Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Eavesdropping
The Commander tensed beneath me, his forefinger and thumb suddenly gripping my chin, tilting my head to look up at him. “You are the daughter of King Vaylor?” he growled, a low rumbling sound. I nodded, one sharp movement that would seal my fate.
“Well, this just got more complicated, didn’t it?” Cerilla sighed deeply.
“Why the fuck were you with the Iron Guard?” There was a slight pull to his words through the heaviness lacing my veins, urging me to answer. I tried to resist, but words spilled against my will. He was using the blood bargain. Asshole.
“I… I ran away.” The words clawed up my throat despite my best efforts to stop them.
“They were going to make me marry viscount Barden. He was vile. I snuck into Asencion and sacrificed myself to the Gods. I thought I would die. I wanted to die.” My voice grew thick as tears swam in my eyes.
He looked down at me, and sadness reflected in his empty eyes.
“Please, I do not want to talk about my past,” I begged, hating the wetness that clung to my eyelashes and the heat that crawled over my face.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “Tell me word for word what the Fire Fates said.”
His shadows were pulling at his skin, sinking and tearing it repeatedly.
It was mesmerising, watching his own power try to hurt him.
The words slipped out, low, dreamlike, pulled from the haze still thick in my mind as I repeated what they said.
The blood bargain pulled the words from my memory for me.
“We are from the Obsidian Court, aren’t we Commander?” Solas said enthusiastically after I had finished reciting the prophecy, breaking the silence.
“Enough,” the Commander snapped, his jaw clenched so tightly I wondered if it would break. His volatile shadows plunged into his chest.
“Does that hurt?” I whispered, unable to stop myself.
“Yes, but I am also used to pain.” He stared at the fire, and it reflected in the depths of his endless eyes. I wanted to ask what he meant by that. But by the look on his face, he wouldn’t answer me. So, I asked one of the millions of other questions bouncing in my mind.
“What is a Fated Mate?” I asked, nestling further against the broad chest of my captor.
“The other half of your soul,” he said softly, still gazing into the fire with a guarded look. I blinked at him, the venom still clouding my thoughts.
Solas continued from across the fire. “It’s.
.. alignment. The piece you didn’t know you were missing until it stood before you.
They are everything you will ever need, ever want.
” Solas paused, and I noticed he absently rubbed his left hand.
The movement was slow and almost tender.
“When the bond is accepted, the Mark of Anamryn appears. Soul thread, in our tongue. It forms on the left hand and binds you for eternity.”
His voice cracked near the end, and I followed his gaze to his left hand.
There, etched into his skin, half-faded by time but unmistakable, was more than a tattoo.
It shimmered faintly in the firelight, a swirling script of silver and black lines, not drawn but woven into him.
Not art. Not ink. Something sacred. Something permanent.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered before I could stop myself.
“She was.” His voice held a sadness I couldn’t comprehend, and something felt heavy in my chest at seeing his small broken smile.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” I whispered.
Solas nodded, his eyes glistening with something unsaid as they slipped down to the mark branded to the back of my hand from the blood bargain.
“So am I. One day I will avenge her. For now, I take comfort that she is amongst the stars, watching over me until I join her.”
I wanted to ask him what happened, but the distant look that crossed over his face told me not to ask right now. Instead, the silence stretched comfortably as I watched the flames dance and crackle.
I looked up at the hulking Fae Commander, reaching up and flicking his nose gently. He raised his eyebrows at me in disbelief. “If I marry your king, I get to order you around,” I mused, unable to hide my smirk.
“Unlikely,” he growled down at me, barely tolerating my closeness.
“Shame, I had some very fun demands for you…” My words trailed off into a yawn, my eyelids heavy. “I am tired,” I stated slowly.
Cerilla rose, her dark curls pooling around her. “I’ll help you clean up,” she said and offered me her hand.
