Chapter 16
Weeks passed.
Another day.
Another meeting...and Arawn almost fell asleep at the War Table again.
It was his own fault, of course, for the many nights he’d laid in his bed, clutching a speaking stone to his chest.
Ezer.
He never should have given the stone to her. He never should have opened his mind to her voice, because now that he’d felt it slide against his mind?
It was impossible to ignore.
Perhaps it was the healing, or being back home, after so many months away. Perhaps it was how he sometimes caught himself staring at her like he was staring at the ghost of someone else...
But he’d given her the damned stone, the only time he’d ever given anyone a gift...
And he loved it.
Her voice had filled his mind every night lately. It was the last thing he heard before he fell asleep. The first thing he heard when he woke up.
She was everywhere.
And still, it was not enough.
He curled his hands over his mug, wishing it were as cold as the world beyond the windows. Wishing he were still out there swinging at nomages with his sword. Anything to get her out of his brain.
She did not belong there.
No one did.
Focus, Arawn, he scolded himself. Focus on your kingdom. Focus on the war.
They’d been at this table for hours already, and still, Draybor had not released them, claiming the gods hadn’t willed it.
Apparently, the gods hadn’t willed Draybor to have an inch of compassion, either.
He’d made Arawn pay penance time and again, for losing his magic.
For making him look weak.
Arawn re-entered the conversation, leaning forward eagerly as if he’d been paying full attention all along.
“To ask such a question about our enemy’s shadowstorm implies we have hope,” said the Watermage Master. “Of which we are sorely lacking in, these days.”
“Careful, Marin,” the Realmist Master practically snarled like a war bear, an expression worthy of Indriya, from across the enormous glass table. “Do I sense your faith in Aristra waning?”
“Not in Aristra,” the Realmist replied. “My faith in our lack of numbers is what wanes. We need more soldiers. We need more eagles. We need Kinlear’s plan with the Raphonminder, however feeble, to succeed.”
A few grunted responses came from the table.
And so did a pang in Arawn’s heart.
Ezer.
They’d all voted weeks ago, when she was in runed stasis, that she would become its Minder.
And now it was expected, as Kinlear had hoped from the beginning, that Ezer would be the one to fly Six across the Expanse. And Kinlear along with her.
He wasn’t surprised that his brother wanted to do it. He wasn’t surprised his father had allowed it, either, because Kinlear was expendable. And ever since Soraya...
Kinlear had given his everything towards something that wasn’t sarcasm or drinking.
More than he had ever done, even with Eagleminding.
Perhaps it was because he knew he would die soon, for when his illness flared, it took longer for him to recover than it used to.
Whatever the reason was, his brother’s attention was locked in on making a difference in the war.
...even though there was a real chance his plan didn’t work.
And Ezer would die.
Arawn blew out a breath, trying his best to hide the squirming feeling in his veins. The chair shifted beneath his weight, the ancient wood groaning as if it could give words to its impatience when Arawn could not.
A Crown Prince would never dare complain. Especially not in the presence of his father.
He set his attention on the enormous wall of windows instead, as a flash of golden wings soared past.
Not the Descent, for that happened much higher up in the Citadel, and took place at the dying of the light. It was still several hours away. No, this was a regular scout keeping watch over the body collectors as they headed out the Snow Gates to scoop up the dead.
Always, more dead.
It was an effort not to think of Soraya on that final day...her legs broken, her blood an oily black.
At first...he’d been in mourning for her.
He’d felt the loss of her love.
But these days, when he did...fury took its place. In the end, Soraya was a betrayer. And now he battled with feelings of hatred every bit as much as he battled the loss of what once was.
The Sacred should have trained them as children, on how to deal with death. Because now that he was older, now that he’d experienced it... it was the kind of opponent he wasn’t sure he’d ever compete with.
He wasn’t even sure it was possible, to face it and win.
