Chapter 37
Emmerick
After leaving Elsedora’s bedchamber, I paced the parlor.
A vision of silk clinging to her body was burned into my memory. The way she’d looked up at me expectantly, it’d nearly broken my resolve. Her wet hair between my fingers had felt so sensually charged.
What had I been thinking touching her like that?
I hadn’t been.
The rush of believing she had been in danger, paired with her wanting my help—it had stoked my ego. I’d protected Sybilla for years, loved her for years, pined after her for years.
I needed to learn my lesson before another woman broke me.
Elsedora wouldn’t be happy settling with me, or any other for that matter. And it would only make me feel lonelier in the end, when she inevitably bored of me. She’d said it herself to Lark—we could preserve this.
She had left a bundle of blankets and pillows on the sofa.
The room had a roaring fireplace and a well-stocked brass bar cart.
Instead of marching up the stairs and giving in, I poured myself a finger of amber liquor and sat.
Lust was natural—especially after twenty years deprived of touch. I could fight it.
Lying on the sofa, I polished off the liquor and set the glass on the floor beside me. My eyes refused to close, and my leg bounced uncontrollably.
Sources, the way she’d pressed her breasts together.
Her nipples, hard against the fabric, had drawn my eyes down every curve of her thinly veiled body.
She’d known exactly what she was doing—and I’d loved every moment.
My hand trailed to the waistband of my breeches, fingers edging inside.
I grasped my hard length, thinking about walking back up the stairs and pinning her beneath me, sinking into her and feeling her tighten around me.
Fuck.
I shouldn’t think about her like this.
Yanking my hand out of my pants, I heaved out a sigh. Crossing that boundary in my imagination didn’t change the fact that she would never settle with me.
The idea of sleep filled me with dread.
I lay there staring at the thick oak planks on the ceiling and counted the notches in the wood until the birds sang a morning song.
Then I found a bathing chamber on the lower level and cleaned myself up.
I dressed in a freshly pressed black tunic and dark breeches before scouring the study for some parchment and a quill.
I left Elsedora a note.
“Off to face the day and see our friends in Luz. I’ll be back for dinner.”
I bit my lip, adding,
“You’ll be on my mind until I return.”
I promptly scribbled out the added line. Though true, I opted instead to sign my initials, and I dropped the note on the parlor sofa.
Lark bent and lit a candle beside the statue of a familiar Moon warlock in the entryway of the Luz Palace.
An ethereal statue of a woman that reached for a crescent moon stood beside him. They’d memorialized Princess Freya and Prince Rynall Toth here. Elsedora had never mentioned that in our countless discussions; it pained me to realize how many things she may not have told me.
Suddenly, her permanence at Lamoreaux made more sense. I would put a good amount of coin on her hating to see that statue every time she entered the palace.
Yet she’d done it for years to visit me. Those plum trees protected more than the house—they protected her heart.
The Toths had been figures of legend in the Central Corridor, where Phynx once stood. But their city lay in ruins; the Great Wars had left it nothing more than a pile of rubble.
I’d learned through El that Freya had been Krait’s first wife. Syb’s husband had a monument of his former lover in their home—a testament to Sybilla’s growth.
I huffed a silent laugh. I found it difficult to imagine the young woman I’d known having enough empathy to let her lover so openly honor his late wife.
I’d once loved Sybilla Wymark. Hardened by necessity as a girl, she had not always made it easy. Her words often came out as lashes to dissuade anyone from drawing too close.
Lark spotted me lingering in the entryway. Her hair was neatly pulled back into a bundle of dark curls at the nape, and her green eyes sparkled with kind curiosity. Though she looked like her mother, all of her mannerisms were less sharpened, less cutting.
More El.
She’d spent a great deal of time with her aunt.
“King Mattock,” she greeted and rose to approach me. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”
“Princess,” I returned.
“Using the main entryway today?” she teased.
I stifled a smile and nodded.
She looked over her shoulder. “I am going to need to apologize in advance...”
“For what exact—”
From the top of the stairway, Sybilla called, “Emmerick, is that you?” Her voice carried ghosts of a past life.
“For that,” Lark explained with a wince. “I had to tell them—they would have killed me otherwise. But I waited until this morning to give you some time.”
