Chapter 17
LYRAE
Ipounded my fists on Ryland’s back as he carried me upstairs like a sack of potatoes.
Called him every foul name I knew, and some I made up along the way. I caught the briefest flashes of boots and steps and stone floors and flickering torches, but the only thing I knew for sure…
I was definitely going to puke again.
But I’d wait to throw up all over Ryland Storme, who I’d never been so furious with in my entire life. Why did I allow myself to get sucked back into his endless lies and schemes? Why, when it came to this male, couldn’t I fucking learn?
The world tipped upside down and I was flying.
No, I was being thrown.
“Goddamn…”
The scream was halfway out of my mouth when I landed on my back on the bed, the soft-as-air mattress cushioning my fall and the remainder of my scream turned into a high-pitched feminine squeak.
Utterly humiliating.
I caught my breath staring up at a beamed ceiling, golden firelight playing across the dark wood and white stucco. Paintings hung on every wall, landscapes painted by an expert hand, all of them featuring some version of ice and snow and a castle with slender turrets.
A half-finished piece was propped on an easel in the corner, a paintbrush balanced across a palette, dust coating the handle.
“I’m taking off your boots and if you so much as try to kick me in the face, Antares, I will tie you down to this bed.” Ryland’s threat started out as a vicious hiss, but ended as something else entirely.
Something dark and sensual, made real with how greedily his eyes dragged down my body.
Like a wolf sizing up his dinner.
Even worse was how every part of me felt set ablaze, how I wanted nothing more than to have him press me deeper into this mattress, to tangle our lips together, to feel his hands roam over my body, like they once had.
But people like us…
“You so much as try, Ryland Storme, and I will carve you into a thousand little pieces so small, even Varian will never identify your body.”
A threat I’d made to others—and followed through on—a hundred times over.
But we both knew my warning was hollow, like a tree rotten from the inside out, all show, with nothing at its heart.
Then I realized, with remarkable clarity, I couldn’t kill him.
As many times as I’d visualized his death, as much as he deserved to pay for his sins, the thought of actually plunging a knife into Ryland’s chest… made my insides go loose and watery.
Hatred and anger and loss hardened a heart, making it possible—even easy—to take a life.
But…my heart was no longer hardened against Ryland Storme.
Maybe—if I was able to be truthful with myself—it never had been.
“You’ve gone very quiet, Lyrae. Finally run out of arguments?
” Ryland lifted my right foot and worked my laces free before sliding off the sodden boot.
“I’m getting you out of these wet clothes while Varian finds you something to eat.
Then you’re sleeping in here where it’s warm and comfortable, while we go deal with Kaden. ”
“I’m sleeping with my knife under my pillow, just so you know.” I warned, but my teeth sank into my bottom lip when his fingers dug into the arch of my foot and started massaging. God, I’d forgotten how good he was with his hands.
“Far be it for me to tell you how to sleep, but you have nothing to fear from Kaden. He’s no threat to you.”
“He threatened to dump me back under the ice.” I couldn’t stop the shudder racing down through me, and Ryland stopped rubbing long enough to search my face. My breath caught, my heart stilling as our eyes met, green to blue, something small and tender glimmering in his gaze.
“Do you really think so little of me, I’d allow anyone to hurt you, Lyrae?
” His hands were warm where they cradled my foot.
“For the record, when you went under the ice…the world stopped turning. I thought I fucking lost you.” His trembling fingers tightened around my ankle like an iron shackle, and something sharp moved through me, settling behind my ribs.
“My fucking heart stopped beating. And it didn’t start up again until Var pulled you up out of the water.”
“Whatever.” I closed my eyes as he lifted my other foot and slid that boot off, began massaging. Even when the blood started flowing, and my feet were stiff full of pins, I didn’t open my eyes.
I couldn’t look, because I knew what I’d see.
And if I saw him right now…my heart would cleave into pieces.