So, he’d spent the last many months trying not to hate Soraya... but a part of him, admittedly, did. His eagle was dead. His magic was gone.
And it was all because of her.
No, Arawn’s conscience laughed. The fault is yours, and the hatred should be directed at the man in the mirror.
And then the wiser, less heated part of himself, added, there is no hatred for a Sacred.
You’re failing again, Arawn Laroux.
His head felt like it was going to explode.
From Soraya to Ezer to the emotions that bounced between the two...
He almost wished he could be in a runic sleep like Kinlear, too. At least then, he would have no coherent thought.
Instead, he did what a healer in the south taught him, on his recruiting journeys.
He closed his eyes and imagined a castle made of white stone. Powerful and runed at every corner...and he shoved every image he’d ever had of Soraya inside...the good and the bad...and slammed the gates shut.
He wouldn’t entertain her ghost one bit.
While he was at it, he should probably shove Ezer inside the castle, too.
Then he remembered the way she’d looked in the bathing chambers, just days ago...and he left the part of the castle that held her cracked open.
Just a tiny bit.
With a sigh, Arawn picked up his coffee mug and downed it, wishing it were winterwine instead. Perhaps that would take the sting away from him. Perhaps that would be strong enough to make him forget everything entirely.
He followed the winged scout with his eyes, past the wall of frosted windows and the swirling snow to the Sawteeth Mountains far beyond. The shadowstorm crackled and churned, dark as night over the peaks, despite the dawning of a new day.
The doors of the castle in his mind blew open, and the intrusive thoughts hit him again. But this time they were of Ezer alone.
What if she dies in there?
What if the Acolyte takes her? What if he turns her into one of his monsters, what if--
His heartbeat hastened.
He suddenly felt the need to stand up. To flip this table.
To get on the back of a war eagle and fly with her across the Expanse, fly with her into that shadowstorm so he could protect her, keep her safe from sharing Soraya’s fate.
Gods, he was a ruined man.
He was ruined the second he’d given Ezer that cursed speaking stone and felt her voice slide into his mind like a promise. He was ruined when he entered the bathing chambers...and found her there...waiting for him in the darkness.
She was a test. A challenge.
A devil in disguise, sent from the gods, to see if he would give in to her.
If he ignored his feelings, if he pushed them away until he stifled them to death...maybe his magic would come back.
Maybe that was the key to proving his loyalty to the Five.
He’d thought it for days now.
So why, when Ezer was near...
Why did she make him burn?
He hadn’t felt his magic sizzle to life in ages. Not since the accident. Not since Soraya.
But lately, he swore the temperature in his veins has risen when she was near. He swore he could conjure more than just a candle’s flame, so long as Ezer pushed his buttons hard enough.
So long as she made him seethe with equal parts wanting and rage.
“Perhaps we attack from the western flank,” said the Watermage Master, a woman with eyes as crystal blue as the springtime sky.
Arawn was about to suggest something when he yelped instead.
Because the stone in his pocket suddenly warmed.
Gods.
He jolted upright, knocking his kneecap on the underside of the table.
“Just a cramp,” he muttered an apology beneath his breath, then pretended to sip from his empty mug to hide the expression he wore on his face.
The Minder may as well have skimmed her fingertips across his thigh, for how much the very thought of her burned.
How much it made him sizzle from the inside out.
Like fire against ice.
He didn’t answer, didn’t wrap his fingertips around the stone, because hearing her voice now, after he’d seen her in the bathing chambers? After he saw the way the sweat licked her skin, how her hair looked when it was wet and glimmering? After he’d bared himself to her, body and soul?
He’d told her about Soraya.
Gods.
Why had he told her that?
He’d never forget the feel of her eyes on him.
He’d never forget the wanting that had surged through him, a shock to his system.
A truth he could not ignore.
She was off-limits, not chosen by the Gods for him.
Forbidden.
