Chapter 3 #2
She was slow to leave, inching back only a step or two, and I could sense she wanted to talk about the little wolf.
I was not in the mood.
Knowing she would broach the subject again if I remained in the war room, I focused and teleported to my quarters. Not running away from her. I had simply realised I should bathe to rid myself of blood and viscera and dress in something more suitable for the castle before meeting with Rhyn.
I strode across my room, the clunk of my metal boots loud on the marble floor as I crossed it to the bathroom, shedding pieces of my armour along the way, leaving a trail between the foot of my bed and the back of the gold-framed black couch.
When I reached the large bathing room, I stripped off my leathers and kicked them aside while weaving a little magic, using all I could spare of my remaining reserves to fill the gold clawfoot tub with steaming water.
Even that small spell left me drained and in danger of sinking to my knees.
I stilled as I looked at the bathtub.
As I remembered Saphira standing there, ready to bathe me as punishment for being amused by my appearance after I had come in from the storm.
As I remembered how the mating heat had hit her again and I had whisked her away, had taken care of her needs, had relished how she had responded to me as no other had before, and as I knew no one would ever again.
She was the only one for me.
It hit me as I stared at the bath, as I swore I could still scent her in the room, and I replayed how right that moment we had shared in the cave had felt.
I had wanted to keep her, and instead I had sent her away, setting her free, and I only had a fierce, snarled declaration that she would come back to me to keep the darkness at bay.
I waved my hand, shutting off the water as that fractured thing inside my chest grew heavier and my lungs grew tight.
She would return to me.
She had to.
But if she did not, I would tear through the veil between my world and hers to take her back.
I would not let either wolf have her.
“Saphira is mine,” I whispered to myself, able to admit it here, when I was alone, when my walls came crumbling down again and I thought of all that might have been.
No.
Of all that would be.
Nothing would stop me from claiming what was mine.
And Saphira was mine.
Not by coin, or by contract, but by heart and soul and blood.
I forced myself to bathe quickly, scrubbing the blood from my skin, and then dried and dressed in my lighter black leather armour.
I tied the top half of my hair back, leaving the braids dangling behind my pointed ears, and strode barefoot to my armoury, trying to turn my mind to the Forgotten Wastes and the war brewing there.
But everywhere I looked, I saw ghosts of her.
The armour she had once stripped from me. The sword that was a twin to the dagger I had made her. The ring that burned on my finger, making me constantly aware of it. I stroked the band with my thumb, unsure I could banish her from my mind and my heart even if I tried with all my considerable will.
By the Great Mother, she had been a fierce little thing when she had stood up to me in the great hall.
My fingers swept over my lips—lips she had branded with a kiss that had conveyed her anger, her hurt, and a glimmer of her feelings.
Making it impossible to forget her.
She had branded me as surely as I had branded her, that kiss a promise just like the mark I had placed on her, one I willed her to fulfil, because no matter how many times I told myself—lied to myself—that I did not need her, I did.
I needed her and felt something for her, and no matter the distance between us, that feeling would not bend or break or yield. It would only grow in her absence, devouring me, until I could not survive without her.
And some selfish, vicious part of me hoped she suffered as I did, tormented by that kiss and her growing feelings for me.
And that it would drive her back to me.
I shoved my feet into my boots, quickly penned a message documenting everything I had seen in the Wastes, folded the parchment and sealed it with wax. I teleported from my room that suddenly felt too small, too confining, and landed in the courtyard, and flagged down the first servant I spotted.
The male was quick to come to me.
“Deliver this to the high king immediately.” I handed him the letter and he nodded and hurried away with it.
That matter of business taken care of, I meant to head to the green to see if Rhyn had arrived, but found myself striding down the damp stone steps to the dungeon, shadows hanging from my shoulders like a cloak that swirled around my ankles as I reached the bottom and stopped before the cell directly opposite the entrance.
The cell I had placed the little wolf in when I had brought her to Falkyr.
I could still see her there, that defiance shining in her beautiful blue eyes as she stared up at me, as she wielded words like weapons, concealing her fear.
“Have you had any more visions of An’sidwain?” I let those words drift into the darkness to my left—an unusual darkness. Normally the occupant of that larger cell had several candles blazing all day and night, warming the space and allowing her to read to her heart’s content.
“I have heard a rumour that your heart has left these lands,” Neve said bitingly, her demeanour cold and amber eyes blazing like fire as she emerged from the shadows of her home, coming to stand near the bars that separated us. “You fool. Saphira has not served her purpose yet.”
“She has,” I countered without looking at the dragon shifter, my gaze fixed on that simple hay sack that had been Saphira’s bed for her first days in the Shadow Court. “I will not risk her in this war.”
Neve huffed, apparently displeased with my answer, but I had no other to give her.
“You need to rest,” she muttered, her tone scathing but not hiding that hint of concern I could hear in it as I struggled to drag my gaze from the empty cell before me.
“I am fine. I will rest when the seelie have learned their lesson, or are all dead.”
“Or when you are dead,” she countered brightly.
“I have no intention of dying to a seelie. They are too weak and pathetic to kill me,” I bit out, fangs growing sharp at the thought my seer and old friend believed them capable of killing me. I had thought she knew me better than that.
