Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
The feverish heat in my skin is back, as is the throbbing in my head, but I don't care.
I can't spend another second in this bed.
I have to get up. I have to get out. I have to find someone and warn them that Malachi obviously still has spies inside this palace, that we've just entered a new stage in this dark, terrible game he's playing—that he’s apparently been playing for years.
My legs are unsteady beneath me as I leave the room, my vision threatening to blur at the edges every time I turn my head too quickly. The mark on my finger throbs with every heartbeat. I keep my fist curled around it, as if I could hide it from myself, and I trudge onward.
Fate is on my side; I don't have to travel far in my panicked, bedraggled state before I spot Reave coming down the hallway. Seeing him triggers a flood of emotions—such a massive, jumbled rush of them that I have to brace my hand against the wall just to stay on my feet.
He sprints forward at the sight of me, catching me just before my legs give out entirely.
“Arowyn, what are you doing? I was on my way to check on you—one of the servants said you fainted.”
“I did, I…”
“Then why are you out of bed?”
I curl against his chest, trying to catch my breath.
“Hey. Look at me.” He gently cups my chin and lifts my face to his. “What's going on?”
My voice comes out much steadier than I feel. “Someone came into my room while I was sleeping. When I woke up, the ring you gave me was gone.”
He keeps his hands braced on my arms, steadying me, but takes a step back to see me more fully, clearly still confused.
I can't manage any more words, so I lift my clenched fist between us, showing him.
I watch his gaze travel from my face to my hand, to the dried blood tracing its thin red path across my knuckles.
His expression shifts from confusion to something far darker, rings of black overtaking his pupils like ink dropped in water.
He carefully takes my wrist and holds it steady as he uncurls my fingers. His eyes find the freshly-carved mark and he goes perfectly still—the practiced stillness of a man who’s learned how to hide his beastly side when he needs to.
But even in my dazed state, I sense the rage rippling just beneath the surface as he says, in a low, dangerous voice, “I'm going to fucking kill him.”
His tone frightens me almost as much as the blood on my skin.
We're moving an instant later, and he doesn't tell me where we're going. He offers to carry me, but I refuse; I feel steadier in his presence, with his hand tightly clenching mine, even as the walls are pressing in and every corridor feels narrower than it did a moment ago.
His eyes dart about as we move, noting every doorway, every shadow, every servant who glances our way.
Finally, he spots who he was apparently looking for: his sister.
She stands with a cluster of courtiers at the far end of the hall, speaking in low, quick tones.
She stops talking the instant she catches sight of Reave.
He doesn't even say her name. All it takes is a look, some unspoken understanding passing between them. She dismisses the crowd around her with a brief word and makes her way over to us, her dark eyes questioning.
Reave summarizes the last few minutes in clipped, precise sentences, fury still writhing under his skin like a living thing that’s dangerously close to finding a way out.
“So apparently the cleansing we did after the Sun Harvest Feast wasn't thorough enough,” Kestrel mutters. “He still has bodies inside the palace. One of the lower servants was probably bribed into doing his bidding for a handsome price.”
“When I find out who it was…” Reave's eyes go completely black, the curse rising with his anger before he can catch it.
I intertwine my fingers more completely with his and give a firm, grounding squeeze.
“We'll find out,” Kestrel says, her voice low, her gaze sweeping up and down the hall, watching for anyone who might overhear. “In the meantime, I'll take her to my own quarters—somewhere I can account for every person with access. And I'll post my own most trusted guards.”
His brow furrows with doubt.
“I can take care of this,” his sister tells him. “There are more problems waiting for you in your office, besides.”
Reave still looks torn as he turns back to me, his hand coming up to the side of my face, his thumb tracing my cheek the way it did right before he said goodbye in his room earlier. Lingering. Memorizing. Like he’s worried it might be a while before he has another chance to touch me like this.
“I'll be fine with Kestrel,” I try to assure him. “Just don't be late for the date you promised me. I really need to hit someone after this latest disaster.”
The corner of his mouth tightens. Not quite a smile. But the tension in his jaw eases soon after, just slightly, and some of the blackness retreats from his eyes.
