Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Maxim
Antony and I circle each other on the black mountain ridge, two predators ready to strike.
All it will take is a wrong move, and we’ll try to kill each other again.
Even if it’s clear that we need information from each other.
Thyra’s in danger, which means my future is in danger, but I have no way to control these strange visions of her. No way to get back to her except to keep moving forward.
“What the fuck just happened?” Antony asks, paying no attention to the wound that continues to trickle blood down his chest.
“You tell me,” I say. “You were with Thyra these last three days.”
He sure as fuck should know more than I do.
Antony’s fangs extend and retract. “How do you know her name?”
“Thyra?”
“Yes, Thyra,” he snarls. “I didn’t know her name until I asked her for it.”
“I heard you say it.”
He scowls at me, his pace slowing. “When?”
“The day before yesterday. When I was pulled to her by the thread that connects us.” It’s my best and only description of what happens when my mind is transported to wherever she is.
“The thread.” Antony presses his right hand to the wound on his chest, his focus suddenly faraway, a dangerous absence of mind, given how easily I could attack him.
“The tree,” he mutters. “The wood. Breaking—”
He gives himself a savage shake, but before he can continue, I demand to know. “What tree?”
I was sure he would have been pulled into the same vision of Thyra that I was, but I saw her with Stellen beside a cluster of ponds in a clearing surrounded by white mist. Rocks, water, mist. Not a tree in sight.
Antony finally stops pacing. “Ask me for a truce.”
“What?”
Again, his fangs extend and retract. “I promised my brother I’d kill you the next time I saw you. I can’t ask for a truce. Ask me for peace, and then we can talk.”
“Peace?” I raise my fists, both smoldering. Even if I wanted to extinguish my fire, I can’t. “Peace between us is impossible.”
He snorts. “At least on that, we can agree.”
But his request isn’t lost on me.
“Then we’re agreed,” I say.
His eyebrows rise. “An impossible peace. Hmph. It will do.” Then, he asks, “Did you see Thyra just now?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “You first.”
I don’t expect him to answer me, but he immediately says, “I saw her.” His focus again becomes faraway. “I can’t shake it.”
“Where was she when you saw her?”
“If you saw her, you’d already know where she was.”
Fuck. This is going to be difficult.
Not that I’ve made it any easier. “I saw her in the Frost Kingdom.”
Antony’s forehead puckers. “In the Frost Kingdom?”
I take a step closer to him, my fire blazing more brightly. “She had bite marks on her neck. It looked like they were made by a fucking vampyr.”
She was about to hit the rock behind her. Stellen was moving fast, wrapping his hand around the back of her head, but I didn’t see if he caught her in time.
She could be bleeding out right now, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
Antony’s shoulders slump. Then he squares them. “I’m responsible for those bite marks.”
I didn’t expect him to admit it, and now I wait for him to make excuses. He was thirsty. He wasn’t in control.
But he says, “There’s no redemption for me.”
A stunning admission for a king to make.
I blow out an exhale.
Hell, but our entire history is a mess of wrongdoing.
I take a deep breath and stop my pacing. “My father was wrong to do what he did to your family. I accept, at some point, that you and I will need to settle the score between us.”
“Again, agreed.” The tension in Antony’s shoulders remains intense as he returns to the subject of Thyra.
“I saw Thyra in a dark place. Maybe a field in the far east. Not the Frost Kingdom, where I expected her to be. She was asleep. Floating in the air in front of a tree with dark wood and no leaves.” His brow furrows.
“Shadows were cutting through one of the branches—”
“Dark wood?” The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Did you see the knife that killed Thyra’s father? Was it the same kind of wood?”
“See it?” Antony scoffs. “An assassin came after Thyra with a knife just like it. I carried that fucking blade around with me before I learned that—”
He stops. Narrows his eyes at me.
“Learned what?” I ask before I quickly decide I’ll have to give information to get information. “That my fire can’t burn that wood?”
Antony looks at me blankly, and then with a curious light in his eyes. “You can’t burn it?”
“An assassin came after me, too. I turned him to ash, but the knife’s handle remained.” I take a chance to say more, watching Antony’s reactions carefully. “That assassin was part of a group led by a man named Stanimir.”
“Stanimir.” Antony’s snarl is full of rage. “He’s the man feeding Hadrian information. He gave Hadrian an amulet made of that same wood.”
“That would explain why Hadrian’s follower was wearing a wooden amulet,” I say. “I took it off him. He also had a very particular iron burn. Two slashes.” I demonstrate with my fingers across my forearm. “If they mark themselves with an iron burn, why carry an amulet, too?”
I peer at Antony, but he doesn’t voice an opinion. Instead, he asks, “Where are the amulet and the blade’s wooden handle now?”
“Close.” I’m unwilling to say where they’re hidden because that will mean revealing the dragon’s hide they’re wrapped in. “Safe.”
Antony begins pacing again, stalking the rock back and forth, and with every step he takes, I sense our impossible peace starting to slip.
I’m not sure what changed. It could have been the mention of Stanimir, or of Hadrian, or even of the amulets or the wood-handled knives.
