Chapter 47
Chapter Forty-Seven
Thyra
I’m certain the path to the library will be as fraught as every other step I take in the Iron Kingdom.
Before we leave, Antony has food brought to us, enough for two people, but he barely touches more than a bite. I’m concerned about his lack of appetite until I try to eat, and find my stomach is still churning after my encounter with Galla.
I manage to nibble some bread and sip some juice before I abandon eating. Pushing my chair back but remaining seated, I take a moment to discover if the dress will adjust its form to my wishes.
I want to know its limitations and if I can change its form, no matter what position I’m in. Sitting, standing, lying down…
Hoping I’m not about to end up completely naked, I try to will the dress to retract its skirt. It would be good to be able to move without the extra material floating around me.
Willing doesn’t work.
I try patting the garment in various places to see if it will pull its threads more intensely to those spots. Such as if I need to protect myself against an oncoming weapon.
Patting doesn’t work either.
By the time I’ve tried everything I can think of, Antony has stopped picking at his plate and leans back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he could be silently laughing at me.
A possibility that’s confirmed when he chortles, “What are you trying to do?”
After my intense interaction with Galla, I must now look absurd, patting and prodding and tugging at this beautiful material. “I’m trying to make it change, but it seems to be stuck in this form. At least while I’m sitting.”
Without warning, he darts forward, sliding out of his chair before I can blink. His arms wrap smoothly around me as he kneels beside my seat, one arm at my waist, the other running up my back, his fingers splaying across my shoulder blades.
Despite the suddenness of his movement, I relax at his touch. Even if I feared he meant me harm—which I don’t—I’m as covered in metal as he is.
His voice is low and soft. “I have an idea.”
I gasp as he tugs me forward, at the same time raising his knee so that he slides me forward onto his thigh. A shot of heat pulses through me as he slowly pulls me forward, the apex between my legs pressing onto his thigh, building on the ache that started last night and hasn’t gone away.
As his gaze suddenly devours me, his eyes darken with need, and his whisper is silken. “Whatever it is you want, try not to think about it.”
Impossible.
How can I not think about what I want right now?
I want this ache to reach its peak, and the only way that can happen is if I give in to the sudden and reckless impulses that will render me more vulnerable than I already am.
But even my survival instincts can’t seem to surface right now. My body has convinced me I’m invincible in this dress, and I need to cling to that belief, no matter how false it could be, because I won’t survive the Starlit Court otherwise.
I tell myself all I want is to ease this ache a little.
Just a little.
Allowing my weight to sink harder against him, I stifle my moan and pray only that the downward pressure will dull the neediness flowing through my core.
As my body rests heavier, his fingertips find their way up the back of my neck to my scalp, small, soothing movements that won’t tangle the strands but send torturous shivers down my spine.
“If we didn’t have somewhere to be,” he murmurs, his face close to mine, his voice more ragged than I was expecting, “I would peel back these threads and discover all your truths.”
My truths?
“Ask me anything,” I whisper. “I will answer.”
His pupils are dilated. I sense his quietly indrawn breath. I feel a question on his lips, but he doesn’t utter it, and somehow, his silence is more agonizing to me than the pleasure I can’t attain.
With a quiet exhalation, he leans back. Just enough for me to catch my breath and remember where I am and how perilous my safety is in this place.
“Sadly,” he says. “I think that worked.”
His gaze flows down my body as he slides me off his knee, putting me back on my feet while he rises upward.
I force my focus back to myself.
The dress has changed its form. While the inner layer remains around my entire body, which would explain why I didn’t feel it transform, every trailing layer is gone; the extra material is now drawn up around my body to resemble an armored combat suit. Even the boots are thicker.
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the dress turned itself into armor when my thoughts became heated.
Antony clears his throat while I try to clear my head.
“If you’re finished eating, we should go,” he says.
“I’m finished.”
I’ve already ascertained that, like Cassia’s quarters, Antony’s rooms have two entrances. One into the main tower, and the other to an external platform. “Will Azul carry us?”
“Not this time,” he says, stepping toward the door that leads into the tower itself, pausing for me to follow him. “It’s safer if we take a more direct and less public route to the library.”
