Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
Thyra
My heart hurts.
Every time Stellen spoke Antony’s name, it was like a cut inflicted across my heart until I had to close off my feelings, creating a shield around everything that Antony meant to me, just like the shield that kept me from falling apart after my father’s death.
I will carry these defenses around my sadness for as long as I have to. Until the day comes when I can fully grieve.
If that day comes.
Until then, I will prevail. I have to. I can’t crumple and fade and give up.
Stellen’s long, white hair slips across his face, concealing his eyes while his frost power casts ice across his fork and down onto the last uneaten food on his plate, the soft crackling sound filling the air.
Putting down his fork, he rises to his feet, his shoulders deeply hunched and voice beyond quiet. “I’ll teach you how to control your armor now.” He adds, “If you still wish to be taught.”
I push myself away from the wall, determined to move, to do everything I need to survive.
At the same time, anticipation and fear thrum through me. The tension between Stellen and me is undeniable and I’m not sure how far my defenses will take me today.
“Come this way,” he says, stepping toward the hallway, pausing only to stoop to the baskets.
He becomes matter-of-fact, his manner distant, when he continues.
“These clothes are for you.” Briefly rifling through the contents, he points out multiple garments.
“The undergarments are warm. If you succeed in removing your armor, you should wear these next to your skin. No matter what, when you go outside, always wear your boots and make sure you have your cloak.”
He straightens, and I follow him along the hallway, his light footfalls mere whispers against the floor.
The doors are staggered, the first one situated on my right followed by the next door on my left.
Through the first opening, I make out an empty room with gray walls and not a single piece of furniture. I wonder if all of the rooms will be empty until the open door on the left reveals a bedroom.
Pastel-pink walls are painted with white clouds above a field of yellow flowers. Not roses this time. These are blooms of a kind I’ve never seen before with long petals and tall stems. Pretty furniture is scattered around a bed only large enough for a single fae.
“Whose rooms were these?”
Stellen’s back is to me, the tension in his shoulders increasing.
“The pink one was my sister’s. This next one was mine.”
He gestures to the room on the right, which contains a much larger bed than the pink room but no other furniture, its walls gray like the first room.
“This was our mother’s.” He points to the final room on the left, another bedroom filled with beautiful furniture.
The bed is large, its wooden legs carved with flowers, while a chair sits in the far corner, and a table rests beside the bed. The walls are the palest purple with white trims.
Opposite this bedroom, once again staggered on my right is a bathing room containing a large clawfoot bath in the center of the stone floor, a sink on the far side, and another door that must lead into a toilet room.
The bathing room, like the lavender bedroom, contains a thin column of the kind Stellen called a thermal conductor.
None of the rooms have windows. Only a clear panel in the ceiling.
We’ve reached a dead end. Or so it appears.
“Through here,” Stellen says, pushing on the wall in front of him.
A click sounds.
His hand depresses against the wall before he says, “This door will open to anyone who knows where to press.”
I take note of the spot before he lifts his hand and the door swings outward.
Another stone garden stretches out in front of me, large enough that it’s the size of the bedrooms and bathroom combined. The space is completely enclosed with multiple clear panels in the ceiling, allowing more light to flow around us.
The air is warm, but not overly so, and I spot multiple thin columns at the edge of the space.
Everything here is carved from stone. From the rosebushes positioned at elegant intervals to the trailing vines meandering across the walls. Unlike the front garden, none of the flowers in this garden appear broken or chipped.
And none of them are white.
All are icy-blue like the walls in the main room.
Stellen leads me to a stone bench positioned several paces from the sculpture of a small tree, its branches decorated in vines sprouting more stone blooms.
“With a few exceptions, flowers can’t grow in Frost,” Stellen says. “This garden was my father’s wedding gift to my mother.”
“A lovely gift,” I murmur, my fingertips passing lightly over the nearest carving as I pass by.
“She thought so too.” Stellen gives me a hard stare. “Or so she told me when I was old enough to understand the difference between love and control. He showered her with expensive trinkets, beautiful gowns, and the promise of a home. Promises of safety, too. None of which he kept.”
Stellen gestures to the seat.
As I sink onto it, I ask, “Is that why you’re always warning me of danger?”
