2
“He’s as horrible as they say,” Celestine whispered. “Plim told me that he told Alixa to take her desperation for importance elsewhere.”
I lowered my spoonful of rabbit stew. “What beneath the waves did he mean by that?”
After Voran Valadorn had dragged his boat into the dunes, everyone had been ushered from the prayer hall while the prince and high priestess appeared to have a tense exchange. One that had seen a pale Nellassa seclude herself in her room as soon as she’d returned to the fortress.
Though no one knew what had been said, the way he’d disrespected the high priestess had told me plenty. He didn’t want to be here. The prince known as Raxon’s claws probably thought this isle and the protection it offered were beneath him.
I’d heard that, like many of us, the enemy’s heir would soon reach twenty-five years and be deemed of age, which likely added to his reluctance to be here.
Celestine waited until the priestess on meal duty had reached the other side of the prayer hall before continuing. “The wolf prince believes Alixa was trying to…” She bobbed her head side to side. “Well, you know.”
But I didn’t know, and I conveyed as much with a frown.
Celestine rolled her eyes. “Really, Ayla?”
As it finally dawned, my cheeks heated. I gave my gaze to the dregs of my stew. “I knew what you meant. I just thought—”
“Oh, you did not. You’re still reading youngling stories.” She sipped her water. “Come to my room after dinner. I have some books from home that haven’t been confiscated yet.”
Intrigued, I forgot about the prince’s arrival and smiled. It wilted when spoons clanked into bowls and chatter quietened at tables.
Though my eyes refused to lift, I knew the reason for it.
His presence was a shadow cast over the hall from atop the stairs.
Maybe it was fear that rendered me incapable of looking at the Valadorn prince. True fear. Whatever it was chilled my blood until it felt frozen in my veins. As he descended the stairs, I tucked my hands in my lap and did something I hadn’t since my mother’s body was fed to flame.
I prayed.
I prayed no one looked at me. I prayed the wolf prince didn’t come near me. And when he did just that, I prayed he wouldn’t seize this opportunity for revenge.
He can’t, I reminded myself. Not here.
His large boots met my line of vision. Military boots. The black leather wrapped around his ankles, laces loosely tied. Matching pants gave a soft squeak with each intentionally unhurried stride toward our table.
When he stopped, so did my heart.
His brief pause beside me lasted all of three held breaths. Yet it felt like a lifetime before he finally moved on to the table behind us and I exhaled.
Chatter resumed like a slow-rising wave.
Meront leapt down the stairs. Golden hair swayed over his broad shoulders as he sauntered through the hall. Grinning, he dropped onto the bench seat opposite ours and immediately pulled his bowl toward him. “Goddess, that was shit.”
“What happened?” Celestine asked.
He pointed at a thin scratch on his cheek. “Haynes smacked me too hard during training. Split my cheek so bad, I swear I could see the bone. Rotten toad.”
My eyes widened.
Celestine laughed. “It probably didn’t even bleed.”
Meront plucked at his tunic and gestured to the copper stains marring it.
His sister huffed. “How is Dirk?”
“Strange but mercifully fast.” Meront lifted the stone bowl to his mouth. The knot in his throat shifted as he swallowed all of his stew. “Was worried I’d miss dinner.” Licking his lips, he waggled his golden brows at me. “And seeing my favorite princess.”
Celestine scoffed. “Put anything pretty and big-chested in front of you, and you’re insufferable.”
Meront was indeed a dreadful flirt. But his remarks toward me had been ceaseless since I’d arrived on the isle.
Before that, although Celestine and I often wrote to each other, I hadn’t seen the twins in almost two years.
In that time, some things had changed as I’d reached full maturity, and I surmised those things had been noticed.
But I’d always noticed Meront.
Even when we were younglings making mud pies and stick creatures because we’d been forced to stay outside while our families conducted so-called business, I’d noticed him.
Everyone noticed Prince Meront.
He dragged his finger around the edge of his bowl. “Nothing wrong with appreciating what the goddess puts before me.”
“Beast,” Celestine grumbled.
I smiled. It must have looked as grim as I felt.
As Moongold’s beloved prince sucked stew from his finger, he studied me. His brows flattened over his cobalt eyes. He released his finger. “What’s wrong?”
Celestine shifted—kicked his shin beneath the table, I realized, when he cursed and glared at her. She made a face. An expression that only a twin could normally read.
For once, I knew what it was. She was telling him about the new ward seated at the table behind ours.
Meront’s hair-dusted jaw rocked. His eyes narrowed slightly on his sister before he looked at me. “He say anything to you?”
I shook my head.
Meront’s large hands clenched his bowl. “He cannot touch you,” he said, yet he gazed beyond me. Perhaps straight at the enemy’s nephew. His voice rose, and I understood he wasn’t speaking to me at all. “This is sacred ground.”