In a thick wool dress, Sybilla descended the steps quickly. Behind her, Krait trailed, much less eagerly.
Before I could reply or even get a good look at her, my oldest friend threw her arms around me and squeezed the breath from my lungs.
“You’re awake!” Sybilla squealed into my chest.
Krait reached the bottom step, and when my gaze met his over his wife’s head, his jaw tightened, but there was a hint of softness in his eyes as he stiffly said, “Welcome back, King Mattock.”
It took Sybilla all of five minutes to shoo her new family away.
I supposed they were only new to me.
Krait had given her a lethal glare before leaving us to speak in private. Apparently, I was not to be let off the hook for kissing his wife, even in the absence of my free will.
Sunlight leaked in from the row of windows across from her desk.
Only now could I fully take in how she’d changed.
Silver strung into her curls, and the lines around her eyes were deeper—she was still as breathtaking as I remembered.
Once, I’d desired to hold her anytime we were alone. To my relief, I felt no such urge.
She sat down behind the desk. After shuffling through two drawers, she pulled out a long parchment; it looked like a contract.
Leave it to Sybilla to get straight to business.
“I need your signature here, and here,” she said.
I’d signed over my rule of the North Corridor to Sybilla and Krait before the curse was cast; the exchange of power was always meant to be temporary.
“This relinquishes my and Krait’s reign of the North Corridor back to you. We will need to coordinate an announcement and recrown you. Krait and I already signed it with a witness.”
Elsedora Lamoreaux.
The document was dated five years ago. Her looping signature was right there beside Sybilla’s and Krait’s. Along with signing her name, she’d drawn a tiny picture of the sun.
My lips turned up at the sides to imagine her scribbling the illustration.
“Syb, can we slow down? Take a moment to catch up?” I asked.
Still standing, I placed my palms on the desk, which put her in my shadow. She hadn’t even given me a chance to sit. When Sybilla gazed up at me, she shook her head. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“Why talk now? We could have for years...”
Well, fuck.
When I’d swore Elsedora to secrecy about that damned mirror, I hadn’t meant to hurt my loved ones. I thought they would be better off not living in the past.
This future Sybilla built—she deserved it all. Would it have been harder for her to move forward had she conversed with me?
Heaving a sigh, I sat in the deep leather chair opposite her. “I can explain that.”
“Sign first, explain later. You will not waver in your commitments this time. The North Corridor fares well, but the people there need a source of hope to bring them together. I let you be fickle about this once before, and look where that led.”
I tilted my head and leaned my forearms on the table. “That is unfair—we both know I was unfit then, and I can’t guarantee I’m any more fit now—even with Caym out of my head. And you don’t seem to be in such a terrible place, Sybilla.”
Nothing had changed. I still didn’t want to lead anyone—but protecting the land where an enchanted plum orchard sat, where a young El had grown up? That felt important enough to try. My reign would be far from perfect, but I could learn to be the King they needed.
“I wasn’t talking about just me,” she snapped back. “You left so many people in the dark. It was selfish.”
Sybilla would sooner lash out at me than admit she’d missed me—it was her way. Her piercing green eyes met mine.
I nodded, teeth grinding from the venom in her words.
When Elsedora first found the mirror, my anger with Sybilla for withholding the truth about my lineage all those years had clouded my judgment.
By the time the anger had faded, it’d felt too late and unforgivable to tell her about the mirror.
But she was right—there were others I’d opted not to face too.
“You all have every right to be upset with me,” I said. “I felt too broken to be of help to anyone, too angry to be a friend, too hopeless to think of anything but surviving the curse. I will do as I must to make it right.”
Her lower lip quivered—the only sign that she was softening to my explanation. “You didn’t want to speak to any of us? Not even Asterie or Fen? Amara? For all those years?”
Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I cleared my throat.
Sources, the realization crushed me—I’d missed so many moments.
“Of course I did, Syb. But I knew Asterie and Fen would never keep that mirror a secret from you—at least Asterie wouldn’t. I thought it would be easier for you all to move forward without me. And Amara...”
I paused with a sigh. My birth mother brought forth more complicated feelings. I didn’t want to see her for the tragic woman who lost everything, not when she’d given me up by choice, not when it was easier to let resentment build instead of forgiveness.