Chapter 21 Wolventon #3
She barked a laugh. “No, no. My sexual needs are far more complicated than that. Lorik and I are… family. I just tell everyone we’re fucking so the girls stop hovering around him. It’s obnoxious. He’s been a magnet for females since forever. It’s annoying.”
She leaned in, her voice dropping lower.
“You’re allowed to know that much. You won’t be around him much anyway. He hates you.”
She disappeared into one of the stalls, the door clicking shut and leaving me alone in the washroom’s charged silence.
It wasn’t kindness, just the closest thing to a strange, almost friendly warning from the girl who once nearly killed me.
But I didn’t have time to think about Rory Rey right now.
The Sunheart had given me an aphrodisiac potion without telling me.
My mother’s sharp and disappointed voice snapped through my mind. And she would be right. I’d been reckless.
But another thought hit harder.
That urge in the hallway, the sudden, overwhelming need to get close to Lorik Draventh, it hit me all over again. He’d seen my eyes go red. He’d said my eyes were telling him I wanted to know more about him. And he knew. He knew I’d taken an aphrodisiac potion, and that I had moved toward him.
Heat crawled up my neck.
Soehl had warned in the courtyard that Auroric potions only worked if there was already real interest. They didn’t create desire; they only stripped away the walls you built to hide it. And Rory had just confirmed the same truth.
Lorik Draventh wasn’t just someone I despised. He was a male who hated me and my entire bloodline. A Moonveil. A boundary carved into the island itself, a line I wasn’t meant to cross. Shame prickled under my skin. Embarrassment twisted in my gut. Because the worst part wasn’t the potion.
It was knowing the desire had already been there.
The stall door opened, and the sound snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts. Before Rory could say anything else, I exited the washroom and slipped out the side door of the tavern, desperate for air, desperate for anything that made sense.
Outside, moonlight washed over the clearing, silvering the grass and softening the night. Music from the hall pulsed faintly behind me, like a distant heartbeat. I inhaled the cold air, letting it bite at my lungs, grateful for the quiet.
Grateful for a moment where no one could see how rattled I truly was. Footsteps behind me.
“Lorik…” I said, turning almost immediately, aching to see him, only to find that the person I was expecting was not there. It was the same local Sunheart I was dancing with. His smile had changed.
“Not who you were expecting?” he asked mischievously. “Were you expecting your Moonveil, Princess?”
“You thought giving me an aphrodisiac potion was going to get me close to you. For what? What do you want from me?” I asked, backing a step. It was clear to me now he didn’t come here for another dance, and yet again, he was not really interested in me. How na?ve.
“You didn’t just unbalance the lineage by becoming Dragontail. You secretly crave Moonveil,” he spat, closing the distance. “You’re a traitor. So to answer your question, I came here to kill you.”
He was a royalist, a true believer in Solenhart blood, looking at me like I’d dirtied the family name and like I deserved to die for it.
He moved too fast. It was a blur of muscle and intent. A cold band snapped around my wrist; a blue restraint ring flared to life, and the hum of my magic died. Silence folded over me like a hand. These were the cuffs they used on criminals to suppress their gift.
“You’re not fit for the throne, you are not Emberkeep,” he hissed.
“I don’t want the crown,” I said. “Let my cousin have it.”
He sneered. “That’s not how it works. As long as you live, the Queen Beatrix will find ways to keep you on the throne.”
The knife tilted toward my throat. I threw a fist up, catching him square in the nose, then spun to run, only to find him already ahead of me, impossibly fast. He closed in, the blade a cold flash at my skin.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Lorik’s voice cut through the dark, quiet, dangerous.
The male smiled viciously. “Now the Moonveil comes to save the Sunheart. This gets interesting.” While Lorik stalled him, I drove a boot into his middle. He doubled over and dropped the dagger.
Lorik didn’t move. “Seems she’s doing just fine.”
“I don’t need help,” I snapped, though my pulse hammered in my ears.
Pride was a hot, stubborn thing; I wanted to finish him, to prove I could and I swung to strike his face one last time.
He was quicker. He snatched the dagger from the floor and slashed it across my leg.
Pain ripped through me, sharp, white, fiercer than anything I’d expected.
I crumpled to the floor, my leg gone slack beneath me, the world narrowed to fire and the metallic taste of panic.
I fell hard, the world tilting as pain exploded through my leg. I tried to move, but it was useless; the limb wouldn’t obey.
Before I could even draw another breath, shadows tore across the ground, curling around the royalist like living smoke. They coiled up his arms, around his neck and then a snap. The sound was soft, final.
Lorik didn’t hesitate. He just killed him. No questions, no warning.
“I can’t move my leg,” I gasped, tears stinging my eyes. “It hurts too much. I can’t handle it.”