Chapter Twenty
WILDER
W ilder met Thea’s gaze and the atmosphere crackled around them as he took her in his arms, guiding them across the ballroom in one fluid motion.
He forgot the pain as he felt her chest hitch against his before she melted beneath his touch.
He breathed her in, savouring the glancing contact of her skin against his and tracing the exposed elegant curve of her neck with his gaze.
Seemingly pliant with shock, Thea allowed him to take the lead, allowed him to pull her closer, locking them together as the melody took hold.
Wilder couldn’t tear his eyes away from hers, their bodies moving in perfect sync, as they always had.
For a moment, the world around them faded into a distant blur.
Every twist and turn, every brush of their legs together whispered of that bond between them.
Wilder’s steps were measured, but beneath that control, fire simmered, threatening to consume them both.
Resplendent in rose gold, Thea was magnetic, and the way she was looking at him, with her lush mouth slightly parted, was as though she didn’t quite believe he was real, as though a million words were on her lips, and she couldn’t find the right one.
‘No sharp remarks for me today, Princess?’ he said quietly, but his voice threatened to fracture beneath the weight of everything it had taken to get to this point.
‘You…’ Her grip on his shoulder tightened, like she needed to reassure herself he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. ‘You were training me all along,’ she whispered, her eyes lined with tears.
Beneath his mask, his brows shot up. ‘You said you threw it away… The gift.’
‘I did.’ She followed his lead through another series of waltz steps. ‘But I got it back.’
The dance was a perilous game, teetering on the precipice of discovery – but it was important, Wilder knew, more than important that they have this moment, for they might not get another.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and pulled her closer, so all he could breathe in was her, and that sea-salt-and-bergamot scent of hers.
‘I told myself that it was enough,’ he murmured into her hair, his voice hoarse. ‘That I should be grateful for the time we had. It was more love than most people get in a lifetime. But the truth is, Thea… A thousand lifetimes with you wouldn’t be enough.’
He wanted to kiss her, more than anything, to let everything that had stood between them fall away into nothing.
But Thea’s breath caught. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything —’
‘Later,’ he said, his hand tightening on her waist.
Her tongue swept her lips as she studied his face, her gaze growing hooded, and it was all he could do not to kiss her then, to finish what he’d started in the stables before his arrest. He ached at the thought of it, and at how close she was now, how her body hummed in response to his.
But he steeled himself. There was so much they needed to talk about, so much they needed to understand and forgive, and a ballroom was no place for such things.
‘We were going to get you out,’ she whispered with a note of desperation. ‘We had a plan.’
‘Later,’ Wilder said again, spreading his fingers so they brushed her ribs, slowing them to match the pace of the new piece the orchestra began. ‘The eclipse will start soon,’ he told her. ‘We should get to the balcony.’
‘Is this wise?’ she asked, as he led them from the heart of the waltz.
‘Wiser than continuing this dance. One of us is bound to do something stupid,’ he said, his voice low as he withdrew them from the dance floor and slipped into the crowd gathering at the balcony doors.
It had been a risk to enter the ball rather than just escape the floating domes, but Marise had argued that sometimes hiding in plain sight was better.
Wilder couldn’t deny that, though he was willing to bet they didn’t have long before the guards awoke from their supposed drunken stupors and his absence from his cell was noted.
There wasn’t enough wine in the world to repay Marise and Torj the favour.
As for the third party involved… He wasn’t ready to think about that yet.
He noticed Thea signal to Cal and Kipp, who were a few yards away in the crowd.
There hadn’t been time to brief any of them, not without risking his cover.
He didn’t know which of Torj’s friends he had to thank for the formal attire or the mask, but he refused to look a gift horse in the mouth at a time like this.
Wilder brought Thea close to him, sheltering her from the jostling of the crowd as nobles fought to get a decent viewing spot from the balcony of the dome.
But his apprentice gave as good as she got, carving a path for them to one of the railings, her face bright and alert beneath her mask.
He caught her stealing glances at him as they moved, her stormy gaze clouded with regret, her hand drifting to the fate stone he knew was tucked down her cleavage.
A year had passed.
A year was left.
