Chapter 19
T he door closed behind us, shutting the palace away for the night.
My gaze caught on the bed across the room.
I had noticed the bed earlier, broad and neatly made beneath a dark coverlet. At the time, it had been little more than another piece of Xandros' rooms.
It felt considerably more important now.
Now there was only one bed, one closed door, and Xandros standing a few feet behind me. Heat crept beneath my skin despite the anger I was still holding onto.
Xandros followed my stare. “I can take the floor.”
I turned toward him. “I’m pissed at you. But that doesn’t mean I want you crippled tomorrow.”
His mouth opened, then closed.
I walked past him.
Bramble scrambled down my arm the moment Xandros set a small dish on the table. He had managed to find Bramble a handful of shelled nuts and dried fruit on our way back from the archive.
My pine marten buried his nose in them with enough enthusiasm to send several skittering across the table.
At least one of us had uncomplicated priorities.
I tugged at the narrow strap digging into my shoulder. The dress had become steadily less tolerable with every hour I spent in it.
Xandros noticed.
He crossed to a wardrobe and pulled out a dark shirt, holding it toward me. “You can sleep in this.”
The shirt hung between us for another heartbeat before I reached for it, my fingers brushing his as I pulled it from his hand.
The fabric was soft, still holding a trace of his warmth.
“I figured it would be more comfortable than your gown.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Thank you.”
Neither of us moved.
His shirt gathered in my hands, soft fabric spilling over my wrists while the warmth left by his body seeped into my palms. Storm-charged air and amber clung faintly to it.
My pulse beat harder.
I wanted to stay angry with him. He had known what the tether between us meant and let me walk blindly into his world anyway. That should have been easier to hold onto with him standing this close. But it wasn’t.
I had slept beside him, injured and fevered. He had held me when I could barely stand. I had kissed him in a dying kingdom and followed him into the palace of a king who wanted to use me.
And somehow, standing in his bedchamber with his shirt pressed against my chest felt like crossing another line entirely.
His gaze dropped to the fabric in my hands, then lifted to my face. A muscle shifted along his jaw.
A blush crept beneath my skin.
I tightened my fingers around the shirt and glanced toward the open doorway beside the hearth. “I’ll change in the bathing chamber.”
Xandros stepped aside, giving me a clear path to it. “Yes.”
I moved past him before my courage could abandon me.
The door closed between us with a soft click, and only then did I release the breath trapped in my lungs.
By the time I crawled beneath the covers in his shirt, exhaustion had settled deep enough into my muscles that even my anger felt heavy.
Bramble circled beside me twice before dropping into the space with a satisfied huff. I rested my hand against his soft back.
Xandros shifted on the other side of him and stretched one arm above his head before tucking it beneath his neck. His gaze settled on the ceiling.
The golden thread rested somewhere between us, quiet and familiar now that I had a name for it.
Soul bond.
My fingers tightened slightly in Bramble’s fur.
I was still angry that Xandros had known. He had carried that knowledge while I stumbled around the truth, feeling something between us I couldn’t explain, and every time I found myself softening toward him, I had to reach for that anger again.
It was becoming harder to hold onto.
His shirt rested loose against my skin. Bramble’s body filled the space between us, and Xandros' breathing had fallen into a slow rhythm close enough that I could hear it.
For a few breaths, the room felt dangerously ordinary.
In another life, there might have been nothing strange about lying beside him with Bramble wedged between us, wearing his shirt while the night settled beyond the windows.
There might have been no Briar Moon hanging over two dying worlds, no Marred hunting in the shadows, and no king a few corridors away who had already made it clear that, if saving Asterra required bleeding the Deepwood dry, he would do it.
Boots crossed the corridor outside, and my body tightened before the sound faded past our door.
Xandros turned his head toward it and stayed still until the footsteps disappeared.
The quiet that followed no longer felt private.
I stared into the dark until my eyes began to ache, aware of the warmth beyond Bramble and the quiet pull of gold to the prince on the other side of the mattress.
Eventually, exhaustion dragged my eyes closed.
Pale light pressed through the curtains when I woke.