A warning to Voran.
Though I was grateful, as Meront scooped more stew with his fingers, I felt it. Eyes, rumored to be a terrifyingly deep blue, burned into the back of my head like a blade poised to strike.
I doubted Prince Voran wished to be delivered to the sea cells beneath the isle, where war criminals repeatedly drowned whenever the tide rolled in. Not even his ruthless uncle could keep him from such cruel punishment if he sought to harm anyone seeking refuge.
All in those cells would stay there until the war was over.
“I know,” I whispered to Meront.
He scowled, as if loathing how I’d lowered my voice to keep the Valadorn prince from overhearing.
Pointless, really. Voran was a wolf. A direwolf. Heightened hearing was just one of the attributes that made him deadly.
Before I could form an excuse to leave that didn’t have me seeming as cowardly as I was, Darcen arrived.
Straddling the bench next to Meront, Coraldeen’s prince stole Celestine’s bread. He tore a chunk from it with his teeth and grinned as he chewed. “Princesses.”
Celestine snatched her bread back. “What priestess were you flirting with this time?”
Darcen watched Celestine pick at the bread she had no interest in eating, his emerald eyes dancing. “None.” He chewed slowly, vigorously, before speaking so smoothly that I was tempted to shiver. “It would seem their vows of chastity created an armor that not even I can penetrate.”
Celestine coughed.
Meront glared at his friend.
I decided now was probably my best chance at escaping relatively unnoticed. Then Darcen slid his gaze beyond the princess and his hand through his black hair, causing the thick strands to stand every which way. “It’s true, then.”
These princes and their arrogance.
“Darcen,” I warned quietly.
He paid me no mind. “I’d thought it was but a rumor.” Without taking his hardened gaze from Voran, he plucked the bread from Celestine’s fingers. “And that the evil princeling’s might was so formidable, Raxon needn’t bother sending him here.”
“I’m surprised you weren’t there.” Celestine curled her fingers into her evening robes. “Everyone was vying for a look at the new ward.”
“Alixa wasn’t there either,” Meront pointed out without a shred of care.
Darcen grinned. “A coincidence, I’m sure.”
“I’m sure,” Celestine said dryly.
Eyeing her, Darcen tore into more of her bread. His mirth faded.
Meront dragged his fingers through his bowl again, fishing for remnants.
He’d often complained that they were trying to starve us—until Priestess Renisha reminded him that we were at war, stuck on an island, and the hunting he and other wards enjoyed was not merely recreational. “He shouldn’t be here. It’s not right.”
Darcen agreed with a hum.
“None of this is right,” Celestine said.
Meront gave her a bland look. “Yes, and that fucking uncle of his is to blame.”
“Raxon’s claws.” Feigning fear, Darcen wriggled his fingers mockingly.
“What if what he seeks is not protection?” He brushed crumbs from the dark growth adorning his square jaw.
“Raxon could’ve sent him here to assassinate or capture one of us.
He hardly seems the type to care if his nephew was caught and thrown into the sea cells. ”
One of us.
Though I appreciated that he did not mention my name, I was getting more and more uncomfortable by the minute. “I don’t think so,” I said, even as I picked at my nails beneath the table.
“You know…” Meront looked beyond me with a troublesome gleam in his eyes. “I think we ought to test that theory.”
My stomach began to ache, and not from the too-salty stew.
Darcen joined Meront in taunting the Valadorn prince, teeth flashing as he drawled, “It would help everyone sleep better each night.”
My anxiety had become so gargantuan that I didn’t sense how still Celestine had gone beside me until she hissed, “Stop it.”
She was ignored.
Meront’s bowl thunked against the worn table, loud enough to draw the attention of other wards, including Voran Valadorn.
But we’d already had his attention.
That bone-knocking feeling of being watched hadn’t left.
The silence bleeding through the hall and Meront rising to his feet pushed my discomfort to its limit. My cheeks warmed, and my ears began to ring. Fearing I might be sick, I slid down the bench seat and hurried across the hall to the stairs.
“Ayla,” Meront called. “Wait.”
I didn’t.
This war remained a distant danger to most at the archives. So much so that Meront and Darcen almost seemed excited by it. They trained while longing to reach twenty-five years so they could leave this fortress and aid in stopping Valadorn’s forces, as if it would be the same as hunting.
But Meront and Darcen hadn’t seen Valadorn’s wyverns, who’d been reared to murder their own kind.
They hadn’t seen just how vicious Valadorn’s wolves were because the bloodshed hadn’t touched their realms. The princes had yet to lose someone they’d known because of King Raxon’s desire to seize the Scale Crown.
If they had, then they might not be so eager to join this war. If they had, then they might understand that the stories about Voran Valadorn were not merely stories.
And that they ought to be afraid of him, too.