He hadn’t been back to those bathing chambers since. He’d bathed in the servants’ instead, with ice cold water. With a constant prayer on his lips, so that his thoughts didn’t drift.
The stone heated even more, as if she were nudging him. Refusing to let her fingers uncurl from her own, wherever she was.
Save me from her, Vivorr, he sent up the prayer like a desperate breath, for the stone was like a poison in his pocket. A drug Arawn wanted to keep coming back to, if only so he could be swept away by the rush that flooded him when she was near.
He hardly heard the voices around him now, as the War Table continued.
As Arawn thought of Ezer, naked in that damned pool behind him...
And the stone in his cloak pocket warmed and warmed and warmed.
Don’t touch it, he told himself. Let it go cold. Let space grow between you, because she’ll fly away from here soon enough, and the gods only know what will become of her then.
And what will become of you, if you keep letting her in.
He couldn’t go back to that brokenness again.
He shifted, his fingertips sliding towards the stone of their own accord, as if he were powerless to the pull of her.
Then his mind slid to thoughts of her last night.
Beneath him in the training room, his body atop hers.
The room was suddenly far too warm.
He closed his eyes, but there she was again, kissing his conscience.
He saw her flat on her back and ripe for the taking, sweat beading across her stubborn brow, and that ever-glorious rage in her eyes as she glared up at him and dared him to defy her.
And gods, he wanted to.
Time and again.
“You challenge me, Minder,” he’d thought to her through the stone.
He’d used it in that moment because he couldn’t trust his own lips to form coherent words.
Her voice had caressed his mind as she’d arched a brow, beautiful and scarred. “And why is that?”
Perhaps it was the way fighting her made his blood burn, or perhaps it was the strength of training that made him feel alive again, like he hadn’t in months since he’d been pulled from the battlefield.
She saw him as strong, a formidable foe, when everyone else thought him weak.
So, he’d been brave last night.
Brave...and utterly foolish.
In the torchlit darkness, in the flashing light of the war, Arawn had leaned close enough that he almost had tasted her. His lips grazed her ear as he whispered, “Win this fight, and I’ll tell you.”
Thank the gods she hadn’t won.
No, the moment his body was away from hers, the tension uncoiled. The clarity reeled back into his head, and he’d knocked the sword from her grasp as if she were a true enemy.
Then he’d fled the room like it was on fire.
Ezer might be the death of him.
She was dragging things out of him.
She was turning him into a thing of want and need instead of a Crown Prince who thrived upon control.
But when it came to her...
Control had gone out the window long ago.
He was falling, from the second he saw how boldly she’d faced Six for the very first time.
He was falling faster than he thought himself able, for she was a force that Arawn had never seen.
Because she wasn’t like Soraya at all.
She did not want him.
She did not need him.
She didn’t even like him, most days.
And that scared the hell out of him, even more than the penance he might pay if he ever gave in to his feelings.
Because he wanted to be wanted by her.
She was the greatest challenge he’d ever been faced with.
The stone in his pocket finally began to cool, as if she’d set it down, abandoned it, wherever she was—the dormitory? The bathhouse, steam kissing her skin, barely hiding the parts of her that—
“Prince?”
He blinked and realized every member of the War Table was staring at him.
Wrong! It’s all wrong, he told himself, as he shoved thoughts of Ezer away. You are a Sacred child of the Five, and you will not give in to the desires of your flesh.
But it had already gone past that.
Now he felt a longing for her, soul deep...the kind he hadn’t felt in forever. And maybe not ever, because she wasn’t claimed by any man.
Especially not his brother.
“What is it?” Arawn barked, for no one had looked away from him.
Help me, Vivorr, he silently prayed. Give me the strength to fight back.
“Your magic,” the king said. “Your strength, my son. Is it returning?”
Arawn realized, then, that the eyes of the Masters were not on his face.
Instead, they were on his hands...where he was clutching the edge of the glass table like a vice.
And his power was surging so hot, the glass was melting beneath his fingertips.