A reality that was always at the forefront of his mind, even during the most chaotic of times. He hated that fate had Thea racing against an hourglass, that the last twelve months had not been kind to either of them, that he knew nothing of the time ahead.
When Thea next reached for the stone, he took her hand instead, stroking his thumb along the scar-flecked skin there. Thea’s lower lip trembled before she clamped it between her teeth and turned her face to the stars.
Wilder didn’t know what to expect from the eclipse, but the anticipation in the air around them was palpable.
It made him uneasy, as did the crush of bodies around him.
The people of Aveum, and the people of the midrealms, had been preparing for this moment for months, praying that this rare celestial event would save them all.
‘Welcome one and all,’ Queen Reyna’s voice projected across the far reaches of the crowd from a secondary balcony above.
‘Today is a monumental day in our history… A day wherein we will bear witness to the magic and glory of the Moonfire Eclipse. For too long now, the midrealms have been plagued by the prophecy thrust upon us.’
The winter queen took a deep breath before reciting:
‘In the shadow of a fallen kingdom, in the eye of the storm
A daughter of darkness will wield a blade in one hand
And rule death with the other
When the skies are blackened, in the end of days
The Veil will fall.
The tide will turn when her blade is drawn.
A dawn of fire and blood.’
An awed silence washed over the revellers.
Queen Reyna gestured to the night sky. ‘The Moonfire Eclipse will turn these tides of fate. This is no ordinary eclipse – it lasts only a matter of seconds, and is the first of its kind in a century. And it will ensure that we find peace in our lands again. This celestial event is a blessing sent from the Furies themselves. May it give us strength and power in its triumph over darkness.’
Wilder felt Thea stiffen in front of him.
He leant in to say something – what, he wasn’t sure; he just wanted to reassure her, to be closer to her, so that the ice around his heart might thaw.
But gasps sounded, and awed whispers echoed across the crowd.
All eyes were fixed on the sky as the darkness began its slow journey across the face of the moon, casting an eerie shadow over the frozen landscape.
As the eclipse progressed, the world around them grew darker and darker.
The snow-covered trees became silhouettes against the darkening sky, and the once bright white snow now took on an orange hue.
It was as though a spectral hand had cast a veil over the glowing orb of the moon, transforming it from a radiant beacon of white into a globe of blood red, draping the midrealms in obscurity, blanketing the lands with an unsettling stillness.
Wilder inhaled the icy air, pulling Thea to him and holding her close.
He had yearned to hold her like this for so long, a year of want, of need unmet.
Now, he didn’t want to let her go. The stars seemed to dim in deference and a sense of ancient magic permeated the world around them.
He wondered if she could feel it too, if the storm within her would wake from its slumber and rise in the presence of otherworldly power.
But there was no hint of a storm, no crackle of lightning in her touch, only her breath clouding before her face in the frigid night air.
Wilder took in the people around them: the warriors ablaze with desperate fervour, the royals and their smug expressions, the people on the streets below, wide-eyed and hopeful…
He knew that, whether by the Furies themselves or not, the event occurring before them all was a pivotal moment in the tides of fate.
He knew that further out in the villages, despite the cold, the common folk would be standing outside in awe of the spectacle, some whispering prayers to their gods, others simply marvelling at the strange beauty of the eclipse.
Beneath the might of the blood-red orb, the air grew even colder, settling deep into his bones. He, like the rest of Vios, waited with bated breath for those seconds to pass, for the shadow across the moon to recede, for the world to be bathed in light once more.
Only the light didn’t come.
Close by, a gasp sounded.
Commotion followed, shock rippling through the crowd.
Thea still in his arms, Wilder craned his neck to see, noting the guards with their hands on their weapons, forcing their way into the throng.
Someone screamed.
Thea whirled towards the sound, her hand inching her dress up to reveal a dagger strapped to her thigh —
Suddenly, all around the silk slippers, tulle skirts and marble floors, darkness surged. It swept in like a tide, lapping at people’s feet, flooding the balcony and bleeding into the ballroom inside. It split into vines, crawling up the walls of the domes, wrapping around people’s ankles.
Shrieks of terror filled the air.
The royal guard fought through the crowd, ready for battle.
Above, the red moon lingered as darkness descended.
And still, the light did not come.