Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Luka stormed through the castle as if there were firebats on his tail. He had no intention of explaining anything, especially not to Shane, Iona, and Danikha.
And you don’t want to admit what you did.
Of course he didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t even want to think about it.
Maybe Danikha can help.
Luka slowed to a walk, took one more step, and stopped, letting his shoulder sag.
He didn’t want to talk to Danikha or anyone else.
He wanted Izabel. Was she in the clinic looking for a murderer, holding her chin up while Melo took swipes at her?
Was she thinking about him? Or had she finally decided he was too much of an asshole to bother with?
In a few hours, she would leave. And why wouldn’t she? It wasn’t as if she needed him….
Gods, he’d been so wrapped up in himself, he hadn’t even realized that she didn’t have claws. The agony of that sudden understanding seared through him like a hot blade. His beast knew Izzy was his mate, but hers did not.
Whose fault is that? his beast roared. You pushed her away again and again!
Luka put an arm out to support himself on the wall as his heart broke.
The pain was visceral, bleeding through his hands, his belly, his chest, as his beast howled inside him.
He didn’t even look up when Shane wrapped an arm around his shoulders and led him, stumbling, down the corridor to his office.
The same office they’d met in the night they’d found Narya’s body.
So much had happened since then, and yet, they were still in exactly the same place. No… they were in a worse place.
Luka sank onto a leather sofa beside the fire and let his head drop into his throbbing hands. He was utterly exhausted. He didn’t know what to do. He had no plan. No sacrifice to make. No bargain to try. Nothing left at all. He was alone in a strange and fearful place. Again.
“Here.” Shane nudged him with a clear crystal glass filled with… something.
Luka waved it away. “I don’t want it.”
“It’s water.”
Luka grunted, then took the glass and downed it. The water was fresh and cool and somehow helped clear his head.
Shane sank into the armchair opposite him. “She’ll forgive you,” he said softly.
“You don’t know what I did.”
“I know she loves you. I know you love her.” Shane leaned forward. “You can fix this.”
“Like you have?” Luka couldn’t keep the derision from his voice. “Forgive me if I don’t take advice from you.”
“I know I fucked everything up.” Shane stood and walked to the window, staring through it as if he wished he could simply leap up on the sill and fly away. Eventually he turned and leaned against the casement, looking as exhausted as Luka felt. “But it’s different for me.”
Luka pushed himself up with a snarl. “Because you don’t love Cori?”
“No!” Shane growled back. “Because my beast and I are in complete agreement. We both know she’s better off where she is.”
“You’re a fucking hypocrite.” Luka took a step toward his friend, his fist already bunching. “How can you say that? You know I’ve tried to keep Izzy safe all this time. I’ve tried to do what’s right for her!”
Shane stepped forward, meeting him with equal rage. “That is not what you’ve been doing. You have pushed her away to keep yourself safe. Not her!”
True.
Luka ignored his beast and turned his agony on Shane. “Oh, please. Do you think Cori is so delighted to watch you fuck half the court? How would you feel watching her seduce anyone with a pulse in a half-mile radius?”
Shane opened his mouth and roared. A feral, ferocious sound of utter torment.
“She had to go! She had to! She hated the politics, hated the backstabbing, hated everything about this life!” Ruby scales covered Shane’s dark skin in a glittering armored wave.
“What would it have done to her to send her troops, her own men and women, to die so that she could sit on a throne she didn’t even want? ”
Luka blinked. “She said that? She refused the throne?” That didn’t sound like the Cori Luka knew.
“I didn’t offer it to her,” Shane admitted raggedly.
“We separated a few weeks before Rayan died. It happened so quickly. Then we were all grieving. Cori found out about the investigation, and she was so angry with me. She said I didn’t have the right to play with people’s lives, and maybe I don’t, but this is the responsibility I was born to. ”
“So you turned your back on her instead,” Luka sneered. “Instead of finding a different way, instead of working with her to find a way. Now you get to watch her ride to war instead.”
“I didn’t want that! I tried….” Shane spun away, as if he didn’t want to hear his own words.
Oh, gods. “What did you try?”
Shane shook his head.
“What did you do, Shane?”
“After Rayan died, I didn’t want to risk her, so I fired her from the castle guards.
” Shane swallowed. “I gave her a diplomatic role—Ambassador to Gunab. She could have been happy there. She would have loved the rainforest, the history, the food.” He paused for a long, tortured moment.
“Even then, even after everything, she asked me to come with her. She wanted me to walk away from it all. She wanted me to turn my back on my duty, on my family.”
“She asked you to do what you expected of her.” Luka looked at his friend, at the misery on his face, and he knew what Shane’s response had been. “But you said no, and then you tried to make her go by breaking her heart, but instead….”
He didn’t need to say the rest. Instead, Cori transferred into the crown legions and threw herself into any danger she could find. Now she was the knight captain of the border forces—the most dangerous commission of all.
Thank the gods of fire Izzy only ran to the market.
“We are both idiots,” Luka said quietly.
“I’m so sorry for everything I did,” Shane said, “but it’s not too late for you. Don’t make the same mistakes I made. Izzy is strong and capable, and she loves your ugly face.”
Luka let the words settle in his heart. Shane had fucked his—and Cori’s—life up. But Luka could still fix this. He could fall to his knees and beg for another chance. He could tell Izabel that he had loved her all these years, that he would do anything if it meant he could stand at her side.
And suddenly, everything became clear. All this time, he couldn’t see how she could live in the city and he could live in the castle. He’d known she would go back. She’d leave him. But it didn’t have to be that way.
You should’ve spoken to her. Asked her what she wanted.
His beast was right. He should’ve told her his fears and asked her what she wanted, but he hadn’t.
He’d broken her heart instead. So now it was up to him to show that there was a chance for them.
