Chapter 52
Chapter Fifty-Two
Thyra
“Thyra!” Antony dives toward me, catching hold of my arms as I struggle to process what happened.
The Ember King.
He was here.
Right in front of me.
He appeared out of nowhere, covered from head to toe, wearing a hood and face mask, but there was no mistaking the fire in his dark-brown eyes.
His heat threatened to consume me, tear me down more sharply than the metal blades flying at me.
Yet he tried to shield me—
“Thyra!” Antony’s hands tug at me, rapidly checking me over, and running the length of me as I remain kneeling on the floor.
“He tried to shield me,” I whisper as I finally look up.
Antony freezes.
A sharp hiss sounds as he draws a breath, and then his chest stops moving. Failing to exhale.
At first, I think he’s frozen because of what I said, but his focus on my cheek is intense, and his murmur is strained. “All cut up.”
With a shaking hand, I reach up to dab at the spot where my face stings.
A single shard had sliced across my skin, but I’m certain it’s a shallow wound, even if the amount of blood smearing my fingertips tells me it looks bad.
“Antony—”
“I was a fucking fool,” he snarls, finally exhaling with a level of rage I wasn’t expecting.
“What do you—?”
He wrenches me upward, angling me over his shoulder with an aggressive heave. “A fucking fool.”
I try to catch my breath as he storms toward the door protected by blood magic, barely breaking his stride to push through it and descend the staircase.
The magic’s cold chill rushes across my body, leaving me with the same dread that swirled in my stomach when he carried me through it earlier today.
The swirling dread spreads upward, and for a moment, a fluttering sensation fills my chest, as if I’m about to have an Oracle vision.
But the sensation sputters and fades, an odd sparking and dying, and I’m not sure what to make of it.
Antony continues to hurtle down the stairs at a pace that frightens me, then proceeds along the corridor with such fervor that his feet pound the ground.
I’m astonished that whatever has triggered his rage has surpassed his need to know all of what I read in the book.
My heart thumps that anything could be more powerful to him than his need to break the curse.
Instead of continuing along the corridor to its other side, he veers down a passageway to his right, pausing only briefly at the first door before he turns his other shoulder, giving me a good look along the remainder of the corridor and the ability to discern that this is the only door along this path.
He shoves the door open.
I startle when he carries me past stone walls inlaid with golden filigree, past plush chairs, and toward the most enormous, lavishly blanketed bed I’ve ever seen, at the side of which he finally slides me to the floor.
This room is far more opulently decorated than his quarters up on the main levels of the Constellation. But the glinting metal on the wall directly to my left defies the comfortable facade.
A pair of shackles is attached to that wall, resting at my shoulder height, each on a short chain.
My focus flies around the room, landing on the large key resting on a little table on the far side of the bed.
Antony told me that these catacombs were intended as a safe place for the king, where nobody could get to him, so I’m not sure why there are shackles on the wall.
“Antony, what is this room?”
“Stay here,” he commands me. “Until I come back for you.”
He’s already swinging away from me, moving quickly.
“Wait—No!” I catch hold of his arm, trying to stop him. As if I could.
The last time he left me alone, an assassin came for me. That’s impossible here, given he’s the only one who can enter and leave without dying, but my concern isn’t being alone. It’s his reason for leaving me here.
“Talk to me!”
He whirls on me, both hands landing on my shoulders, pushing me back and back toward the wall, where I stop, pressed hard against the cold, glittering surface, the shackles on either side of me.
I expect him to chain me to the wall, but his hands squeeze my shoulders, painfully tight, and his voice is treacherously low. “Do not test me right now, Thyra. You will stay here, where you will be safe from me right now, and—”
Click.
He jolts.
The shackle I clamped around his left wrist clatters as he wrenches himself backward. “What did you—?”
With my heart in my throat, I dart away from him.
I may be chained to him by the ruby circlet and unable to move more than three paces from his side, but he’s now chained to the wall, and the circlet’s length allows me to move farther than he can.
Particularly, I get myself clear of the other shackle in case he tries to snap it around me. A bad possibility, since then we’d have no hope of reaching the key on the far table to free ourselves.
Quickly, I locate myself in the space between him and the bed.
His focus flies past me to the little table, where the key rests, confirming for me that it is, indeed, the key for the shackle.
“Thyra,” he snarls at me. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
That’s probably true. But I’m not letting him out of here until I understand what has triggered his mindless rage.
“Thyra!” He strains against the shackle, turning to brace one foot against the wall, groaning with effort.
The tension in his posture, so extreme that I expect the shackle to warp and snap, certainly the chain links to groan and separate, but it seems the restraint was designed to withstand even his great strength.
I relax, although I probably shouldn’t.
After all, he could wrench on the circlet and pull me close to him at any moment.
I stand my ground. “Talk to me.”
Especially because I need to speak with him. I need to tell him everything I read and saw in the Chronicle.
He doesn’t seem to be listening, seething with effort as he pulls and pulls at the shackle.
“Tell me why,” I say, deliberately making my command unclear, trying to force him to focus on my question and away from his rage.