I shooed it away, curling myself against my captor’s chest, clinging to his body any way that I could. “I will sleep here,” I responded, unbashful. Cerilla began to protest, but the Commander cut her off.
“It is fine, Cerilla, just leave her,” he seethed. “She will go back to despising me in the morning,” he muttered, and I thought I heard a hint of sadness in his voice.
The forest stirred to life around us, bathed in unearthly beauty that mocked the growing shame clawing at my chest. Winston, the enormous dark stallion, trotted along the narrow path.
The sun trickled through the thick canopy above, illuminating the dense greenery and delicate flowers that surrounded us as I tried to clear my head.
The venom had steadily trickled from my system.
It leaked from me slowly, like fog lifting after a storm, leaving everything sharper. Harsher. Real.
My gore-splattered body sat rigid in the saddle, my spine pressed against the broad chest behind me.
I longed to scrub my skin clean, of more than just the remnants of the Nightbourne, but from what I had done.
The haze clinging to my thoughts had thinned enough for clarity to bite.
Shame curled hot and merciless in my gut, my cheeks burning as fractured memories flickered like lightning.
My hands on him. My mouth against his skin.
I had begged. Moaned. Pleaded. I had fallen asleep against his chest, only to wake on the ground…
Alone. I shifted, trying—and failing—to put space between us.
The weight pressing down on my chest wasn’t just humiliation.
It was disappointment. I had been violated so many times in my life, and now I was upset that I wasn’t?
Gods, how broken am I?
Something inside me cracked. My breath hitched, then stuttered.
Air scraped into my lungs but didn’t stay.
Monsters were hunting me. A ghost was haunting me.
I was supposed to save everyone from the Seven Hells.
I was captured by my people’s most feared enemy.
I still had no idea what I was, and I had offered myself up for marriage for a war.
My chest tightened, a crushing band pulling tighter with every shallow inhale.
Too fast. Too shallow. I couldn’t slow it down.
Why can’t I breathe?
I leant forward in the saddle, clutching at air that refused to fill me, breath after breath tearing in against the frantic hammer of my heart, panic flooding my veins before I could stop it.
“Lyra?” The Commander’s voice cut through the spiral, low and steady. “What is it?” he asked.
Instead of answering, a sob tore from my throat, hot tears spilling down my cheeks without permission. “Look at me,” he murmured as he pulled on Winston’s reins to slow our speed. Solas and Cerilla were in front, and they rode ahead, not realising we were falling behind.
“You are safe, Little Drownling. Breathe.” His hand came to my waist, firm and anchoring, keeping me upright. The other hand splayed over my chest. I tried to shove him away, but he only held me tighter.
“Breathe with me. Slow. In through your nose.” He drew a deliberate breath behind me, deep enough that I felt it expand against my back. “Out.”
I tried. Failed. Tried again. But he kept filling his lungs with long, slow breaths behind me. And eventually, I managed to mimic one, my body obeying him before my mind could argue.
“That’s it,” he said quietly, as if every word was chosen with care. My lungs stuttered, then caught, dragging in a breath that burned but stayed. My chest ached, tight with something dangerously close to relief, and I hated myself for leaning into his steadiness.
“You did so well for me,” he praised, sending a shock of heat through my system that I tried to run from. “I was worried you were going to spook Umbra,” the Commander mused quietly.
“Who is Umbra?” I asked between measured breaths. I needed to take control—to anchor myself before everything slipped beyond my grasp again.
“My horse.” He took his hand off my chest to pat its dark mane, keeping the other wrapped around my waist. I squirmed away, almost toppling to the ground. His gripped tightened and he pulled me against his body. “Easy now,” he said low and smoothly.
“I had named him Winston,” I muttered through the easing panic. His laugh rumbled through me. A genuine laugh. Gods help me, it was a noise that did something to my heart. I pushed that feeling down and locked it in a cage where it belonged.
“Do you think your High Lord will accept my proposal?”
