Chapter 36
LYRA
Kieran didn’t say anything when I stepped into the ring.
His training blade lowered at his side. The Shadow that had been moving lazily around his wrist sank back into him, leaving the broken stones washed in moonlight.
His eyes went straight to my face, then my shoulder, then back again. “Eiryx told me what happened.”
I pushed my hood back. “How charitable was his version?”
“He said you and Neseryn nearly got Court Three shut down too.”
“That feels exaggerated.”
“He also said the wards had to throw you apart.”
I stopped a few feet from him. “That part was less exaggerated.”
Kieran set the blade on the nearest piece of fallen stone. There was an economy to the movement I recognized by now. The calmer he looked, the more likely violence was already taking shape behind his eyes. “You look awful.”
“Thank you.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“That somehow makes it worse.”
His gaze snagged on my split lip. For half a second his jaw flexed, and I could almost hear whatever he chose not to say.
Neseryn was different with him. I had known that for weeks.
There was too much familiarity between them for whatever history they shared to be casual.
They spoke like people who knew where the other person kept every knife and which ones had been used before.
Sometimes they looked at each other and an entire conversation seemed to happen somewhere I couldn’t reach.
I still didn’t know what had put that history there. Tonight Kieran didn’t ask why she’d done it. That bothered me. “I didn’t come here so you could glare at my face.”
“I’m not glaring.”
“You look like you’re trying to set fire to something with Shadow.”
“That would be inefficient.”
I almost smiled until my lip pulled, killing it before it fully formed. Kieran saw that too. Before he could start, I looked down at my hand. “There was another thing.”
His attention sharpened immediately. I rubbed my thumb over my palm.
The skin had been scrubbed clean hours ago, but I could still remember the slick warmth of blood between Neseryn’s hand and mine.
“Her Shadow reacted to me.” Kieran didn’t answer.
That was enough to make me look up. “It was already around my arm when she cut me. It should’ve disappeared afterward, but it stayed. ”
“Where?”
“Around the wound.” His eyes dropped toward the bandage beneath my shirt. “It moved toward the blood. Slowly. Like it had found something it wasn’t expecting.”
Kieran’s face gave me almost nothing, but his shoulders had gone too still.
“My Shadow reacted before I could stop it. I kept it under my skin, but she felt that too.”
“And that was all?”
“No.” There it was again, the assumption that with me there was always another part.
“We ended up on the ground later and our hands touched.” Kieran looked at mine.
“There was blood on both of us.” His hand stopped halfway to mine.
I noticed because he had already been reaching for it without seeming to realize he was. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.” His eyes lifted. “Don’t make that face and tell me nothing.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Hostilely.” He didn’t smile. “Did she say anything?”
“She asked what I did.”
His jaw ticked. “Exactly that?”
“Yes.”
“And after?”
“She got angry.”
A breath left him through his nose. “That sounds like Neseryn.” I studied him.
He knew her too well. Whatever existed between them had begun long before I came through the Veil, and I was suddenly very aware that the man standing in front of me might understand Neseryn’s silences better than I understood some of my closest friends.
“She looked at me like she recognized the feeling.”
Kieran’s gaze shifted toward the ruined wall behind me. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know what the reaction means.”
I stared at him. “You’re admitting that?”
“Enjoy it.”
“I would if you didn’t look like you were withholding the second half.” His eyes came back to mine. There were moments with Kieran when I could practically feel a door closing. This was one of them, and I was too tired to beat my fists against it tonight. “I thought you might know.”
“I know enough to tell you not to test it deliberately.”
“Wonderful. That’s very useful.”
“I’m serious, Lyra.”
“So am I, Kieran.” I looked away. The old ring was quieter than the rest of the Sanctum ever managed to be. Even at night there was always movement somewhere in the main grounds. Here there was only wind through the trees and the faint scrape of leaves across stone.
It should have made thinking easier.
It didn’t.
Kieran came closer, stopping beside me rather than in front of me. For a while we both looked at the broken ring.
“I spent the entire morning thinking about my mother,” I said.
His voice softened. “Aurenya.”
Hearing the name from him still did something strange to me. “You were standing right there when I figured it out, and somehow it sounds worse when someone else says it.”