He stops struggling, his back partially to me, his shoulders hunched, but I don’t think it’s in defeat.
He’s crouched over like a caged animal, coiling as if to attack. “Why what?”
I gesture carefully at the room. “Why do you want to get away from me?”
“I don’t want to get away from you.” His voice is even lower, nearly unrecognizable. “I want to get closer to you.”
“Then get closer to me—”
“No.”
I’m puzzled. He’s been physically much closer to me on many occasions. He keeps me chained to him for the Goddess’s sake. “Why not?”
When he doesn’t answer me, I dare to take a step toward him, hardening my voice. “Antony. Talk to me.”
“Her face was cut up,” he roars, shouting at the wall, his free hand smashing into it, but the rock appears designed to handle his strength, not a single crack appearing.
My heart is suddenly heavy with all the horrible possibilities.
Softly, I ask, “Whose face?”
With another brutal thump, he turns his fist on his own chest, a blow so violent that the clang makes me flinch.
“Pain is life,” he shouts.
Again, he punches his chest. And again, and again.
So hard that his chest plate caves, and I’m afraid of the damage he could do to himself.
Launching myself forward, I snatch hold of his fist on its outward swing, holding on with both hands as tightly as I can, a completely futile action that endangers my limbs.
His sharp movement drags me close, and he’s about to crush both of my hands between his fist and his chest, but he stops in the nick of time, his breathing audibly heaving, his eyes mere scrunched slits glaring down at me.
Slowly, he leans to his right, toward the wall. His shackled arm has enough leeway that he can close that hand over his helmet and slowly draw it off his head.
He drops it to the floor with a clatter and doesn’t seem to care that it rolls all the way to the side of the bed.
All his savagery is revealed to me. His jagged black hair. Tense jaw. Glittering green eyes. Ragged breaths rasping between perfect lips.
Quietly…a quiet that feels as if it could break me…he bends his head to mine, his bristles scraping my face, then my lips. “Do not with your kindness.”
I stay perfectly still, daring only to whisper, “What part of chaining you to a wall is kind?”
His lips press to my injured cheek, right below the cut, becoming a sweeping contact as he drags his mouth from beneath my injury to the corner of my lips.
And stops.
I’m certain he’s smeared blood across my face because one side of his lips is now painted with my blood.
My breathing is rapid, but the tip of my tongue tingles with a different moisture.
Salty tears.
Not my own.
Tears of rage on his cheeks, dragged to my mouth, mingled with my blood.
I turn my lips to his, nearly touching, and once again, fluttering begins in my chest, wings unfurling, only to fold again and remain silent.
I’m so close to pressing my mouth to his, but his voice stops me.
“I can’t fight this.” His words are barely audible. “If you want to survive me, you should step away now.”
Again, an elusive fluttering tingles within my heart, and from a distance, an echo whispers.
It’s my own voice asking: What should I call you?
That same brief and incomplete vision I had when I first arrived in the Iron Kingdom. I don’t know why I would see it again now, especially when it’s too obscured to deliver any message to me.
“You’re convinced you’re going to hurt me,” I whisper.
“Yes.” His groan rushes across my lips, his body thrumming with visible tension as he maintains the painful distance between us. “If I break you, then I’ll break my future. I’ll destroy my kingdom. But my worst impulses tell me not to care.”
I should heed his warning. Even yesterday, I might have, but I’m far more aware of my capabilities today. Far more emboldened by the protective layer of Lethian silver around my body.
I draw a slow breath, inhaling the coppery scent of blood, tasting the salt of his angry tears, and I dare, with every shred of my soul, to challenge him. “Then put your impulses to the test.”
The slight widening of his eyes tells me I’ve surprised him.
“Whatever darkness you’re fighting, whatever memories you’re trying to forget, whatever violence you’ve experienced, test your control.” My voice grows stronger. “With me.”
He remains frozen, but he hasn’t refused, so I push on. “Prove to yourself, once and for all, that you won’t hurt me. That you will never hurt me.”
His pupils darken at my words, his fist slowly unfurling where it sits between my hands, his fingers carefully lacing with mine.
With terrifying slowness, he brings my hand to his cheek, right where I rested my palm and stopped the Frost King from killing him.
Gently, he presses my hand, but his voice is harsh, defying the question filling his eyes. “The only way I can prove this to myself is to give you pleasure without taking any for myself. Will you allow me to do that?”
A shot of heat rushes from my chest to my core, pooling in my center.
When he washed me last night, I was in shock. I needed the cold burst of water and the nearness of his body to keep me anchored. He didn’t warn me of his monstrous nature during those moments, even though he was holding me closer than he is now.
I don’t know what has changed for him today to be so troubled now.
But I’m certain that unless he breaks through whatever fears he holds closest to his heart, I will never be safe with him.
So for now, I put aside the False Queen’s curse and what I saw in the Chronicle and the golden shard that cut my face and the fact that Antony’s fate is irrevocably entwined with mine, and I focus only on his heart and mine.
Exhaling any lingering fear, I whisper, “I will allow it.”