45. Kye
Kye
The door to Hadrian’s tower apartment was fucking locked.
A good thing, because I didn’t trust the guard standing outside any more than I trusted the Rivean I’d dragged back from the mountains. I crossed my arms loosely, making eye contact with the man and nocking my head in the door’s direction. “My brother said to meet him in his rooms.”
Technically a lie.
The guard raised his flax-colored brows as if he guessed as much. “Have you tried knocking?”
“I’d prefer to not disturb him if he’s asleep.” Not a lie.
The man snickered. “Why did he ask you to meet him, then?”
“I’m later than I expected,” I returned, waiting for the man to do something other than twiddle his thumbs and stare at me.
The guard shrugged, haughty as he cast his gaze elsewhere. “I don’t have a key.”
Being the second-born prince comes with its share of advantages—a longer leash, lighter supervision, more influence over my own interests and hobbies—but every so often it introduced some short-dicked flea who pretended not to recognize me just to get his jollies at exercising some level of power over a prince of Calder.
My tongue roamed the corner of my mouth, probing for patience. “What the fuck is the point stationing you here, then? What if he was attacked from inside?”
The man’s eyes dropped to my belt, taking his time sizing up my knife. “Unwanted guests, I suppose.”
My eyelids closed and reopened. With reluctance, I leaned into the door, raising my voice. “Hade. You awake?”
A beat of silence.
“Yes.” Floor creaked, muffled footsteps padding from the other side of the wall.
“Mmmm,” I answered through the door, my tone bright. “Your guard offered me your key in return for a complicated series of favors, most of them sexual.”
From the corner of my eye, the man’s mouth parted. The door opened, Hadrian’s face peering through the yolky sconce light. He glanced over the both of us with the stern scrub of a general assessing new recruits. “Dursand,” he scolded softly, “he’s married.”
“I did not—”
Hadrian widened the door, waving me lazily inside. I waited until I was completely through before looking back at the guard. “I’m flattered, Dursand, but next time remember—my eyes are up here.”
Dursand cleared his throat. “Your Highness—"
Heavy wood swung closed. The latch clicked, and a muttered curse followed from the hallway outside. Hadrian sucked a smile into his mouth, meeting my eyes. I snorted.
“You’re an asshole,” Hadrian muttered under his breath, amused as he turned to wander through his sitting room.
Unlike my quarters, furnished with pointy blades and spiked clubs and other hazardous toys that probably drove Maren mad, Hadrian’s rooms were a neat arrangement of firm-cushioned armchairs and books on every subject Aalto had ever shed light over.
Just stepping inside, the scent of dusty bound paper and leather covers overpowered everything else.
It was no wonder my brother was always coughing; he probably shared his apartment with half the fucking book lice in Calder.
I dropped into my favorite armchair, the coziest one, even though three legs were shorter than the fourth and it wobbled when I moved. I wound myself sideways enough to sling a leg over the armrest. “You’re up late.”
“So are you.” He lowered himself into the nearest seat with the stately elegance of a future king. “What do you want?”
“Distraction. Maren left for Leihani a few hours ago.” I’d tried reading the book Selena had given me at first, which had almost worked, until the wind ran over the shingles somewhere overhead, making the rafters croak and groan so loudly I kept glancing up, prepared to find an assassin sent by my father crouched under my table or pressed into my wall.
So, like a scared little boy, I’d found myself crossing the sky bridge, my feet aimed at my older brother’s tower.
Hadrian roosted his chin amongst his knuckles. “I didn’t know she planned to return there.”
“It wasn’t planned. Emilius threatened her father over their dinner.”
“Ah,” he said, in a tone of unsurprise.
I massaged a circle into my temple with my thumb. “She cut off his hand.”
My brother blinked. His mouth opened. Then closed.
“His ring hand.”
“Tonight?” he stammered. “Just now?”
“A few hours ago.”
He stared at me, jaw slack like a brainless fish.
“He used it on me.”
Hadrian stood. “He what?”
I flipped a hand. “You can hardly blame him. Probably thought she was going to fucking kill him.” The corrosive burn in my lungs hadn’t completely subsided.
It had felt like breathing through acid.
Like I’d swallowed toxic mist and let it eat me alive.
In the few hours I’d spent alone, I’d found myself coughing black phlegm, the sight enough to turn my stomach.
“She lopped it off like wheat in a field. Now we know separating him from that thing won’t make any difference.
He’s worn it for thirty years, I’m sure it’s leeched into his blood. ”
“This isn’t funny, Kye.”
“Do you see me fucking laughing?”
Hadrian huffed. “He’s alive?”
“He was when we left his quarters.”
Hadrian shook his head, striding to a window as if the sight of me pierced his fucking eyeballs. He ironed his hands down both sides of his jaw. “He won’t let that go.” Hands on his hips, he rotated to face me, leaning into a wooden beam between glass panes.
“Why do you think I’m here?”
“You, I’m not worried about,” Hadrian said, flicking his fingers as if discussing the worth of a butter knife.
We both knew Emilius kept me around to ensure compliance from Hadrian, otherwise he’d have sent me off again to fight Rivea weeks ago.
My brother sighed, shaking his head slowly. “His entire hand?”
“Entire thing. I haven’t sharpened that knife in a fortnight, either.”
“Aalto burn the stars,” Hadrian muttered to himself. “She’s not safe here now.”
I swung my leg to the floor, sitting upright. “When was she safe here? When Emilius referred to her as a dog? When Thaan locked her in a glass cage?” It wasn’t that I doubted whether Maren could hold her own. I’d seen her do worse things to dozens of men—thousands, actually—than sever a hand.
But the thought of the King setting his sights on her strung ice through my veins.
The King was only human, a mortal man with a beating heart, more than halfway through the decades his life would claim.
It was the boy within me that was still afraid of him.
I’m not sure I’d ever stop being afraid.
Thaan could steal my face, Pirates could chain me to a wall, Rivea could send me to a prison to be hanged in the morning, and none of them would scare me.
But I still remembered the scent of black tar as my mother curled over the foot of her bed, coughing and gasping, her husband asleep on the opposite side.
The warmth of her hands when she spied me hovering over the threshold and called me to her, clearing her throat and rasping at me that she was fine.
The sound of our feet as she walked me hand in hand back to my room, tucking curls behind my ears and studying me with soft intensity as though worried she might go back to her bed and somehow forget what I looked like.
I’d asked her to stay. “I’ll make room, Momma,” I’d said, scooting to the very edge of my bed. She’d considered it, smiling sadly at me before tucking the blankets under my chin.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” she’d said, and I’d watched her close the door behind her, unable to understand why I didn’t believe her.
Why it felt like something combed the halls of the palace, leaping from shadow to shadow, flame to flame, hiding between shutters and rafters and dark panes of glass.
Something that prowled behind her steps, waiting for the moment to take her away.
A feeling heavy and dark and full of silent static. One that latched onto me like cold hands, that I couldn’t convince myself was nothing.
Thaan addled Emilius’s mind years ago.
Would my mother have never suffered, if Thaan hadn’t done it? Would I have grown up knowing her?
Hadrian loosed a tired breath. “Well. Maren might have been an inconvenience to Emilius before, but you can count on it now. You need to be careful, Kye. Once he wants someone dead—"
“I know,” I said, not bothering to look up at him as I leaned forward, propping my elbows over my knees and clenching my jaw. The chair wobbled underneath me. My thumb pressed roughly against the fleshy mound in my opposite hand hard enough to stain my skin white. “I know.”