It didn’t matter that she had no claws. He would love her, show her that she could trust him, and maybe they would come in time.
He held out his hand and waited until Shane took it. “I forgive you, Shane. You’ve hurt us all, and that is something you’ll have to live with, but we can be friends again one day.” He shook Shane’s hand and let it go. “And now, I resign.”
Shane flinched. “What?”
“I’d rather be with Izzy, however she’ll take me.”
Thank the gods. Finally.
Luka smiled and jogged to the door, ripped it open, and almost bowled into the wide-eyed messenger waiting for him outside.
“Knight Commander.” Felix bowed, picking at his thumbs nervously. “Adina asked me to speak with you.”
“I’m in a hurry. Can you walk with me?”
“Yes, sir.” They fell into a fast pace, walking side by side.
“What can I help you with?” Luka asked, trying to be gentle with one of the newest—and most anxious—messengers, despite his haste to get to Izzy.
“I have a message. I mean, obviously, because that’s my job? Ah… that is, Adina asked me to tell you—” Felix took a shaky breath. “—I saw Lady Narya with a healer.”
“The night of the banquet?” Luka asked more sharply than he intended.
“No, the night before,” Felix answered in a rush.
“They were sitting together in a corner of the walled garden. I expect they didn’t think anyone could see them in the shadows.
But I was already there. I like to read with my back to the mountain where the stone is warmed, behind a big stand of lace bush.
Adina said we could take any book we wanted from the library, provided we looked after it. I thought—”
Luka stopped walking and placed a hand on Felix’s shoulder to stop the young man’s rambling. “You’re allowed to read the books, and you can take your break in the garden. Please tell me what you saw.”
Felix bit his lip. “I didn’t say anything before because it wasn’t unusual. They asked if we saw anything unusual, but I didn’t. And—”
Luka kept his voice calm and kind. “You’re not in trouble, but I need to know who you saw. Was it Physik General Melo?”
“Oh, no.” Felix flicked his thumbs. “Lady Narya was with Healer Sarwin.”
Luka’s beast coiled in his belly, sending scales slithering up his arms to cover his chest and throat. “They were together? Romantically?”
“No. I don’t… um, I don’t think so.” Felix blinked nervously at Luka’s glittering armored scales.
“Healer Sarwin is already seeing someone, and he’s not at all keen on socializing.
In fact, Sergeant Sutton once made the mistake of approaching Master Sarwin in the great hall to ask if he wanted to go to the market for a drink and dancing.
” Felix winced. Clearly, it had not gone well for Sutton.
Who could Sarwin possibly be seeing? Luka prided himself on knowing the flow of the relationship tides within the castle. Who was courting whom. Who was sleeping with whom. Who hated whom. But he didn’t know this. Could it be someone who wanted to start a war?
“Who is Sarwin with romantically?”
Felix opened his mouth, closed it, and then tried again. “I don’t know. No one does. Except them, I guess.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me about Healer Sarwin?” Luka asked carefully. “Anything at all?”
“I don’t know. I mean… he lives in the castle, but he also spends time in the city. I think he helps some patients there? I don’t know. I heard his family are steel smiths. Except his uncle Benja, obviously.”
“Benja?” Luka prompted. Something about the name was familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“The apothecary,” Felix said, as if everyone should know. “But he’s dead.”
A wave of unease slithered over Luka’s skin. “The apothecary? From the market?”
Izabel’s shop? Gods of fire.
“Yes. I once heard Healer Sarwin talking about how Mistress Izabel stole his shop. Although I think it was her brother he really blamed. He was quite bitter about it and….”
Felix continued speaking, but Luka had stopped listening. Rayan had found out about the shop being repossessed from a healer—Sarwin—and he’d helped Izabel buy it. Sarwin felt that they’d stolen it. But was that enough for murder? Did Sarwin kill Luka’s best friend over this?
How does this link to Firebreather? There’s something we’re missing.
Luka grunted. They were missing a lot, but now he knew exactly who to ask. “Thank you, Felix. You’ve done very well.” He patted the young man’s shoulder. “Do you have any idea where Healer Sarwin is right now?”
“I saw him at the clinic, as usual.”
Gods. With Izzy! No… wait, I don’t think she’s there. It was the first time he’d ever heard uncertainty from his beast, and it was terrifying.
“And Mistress Izabel? Where is she?” Luka asked.
“I saw her leaving earlier,” Felix answered.
Luka had to fight to hold in the thrashing of his beast. Gods, she had really left. He’d pushed her away again and again, and now she was gone. “Did she leave a message before she went?” Please, let her have left something—anything—that showed she had thought of him before she left.
Why should she? What did you leave her? His beast rumbled as it coiled in his belly.
“No messages were left for you, I’m sorry.”
“Nothing at all? Not even a note? Maybe something was mislaid?” Luka could hear the desperation in his voice, but there was nothing he could do to change it.
Felix shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. There wasn’t anything. The only mislaid message today was a note to the kitchens that turned out to be a soldier’s kit list. We still haven’t untangled that one.”
Luka rubbed the back of his neck. Felix was right, that had nothing to do with Izzy.
We need to check on her.
Gods, he wanted to. He wanted to leave everything behind and fly straight to her.
But was that the right course of action?
Luka took a slow breath, considering. Izzy was on her way home, where Ryland would keep her safe.
The best thing he could do for her was arrest Sarwin and remove the threat completely.
He focused on Felix. “Run to the barracks and find Knight Captain Cori. Please tell her what you’ve told me and ask her to release First Lieutenants Aiden and Kai to me. I need them.”
Felix bowed and sped off just as Luka broke into a run. He needed to catch Sarwin before the healer realized there was any trouble. Then they would have a little chat.
After that, there would be plenty of time to go to Izzy and apologize for everything he’d done.