“Worse?”
“More real.” He glanced at me. I picked at a loose thread near my cuff.
“Last night everything happened too quickly. The seal, Vareena, the Codex. I barely had time to understand one thing before another landed on top of it. Then this morning Calis was complaining about my stance like I hadn’t spent half the night wondering whether my mother used to walk the same halls.
” Kieran’s mouth twitched. I stared at him. “You think that’s funny?”
“No.”
“You absolutely do.”
“I’m imagining you telling Calis your footwork suffered because you discovered you might be the surviving heir to Elyndor.”
“I almost did.”
“That I would have paid to see.”
“Asshole.” A quiet laugh escaped him before he could stop it. I hated how much I needed the sound. For a few seconds it made the last day feel less impossible. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with any of it,” I said.
“You don’t have to do anything tonight.”
“I know I don’t.”
“You sound furious about that.”
“I am furious about everything. I have a list that grows every hour.”
“That I believe.”
I turned toward him. “Neseryn. Lidia. Aurenya. Maerox. The Codex. Halos. The Council. Every answer I find only leads to another question.”
“And me.” I hadn’t expected that.
Kieran watched me. “Yes,” I said after a moment. “You too.” He nodded once, not even attempting to defend himself. “You know more than you say.”
“Yes.”
“You could at least pretend to feel guilty.”
“I do.” The answer was so simple that it stalled me.
Kieran looked away. The runes along his forearm caught the moon as he folded his arms, black lines disappearing beneath his rolled sleeve.
I had looked at those runes too many times—during training, during arguments, and during moments when the difference between the two had become questionable.
Two nights ago, his hands had been on me and there had been far more important things to notice. My gaze stayed there too long.
He noticed. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.” His eyebrow lifted. I almost laughed.
“You just gave me an entire speech about that word.”
“I changed my mind.” His eyes dropped to my mouth. The air between us shifted so quickly I felt stupid for pretending not to notice. Two nights ago was suddenly there again. His mouth on mine. The second kiss I had started because the first had not been enough.
I had spent the entire day being dragged through every possible emotion except the one standing directly in front of me. Kieran uncrossed his arms. “Lyra.”
“What?”
“You should be resting.”
I laughed softly. “Do not ruin this.”
His brow furrowed. “Ruin what?” I stepped toward him. Understanding reached his face before I touched him. His breathing changed by a fraction when I closed my hand around the front of his shirt.
Kieran looked down at it, then at me. “You walked all the way out here bruised to hell to ask me about Neseryn.”
“Partly.” His eyes darkened. “If all I needed was someone who understood Shadow, I could’ve found Eiryx tomorrow.”
Kieran went completely still. I was close enough now that the front of my body almost touched his. His voice dropped. “You came here knowing what happened two nights ago.”
“Yes.”
“And knowing exactly what I’d do if you touched me again.”
I tightened my hand in his shirt. “Then stop talking like I made a mistake.”
That was all it took. His mouth came down on mine.
His hand caught the back of my neck and pulled me into him.
My split lip stung sharply enough that I tasted blood, but I was already kissing him back harder, fingers twisted into his shirt, every miserable hour since last night burning out through my skin.
Kieran made a rough sound against my mouth.
I felt it everywhere. My back hit stone.
Pain tugged at my shoulder, and his body shifted before I could react, turning me away from the bandaged side without breaking the kiss.
One hand slid to my waist and held me there while his mouth moved to my jaw, then my throat.
“You have no idea,” he said against my skin.
I caught his hair and dragged his head back enough to see him. “About what?”
His eyes had never looked so hungry. “How long I’ve been trying not to do this.”
Heat tore through me. I kissed him again before I could decide what to say. Maybe there was no useful answer. My fingers went to the fastenings at his throat. His went to mine. We got in each other’s way immediately.
Kieran swore.
I laughed into his mouth.
“Shut up.”
“You trapped my hand.” His mouth caught mine again before I could answer. My shirt loosened at one shoulder. His opened halfway down his chest. My hand slipped beneath the fabric and found warm skin, hard muscle, then the raised pattern of a rune beneath my palm.
Kieran’s whole body tightened.
I pulled back just enough to look.