“We’re enemies, you and I.” The tips of Antony’s fangs gleam in the smoldering light of my fire. “We will never be anything else. But now I have a decision to make, and I don’t know—” He sucks in a breath. “I don’t fucking know which path will help Thyra and which will hurt her.”
I remain ready. My muscles tense as his agitation visibly rises.
If he chooses to fight me again, I face the reality that my fire alone can’t kill him.
My flames can hurt him. They can burn him and tear his flesh. But he won’t die unless I rip off his head, an achievement that has so far eluded me.
“You’re going after her,” he says. “Aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
His sharp fingernails descend as he continues to move back and forth, each step bringing him closer to me.
“I won’t let you hurt Thyra or bring danger to her,” he says. “But you can’t help it, can you? Your fire is a danger to everyone around you. One touch and you’ll kill her.”
His muscles bunch, and I sense he’s about to launch himself at me.
“Wait.” I force my hands to return to my sides. Force myself to take a step back. A sharp contrast to my nature. I don’t defuse situations. I set them ablaze. “I have a solution for my fire. A way to interact safely with Thyra.”
To an extent.
I don’t want to show Antony the dragon’s hide. It’s a step too far in revealing my hand. But I also can’t risk that he’ll try to stop me. Or shadow me and try to thwart me at every turn.
“Will you take my word on it?” I ask. “That I have a way to stop my fire from hurting her?”
He guffaws. “Fuck, no. Look at you. You’ve lowered your fists, but your fire keeps burning.” He arches his eyebrows. “Actually, your pants are on fire.”
Damn.
One side has caught alight where I lowered my right hand too close to it. Thankfully, the flame was small, so the fire-resistant material is burning slowly, but my pants will be ash within the space of another minute if I don’t put the fire out.
“You can’t even keep yourself clothed.”
“I have spare pants,” I snarl.
“Sure,” Antony replies. “Good luck pulling them on.”
He jabs at a spot behind himself. “I’d hate to kill you with your dick hanging out. There’s a puddle of ice water back there. You can use it before your pants burn through.”
A scowl is now fixed on my face. “No.”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
Fuck it. If I don’t want to suffer the indignity of fighting him buck naked, then ice water is the least of the evils I’m facing.
I stride past him, taking a wide path, and head for the puddle he pointed to. Once past him, I turn and keep him in my sights.
I had already guessed that Stellen had come here. Thyra fled into the bloodlands, and then I saw her in the Frost Kingdom, so it stands to reason Stellen took her at some point between here and there. I’m not surprised to discover the water has remained icy. Laced with powerful frost.
I can’t use my hands to splash water onto my clothing—the liquid will evaporate too quickly—so I drop and roll, soaking the side of my clothing before the flames can burn all the way up to my waistband.
I’m left with one side of my pants gaping at the thigh, but it’s better than my dick swinging in the breeze.
Antony creeps up on me, but I’m not unaware.
I haven’t taken my eyes off him.
“Is this your life?” he asks.
Casting him a glare, I rise into a crouch, silently grateful the flames spreading across my fingertips have also extinguished.
For now. Stellen’s power was strong enough to combat mine on the day we first fought for Thyra.
It seems the ice he leaves behind can also douse my flames, but I’m certain my fire will be back soon enough.
While I prepare a sharp retort, Antony asks, “How old were you when your father sent an Ember assassin to kill me?”
I lean back on my heels, my acerbic response vanishing.
I remember the uproar. The shouting. I didn’t know why everyone was so angry until Kaiba’s mother—my aunt—took me aside and told me what my father had tried to do. It was the one and only time she’d called him what he was: dishonorable.
“I was eight.”
Antony hums in the back of his throat. “Just a child.” The corners of his mouth turn down. “We were both just children.”
“Children at the whims of fate.” I grind my teeth as I rise back to my feet, my fire cold and dead.
Now we’re grown men and still at the whims of fate.
“I have to break this fucking curse,” I say. “I need Thyra to do that.”
“Not if it hurts her.”
Three days ago, I never would have imagined Antony caring about the Oracle’s well-being.
“You need this curse broken as badly as I do.” I shake my head at him. “What changed?”
He doesn’t answer my question, but his eyes darken. A dangerous sign.
“That dark wood can stop Thyra from foreseeing the actions of the person who carries it,” he says. “As long as a piece of that wood is on their person, she can’t foresee any harm they might do to others. Or to her.”
The full impact of what he said sinks in quickly.
That means…
“Thyra won’t see me coming.”
But is that a good thing?
I don’t have time to consider it because Antony gives me a sudden smile, dark and chilling, and I’m reminded that he grew up surrounded by fae who manipulate others for sport.
He’s renowned for weaving lies and maneuvering his enemies toward their deaths.
Ah… Fuck.
I take a quick step back.
He got me talking. He even got me to douse my fire.
Which is suddenly a huge fucking problem.
“Here’s what else I know,” he says, his voice low, his green eyes turning pure black, a visible surge of vampyric power.
“Whatever vision Thyra had just now, she drew us both to her. You might have seen her in the Frost Kingdom, but I saw her in darkness. Somehow, she took me to that tree. She showed me that fucking wood being harvested. And now? Now I have a purpose.”
He advances toward me again. “I’m going to hunt down every fae carrying a piece of that fucking tree, and I’m going to kill them. Starting with you.”