Chapter 18
F or a moment, I could only stare at him.
“You can’t allow me to leave?”
The words came out sharper than I intended.
My hand closed around the edge of the table as my gaze snapped toward the silver doors. Six armed guards waited beyond them. More stood throughout the palace, between me and every road that might lead back to the Deepwood.
I had crossed into Asterra willingly.
I had never agreed to become its prisoner.
Anger shoved aside the last of my unease, and I turned back to Aurelian. He hadn’t moved. He still sat at the head of the table with that same unreadable calm, as though keeping me here had already been decided.
My fingers curled hard enough that the star pressed against my palm.
Veil Weaver.
I opened my hand.
Eight points glowed beneath my skin.
This was why he wanted me.
Xandros had not put the mark there. It had belonged to me before I ever touched him, hidden beneath my skin until the road dragged it into the light.
My father’s rough hand closed over mine in memory, his voice carrying words I had heard so many times they had become part of me.
Cedar bends before it breaks. Stone holds when everything else gives way.
My vision blurred for a second.
Had he carried the same mark?
Had I held his hand a thousand times as a child without ever knowing what was hidden there?
A chair scraped hard against the floor beside me.
Xandros was already on his feet. “She decides whether she leaves.”
That tether between us pulled tighter.
I looked up at him.
His shoulders had gone rigid, and his constellations glowed like banked embers. I had watched him measure every answer he gave his brother, choosing his words with a care I understood better now that I knew who sat next to us. Xandros knew exactly what Aurelian was capable of.
And he had challenged him anyway.
Aurelian rested his silverware beside his plate, perfectly straight, before meeting his brother’s eyes. “She does not.”
Something cold tightened beneath my ribs.
Xandros moved around my chair. The movement was controlled, but there was nothing subtle about where he stopped. His body filled the space between Aurelian and me, one hand resting beside my plate, open and empty.
Heat flared inside my fist, tendrils of golden light reaching for the male at my side.
I looked up at him. Anger tightened the lines around his mouth, but when his attention dropped to me, there was something else there, too. Fear.
“Do you want to remain in Asterra?”
I swallowed and shook my head. “No.”
His eyes held mine another heartbeat, and that golden line tethering me to him drew tighter.
He faced his brother. “Then she leaves.”
Aurelian lifted his glass and took a slow drink. The calmness of the gesture made the hair rise along my arms. Whatever had shifted between them, Aurelian had felt it too. And it bothered him more than he was letting on.
“You still believe this is a matter of permission.”
Xandros clenched his fist, his knuckles scraping against the table.
“You have a Veil Weaver who does not know how the roads work and a kingdom that has spent centuries trying to survive without them.” Xandros stepped closer to my chair. “Keeping her prisoner gives you neither of those answers.”
Aurelian’s glass stopped halfway to the table. “She knows nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Something tightened in the king’s expression.
“Whatever knowledge her family carried was buried.” Xandros' gaze remained fixed on his brother. “And the last time you decided force was an acceptable substitute for understanding the roads, both realms suffered for it.”
Silence swallowed the room until a thin ringing filled my ears.
Aurelian held his brother’s gaze, his face perfectly still. One finger rested against the stem of his glass while the seconds stretched slowly by.
Xandros barely seemed to breathe beside me.
Aurelian’s finger slid once along the glass.
“You have spent half your life believing knowledge will save people who refuse to save themselves.”
Xandros said nothing.
“Captain.”
One of the guards stepped further into the room. “Your Majesty.”
Aurelian reached for his glass. “If Prince Xandros orders you to remove the Veil Weaver from this palace, whose command do you obey?”
The guard’s boots shifted against the stone. His gaze moved toward Xandros. Darkness dropped across the room so quickly my hand went for the knife in my boot.
Golden light ignited beneath my feet. Thin lines blazed through the polished floor, racing beneath the table and up the walls in branching constellations I had mistaken for decoration.
The guard gasped as light snapped around his body.
His back bowed as his boots left the floor, one hand clawing uselessly at his throat while a golden brilliance burned through the seams of his armor.
Xandros lurched forward. “Aurelian.”
A sharp crack rent the air, followed by a spray of blood.
The guard fell, his body striking the stone hard enough that I felt it through the soles of my shoes.