A knot of tension worked its way in my shoulders. Gods, I wanted a bath. A long, hot bath was my only reprieve in the castle.
He seemed to consider for a moment. “If your father agrees to the terms, then yes.”
A bloom of hope flared in my chest, swallowed by a wave of nausea. If Father accepted, I could unite the Kingdoms. Would I have to see him again? Would he somehow take me back to Stonebriar? I wouldn’t leave it up to the Gods, if he tried to drag me back, I would plunge a knife into my own heart.
“Solas and I trained last night. I want to keep training while I am trapped with you,” I said, trying to steady my voice.
He scoffed. “You want me,” he said, “to train you?” His tone was smooth. Mocking. But there was heat beneath it. Interest.
I straightened, rising to the challenge in his voice.
“I figured you would like a fair fight.” I mused, and he hummed in response.
“I want you dead, remember? As soon as this deal is finished, I want to pull your beating heart from your body and crush it under my boot.” I poured sweetness into my voice, drenching it in innocence.
“Such pretty threats.” He huffed a quiet laugh, breath brushing my ear. “Are you going to beg me to let you train?” His voice dipped, slow and deliberate as he rolled his hips against my ass. “I liked the sound of you begging.”
Heat crept across my face and I cleared my throat. “No. I will never beg you for anything again. That wasn’t me. I don’t want you,” I snapped, trying to wiggle away from him in the saddle.
“Ah, I see,” he said, satisfaction dripping from his voice.
“Pretend all you want, my little prisoner, but I can hear the way your heart quickens when I’m near you.
Smell the way you react to my words.” He inhaled deeply as if proving a point.
“Even now, I can scent your arousal. When I touch you… You like it, even if it’s laced with…
” He paused, thinking. “Anger. Oh, you hate that you like it, don’t you? ”
“The only thing I hate is you,” I muttered. It felt violating that he could sense my feelings, even ones I didn’t want to acknowledge myself.
“You are lying again,” he chuckled darkly, and I threw my elbow into his hard abdomen. Pride swelled in my chest as a small amount of air whooshed out of him, and he went quiet. Truly quiet. No teasing. No provocation.
I folded in on myself and crossed my arms against my chest.
We had trailed through the woods for hours, and my hips ached with every rock of the saddle that slammed me against the heated wall of muscle that I still wanted to stab.
My eyelids had grown heavy, and I had drifted to sleep against Winston’s mane.
I dreamt of a crown sinking in the ocean. Lost forever.
Find the pieces.
The voice made my eyes snap open. I quickly closed them when voices carried around me. “She is different to what I thought she would be,” Solas said in a hushed voice. The sound of the horses’ hooves almost drowning out their voices.
“She is exceptional.” The Commander’s voice was filled with a sadness so old it felt heavy on my heart. “It’s different this time. She is different. I cannot bring myself to hate her. When I kill her, it might just kill me along with it.”
My heart pounded rapidly in my chest. Had I misheard him? He was going to kill me.
I felt the Commander shift behind me. The sound of hooves drifted further away. I kept my eyes sealed shut. Did he know I was awake? Did he know I heard? Warm fingers brushed against my temple, pushing my hair off my face. I resisted the urge to press into the touch, or flinch.
“You are having a nightmare, Little Drownling.” He sighed, hand lingering as if he didn’t want to pull it away.
I tried to keep my breath even and my eyes shut.
Eventually his hand moved and I risked cracking open my eyes.
The late afternoon sun-bathed us in an orange glow.
No longer were we in the dense forest. The large, enchanted trees had given way to vast rolling hills in the distance.
We were weaving through a town, neat buildings with flowerpots gathered at their doorsteps lined cobbled streets.
Fae stopped what they were doing as we rode past. Some kneeled.
Some bowed. But none of them seemed scared.
If anything, they seemed delighted to see the Commander of Death darkening their streets.
One thing was clear. I needed to get away from him and find their king myself.