47. Thyra
Chapter Forty-Seven
Thyra
Stellen leans closer to me, close enough that he could strike me dead. Especially while I’m holding Antony.
“Logic tells me you’re a danger to me, Thyra,” Stellen says, his voice a murmur while the strains of his power hum in the air.
“But I already knew that and not for the reasons you might think. From the moment your voice first reached my heart, you were a promise of a future I could only dream of, the kind of dream that could drive me to take incredible risks. I wasn’t na?ve about the dangers that future would hold if I chose to fight for it. ”
He’s too calm. Impossibly calm and my heart can’t take it.
The truth about the blood bind has hung over me for days. The impact has been devastating. During my last confrontation with the False Queen in a blade vision, she promised me that kindness will be crushed. Hope will die. She told me I would be the one doing the crushing.
I recognized the cruelty of her actions.
The three kings reigned through brutality and fear, their physical strength and strategic planning keeping them alive. Without that strength, they will die.
Not a hypothetical. A proven reality.
My throat is tight as I ask, “What are you saying?”
“This blood bind will not separate us. No matter what evil it might be trying to achieve.”
I’m shaking my head, denying his words because every time something good has happened, it’s been ripped away from me.
“You say that now. But these runes are draining your strength. Taking your powers and giving them to me. Your sharp hearing. Antony’s eyesight.
Maxim’s heat. I can even levitate a little.
That’s just the beginning. There will come a moment when you have to make a choice between your life and mine, and—”
“Have I not already?” Stellen’s voice is suddenly harsh, no longer calm or quiet. “Have I not already proven to you, Thyra, that I will gladly lay down my life for those I love?” He thumps his fist to his heart. “That I would choose death if it meant you would live.”
I’m frozen, hurting, uncertain, but more than anything afraid of accepting that love could prevail above this darkness. Not my love, because my heart is within my control, but his love.
I try to breathe through the fear and the hurt and the painful hope as he holds my gaze.
“Whatever pain you fear this blood bind will bring to me, Thyra, I don’t fear my death,” he says. “I’ve already fucking died. And you’ve already proven that you would battle through excruciating pain and darkness to save me. What greater love could I ever hope for?”
He drags in a ragged breath. “The worst pain this bind could cause me is for you to push me away because of fear. The cruelest harm would be losing you because of some dark trickery.”
His jaw clenches as he draws back from me. “I won’t let that happen. If you want to leave, I will fight to the death for your right to leave. But if you want to stay, then I will fight any darkness for you to stay.”
Tears stream down my cheeks. I don’t know when they started, but my heart is in tatters.
I was certain Stellen’s logic, not his heart, would dictate his actions. Now it’s my trust that’s being tested. Because with every breath I take, I still expect pain.
I never expected grace.
“I didn’t… I don’t…” I try to speak but can’t, a quiet sob all I can utter.
“Thyra, you’re my family now.” Stellen’s gentle hand finds my back, rubbing my sore muscles, easing the last shreds of my fear. “I hope I’ve already proven to you that I will love you beyond death.”
“You have.” I squeeze my eyes closed, my arms tight around Antony and even though I wouldn’t let go of him for the world, I wish I could draw Stellen closer.
His hand continues to ease my muscles, his power cooling the water spraying around us, little snowflakes floating at my sides. Landing on my nose, dusting my hair. Only to be washed away seconds later.
A snowflake drifts to Antony’s forehead, rinsed away a moment later, but he stirs, giving a deep grumble. “Fuck me, I will not be outshone by you, Stellen Nas’Lethian.”
“Antony?” I check his eyes, finding them open only to slits, still badly bloodshot and unfocused.
“Give me a minute,” he mumbles. “I have things I want to…”
The resumed heaviness of his body warns me he might have blacked out again.
“Antony?”
He drags in a deep breath, stirring. “Things I want to say.”
“Well,” I whisper. “You might wish to speak, but I’m not listening until you let me remove this plate.”
The burning of his exposed skin appears to have stopped. The water has certainly helped. But his final plate of armor still feels warm and that can’t be a good thing.
Even so, he attempts to angle away from me, a movement that only makes the plate slip.
My stern question is instant. “How much did you hear before?”
Antony attempts to hunch again, a fruitless endeavor. “You can levitate.”
“Then you heard enough to know I’m not to be trifled with.” Bracing with my legs, I slip one hand from his back and press it to his cheek, forcing him to meet my eyes. “Let me take off this final piece.”
His unfocused gaze slides away from me but he pulls the final steel plate from between us.
