Chapter 10
LYRA
“Absolutely not.”
When Terran told me to gather my belongings, I hadn’t expected him to lead me to a door in the very same corridor which I had previously occupied. Perhaps that was the reason he’d told me to hang back while he looked out first. And then shuffled me into… his bedchamber.
Somehow, from the moment we entered, I could sense it was his.
And after our encounter, it was the last place I wished to stay.
Knowing my own limits was a strength, my parents said.
And in this particular case, Terran was a limit.
Innuendos and harmless flirting were one thing.
Being alone and sufficiently tempted into actual relations with someone who had occupied my thoughts throughout the years more than I wished to admit was another.
He stirred my ancient Aetherian blood like no one else. A Gyorian. The son of Balthor. My enemy. And yet…
“You have little choice.” He closed the door behind him.
I glanced around the expansive chamber, expecting it would have been cold, severe, perhaps sharpened by stone and steel.
But this… this was something else entirely.
The fire was already lit when I stepped inside, casting a warm glow over dark walls softened by deep-green tapestries and shelves filled with worn books and small, strange relics.
A low-slung leather chair sat near the hearth, creased as if someone spent time here.
A large, arched window overlooked the cliffs and forest beyond, the kind of view that made you feel untouchable, removed from the chaos.
It wasn’t just a chamber. It was a sanctuary.
“What is the smell?” I asked.
It was entirely pleasant. Warm, earthy… like sandalwood and something darker beneath it, unfamiliar but not unwelcome.
Terran didn’t answer right away. He was busy lighting a second taper, as if he hadn’t heard me. But I saw the twitch of his mouth.
“You noticed,” he finally said.
“Of course I noticed. It’s… distracting.”
Another almost-smile. “My mother’s blend. Oils from the southern forests. I burn it when I want to think.”
I inhaled slowly, letting the scent consume me. “And now?”
He looked up. “Now I burn it because you’re here.”
Even as I put down my leather satchel, I said, “That comment is precisely the reason I will not be staying in your bedchamber, Terran.”
He approached me. “Because I don’t pretend, as you do, that there is something between us?”
I ignored the flutter in my chest. “I am not jesting.”
“Nor am I, when I say I’ve a notion where my father hid the Stone. And if I’m right, we’ll have to remain in the palace to find it. Since you were ordered to leave Gyoria, there is little choice.”
Could it really still be in the palace? If so, I was closer to it than I imagined. When I whispered back to Aethralis to speak to Mev, Kael guessed that his father may have brought it to The Forbidden Tunnels, but it seemed the Gyorian relic may be more within my reach than I expected.
“I’ll make inquiries and must train with my men lest they grow suspicious. Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll return as soon as I’m able.”
He wasn’t jesting.
“You mean for me to stay locked inside your bedchamber while you go about your day being”—I waved my hand with a flourish—“Prince of Gyoria?”
Terran blinked.
“What would you have me do instead? Not attempt to locate the Stone? Escort you beyond the border, as my father ordered? Or perhaps you can accompany me to the training yard so that word of me disobeying that order gets back to him?”
That he was disobeying his father’s order alone was so surprising that I considered his words, and my options.
Though I’d utilized my audience with the king to begin to unravel some of the secrets Kael learned his father had kept from him and his brother, I still hadn’t expected Terran to acquiesce so soon in any way.
He’d felt the shift. And likely knew his father to have grown unstable.
“Also, you are not locked in my chamber. None would dare to enter here, and you are free to leave whenever you will. Although I’ve no doubt you could do so anyway, if I did choose to lock the door.”
Unable to help myself, with a flick of my fingers, I used the air current to lock his chamber door.
This time, Terran’s smile wasn’t a hint but a bold statement.
“Not sure I have time to play, but…” He shrugged. “If you insist.”
With one swift, assured motion, the Gyorian lifted his tunic from his body and tossed it to the floor.
“Terran,” I warned. He glanced at me with such a raw, unfiltered look of desire that I forgot what I’d been about to say. “You are outrageous,” I managed. “Put your tunic back on and leave as you intended.”
I reopened the lock.
Laughing, the brief intensity replaced by a rare moment of joy—it was the first, to my knowledge, that I’d been in the presence of Kael’s brother actually laughing aloud—he did as I suggested and covered his linen shirt with his tunic.
