Chapter 11
Nyxiana
“Fifty people live at Ash Hollow,” Valen says. “Why go to another realm for blood?”
He wants the real answer. He earned that last night, when he told me we’d handle it together.
I could give him the short version, I give him more.
“Ordinary blood does nothing for me,” I say.
“Not the pack’s, though wolves aren’t ordinary, nor a fae’s.
None of it does what I need. Dragon blood does.
Angel blood does. That’s rare anywhere, and Evren’s the only one at Ash Hollow with enough of it to matter.
” Feeding off people at home was never possible. It never will be.
“Why didn’t you take Kaspian’s offer, then?” he says. “Evren was right there.”
I look at him too fast. “You heard that?”
“I have good ears.”
I look at him a moment before I answer. “I wasn’t ready to owe him that.”
“That’s the reason you feed alone.”
“It’s a reason.”
I could leave it there. I don’t. I go quiet for a few steps, deciding how much of this he gets. Some part of me wants him to know anyway. That unsettles me more than anything I’m about to say. Saying it out loud takes real effort. I say it regardless.
“I do this alone because I choose to. I always have. Feeding is the one time my control slips. I go weak. The hunger is in charge. A stranger forgets my face by morning. Anyone who actually knows me would remember my weakness forever.”
He doesn’t press. “All right.”
We walk together in silence for a while.
Drakoria spreads out around us, high country under a wide sky, warmer and older than the forests back at Ash Hollow.
I carry the same fire this family does, the fire that turns my eyes gold when I let it loose, even though I grew up a world away, in my father’s city under the red moon.
Briarstone has always been half mine, family and strange at once.
Valen keeps close on my left, his eyes moving over the ground as we cross it, the high places, the long sight lines, the folds where a threat could wait.
I let him watch for both of us. What I can’t stop tracking is him.
He stands almost a head over me, all lean muscle, relaxed; not braced for a fight.
He’s older than he looks. I don’t know by how much.
Looking at him now, I don’t think a number would explain it.
His heat fills the whole space at my side.
My stride lengthens to match his, longer steps than I’d take walking alone.
Wanting to be near a man is new to me. Wanting anything for myself is newer.
The fortress rises in front of us now, black stone and high walls.
Guards at the gate come to attention the moment they see me.
I’m known here, the king’s niece. The gate opens before I say a word.
We pass through, across the courtyard, into corridors of old black stone.
Torch-brackets line the walls, the flames steady in air that doesn’t move.
The stone smells of old smoke and pitch, a place kept warm for centuries.
Dragon lines are cut into the lintels overhead, worn soft by hands and years.
I walked these halls a hundred times as a girl.
My feet know the turns before my eyes catch up.
It’s grander than I remembered, warmer. Valen says nothing.
His eyes go to the doors, the height of the ceilings, the number of guards.
We’re only partway down the corridor when Niko catches sight of us and crosses the hall, a scroll still tucked under one arm like he had somewhere else to be a moment ago.
He’s a big man, dragon and angel both, faint scales catching the torchlight at his temples, old celestial fire banked low in his eyes.
“My favorite niece,” he says, then catches himself.
“Don’t tell the others I said that.” He takes my face in both hands, warm, unhurried. “What brings you all the way out here?”
Queen Saige is right behind him, wolf-shifter, fierce and warm. She pulls me in and holds on longer than a greeting needs. “How is Auriella?” Her voice goes soft on my mother’s name. She doesn’t let go until I answer.
“She’s well,” I say. “She sends her love.”
To this house I’m not something strange to be stared at. I’m Auriella’s girl, come home.
The family closes in around both of us. Rhonan reaches me first. “You couldn’t just visit,” he says. “You had to bring a crisis with you.”
“I could say the same about you, troublemaker.”
Evren already told him I was coming, so none of this surprises him.
His mate Serena hugs me too, her arm through mine.
Jarvald is a step behind, steady, already scanning the hall out of old habit, half managing the room without seeming to try.
Seris pulls me into a hug and tells the others to let me breathe first. Vaela, the youngest, holds back at first, quieter than her siblings, watching from a step outside the circle until I cross to her myself and draw her in.
They take me back like I never left. For a moment the years between visits fall away entirely.
When the greetings are done I bring Valen forward. “This is Valen, new to Ash Hollow.” Niko takes his measure like any king sizing up an unfamiliar face, then clasps his arm. “Whoever walks in at my niece’s side is welcome in my hall.”