Fire loved Ryland Storme, like dawn loved the horizon—painting him in light, even as darkness tried to claim him.
Every flame picked out the gold strands in his hair, the amber tones in his eyes, the color in his cheeks.
He was my favorite memory gilded in gold, close enough to touch, to kiss, to sink my teeth into.
And I was so very tired of fighting.
So tired of hating everyone for everything that had ever happened to me.
All those imagined wrongs…what if they were just mistakes?
What if, outside of the Oracle’s games and the Shadow King’s endless schemes, there was no grand conspiracy? What if all my rage was the result of evil people doing evil things, but none of those people had been Ryland or Varian?
Ryland has to tell you, Varian had said, up on the hill before everything had gone to shit.
“Why did you leave me that day, Ryland? When the soldiers had us surrounded at Lord Maldrake’s…why did you abandon me?”
“I never left you.” He shook his head at my accusing glare.
“I swear, I didn’t. They scooped everyone up that night and separated us.
Before dawn, the guards stuffed me and Varian in a prison wagon and carted us straight to Caladrius.
We spent years in the Fae King’s dungeon under the care of Solok. Solok. The Fucking Axe.”
I sobered up fast at the mention of that name, at the deep scar over the bridge of Ryland’s nose, all those new marks peppering his body.
At the memory of Varian’s quiet, watchful demeanor.
I’d seen enough Caladrian Fae with that same brittle hollowness, those shadows behind their eyes, the result of being broken apart too many times in those dungeons.
Torture altered you on a fundamental level.
Enduring that kind of pain twisted something inside you, and Solok…Solok was the worst.
The stories of that bastard’s cruelty were worse than even the Butcher of Evernight, and the venomous way Ryland spat out the bastard’s name like a curse convinced me he was telling the truth.
Once you met Solok…no, you’d never forget that monster.
“After a few years—Varian tells me it was close to five, I’ve lost count—the bastard gave us a choice. Execution or work for the Fae King tracking down the northern covens, or what little was left of the covens. Not much of a choice.”
Oh gods. They were some of the monsters who’d hunted down Bella.
Our closest ally to the north, Belladonna, next in line to be the High Priestess of the High Barrens Coven, had told us how the Fae King exterminated the witches, how they’d been hunted for centuries, until they finally went so far north, neither of the kings could reach them.
Even Anaria’s mother descended from a High Barrens witch bloodline…and these two had…
I closed my eyes. Blew out an unsteady breath.
Who was I to judge either of them, after all the blood I’d spilled?
Ryland had made the same bargain I had, albeit for a different master.
Or maybe the same master. “Did you ever meet the Oracle?” I asked softly. “The old spider who served the Fae King, always whispering in his ear?”
“Once.” His voice was choked enough I pushed up on my elbows.
“Only once. She came and visited me in the dungeons, shortly before I was released. That witch bound me, ensuring I could never leave Caladrius, never cross the border into Solarys again. Not without her blessing.” He carefully set my foot down in his lap and my heart lurched to a stop when he shrugged his jacket off.
His piercing gaze found mine, lips slightly parted as he paused, searching my face, as if looking for something he’d lost. Maybe something he’d found.
“I would have come for you, Lyrae,” he whispered.
“We both would have come back to Blackcastle for you. But we couldn’t.
Believe me, we tried, but the marks…every time we tried to cross through the ward between Caladrius and Solarys, we nearly died.
And then, once the Oracle was gone…” He looked away, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
“You getting pinched was my fault. All of this…was my fucking fault. I was the one who accepted the Maldrake job, I was the one who got conned. A mistake I’m in the process of rectifying.”
His handsome face turned hard, something dark brewing in his eyes, something that looked a lot like vengeance.
“I should never have given up on you. But…I…after the war, after all those years, Var and I thought you were dead, Lyrae. And I couldn’t leave Caladrius to look for you.” He set my foot down, began rolling up his sleeve. “Maybe you’ll believe me if I show you…this.”
