Chapter 39
SAPHIRA
Oberon slowly straightened, drawing me upright with him as stilted shadows snapped around us, some as sharp as blades and others as soft as feathers.
My gaze leaped to Kaeleron where he stood in the doorway, the light spilling out of the ballroom at his back not enough to drive back the inky dark that spilled from and clung to him as he stared his friend down.
“No fangs?” Oberon drawled. “I am disappointed.”
Kaeleron lunged for him, his claws out.
Oberon held his gaze as he lifted my hand and brushed his lips across the back of it, and whispered against it, “A pleasure to be your first, milady.”
He disappeared as Kaeleron’s inch-long black talons tore through the air where his throat would have been, avoiding that beheading he had spoken of, and the Shadow King turned on me with a vicious snarl.
My spine went rigid, every muscle in my body tensing as I braced myself, as I stared him down, refusing to be cowed by him, to quake in fear when Oberon had only been keeping me company, lifting my spirits.
Spirits Kaeleron had crushed.
I turned my back on him as casually as I could manage and snarled, “Go to hell. Don’t you have a princess to court?”
He seized my arm, his claws still out, and tried to turn me to face him. I wrenched out of his grip, my mistake only dawning on me as his talons raked over my bare skin, ripping a hiss from my lips and leaving thin, dark streaks on my arm.
His feral gaze locked on to what he had done as I covered the wounds with my hand, stemming what little blood flowed from the shallow marks.
Slowly, his expression shifted, as if each inhale and exhale purged whatever he was feeling piece by piece, until it was as cold and unreadable as when I had first met him.
The mask firmly back in place.
“Go,” I bit out, unable to don my own mask so easily while emotions rioted within me and all the anger and hurt that Oberon—and the calming touch of moonlight—had chased from me boiled back to the surface.
“Go flirt and smile at the high king’s daughter.
You have to stay in his good graces, don’t you?
What would he say if he caught his favourite out here with me?
Maybe you should just go bed her tonight and seal the deal. ”
I spat those last words at him with all the venom and pain in my heart.
Kaeleron went still.
Terribly still.
His usually sharp silver gaze becoming unfocused.
Regret rose and swirled among the anger and hurt as I stared at him, as he looked right through me, as if he was trapped in some memory far away from me.
Ashy black slowly stained his fingertips, blending with his claws, and those ancient markings appeared on his skin, tracking down his fingers to his palm as his skin turned as pale as moonlight.
His lips darkened towards black, the skin around his eyes becoming shadowed as crimson bled into the silver of his irises.
His power magnified around me, a tangible thing that condensed in the stones against my chest, making them feel heavier and heavier, as if the Cerulean Star was feeding off his magic.
Off him.
I had the horrible feeling I had pushed him somewhere dark with my hurled, rash words. That I hadn’t wounded him with them but rather reopened an old wound. A festering wound.
The ground beneath my feet trembled, the vibrations steadily building until my bones quaked with them, and the shadows around me grew twisted and as black as night, rising to blot out the stars.
“Kael?” I reached a shaky hand out towards him, swallowed and mustered the courage to touch his arm.
The moment my palm made contact with the fabric of his tunic jacket, his crimson eyes snapped down to it, the dullness in them falling away under the honed edge they gained.
And then he wrenched away from me, shifting back a step, and expelled a hard breath.
His heart thundered in my sensitive ears, faster than I had ever heard it, and an acrid bitter scent coated his familiar smell of a storm. Rage, but not fresh anger. An old rage. A wound that had failed to heal and tormented him even now.
A pain I had pulled up to the surface.
He stalked past me, heading for the view of the city, too silent for my liking.
It struck me that I wanted him to shout at me. I wanted him to react to what I had said. I wanted him to be angry and lash out at me.
Because I wanted to shout at him, to scream at him that I couldn’t stand being here.
That I couldn’t stand seeing him with that beautiful female.
That I had danced with Oberon because I had wanted him to know how it felt to be rejected and overlooked.
I wanted him to know how hopeless I felt.
How hurt I was.
How afraid I was that I had fallen in love with him and there was no happily ever after on the cards for us, that I was nothing more than a temporary sort of entertainment to him, something to amuse himself with before he married someone else.
Someone more worthy of him.
I curled my fingers into fists as unwanted tears burned my eyes, as I failed to banish those dark thoughts and all those doubts from my mind, not strong enough to vanquish them.
I wasn’t going to cry.
I was going to get mad. I was going to get even.
I was going to be strong and not let this jealousy tear that strength from me.
That was all this feeling blazing inside me was.
Jealousy. I wasn’t used to having other females looking at or touching my male, and my wolf side was feeling possessive, bringing out my claws.
And dredging up all my fears.
My short claws bit into my palms as I clenched my fists, fighting the maelstrom of emotions that battered me as I stared at Kaeleron’s back, as I saw him with that female. Smiling so easily. Holding her close.
I wasn’t going to cry.
The tears fell anyway.