Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
“You have ten seconds to start explaining yourself before I let these shadows rip you apart,” Loren growled.
“I would,” Eryn rasped, “But you seem rather intent on strangling me. If you could just—”
Loren snarled, shoving the other male back against the wall. Eryn coughed, clearing his throat and rolling his shoulders as he brushed his clothing back into place.
“For a politician, you’re rather easy to provoke,” Eloria’s spymaster said lightly, his lips curling into something closer to a sneer than a true smile.
“Not the best trait in a ruler. If you’re not careful, people will start to say you’re unstable.
I wonder what they would think if they knew you ordered your mate to put a knife to her own throat—”
“Why are you here?” Loren demanded.
“Officially?” Eryn smoothed down his shirt. “I came to deliver a message.” His dark eyes flicked up, sharp as steel. “They want your mate presented. Immediately.”
“No,” Loren growled. The shadows shifted around him, their muttering voices echoing his refusal.
“There have been more bodies,” Eryn continued, ignoring him. “More messages, carved into the flesh of fae females with red hair and clipped ears. The Small Council wants answers—and they expect her to provide them. You protests, while noted, are not enough to shield her anymore.”
Loren clenched his teeth. “Tell them to talk to Eloria. She’s the regent.”
“Of course. And yet—I’m here.” Eryn’s lips quirked into a humorless smile. “Do you think that’s an accident, Your Majesty? More than a few of her advisors are concerned that our beloved Princess Regent is allowing her affection for her long lost brother to cloud her normally impeccable judgement.”
Loren bared his teeth, the shadows churning around his feet. But Eryn stepped forward anyway, ignoring the warning.
“And maybe,” he continued, his voice dropping to a murmur.
“Maybe her long-lost brother is letting his attachment to his mate cloud his. Not that I don’t understand your concerns.
If it would make things easier, I could speak with her here.
Give her a chance to explain herself before things get unpleasant—”
The shadows erupted, flooding the chamber in a torrent of cold and dark.
They lashed the walls, rattling the sconces as they spread across the walls.
They wrapped around Eryn’s arms, his legs, his throat.
They pinned him to the wall, a thousand voices clamoring for blood as Loren’s hands wrapped around Eryn’s throat.
“Nothing he’s doing is her fault,” Loren hissed. He watched as Eryn’s face darkened, turning from red to purple. “And I won’t let a small, insignificant worm like you make her believe it is—”
“Loren!” Thorne’s familiar voice cut through the roaring in his ears. “Stand down, Loren. You can’t kill Eloria’s spymaster.”
Loren’s fingers flexed tighter, something cracking under his grip. He could kill Eryn. He knew it and the shadows knew it—just one more squeeze and Eryn’s poisonous words would never reach her ears. No one on this island could stop him—
“Your mate just ran out of here sobbing, Loren.” Thorne shoved through the darkness, his hand closing around Loren’s wrist. “She’s the one who matters right now. Not him. Let. Him. Go.”
For a heartbeat, Loren didn’t move. The shadows screamed in his ears, howling for blood as Eryn’s pulse slowed beneath his fingers. It would be so easy—
Loren wrenched himself back, letting the other male crash to the ground in a heap. “Get out of my home,” he snarled. “And if you so much as breathe in her direction ever again, I’ll finish what I started here.”
Eryn clambered to his feet, his smirk back despite the necklace of bruises on his neck. The spymaster inclined his head in mock courtesy, composure settling back over him like a well-fitted mask. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
Thorne didn’t release Loren’s arm until the door had swung closed behind Eryn, waiting until the spymaster’s footsteps faded from hearing before he rounded on his oldest friend.
“What were you thinking?” Thorne demanded. “He’s part of Eloria’s Small Council. Do they know what they say about you?”
“That I’m unstable,” Loren snapped, jerking his arm out of Thorne’s grip. “And they’re right. I’m not fit to be king. But they aren’t getting near her. I’ll kill them all first.”
“Loren—” Thorne hissed, trailing off with a shake of his head. “You can’t say things like that. Did you actually make her hold a knife to her own throat?”
Loren glanced away, his gaze falling on the stub of candle still sitting on the floor.
She’d resorted to a human crutch out of frustration—nothing worth getting so angry over.
But then she’d challenged him and he had—Loren shuddered, the aftertaste of her panic and terror still lingering on his tongue.
“She doesn’t understand the dangers,” he said, like it excused what he’d done. “What someone like Eryn could do to her—”
“Right now I think she’s worried about what you could do to her,” Thorne snapped. “You’re no good to her like this, Loren.”
“You’re right.” Loren swallowed hard. “She doesn’t trust me. I shouldn’t be training her. You should—”
“That’s not what I meant.” Thorne shook his head, turning toward the door. “Both of you are struggling here. No one comes out of that place without scars, physical and mental. Come on, let’s go make sure she’s safe—”
“She’s in her room.”
He could feel her through the bond. Even though the taste of her emotions had faded with distance, he could feel enough to know she was curled in her bed, the covers pulled over her head like a child hiding from a monster. Terrified—of him.
“Loren—” Thorne started.
“I can’t, Thorne.” The words fell from his lips, stiff and wooden. “Thank you for not letting me kill Eryn, but…just go. Please.”
Thorne stared at him, his face shadowed. There had been a time Loren had known his face as well as his own—but he might as well have been a stranger now.
“Consider accepting some help, Loren,” Throne said finally. “If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for her. You both deserve better.”
Loren stared at the candle stub as the door swung closed behind his friend, the shadows twisting and writhing across the room as if they might find the threat to his mate hiding in some dark corner.
All they wanted was to protect her, to fix this.
But they couldn’t. He couldn’t. Because he couldn’t even fix himself.
And the Small Council—Loren had no doubt they would be back with more demands. What if they looked at the bodies piling up and decided that one fae female’s freedom was an acceptable cost to pay to stop the bleeding?
His stomach turned, bile stinging his throat. Eloria wouldn’t—she couldn’t do that to him. But Eryn? Cormac? How many others would disagree?
The shadows lashed the air around him, a sudden, violent burst of power that made the aetherlamps flicker wildly above him. Fix it. They seethed. Protect her.
But he couldn’t. Not from here. Not like this.