My heart began to pound as Ryland pushed his sleeve high enough for me to see the thin line of black etched on the inside of his muscled forearm, and my insides twisted in horror, the kind of horror I thought I was done feeling.
“That’s her mark,” I whispered. “For the ones who served her.”
Even silhouetted against the fire, his face flushed red with shame—the same shame I felt whenever I looked at my own arm. That same glass-like anger at what she’d taken from me, and the willing part I’d played in my own demise.
All of that self-loathing bubbling beneath the surface like a poison left to putrefy for too long.
He dipped his head, yanking his sleeve down to hide the mark, two angry red spots burning in his cheeks. I leaned forward and cupped his face, thumbs rasping against his stubbled cheeks.
“Don’t be ashamed,” I murmured softly. “Not in front of me, do you understand?”
All of a sudden, I was so damned tired.
Worn down by too much anger and too many lies. I wanted to remember what it felt like to laugh again. To wake up like I was poised on the threshold of possibility, that the world wasn’t a dark, dangerous place, but an adventure meant to be lived.
“Do you know why I recognized your mark, Ryland?” I asked softly, reaching for my own sleeve, peeling back the wet fabric to reveal my own shame.
“Because of this.” His breath caught as he stared at the hideous, raised scar.
“I paid a mage to burn the black off, but even that didn’t free me.
And then, after she was dead, I thought the mark would disappear, but it didn’t. ”
These feelings were dangerous.
They went against every promise I’d ever made myself. And yet, every last piece of me wanted us to burn together, like fire and ice, the way we used to.
“Neither of us were ever any good at this shit,” I murmured. “It’s hard, I think, to let go of the past, but…” Gods, I could barely push the words past my frozen lips.
“I would very much like to call a truce. Temporarily.”
“A truce?”
Ryland leaned back in the chair and tugged both my feet into his lap, wrapping those powerful hands around my ankles once more, deft fingers massaging my stiff ankles. “I can live with that, as long as you tell me everything.” The green in his eyes glittered, like greed personified.
“I want to know every minute of every day since the last time I saw you.”
“None of it’s good, Ryland. None of it. And I’m not…” I swallowed hard. “I’m not proud of the things I’ve done.” I dragged my hands down my face. “The Oracle turned me into a monster, and because I hated you and Varian so much, I allowed her to.”
“And you think I am?” Ryland murmured with a sigh of recrimination I recognized all too well. “I’ve made decisions I never thought I’d make. Survival is an ugly business, and I’m…there was a time when I tried to protect you from that.”
“You turned me into a thief,” I reminded him softly. “A life of crime on the streets of Southwell wasn’t exactly protecting me.”
“I was the king of those streets, if you remember.” Some of that old swagger animated his face, squared his shoulders. “Nobody dared put their hands on the female I…” He swallowed hard. “Nobody dared lay a finger on my very best thief.”
“For the record, Ariel was your best thief. Well, her and Varian, with his nose for gold.”
“No, Lyrae, you were always better.” Those clever, clever hands slid up my calves, warm and familiar and dangerous. Oh, so dangerous, because I wanted them to drift higher.
Then higher still.
I wanted his mouth on me, his tongue, his fingers and his cock.
I wanted Ryland so badly I was about to do something foolish right now, something I’ll regret, even as I know I will enjoy it with every cell of my being. Enjoy it enough to throw away my future as the queen’s commander, and that, right there, is the most dangerous thing of all.
That Ryland Storme could make me forget who I’d become.
Ryland’s jaw clenched. “Always the best. I should have told you that, too, a long time ago.” He blew out a ragged breath then let me go, that careful distance sliding back into place between us.
I didn’t know if I was grateful…or disappointed when he stood up, his face as unreadable as ever.
“Now get out of those wet clothes; you’re soaking the sheets, and I doubt Kaden’s in the mood to play housekeeper.” He jerked my head to the bathing chamber. “One of the few perks of this place is hot water. Run a bath and warm yourself up.”