Her gaze drilled into my side, the precise point where my leather armour concealed the wound one of the Evening Star Court fiends had dealt me.
“A momentary lapse in concentration,” I assured her. “It will not happen again.”
“Because you lost your heart? Or because that heart is now a dark and shrivelled thing in your chest, wrapped in shadows and thorns. Just the way you like it.” She huffed as I slid her a black look, unrepentant as she idly picked at fluff on her very plain dress, as if I was no threat to her.
“I assure you, I am still in possession of my heart.”
She shrugged. “Shrivelled thing that it is. Like a tiny black walnut rattling around in your chest cavity.”
I began to roll my eyes and caught myself. What terrible influence my little wolf had on me, making me resort to such behaviour when teased rather than torturing whoever had dared to speak to me with such disrespect.
I was about to give Neve a sharp reminder of our positions within the Shadow Court when I noticed the new addition to her hoard, tucked behind a pile of knick-knacks, almost shoved out of sight.
A wooden lacquered box with a golden clasp, just big enough to house the ruby stone I had retrieved for her in the Forgotten Wastes, at great cost to myself.
I had lost something because of this stone.
Something more dear to me than I wanted to admit.
And now Neve had shut it away, pushed it behind other more eye-catching items, as if she wanted to forget it existed.
But I could not.
She kept her gaze fixed on me as I gripped one of the bars between us and continued to look at the box.
“What is An’sidwain?” I lowered my gaze to her and her shoulders stiffened beneath the velvet material of her burgundy dress. “What is that stone that beats like a heart?”
I could not feel the pulsing power of it on this side of the wards that shielded Neve, hiding her from the one who hunted her, and now hiding the stone too.
“Does it have something to do with him?” I narrowed my gaze on her and her eyes flashed like fire as her lips thinned in anger even as she shrank back in fear.
“No.” She spat that word and then her face twisted as my eyes narrowed further, and she tugged at a thread on her dress as she whispered, “Yes. But do not ask me to speak of it.”
I would have granted that request once, when I had been in possession of a sliver of a heart, but now I had none and this stone—this heart—An’sidwain was responsible for it, so I would know what I had gained in return for such a sacrifice.
“What is An’sidwain, Neve? I will not ask again. I will know its purpose. Why is it the key to my revenge?” I moved to the door of her cell. “Reveal it to me with a vision, or I will open the door to this cell and remove it from your care to study it.”
She gasped and stepped back, her wide eyes flying to the lacquered wooden box and then to me, the shock in them morphing to anger as she tugged her sleeves up her forearms.
“Fine,” she snapped, eyes glowing with amber fire. “If you want a vision, I will have one.”
She closed her eyes and sank to the stone floor, kneeling before me and resting her hands on her lap with her palms turned upwards.
She drew down a slow, deep breath and then expelled it, the picture of calm and peace.
But then her lips flattened and her fair eyebrows pinched, and the tips of her fingers twitched, claws emerging as her jaw flexed and tensed.
Her shoulders stiffened and she stifled a cry, sinking small fangs into her lower lip to draw blood as her expression twisted, as her hands began to shake and she had to grip her knees to keep them steady.
The softer part of me roared at me to tell her to stop, but I kept silent, even as she grunted in pain and curled forwards, bending over her knees and breathing hard, her golden hair spilling across the damp flagstones.
And then she went still.
Silent.
The only movement and sound her breaths that stirred her hair.
“Well?” I leaned towards the bars, eager to hear what she had seen.
She lifted dull eyes to meet mine, her skin sallow around them, her lips drawn and pale.
I was a bastard, just as my sister had said. As heartless as this dragon shifter had called me.
I had to force myself to look at Neve, to see the pain I had inflicted upon her by making her force a vision that would leave her weak for days, all because I was letting my dark mood—my own pain—get the better of me.
“The key to your revenge is where it always was.” Her tone was grave as her amber eyes slowly cleared. “In Saphira. Letting her go has not changed that. She is still the key to your future happiness. Without her you will fail.”
I was beginning to suspect that Neve meant happiness and future in ways far different to how I had originally interpreted them.
She slowly shook her head and sighed. “You may have found the stone, my king, but you have lost the an’sidwain you need.”
She was speaking of my heart now, using the ancient fae word for it.
Was every female in my small inner circle determined to torment me by constantly bringing up Saphira? Was I to find no relief from the pain of what had happened?
“Send word if you have a more useful vision.” I pivoted away from her.
And stilled as onyx spilled across the flagstones near the bottom of the steps that led up to the courtyard, spreading outwards to form a circle.
Malachi rose out of it, his enormous black leathery wings tucked against his bare back and his gold-tipped obsidian horns curled around themselves, flaring forwards into deadly points that would have alerted me to his anger if it had not been painted across his face and shining in the deep purple-red that ringed his pupils.
The demon’s gaze sought me.
And he growled.
“I have spotted more seelie in the Forgotten Wastes.”
I stepped towards him, Saphira and Neve, and even my own exhaustion forgotten as I focused on my spymaster.
“Another scouting party?” I prepared to teleport back to my rooms for my armour and sword, ready to head to the Wastes alone to fight them, using the battle as an outlet for this growing darkness within me. “How many are they?”
Malachi’s next words put an end to that reckless idea.
“An army one thousand strong, and they are marching this way.”