As he pulls away, he says something to his sister in the old language of their kingdom—something soft and deliberate that makes Kestrel’s eyes widen slightly before she catches herself and drops her usual mask back into place. She doesn't say anything in return. She just nods.
He gives me a quick, hard kiss, then lets me go and steps away without another word.
I'm curious about what he said to his sister, but I'm too distracted to ask; the mark on my finger is burning again, a dull and relentless pulse. And so is the older one on my wrist, suddenly. The skin all around that mark feels uncomfortably warm in a way I don't want to try and make sense of yet.
I wait until Reave is out of sight before I let an overwhelmed exhale escape me, my entire body shaking with the effort of holding itself together. A few tears prick at my eyes. I blink them away.
Kestrel touches my elbow, urging me into motion.
We move swiftly through the palace, passing several windows that allow glimpses of the storm I'd felt building on the wind earlier.
It's fully arrived, now; sheets of rain hammering the glass; the sky the color of old pewter; lightning cutting occasional white seams through the swollen sky.
“This wasn't your fault, you know,” Kestrel says, after a long stretch of silence.
I don't reply.
“And no matter how many marks are carved into your skin, you belong to no one except yourself. Don't forget that.”
She steers me onward, keeping her hand at my elbow and her gaze alert. Her touch is light, entirely practical, almost cold—like so many of her gestures. But I find myself grateful for the anchor of it. Especially when the thunder outside grows louder and the throbbing in my head wants to mimic it.
We've made it nearly to our destination when a figure careens around the corner, moving so fast it startles Kestrel into taking a protective stance in front of me. She relaxes quickly, cursing under her breath as we both realize it's Briar.
“Owyn. There you are.” Briar pushes past Kestrel to reach me, her hair wild and her eyes red-rimmed and her relief so obvious and enormous that it makes my chest tighten.
“Thank the gods,” she pants. “I've been looking everywhere for your stupid ass—I just heard you'd collapsed, but you weren't in your room, or the king's, and I didn't know where they'd taken you, and Sesca…”
I go very still. “What about Sesca?”
Briar hesitates, still taking in the state of me. I get the impression she's trying to decide if I'm in good enough shape to handle more bad news.
I'm not.
But it doesn't matter.
“Briar. Tell me. Now.”
“I…I went to visit her this morning, and she was acting strange. Like she was sick or something.”
Sick.
Is this why I felt the way I did earlier?
“She wouldn't speak to me,” Briar continues. “She kept pacing and circling the yard, flying away only to double back. I tried to follow her, but the last time she took off…she went too far. I lost track of her, and she still hasn't returned.”
Kestrel's grip on my arm tightens.
I look to the nearest rain-splattered window and try again to reach for Sesca through our bond. Not a careful, probing reach this time, but one desperate and clawing, every shred of focus I can muster casting out into the dark, hoping to hook on to some sign of her, any sign of her.
For a moment, nothing.
Then—
Pain.
Subtle, at first. Just a needling pressure underneath my ribcage. Then it spreads wider, a jaw of jagged teeth yawning open before clamping down on my heart with a ferocity that nearly doubles me over.
“I have to go to her,” I hear myself say.
Kestrel's hand becomes a steel trap. “I'll send others to hunt for the dragon. Right now, we need to get you somewhere safe, and you need to stay there.”
A reply rips out of me, primal and bristling. “I'm not safe if Sesca isn't safe. Now take your hands off me.”
Her voice is just as savage. “Don't be an idiot.”
I yank free of her grip with a strength that doesn't feel entirely my own, even as somewhere, deep in my thoughts, a small voice wonders if she’s right to call me an idiot.
Then panic surges through the bond, more devastating even than the pain.
“She needs me,” I whisper, and there is nothing else except this thought in my head, and every other feeling scatters except the desperate urge to run.
Kestrel tries to grab for me again.
I duck her reach, turn, and break into a sprint.
The palace blurs past. I'm moving with speed I shouldn't, couldn't possess on my own, one that’s desperate and divine and barely directed, slowed only by the fact that I'm not overly familiar with this wing, and so I don't know where the nearest exit is.
For a flickering instant I consider making an exit, driving myself through one of the rain-lashed windows, taking on the glass and the drop and whatever comes after without breaking stride. I don't care if it hurts.
I don't care about anything except getting to wherever Sesca is.