Chapter 62 Antony
Chapter Sixty-Two
Antony
Standing this close to Thyra is killing me.
For seven nights, I’ve been pulled into her blade visions, my heart torn open over and over again as I watched her float, five paces away from me, sleeping in a field of dust.
It was the same blade vision I saw during my fight with Maxim.
Each night, the wound in my heart has broken open a little more, the injury concealed beneath my armor.
Now she’s standing right in front of me, dressed in warrior’s clothing, a yellow ribbon braided into her hair, her pale-blue eyes furious, and she’s fucking commanding me not to leave her.
She steps toward me, the corners of her mouth turning down, a snarl on her lips. “You will not—” She drags in an angry, trembling breath. “You will not leave me again. Do you understand?”
Fuck me.
If she told me to fall at her feet, I would.
Only the thought of Azul tearing me to pieces keeps me from closing the gap between her and me. If I stay, the monstrous blue eagle will hunt me down and end me.
“I’m a danger to you, Thyra,” I say, extending the fangs I had quickly retracted. “That hasn’t changed.”
“You’re a monster,” she says with a firm nod, but her eyes don’t leave mine. “It turns out I’m not afraid of monsters.”
I can’t keep away from her a second longer.
I plow toward her, ready to sweep her back into my arms. Kiss her. Drink in her scent. Demand her permission to peel off this black suit and—
I’m two paces away from her when her legs buckle and her eyes fly wide.
A blast of golden energy rushes across her right arm and torso. Yellow light fills the air between us. No mere stream along her arm.
Fucking blade vision.
It will steal what little time I could have had with her.
“No.” Her cry rakes across me as I catch her, scooping her into my arms so she doesn’t hit the ground.
Her body is heavy and her eyes are closing, even though she’s clearly fighting to stay awake.
“Promise me,” she gasps, still furious at me. “Promise me you’ll be here when I—”
Her eyes go blank, her eyelids close, and her head tips back in my arms.
I cushion her against my chest. I’ve landed in a kneeling position and now I nestle her on my lap and bring her head to my shoulder.
I’ll only have seconds before the blade vision will drag my mind from my body too.
I prepare myself for the agony of watching her float above dusty ground again. The pain of wrenching on the thread binding her heart to mine while never getting any closer to her.
I brace.
But…
My mind doesn’t leave me.
Thyra’s appearance transforms, her hair darkening to inky black, her lips blushing crimson red, all the signs of a blade vision.
Yet I’m still lucid.
My mind is still my own.
Why is it different this time?
Is it because I’m with her?
The softest snap of a breaking twig alerts me to the enemy creeping up on my left.
Stellen’s gray clothing is covered in black soot. His white-bladed swords are drawn but not yet glittering with ice. His ghostly features are dusted with snow that has turned crimson colored, either with blood or the highly flammable thistleberry oil in Hadrian’s weapons, I’m not sure which.
Only minutes ago, I watched the Frost King charge into the black fumes, conjuring a fucking snowstorm to extinguish the fire and disperse the smoke that was choking both his warriors and mine.
Because they were my warriors. All loyal to me and therefore expendable to Hadrian.
Only his followers are given protective masks.
I’d only just arrived. I was already drawn near the border by my brother’s warning of danger to Thyra, but it was easy to identify this location by the smoke that was visible for miles.
Even with all my physical strength, I couldn’t have done anything to stifle the flames. Only try to get my people out as quickly as possible.
I’d be impressed with Stellen’s skill, maybe even grateful, if I weren’t so fucking opposed to the fact that he’s still breathing.
Stellen breaks the fraught silence between us as he continues his slow pace toward me. “I don’t know how you survived our fight in the bloodlands, but if you’ve hurt Thyra, I will make you suffer.”
I don’t take his warning lightly. He got the better of me once. Although in fairness, I was out of my mind at the time.
“I was going to say the same to you.” I side-eye him as I continue to cradle Thyra to my chest. If her countenance changes for him as it changes for me, then he should have already deduced she’s in the throes of a vision.
To be sure, I snap, “Blade vision.”