He didn’t move again.
For one breath, neither did I.
Blood spread beneath his head while the gold slowly faded from the floor and warm light returned to the chandelier overhead.
Aurelian took a sip from his glass.
My stomach rolled, my fingers locked so tightly around the bone hilt of my dagger I thought they might break. I forced them open one at a time, then followed the glowing lines disappearing beneath the table.
The room itself had answered him.
The remaining guards stood beyond the doors without moving toward the body. Aurelian looked at the nearest one. “You are captain now.”
The male bowed immediately. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
And then the king simply returned his attention to his plate.
“Take them to the lower archive. They may read whatever remains from before the Severing.”
Xandros stared at his brother while Aurelian picked up his knife and cut into another stringy piece of flesh.
My stomach turned.
“You will both remain under guard.” Aurelian lifted the bite to his mouth. “Now, go.”
Bramble’s fear came on so sharp and sudden it almost stole the air from my lungs.
I had barely felt him since we arrived in Asterra. My chest squeezed as another wave reached me, quieter this time, though it still carried the same frightened urgency.
He was still upstairs. Alone.
I took a step toward the doors before the dead guard caught at the edge of my vision. Blood still darkened the stone beneath him.
My hand found Xandros' arm once we made it out of the room. “I need Bramble.”
Xandros nodded before demanding we return to his room before going down to the archives.
The captain bowed. “Yes, Your Highness.”
I let out the breath trapped in my lungs and kept my hand around Xandros' arm until we were moving.
Bramble was already awake when I entered the room.
He sprang from the chair and scrambled up my dress before I could bend for him. Claws caught in the midnight fabric as he climbed my side and pressed his narrow body against my shoulder.
A sense of relief barreled through our bond hard enough to weaken my knees.
I buried my fingers in the trembling fur beneath his jaw, leaning my cheek onto the top of his head.
He was safe. We both were. Even if I didn’t know how long that would hold true.
He shoved his nose beneath my ear, making small chittering noises as he tried to eliminate every ounce of space between us.
I slid a hand over his back and felt something inside me settle with him.
Xandros waited near the door. His expression softened when Bramble wound himself across the back of my neck and settled there.
The image of the guard crumpling onto the stone still turned my stomach, but Bramble’s familiar weight against my shoulders steadied my breathing enough to keep moving.
The lower archive lay beneath three flights of narrow stairs, where the palace air grew colder with every turn.
Golden lines ran through the white stone walls, thin veins of Everlight that brightened when the guards passed. Several flickered weakly. One had gone dark around a hairline crack where a faint stain of indigo had gathered beneath the surface.
A shiver ran down my spine, and my steps slowed.
Xandros followed my attention. His entire body stiffened momentarily before he gently guided me away.
Neither of us spoke.
The sound of our footsteps echoed beneath the high ceilings, each strike of my boots carrying farther than it should have. My heartbeat pounded in my ears between them, and Bramble’s quick breaths warmed the side of my neck.
The silence around us made every small sound impossible to ignore.
At the bottom of the third staircase, the guards stopped before a silver door with no hinges or handle. Constellations sprawled across its tarnished surface, so faded in places I had to look twice to follow their lines.
The new captain moved aside, and Xandros pressed his palm against the center.
Everlight spilled from his hand.
The constellations across the door answered one after another until a narrow seam appeared between them.
Stone grated beneath my boots as the door withdrew into the wall.
A faint gust slipped through the opening, cool and dry against my skin, carrying the stale scent of dust and old parchment.
Rows of shelves disappeared into the darkness, crowded with bound volumes and rolled maps. Small silver cases and narrow boxes filled the remaining spaces, their frames and hinges warped with age.
Several shelves had collapsed beneath the weight of their contents, leaving old papers scattered across the floor.
I stopped just inside the doorway.
Dust coated pages that might have held answers my people had died without knowing. Maps curled in on themselves. Leather bindings split along their spines while entire shelves sagged toward the floor.
My throat burned.
All this knowledge buried down here while the Deepwood bled and Asterra starved.
I stepped carefully over a fallen book and moved deeper into the archive.
Boots scraped behind me, then stopped.
I glanced back.
The guards remained on the other side of the threshold.