Stellen’s eyes meet mine, a gaze of pure intent. “I will never promise you safety that I can’t guarantee. I won’t paint over malice, manipulate the truth, or tell you you’re imagining the pain you see around you with your own eyes. If that makes me cruel, then so be it.”
“Not cruel,” I say. “Honest.”
Brutally so.
He kneels in front of me, resting down on the stone floor, which can’t be comfortable.
I’m not sure what to expect when he removes his weapon harnesses and pulls his tunic up and over his head, fully baring his chest for the first time.
His muscles are lean, his figure lithe, but if anything, his chest looks broader and his shoulders wider now that he’s unclothed from the waist up.
He tucks his hair behind his pointed ears before he raises his hands toward me, turning them over, palms up. “Come closer,” he says. “Give me your hands.”
I slide forward on the bench, my knees brushing his chest.
“Closer.”
I can’t read a thing from his expression, not even from the curve of his lips as he nudges my knees to either side of his waist.
He gives me enough space that I could choose to slip both of my legs to one side so I won’t end up straddling him, but it will force me to twist awkwardly.
I opt for comfort, sliding my legs the rest of the way past his waist, my thighs pressing to his hips while the dress bunches between us.
Finally, I place my hands in his.
“Keep one hand here on my neck,” he says, drawing my fingertips to the side of his throat beneath his jaw. “And your other hand here on my heart.”
He pulls my right hand to his chest before he continues. “Focus on my speech. Focus on my heartbeat, even if you can’t hear it. Sound is vibration. Can you feel it?”
I give him a nod. The sensation of his vocal cords thrumming through my fingertips is strong. The beat of his heart is harder to detect until I realize that I can also feel his pulse at his throat.
“Sense how the beats synchronize,” he says. “One after the other. Sustaining life with the quietest sounds.”
He presses my palm firmly to his chest. “All sounds find their purpose in mind and heart. You may not have the power of Voice that Lethians have, but your voice carries energy, Thyra.”
“Do you mean when I speak during an Oracle vision?”
The immense impact of my cries during the confrontation with the shapeshifters didn’t escape me. I’d knocked Stellen off-course and caused Brunkil to bash his fists against his ears as if he’d wanted to beat his eardrums to a pulp.
“Not only when you’re having a vision. Anytime you create sound, you’re performing an act of creation that can harm or protect or entertain or merely pass the time. In all sound, you create power.”
As he speaks, his words continue to vibrate against my fingertips while my palm cools against his cold chest, two distinct sensations. One surprisingly warm and the other chilling.
“The challenge is for you to find the act of creation that speaks to this Lethian garment.” He leans closer, his ethereal features dominating my view. “What moves the threads? Is it joy? Sadness? Peace?” He pauses. “Lust?”
My heart jumps.
Other than enabling me to take care of my bodily needs, the Lethian threads only changed their form when Antony touched me. Kissed me. Stroked me. Ran a finger across my skin…
“Lust,” Stellen whispers.
I have no doubt the quick catch in my breathing and the thunderous beat of my heart gave away my thoughts.
Stellen studies my lips as he says, “Do you know the story of how this dress was sung for the last Lethian Queen, Thyra?”
I recall how Cassia spoke about the dress with a hushed voice.
“Love and beauty were sung into its threads,” I say. “It was created using a song of strength.”
She told me the dress had last been worn by Antony’s mother, Aeliana Vividari, who’d embodied the love and strength of these threads.
For a brief moment, I have to ask myself if Aeliana ever bonded with the dress or used it as anything other than a garment.
If she ever did, it must have been out of sight of Antony and Cassia because they were shocked when the dress assimilated with my body and changed its form.
The slow smile tugging at Stellen’s lips draws my attention back to him.
“Love and beauty, sure,” he says. “But lust is another power altogether.”
He reaches across the distance between us, leaving my hands where they press.
Placing his fingertips at the side of my throat and his palm to my heart, he mirrors my contact with his body.
“This dress was sung by the queen’s betrothed,” Stellen says, his touch nearly tugging me closer to him.
“He was a Lethian man from a poor family. When they married, he became her husband but didn’t become king.
Lethians only have queens because our women’s voices are…
were…always stronger. But before they married, he sang this dress as a wedding gift. ”