Rhonan looks him over, a new face even to him. “How long have you been with the pack?”
“Not long.”
“Wolf?”
“Wolf.”
Rhonan’s eyes cut to me, a flicker of doubt crossing his face. Then he lets it go. He doesn’t push for more.
With the introductions done, Valen eases back from the center of the room and takes a place by the wall, where he can keep the doors in view.
Saige calls for a feast. The hall fills, long tables laid with platters and wine, more food than any of us could finish.
They seat Valen next to me, because whoever walks in at my side eats at the king’s table.
He eats quietly, eyes still moving over the room.
I eat like the rest of them, the food rich and familiar on my tongue, letting Seris fill my plate past the point I’d stop her if we were anywhere else.
The bread here is better than anything in my father’s kitchens. I’ve never told my mother that.
One of the cousins asks what it’s like living with a wolf pack.
“Loud,” I say. “Warm. Better than I expected.”
Saige leans in. “Do they treat you right?” Her attention stays steady on my face while I answer.
“They do.”
“And you’re eating?” Her voice drops, quieter than the question needs to be. With Valen sitting right there, she isn’t asking about dinner.
“I’m fine, Aunt Saige. I take care of myself.”
Seris tells the room about the summer Kaspian and I spent here as children, how we snuck into the throne room after dark on a dare and knocked over a suit of armor loud enough to wake half the fortress. The table roars.
“That was your idea,” I tell her. “I just took the blame for it.”
“You volunteered.”
“I was seven. You told me armor doesn’t actually attack people.”
For a while I’m just a cousin at a loud table, giving as good as I get.
The ease of it works on me. I came in braced for a hard errand on a dangerous trail. Here it’s family and a warm hall and too much food. The dread I carried in eases. By the second cup of wine the trail feels small and far away. I let it stay there.
The hall is full of signatures I’ve known my entire life, my uncle’s, my aunt’s, every cousin’s, each as familiar to me as a voice. Valen is the only blank in the room. The blank sits easy with me anyway. That should bother me more than it does.
When the meal winds down, I draw Niko aside and tell him as much as I can: I’m following a trail tied to the marks that surfaced on the pack’s women, and it points here, to whatever the family’s kept the longest.
“The library’s yours,” he says. “The vaults too, whatever you need. I’ll have someone let you in at first light.”
“That’s all you need to hear?”
“You’re family. That’s enough for me.”
The night goes long and easy, old stories, cousins talking over each other until nobody can follow whose story it started as.
Valen has settled near the hearth, nowhere near a door, out of old habit more than caution now.
Sometime in the evening I look for him across the hall.
He’s already looking at me. The heat in his eyes is open, unmistakable, aimed at me, nothing held back from it for once.
He looks away fast, his face closing as he turns back to the room.
I catch it anyway. It’s the first thing he’s ever let me see.
Late in the night he crosses to me and sits down on the bench beside me, a little apart from the noise.
His arm is almost touching mine. His hands rest loose on his knees, not braced on anything, not looking for a way out.
The heat of him pours along my side. My body sways toward it. I don’t pull back this time.
I want him. I have never let myself want anyone this much. Tonight, I stop.
The fires burn down. The hall empties by degrees, cousins peeling off one at a time. He stays because I’m still here.
I’ve watched him hold himself tight in every room since he came to Ash Hollow. Tonight, he doesn’t. I want to cross the space between us and put my hands on him while he’s still this open.
They give us rooms in the family wing, his door across the hall from mine.
I lie in bed in my uncle’s house, in my mother’s realm, warm and full and welcomed.
None of it quiets the desire still running under my skin.
I know exactly which door is his. I can still feel the heat of him along my side, phantom and real at once.
I imagine crossing the hall and pushing that door open, finding him already awake, like some part of him has been waiting for me too.
His hands would do more than sit loose on his knees this time.
Staying in this bed instead takes more out of me than I want to admit.
Ash Hollow is home, and safe. There I’m part of what keeps it that way, always reading, always holding. Tonight, my uncle’s guards stand the watch. For one night I’m the one being kept.
The family’s oldest rooms open at first light. Tomorrow looks simple from here. I fall asleep aching for him. It’s still the easiest sleep I’ve had in longer than I can remember.