A clatter sounds, which I at first think is the plate meeting the floor, but then the subsequent clank indicates otherwise.
Stellen’s quiet exclamation makes me worried. “Fuck, Antony.”
I adjust my balance so I can look down at Antony’s chest.
Oh, no.
A gaping wound cuts across his heart, the organ itself visible through the opening and horribly mangled.
“How…?” Hot tears burn behind my eyes. “Oh.”
Antony’s weight grows heavier as the first streams of cold water flow across his chest. “I didn’t want you to see that—”
“Your heart, Antony, it’s—”
“—and think I wanted to chain you again.”
My forehead creases, my confusion rising. “What?”
“The ruby circlet,” he mutters. “I didn’t want you to think I would shackle you again.”
I finally spy the long, delicate chain on the floor, coiled like a snake in the wash. The source of the clattering sound. It must have been nestled between his chest and the final plate of armor.
I can’t stop another sob from tearing out of me. A sudden heave of emotions that I can’t cage anymore. “I didn’t think you would.”
Antony’s forehead crinkles as he peers at me, eyes scrunched nearly closed. “Really?”
I give a little snarl. “You’ve lived with lies for too long.”
“Lies and liars, remember?” He presses my hand closer to his cheek, leaning in to my touch and closing his eyes.
We stay like that for a long moment, my palm pressing to Antony’s cheek while Stellen rubs my back, and my heart…
Finally finds a glimmer of peace.
“I think I can get up now,” Antony says, drawing back with a groan.
“Are you sure?”
He attempts to straighten, still in a sitting position, but he wobbles and slumps back against the wall. “Give me a second.”
I don’t think time will make a difference.
“You need blood.”
Antony recoils so abruptly, he smacks his head on the wall behind him. “Fuck.” He rubs the back of his head, his voice sharp. “I will never drink your blood again, Thyra.”
Stellen’s cool hand stops moving at my back, but his lips are pursed and eyes narrowed. He hasn’t immediately jumped in and told me to be careful.
Instead, he murmurs, “A safe space.”
I meet his pale gaze. He and I spoke of a safe space for Maxim. Antony needs one too. I never would have dreamed Stellen would be like an anchor for me with the other two kings.
Antony growls at us as he presses against the wall. “I’m not liking these unspoken moments between you two.”
Returning my focus to him, I ask, “What if I give you my blood, instead of you taking it?”
Antony stares at me, his expression closed off. I’m not sure if he realizes how badly his hands are shaking. He certainly won’t be able to see how deathly pale he is, even if he must be able to feel the full extent of his burns.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“I can make a small incision in my arm and—”
“No.” Antony’s voice is sharp. “My fears are real, Thyra. I can sense the blood pounding through your body. I want to gorge myself on you. Drink you up, no matter the consequences. That is what this poisoned body would have me do.”
I lean into him, whispering a challenge. “Prove to yourself that you won’t. Just like you proved to me once before that you wouldn’t hurt me.”
When I first bled in front of him, a cut on my cheek, he feared hurting me. At the time, I didn’t know why he was so agitated, only that his fear was deep and intense.
“But I did hurt you,” he says.
I don’t deny it. He speaks the truth. Painting over the past won’t change that. But the future isn’t set.
Quietly, I rise to my feet as Stellen reaches carefully for the pump, turning off the water. The liquid drains away around us.
I point to the disappearing water. “Do you see?” I ask Antony, echoing what he said to me after an assassin had tried to kill me. “The past is draining away. Yes, it happened, but soon it will be gone, and you won’t have to fear it anymore.”
Antony shakes his head at me, a vehement side to side, his bloodshot eyes barely focusing on me. “That won’t work this time.”
I ignore him because his wounds aren’t healing and I won’t stand by while the blood bind hurts him. Dropping into his lap, straddling him, my knees on either side of his hips, I say, “Be done with your fear, Antony. Once and for all.”
Sharply, I tilt my head and bare my neck to him.
He recoils again, and I’m conscious of the sharp look he gives Stellen.
The threatening ring of steel tells me Stellen has drawn his swords, as I trusted he would.
He won’t let me get hurt.
“Bare your fangs,” I say to Antony, a hum in my voice, an irrepressible power filling my throat. “Kiss my neck. Thoroughly. But don’t drink.”
His fangs extend and his eyes fill to full black. I allow myself to bend to his will as his arms rise across my back and he yanks me closer, my pelvis pressed hard to his.
The silver armor at my neck parts for him, exposing my flesh to danger.
He snarls. “Be careful what you ask for, Thyra.”