I wait for him to open the door, but he pauses for a moment, his back to me. Then he reaches for a panel in the wall. It isn’t concealed, sitting above a small table, the panel appearing almost like a painting on the wall.
The panel clicks open at his touch, revealing a compartment from which he withdraws a small chest. Removing his glove, he opens the chest with his bare hand before he places it down onto the table.
Sliding the assassin’s dagger from the holder at his waist, he places it into the chest before snapping the box closed and returning it to the chamber in the wall.
“You don’t want to take that with you?” I ask, wondering if it could be useful.
He taps the axe he always carries on his back. “I have this. Better to keep the knife safe for now. I’m certain it holds clues about who sent the assassin after you.”
And after my father. A fate that, terrifyingly, he didn’t foresee.
I fight the dread building within me at the reminder that all it took to end his life—the Oracle’s life—was a simple knife.
Antony doesn’t seem to miss my tension, his head tilting, but his voice is low and soft. “Let them come, Thyra. You know I won’t let them touch you.”
My stomach flutters, warmth growing in my chest.
After he opens the door, holding it wide for me to step out into the empty corridor, his arm brushes my lower back, the lightest touch through my armor, reminding me of the torturous tingles that spread through my body only moments ago.
It's nearly impossible to focus away from Antony, but I force myself to assess our surroundings: not a guard is in sight.
Trying to steady my voice, I ask, “Are there normally guards along these corridors, or is it usually this quiet?”
“This is unusual,” Antony replies. “No doubt another one of Mother’s games.”
He points me to the left. “This way.”
I step along the wide corridor, expecting Antony to remain behind me like he normally does, but he keeps pace with me, a looming presence at my side.
After we pass multiple hallways leading off from both the left and right, my steps slow because it seems we’re headed toward a dead end.
A small alcove sits directly ahead, the kind that might contain a decorative vase or scroll, but this one is as empty as the corridor.
“Did I miss a turn?” I ask, uncertain why Antony would have let me keep walking.
He moves ahead of me for once, stepping into the narrow space. “This alcove provides access to a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers beneath the Constellation. We can use them to get to the library.”
I take a glance around in case someone’s watching us after all, but Antony adds, “This entrance isn’t a secret. Most highborn know about it. But only the current king can safely use it.”
He pulls off his metal glove to press his palm against the wall at the back of the alcove, at which point the entire panel slides open.
I can’t see anything beyond the opening. Only pure darkness. An unknown abyss that raises the hairs on my arms beneath my dress.
My foreboding only heightens when Antony warns me. “Never try to enter this place without me. I need to carry you so that the protective spell around the door treats you like an object I’m bringing with me.”
I scowl at being treated like an ‘object’, but I’m wary of the tension pulling at the corners of his eyes. If I hadn’t seen him multiple times without a helmet, I might not have noticed it, but now it gives me pause.
“What happens if the magic doesn’t treat me like an object?”
“You don’t have to worry about that.” He slips his glove back on and holds out his arms. “Come here.”
I step toward him, my heart in my throat, but I remind myself he’s gone to great lengths to keep me alive. He won’t throw that all away now.
My only real uncertainty is whether he’ll scoop me over his shoulder as he did at the forge, but he sweeps me up with a command, “Arms and legs around me. Stay close.”
I twine myself around him, clinging as he supports my back, reminded of the heated moment when he carried me through his cabin last night, his arm supporting my naked backside.
The warm memory is quickly surpassed by the cold air spilling around me as he steps through the alcove.
The panel snaps shut behind us, leaving us in complete darkness before orbs ignite at intervals, light bursting into life similar to the light in his family’s temple.
I expect my dread to ease, but the hairs on my arms remain standing beneath my long sleeves, an unwelcome feeling. “What magic was that?”
“Blood magic,” Antony says, moving forward without putting me back on my feet. “It recognizes only the Iron General’s bloodline and, more restrictively, only the current reigning monarch descended from that bloodline.”
“That’s Merovian magic.”
He nods, his steel-covered jaw sliding against my cheek. “Blood Fae.”