears bleed out from the delayed fear and also the blinding sting now climbing up my knuckles and arm.
I hate heights.
I hate them because the first time my father lost control of his anger—the first time I ever felt truly endangered from him—was on top of the castle’s roof eight years ago. I swallow that memory and lock it away.
Dae’s spirit shifts, spreading. Darkening. The temperature drops around me, and I swear ice cracks up the black exterior walls of my tower.
His voice is strained in the air. “What makes you happy, Nizzara?”
“What?”
His words are tortured. Desperate. “Give me a happy memory.”
This darkness in his presence—the unworldly cold—might be the danger Liha warned me of, but I am no longer hearing a blaring warning bell, but rather a nudging caution. One that nudges me to give him what he asks for.
A happy memory.
I tug my gloves off and look down to the small ring on my finger in the shape of a snake. “I have a friend. I don’t get to see her often, but she makes me happy.”
The longer I think of Yisabell and all the little stories I tell her, the more my breathing calms.
Exhaustion hits me. I take one more breath full of the winter air and turn back into the warmth of my chambers, heaving the thick doors shut and relatching them.
Preysee looks relieved to see me. I see through the archway of my closet she has a nightgown waiting on the ottoman inside. Her gaze runs me over head to toe as if to make sure I’m whole before she informs me that she’s been asked to return to the main floor. I thank her and she offers a meaningful nod before she slips out. Not a minute later, Brunar pounds on my door, checking on me.
After calling back to him, I take off toward my closet. Having to undress the old-fashioned way again. This time, my fingers are still numb as I try to work the main zipper, and I make a mental note to thank Liha for her outfit changes.
Dae lingers, silent, but close behind me at the edge of my caster’s shield that clings like a second skin—its own mini-dimension—according to some books I’ve found. He doesn’t come close enough to touch it like he had in the bathing chamber. But I haven’t forgotten the electricity that ran through me at his touch.
I remove each ice-cold dagger from my fighting leathers and place them on black velvet pads formed to fit each one, then unbuckle my now empty knife belt and roll it before placing it on its own cushion. I reach for the small black zipper at my neck, pulling it down the front of me and that’s when Dae disappears. I unclip my bodice and sigh with the release of it before finding the red silk nightgown with cut-outs down my sides that Preysee picked out.
I’m surprised when I leave my closet and find Dae is still in my room. “So, you can spy on me when I sleep but not undress?”
“Those are two very different things.”
Does his voice sound tighter?
“Not for spirits.” I point to my walk-in closet. “There were about ten in there just now.” Although most of them weren’t whole spirits, just leftover shreds of souls.
“It is different for me.”
I climb into bed, sighing with undiluted pleasure as my bare feet slide through the silk sheets.
“Does Liha leave you alone a lot?”
I close my eyes, my body feeling heavy. “She likes to go play,” I say.
“So, she’s off playing while you risk your life helping your people?” The space Dae hovers—just beside my bed—turns to ice.
“She was a princess in Heshena about a thousand years ago.” I yawn. “Only sixteen when she was captured sneaking out to see her lover. Forbidden love situation. From what I gathered she was tortured in a slow, terrible way before she was killed. So, she can’t stand to see me in danger, can’t watch anything that involves pain or blood. She will duel with me, but even that is hard for her.”
“Why not bond with a spirit that has a stronger stomach? Who will stay at your side, especially during those times?”
I peek my eyes open to glare at him. His presence now hulks at the side of my bed, no longer a floating ball. His outline, with wide shoulders and tapered hips, is almost as bad as his damn voice.
I deepen my glare. “I do not fault her for her traumas, and she doesn’t fault me for mine.”
His voice sounds pained, almost guilty when he asks, “What are your traumas?”
“None of your business,” I snap, but they flash through my mind.
Watching my father slowly lose his grip on his temper, taking it out on me. And me, born with that same fiery rage that never leaves.
His anger.
My anger.
His violence.
My violence.
Dae’s voice is almost a whisper. “Why risk your life for Palko?”
My whole life seems to flash before my eyes in answer, the things I’ve seen, things I’ve experienced, but ultimately, at my core, this is who I am. I’ve known for a long time this softness in my heart is a weakness. Father has proven that much. A weakness I shouldn’t show to anyone. I roll away from Dae.
“Because those cloaks were last year’s fashion, and they deserved the dungeon.”
As sleep tugs me under, and bad memories swirl in my head, Dae’s voice is like a cool, calming breeze drifting through the room. “You really are cruel, you know.”