Chapter 9 Roland
ROLAND
However much Bet wanted to shield Tris, I needed him. If for nothing else, I needed him to keep Bet from garroting Lord Forov in the baths.
Perhaps I simply needed him to tell me that everything would be fine. Tris was one of very few people who could not only speak a comforting word, but manifest it.
It seemed that I was not the only one who required his attention, though.
When I reached his office, it was already occupied.
At first, I only caught the movement of Bowen’s enormous back as he paced the room.
Then, I saw Aderyn’s bright blond hair over the edge of the seat before Tris’s desk, and I leaned back, out of sight of the doorway.
They were discussing—me. My future.
What Llangard required.
Gods, Forov was not the only one who had my possible nuptials on their mind.
Just beyond the door, I listened in. Did Aderyn—
Did Aderyn want to marry me?
My heart fluttered at the thought. I’d get to keep him by my side forever. No more of this traveling back and forth across all of Llangard while I was stuck at the Spires.
I’d taken him to bed. If a commitment was what Aderyn wanted, he could have it.
I’d be happy to give it. I didn’t want to keep Aderyn from his family, but they were welcome here, and I’d hardly lock him up in a tower.
He could come and go as he liked, of course, but I hoped if we were married, he’d want to stay close more often.
That would be so wonderful.
Only . . . there were things Aderyn didn’t know about me, secrets I’d kept from him as long as we’d known each other.
And perhaps this wasn’t about me at all. Aderyn might simply wish to marry.
He spent so long away from Atheldinas that he could’ve met someone else. It wasn’t impossible, and it was presumptuous of me to think that he wanted anything that binding with me. He kissed me, and we had . . . but that was—that was just us.
And I was, no doubt, trying to excuse my duplicity by pretending I did not know his true intentions.
Aderyn was my best friend. If he’d longed for another, I’d have known of it. Not once had I seen him smile at another in a way that threw into question the way he felt about me, but if we were to proceed with something more, I would have to come clean about everything.
If he wanted me, he deserved all of me—the full truth. Once he learned it, he’d never forgive me.
I couldn’t forgive myself.
A sudden gasp gripped me, but try as I might, my tight throat kept me from inhaling the air I desperately needed.
I stumbled back, clutching my chest, and claws pierced my doublet and it tore as my body changed.
I rushed away from Tristram’s office as a familiar pressure gripped me and my mind buzzed, caught in the space between fear and the scattering of mice claws in every tiny nook in the Spires.
Mindless, I fled to the end of the corridor, to a tower that cut down and down and down into the earth in a narrow, steep spiral staircase. I took the stairs down, until the dark of the unused space swallowed me up.
At the bottom, I pressed myself into the shadows beneath the stairs and tried to breathe. I was safe down here. No one would find me.
Aderyn wouldn’t see.
Above, I could hear footsteps, but there was only one narrow window in the tower, high above where I was hidden, and the light didn’t touch me.
I closed eyes and listened—three mice, maybe more. Their tiny sniffling noses. The sound of servants floors above, shaking out fresh linens and chatting with one another.
The Spires was alive.
Was I, still?
I shouldn’t have been.
“Roland?” The voice, so tentative and soft, drew a hiss from me as I pressed back against the wall.
It didn’t matter. Tris had never been afraid of me.
I wanted to think that was because I was no one to fear, but he hadn’t feared my father either. Perhaps Tristram Radcliffe simply had very poor judgment.
His golden eyes shone, even in this dark place, when he found me beneath the stairs.
“I thought I saw you in the corridor,” he said gently.
He reached out, and I flinched back.
This was—Rhys had said it would get worse, but I didn’t want them to see. To know.
Not anyone. Not even Tris.
“Show me?” he said gently. In the end, there was so little judgment in his voice that I had no choice in the matter.
I held out my shaky hand. Even in this dim light, the golden scales snaking down my arm shone.
With a whimper, I curled my fingers in to hide my claws, but Tristram took my hand and eased it slack again.
“It’s all right,” he whispered, holding on so lightly.
I wanted to cry and wail and beat his chest and tell him that it was absolutely not all right, that the last thing it would ever be was all right, but—
But that would have hurt him. Tristram had been trying to save me when he and Rhys had given me that first sip of dragon’s blood, and the very last thing I wanted to do in this world was punish him for the crime of loving me that much.
I took a shaky breath and nodded. Even my voice came out strange and rough. “I just have to calm down. It’ll go away.”
This feeling always came upon me hot, like a fire had lit behind my ribcage. It overwhelmed all my senses.
The first time it had happened, I’d jumped from a tower window and stalked off, unharmed into the night. On pure instinct, I’d left Merrick in search of Aderyn.
I’d not come back to myself until Bet found me, and even then, my first thought had been to fight.
Fight him, or fight the whole world. It wouldn’t have mattered. But I’d calmed down, and we’d followed the army to Windy Pass.
I . . . had not realized what happened to me until we reached the battle proper, and I saw the warped and twisted monsters across the field—those who’d taken dragon blood in exchange for a blighted magic.
It had doomed them all. They’d become feral, except my cousin—another Cavendish that survived the blood with their mind intact.
Well, relatively. I never knew how much of Nicolas was himself at the end, and how much was the blood. I liked to think it was the blood that had twisted him, but our family had been barbed and bitter long before he’d had a sip of it.
That was almost worse—the thought that my tainted inheritance was more than just a mistake or the allure of power. It was something buried deep within me, a doom that lurked just beyond the horizon, stalking ever closer.
Blood or no blood, I was wrong.
When Tristram told me how my cousin fell, I’d seen my future in Nicolas’s fate. Cruelty and darkness and greed, all writhing inside me until they were all that was left.
I couldn’t let it happen. For Tristram, for Llangard, for Aderyn, I couldn’t allow it.
The blood had still taken what pitiful magic I’d had, and it wanted all that was left of me.
Tristram held my hand firm, running his thumb over my knuckles until I could breathe steadily again.
As soon as I’d caught my breath, he gave my hand a soft tug and I tumbled forward, burying my face against his shoulder so he couldn’t see the silent tears welling in my eyes.
He hugged me tight and let me stay there, never mentioning how my breath jumped or my shoulders trembled.
When I finally relaxed, he swiped his hand down my back. “Perhaps you should take the rest of the day to rest and recover?”
The shift was coming, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it. I’d tried. Every time, the beast inside won the day.
Tris and I both knew that I wouldn’t be recovering; I’d be hiding.
I nodded anyway.
I was doomed, and as horrifying a prospect as it was to bring all of Llangard down with me, the worst part would be looking into Aderyn’s eyes when he realized that I was the very thing he hated most.