Bramble had somehow claimed twice the space he’d possessed when I fell asleep. His body stretched lengthwise between us, one paw shoved against my ribs while his hind legs rested against Xandros' side.
The prince was already awake. His silver eyes met mine over Bramble’s back.
Neither of us moved until Bramble stretched, planted two paws in my stomach, before pouncing directly on top of me.
I caught him around the middle and shoved him aside with a grunt.
Xandros’ mouth twitched.
“Don’t.”
His brows rose in an expression of mock innocence. “I said nothing.”
“But you were about to.”
He shrugged. “I mean, I was thinking several things.”
“That counts.”
His smile widened just before three hard knocks struck the outer door.
Xandros' expression changed immediately.
His arm came out from behind his head as he sat up; his constellations stirred faintly across his neck and chest.
There wasn’t a second knock. Whoever waited outside already knew we had nowhere else to go.
By the time Xandros opened the door, I had pulled on the rest of my clothes beneath his shirt and was almost finished braiding my hair back from my face.
Two royal guards stood in the corridor.
“The archive has been opened.”
Xandros glanced back at me.
I knotted my hair at the tip of my braid, then slid my dagger into my boot. “Then we should make use of His Majesty’s generosity before he changes his mind.”
One guard’s mouth tightened.
Xandros stepped into the corridor. “You understand our customs quickly.”
My gaze snapped to him.
The words were his brother’s from the night before, delivered with the same measured politeness. Xandros did not look at me, but the faint shift at the corner of his mouth gave him away.
Warmth flickered through me before I could stop it.
I followed him into the corridor before the guard could decide whether either of us had insulted his king.
Through one tall window, I caught a glimpse of Asterra beyond the terraces.
Daylight had stripped the city of what little color the night had given it.
The white towers of the palace rose through a thin silver haze, their edges blurred by ash or dust hanging over the streets below.
The failing trees looked almost colorless beneath the pale sky, and without darkness between them, the collapsed roofs and empty spaces where buildings had once stood were impossible to miss.
My steps slowed, and Xandros stopped beside me. His reflection hovered in the glass, silver eyes fixed on the city below as his jaw tightened.
I looked away first.
I took my first real breath when the door to the archives scraped shut behind us, the cool, stale air settling against my skin in a way I didn’t expect to find comforting.
The records we had abandoned the night before still covered one of the long tables. I passed them without stopping.
We already knew the star in my palm belonged to me. We knew what the thread between us meant. But neither answer told us how to keep two worlds alive.
I moved deeper between the shelves.
Xandros went toward the oldest wall of records while I returned to the map cases. Dust worked beneath my nails as I opened them one after another, easing brittle sheets apart and searching for the same symbols that had appeared on the records from the night before.
A shallow wooden box was wedged behind two larger ledgers. I worked it free and forced open the stiff lid. Inside, brittle sheets had been folded into quarters, their edges worn soft with age.
I eased the first one open.
Faded lines crossed the center, some green, others gold, running between a row of circles marked with the same road symbol I had been searching for.
The next sheet held more circles connected by the same green and gold lines.
By the third, my pulse had begun to quicken.
“Xandros.”
Parchment shifted behind me. His footsteps crossed the stone a moment later, and warmth settled near my shoulder as he leaned over the table.
I flattened the sheet carefully with both hands.
The drawing was simpler than the maps we had already found.
Five roads crossed the divide between the two halves of the page. Smaller lines spread from each one through the Deepwood on one side and Asterra on the other. Green flowed toward Asterra. Gold returned along the same paths.
In the next drawing, one road had disappeared. The lines that had fed it curved toward the four that remained.
Another road vanished beneath a dark slash of ink. The lines around the surviving roads grew thicker.
My fingers slowed against the parchment.
By the final drawing, only one road remained between the two realms. Every line on either side narrowed toward it. Green and gold had been drawn over the same crossing until the parchment had nearly worn through.
The Cedarstone marker flashed through my mind, my palm locked against the stone while Xandros strained across from me and power tore through my arms until my knees nearly folded.
“The roads weren’t separate.”
Xandros leaned closer.
I traced one of the thin lines from the first drawing. It joined another, then another, connecting the roads across both realms. “They were all connected.”
Gold stirred beneath the constellations along his hand.