Chapter Twenty-Six
SIX MONTHS LATER…
Draven leaned his weight against a marble pillar, crossing his ankles as he added an extra layer of shadows over him with the flick of his wrist.
It had been years since he had attended something held in King Alastair’s court.
Years since he last crossed the borders into the Rivara Kingdom.
Somehow, he had always managed to skirt his way around coming back here—a place that always reminded him of his mother and how much she loved staring up at the stars with him.
Being back was bittersweet.
It was nice to silently breathe in her memory.
It was entirely unenjoyable, however, to be doing so while forced to entertain petty politics and advances.
Yet the Founding Celebration was as prestigious an event as they come, and his father was unable to attend this year, forced to instead focus on direct orders in Erandor given to him by King Erasmus himself—though what those orders were, he didn’t know.
Unfortunately for Draven, Tynan would sooner be damned than House Dalmar not show face at such a high-ranking social event, so…
here Draven was. Tynan even sent Eri Valenwood—the slimy scum—to accompany him as an extra layer of precaution, knowing full well when people saw him they would think of who he served.
Draven found it all positively pathetic.
The groveling of men. Their desires for attention, approval, and political gain.
Their hollowed words and fickle constitutions.
He’d had his fill of men who claimed interests and agendas that served the good of the people, while really it only served to fill their coffers and egos.
The only saving grace for tonight was that Kiran was forced to attend in place of his father as well. Though, he always took considerably less convincing than Draven. Kiran always found a way to have fun at these functions; Draven did not.
A girl with long, auburn hair dressed in a tight red dress featuring a haltered neckline rounded a pillar and approached him. She rested a perfectly manicured hand on his bicep and pressed her large chest against his arm.
Draven spared only a passing glance at her. “Can I help you?”
“As a matter of fact,” she hummed through her husky tone, “you can. I’m looking for a dance partner for the next song.”
“No.”
The girl stiffened, clearly receiving an answer she wasn’t expecting. Her grip on Draven’s arm tightened—her nails biting into his skin—and she pouted at him. “Won’t you reconsider?”
His mouth tightened with annoyance. “The only thing I’m reconsidering is my hiding spot. Now go find someone else to bother.” A pause. “Perhaps a nice red head who indulged in a bit too much wine, for example.”
She strode off in the other direction, grumbling, “Asshole,” under her breath as she went.
An amused curve tugged subtly at the corner of Draven’s lips.
Perhaps six months ago he might have taken the girl up on her offer.
He would have glided around the dance floor with her, reluctant and gruff, doing so only at the promise of leaving the party the moment the music ended, strutting off somewhere to have a meaningless, rough fuck, just needing to clutch a fistful of hair and feel a warm body against his frigid skin.
But he was trying to be someone different—better.
Which meant mindlessly bedding someone for all the wrong reasons was not something he had been allowing himself to do as of late.
Hell, the last person he had slept with was…
He grimaced as he remembered. Shit. He really was an asshole.
It had been Arden Larking—someone who, given the precarious nature of their arrangement, had never shied away from expressing how she felt for him.
Her father wanted a political marriage between them desperately, and Tynan had always seemed like he entertained the thought of accepting.
Though if he did, it would be on his terms.
For years Draven kept the line clearly drawn between them, never crossing it.
Until one gods-damn night when he had consumed so much alcohol his vision doubled, she found him stumbling in Talderine after some noble’s bullshit party his father made him attend.
Her House—House Larking—had been there as well.
She offered to help him back to his inn, and he had been too intoxicated to refuse—that or the alcohol had just robbed him of his ability to make logically sound decisions. Probably the latter.
Regardless, the moment he woke up the next morning, her nestled contently at his side, naked and clinging to him the way an intimate lover would, Draven knew he had royally fucked up.
He knew he did not and would not ever care for her in the ways she wanted him to.
So, he simply peeled her from his body and left without a word.
It caused some tension, to say the least.