“I saw the blade’s energy,” he says, beginning a prowl to my left, keeping his distance, swords remaining drawn. “I also saw you snatch her from a fall that could have broken her legs.”
Is he trying to thank me without thanking me?
I use my powerful eyesight to take in all the small details he might be hoping to hide beneath the soot and oil. The strain around his eyes. The intense worry in the twist of his lips. The shadows that cloud his expression with every glance he directs at Thyra.
Fuck me. It seems the heartless Frost King isn’t so heartless, after all.
I allow myself to exhale, a heavy sound. “She’s turned your world upside-down, hasn’t she?”
He stops pacing but answers me only with a narrowing of his eerie eyes.
I try again. “Has she challenged your status quo? Pulled you beyond the boundaries of your well-trodden paths? Fractured your limits?”
I’m certain he flinches at the last.
He keeps his swords raised. “She suggested you and I could have made a mutually beneficial deal.”
My eyebrows arch. “How so?”
“My people are hungry while the Iron Kingdom has plenty of grain. You had a power struggle with your stepmother while I could have offered you a solution.”
Silently, I chew over his meaning. “Thyra thought I’d give you grain if you could control Galla Vividari? I don’t see how you could have done that.”
A snarl builds in the back of his throat, and I sense the sound he’s about to make burn the air before he even speaks.
“Stop breathing.”
The air chokes in my throat, the constriction impassable.
Fuck, fuck—“Fuck!” I throw off the constraint. Clearly faster than he thought I would, given the slight widening of his eyes. Damn, I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds there.
My throat is raw and my voice is now a rasp. “That won’t work on me again.”
“If you say so.”
I reconsider the tension around his eyes and his white-knuckled grip on his weapons.
My words are more cautious now. “You’re different than the last time we met. Angrier.”
More volatile, and it’s giving me pause.
He replies, “A dangerous truth for a liar to speak.”
I incline my head, ready to speak another dangerous truth, except this one might provoke Stellen into action. I’m just not sure what kind of action. “It’s killing you to see Thyra in my arms. Just as it will kill me to leave her without saying goodbye.”
His reaction is not what I expect. “She told you to stay,” he snaps. “So you should fucking stay.”
My eyes widen, but he isn’t done.
“It broke her when she thought you were dead. If you leave, it will break her again.” The corners of his mouth turn down and ice burns across his swords. Fucking angry. “Is that what you want? To crush her?”
His weapons rise and it only now dawns on me…
A soul-crushing possibility that, instead of trying to end me, he might try to force me to stay.
My chest hurts.
I hunch over her. She’s too heavy in my arms. Too fast asleep for me to wake her.
She’s so fucking beautiful right now, but this perfect face she wears isn’t the one I fell in love with. I love her heart and her soul and her small smiles and her kindness in the face of my brutality.
But staying…
Already, my vampyric impulses are nudging at my consciousness. Already, I’m becoming aware of the steady beat of her heart and the flow of blood pulsing at her neck and the ugly fact that I’ll need to feed soon.
Fighting myself, I say, “I am not the one to love her.”
Stellen stiffens, but I keep my gaze on Thyra, drinking her in as I ask, quietly, “Frost King, what do you see when you look at her right now?”
“I see a Frost Fae,” he says, his blades lowering. “Her appearance is flawless. But untrue. Thyra is far more complex than that.”
I bow my head over her, drawing the aching perfume of white roses into my chest while I can. “I see an Iron Fae. The way I imagined, before I met her, that she would be. But this perfection, I want it to fade. I want her back. I want my hope back.”
I drag my focus away from her, my voice hardening. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’ve placed the burden of my hope on her shoulders, and what have I given her in return but pain?”
I expected Stellen to be as frozen as ice, but his weapons have fully lowered.
“She is all things to all people,” he says and as he speaks, the air hums with a dangerous note.
I nod, my fingers tangling in her hair, my cheek pressing to hers. “We have power over her fate. The least we can do is ask ourselves: will she ever be what she wants? Or will she forever bend to what we need?”