“Come,” he said, and I followed him through a carved stone archway draped in deep-green velvet. A vision of him in this bath chamber, shirtless with water glistening along the edges of his collarbone, assaulted me.
Refocusing, I marveled at the large space warmed by candlelight, a flicker dancing over dark stone walls veined with pale quartz.
“Lumenbind keeps them lit,” he said. “The enchantment is said to have been developed by the first Gyorian king as a symbol of the ‘light that would never dim,’ as a reference to our clan.”
I had much to say about that… If any king in history had done more to dim the Gyorian light, it was Terran’s father, but I remained silent and stared at the soaking tub. It was sunk into the floor and easily large enough for two, perhaps three.
“Its rim is polished obsidian.” Terran moved closer to me. The scent of bergamot and something darker, like crushed cedar and spice, reminded me he was near. As if I could forget.
A Gyorian crest was carved into the wall above the basin, half-wreathed in ivy, and I realized this wasn’t simply a place to clean oneself. It was a retreat. A private escape for someone who didn’t let many people in.
I looked up at him. “I’ve bathed in the palace before and have never seen anything like it.”
“My quarters, and Kael’s too, are unlike my father’s in many ways.”
“Fitting, for you both.” I left the rest unsaid.
Terran’s expression hardened. “Do not mistake me for someone I’m not, Lyra.”
Deciding it was time to push, I did just that. “You will not convince me that tearing apart Elydor by punishing innocents was your doing.”
“Innocents? Your king knew the risk of opening that portal. Legends foretold it.”
“Humans brought their own sort of magic—”
“Conjecture and supposed prophecies?”
“Your hatred of them blinds you.”
“Your love of them softens you.”
I moved my hand quickly to show Terran precisely how soft I was and never expected him to grab my wrist in time. He was surprisingly nimble.
“Do not use Aetherian magic here.”
His hand wrapped easily around my wrist. Shuddering at the feel of it, shockingly immune to wishing he’d let go, I asked one simple question.
“Why?”
His gaze moved to the intricate carvings on the chamber walls: spirals and branches that seemed almost alive in the glow of the candles. Releasing my wrist for the second time that day, he exhaled.
“Why?” I asked, quietly this time. “What are they?”
“My mother,” he said finally, “was quite skilled. They’re her carvings.”
Terran’s mother. The former Queen of Gyoria.
I knew less of her than I did the king or her sons. When she was alive, my parents were ambassadors to Gyoria, though I’d learned more about her from Kael when we served on the Gate Council together.
“Kael never mentioned that particular skill to me. My father remembers her as kind and welcoming. Back then, he enjoyed coming to Gyoria. Said it offered a kind of peace not found in the north.”
He hardly reacted to my words.
“She was kind to all. Kael is fond of saying what’s become of Elydor, in her name, would devastate her.”
“Do you agree?”
The demons Terran wrestled with were not ones I envied. He stared at the walls, not answering, for a long while.
“You are welcome to freshen yourself in here while I’m away. I will bring food, and hopefully information, that will allow us to seek the Stone this eve. I would prefer to do so quickly, before you’re discovered.”
“Will it matter if I’m discovered when your father realizes what you’ve done?”
“For you, aye. It could be the difference between life or death. I do not doubt my father will wage a war between our clans and will have little qualm about taking your life, Lyra.”
I knew as much, but to hear him say it…
“For me? Nay. He will see it as a betrayal, for it is one. But perhaps it will be the catalyst needed to learn the truth of what he knows about the current imbalance.”
So he had felt it.
“Keeping me here,” I said, not wanting to dissuade Terran from his plan, but to ensure he carried it through, “allowing me to aid you in retrieving the Stone might be seen to some as a betrayal equal to your brother’s.”
He didn’t get angry. Or clench his fists. Or even look at me with the disgust that I’d come to expect from most Gyorians, and especially him and his father.
“Ignoring the truth is also a betrayal,” he said softly. “To my mother.”
With that, Terran left the bath chamber. Moments later, I heard the large, wooden door of his bedchamber click open and then shut.
He was gone. And I was alone in the private retreat of one of the most feared Gyorian warriors, its prince and sworn enemy.
Then why did I suddenly feel so at peace?
One that warred with a measure of fear I’d learned to ignore and the near-constant flutters of excitement at being alone in Terran’s bedchamber…
flutters matched only by the ones ever-present when he was near.
A question better left unanswered.