Draven carved a hand down the length of his face and propped himself off the pillar he’d been leaning on. Taking care to stay hidden within the shadows near the back of the hall, he made his way to the banquet table lined with pre-filled glasses of the Rivara Kingdom’s renowned Sparkling Ecstasy.
If he was going to suffer through this evening, he might as well take the edge off.
He plucked a glass from the table and brought it to his lips.
As he sipped, he caught a glimmer of flowing lilac hair swaying in the distance.
His eyes wandered in the color’s direction, where they found a girl probably no more than a few years younger than him gliding across the room with a pitcher clutched to her barely covered breasts—a courtesy of King Alastair, Draven was sure.
She turned just enough for Draven to make out her features, and—
He froze, feeling as though he suddenly rewinded nearly ten years into the past.
She’s a pretty girl. Far too young to be in here, though.
King Alastair is known to love his night attendants.
I wish I could steal her away in the middle of the night and take her back with us.
For a heart-wrenching moment, he could feel his mother beside him.
He was nearly standing in the exact same spot they had all those years ago.
The girl was also nearly in the same position across the room, filling the goblets of the exact same men, different in their appearance yet entirely similar in their hollowed hearts.
Only, she was not a young child anymore.
She was a full-fledged woman. Beautiful, even.
Undeniably so. A striking sort of beautiful that Draven soon learned men loved to claim as their own—loved to capture.
Yet they never wanted the artistic features to roam free as beautiful things should. They wanted to cage it—control it.
Beauty was not just something to behold; it was dangerous.
And this girl was surrounded by predators.
You are not a monster.
She was the first person to ever hold his eyes and say that.
Actually, now as he thought about it, he wasn’t sure if anyone outside of his late mother had still ever said those words to him.
He couldn’t recall a single moment where someone saw the full prowess of his magic and reacted with such acceptance.
There was not a single person who saw him lose control like that—hell, he wasn’t even sure if there was a single other person who saw him lose control in general—and have the fearlessness to hold his face in their palms and tell him they were not afraid.
You’re not scared of me?
Why would I be scared of you?
He wondered if she was still the same girl he met that day. If somehow, all these years later, she had managed to keep her defiant eyes and fighter’s spirit. He hoped King Alastair didn’t break her—didn’t rob her of that.
A gripping sadness unexpectedly appeared in his chest.
She wouldn’t even remember Draven if he attempted to ask her how she was doing. She would not know of their encounter—would have no memories of a moment that was so fleeting, so seemingly insignificant yet not.
It was a moment Draven thought of many times throughout the years.
He didn’t realize he was moving toward her until a firm hand clapped him on the shoulder, stopping him right as he was about to enter into a large crowd outlining the edges of the ballroom floor.
“Joining the festivities? How unlike you.” Kiran’s tongue was thick in his mouth.
Draven blinked, momentarily feeling like a stranger in his own body. He shook his head, threading fingers through his styled hair. “She’s still here.”
Kiran cocked his head at him, a humorous glint in his eye. Clearly, he thought Draven was drunk and rambling. “Who is?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he was wracking his brain, attempting to remember a name.
What is your name?
Lyra.
“Lyra,” Draven murmured under his breath, his eyes locked onto her as she went from table to table across the room.
“Her name is Lyra.” He said it as though he had entered a daze.
In a way, he supposed he had. He was wedged between the peculiar, disorienting feeling of the past converging with the present.
“Who?” Kiran asked, taking a sip from the glass clutched between his fingers. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”
He did not respond right away. Instead, his throat had to work around something heavy before words were able to flow through it once more.
“Do you remember the last time my mother and I came here? It was for some celebration in honor of my father. I came across a young girl in training to become one of King Alastair’s night attendants, and I found a guard being rough with her.
It was the first time I had ever truly lost control of my magic. ”
Kiran hummed, tapping his fingers against his cheek in tune to the music’s rhythm as he thought. “That was nearly a decade ago,” he eventually said, seeming to remember.