Chapter 29

29

arwen

Arwen, wake up.” Kane’s voice was a caress. “Briar has news about Mari.”

My eyes flew open and peered past Kane to find Briar, face solemn, standing in the cherrywood doorway, her near-translucent skin shadowed by pale, evening light.

I shot up, nearly colliding with Kane’s head. “What is it? Is she—”

“She’s going to be all right.”

Solace and concern warred in my heart. If Mari was going to be fine, why did Briar look so worried?

I launched myself out of bed and scrambled for the silk robe that Cori had hung beside a birdcage stuffed with more of those wrinkled, flaking books. Kane and Briar strolled down the dark, carpeted hallway and I rushed after them.

Had I slept until evening?

In the last bedroom, Mari lay, still unconscious under white quilted bedding. An impressive sunset flirted through the window that looked out across Willowridge’s cityscape. Cori laid a damp cloth on Mari’s forehead, then took her pulse, writing something down in a worn journal on the bedside table.

I crossed the room to Mari, taking her cool palm into my hand. The lack of warmth sent my power rippling at my fingertips, but there was still nothing to heal—a deeply unsettling sensation, like trying to see out of a blinded eye.

I almost missed Griffin, leaning forward in a leather chair in the corner of the room, elbows pressed to his knees, palms tightly clasped, eyes ringed with lack of sleep.

“Has she woken at all?” I asked.

“No.” His voice was hoarse.

“She will, she just needs rest,” Briar said behind me.

I turned. “What happened to her?”

“She’s been poisoned,” Briar said, folding her arms elegantly and leaning back against the windowsill. Purple shafts of sunset highlighted little floating specks of dust hovering in the room’s still atmosphere and painted Briar’s angular face in warm contour.

“Cori and I checked for injuries, ailments, curses, hexes, charms . . .” She furrowed a brow at the memory. “The amulet she wore . . . I fashioned that amulet many, many years ago, for my closest friend, Queen Valeria Ravenwood.”

I had never heard Kane’s mother’s name before, but I swore I could feel the air in the room deplete as Kane sucked in a sharp breath.

“It held a simple spell. To protect her from death at the hands of the Fae king in the months leading up to our plot against him.” Briar cut a sidelong glance at Kane. “He wasn’t such a doting husband even before then, if you recall.”

“How come my mother never suffered the same fate as the witch?”

“Valeria was not of my coven. She could never have pulled from my lineage when she wore it. The amulet only served its intended purpose around her neck. However, Mari here seems to have found a way to use the power I forged the amulet with to bolster her own.”

Mari had been right. The amulet had been boosting her power. All this time . . .

“You say she was doing magic far beyond her skill level?”

Kane nodded at Briar, his mind turning alongside my own.

“And she wore it day and night?”

“She never parted with it,” Griffin said from his corner.

“Once the amulet came off, the debt demanded to be paid. Months and months of bolstered magic . . . The overindulgence led to withdrawal. Her body is making up for lost time.”

“So, if she rests, she’ll wake up eventually? Fully recovered?”

“We hope.”

“And Mari’s mother . . . she must have been part of your coven, right? Mari knew the amulet was helping her reach her ancestors.”

Briar’s mouth twisted as she glared at me. “No. As I told you, your friend must have found a way to steal my magic against the wishes of nature. My coven has been extinct for centuries.”

“She would have told me if that were the case.” Mari would have been thrilled if she had discovered such a loophole. She would have shouted it from the Shadowhold rooftops.

“Perhaps she was delusional,” Briar said, eyes chilling. “Believed her own lies.”

Something about Briar’s callousness felt false. Like she was the one putting her faith in made-up stories. “If that’s really what you think,” I pressed, “why do you look so afraid?”

I only registered Cori’s sharp intake of breath as Briar stepped forward, and despite my better judgment, I flinched. But she only walked past me and toward Kane.

“Your castle healer is too bold,” she said, lips lifting upward. “I’m tired of her voice. If anyone is keeping secrets, it’s you, Prince Ravenwood.”

There was something so sinister about referring to Kane as a prince rather than the rightful king of Onyx. Reminding him, and everyone else in the room, who he used to be—who he came from. My mouth turned with distaste.

Kane’s face hardened. “None that I can recall.”

“You’ve spent the past fifty years looking for the last full-blooded Fae. Now you’ve been traveling with a witch pilfering my magic, the prince of a kingdom that despises you, and a healer who has been rumored to have obliterated an army just a month ago in a combustion of light and flame . . .”

Kane’s crushing silver eyes only flickered. But his lack of response was enough to stoke the tempest within Briar.

“How could you not have told me? I sacrificed everything for you. My life back in Lumera, my power, Perry. And still, I welcomed you into my home, healed your ailing witch, and you planned to leave and never tell me that you found her? After all this time? After all we lost? How dare you?” The glass window behind Briar shattered with her rage and sent a gust of cold air through the room. I jumped at the sound and Cori shuffled out through the door like a well-trained dog.

“Briar, darling,” Kane’s words were coy, but his eyes flashed. “Control yourself.”

“I will do what I please,” she said, with deadlier calm than I had ever heard someone speak around Kane. “I have half a mind to show you exactly why you were wise to stay away all those years—”

“You’re right,” I said, the words spilling from my lips before I could catch them. “I’m the full-blooded Fae. He didn’t tell you because I begged him not to. Too many people are after me . . . Kane told me how much he trusted you. I was foolish not to listen.”

I could hear Kane’s frustrated sigh, but I kept my eyes on Briar. I expected wrath, or violence, but when she turned back to face me, it was satisfaction that pursed her lips. Some kind of . . . acceptance.

“Right,” she said evenly. “I figured as much.” And with that she drifted out of the room as if on a wisp of smoke, and left the rest of us in silence.

---

Knowing Mari would wake soon, and that, at least for the time being, Briar would not kick her out of her home, we had decided to leave for Crag’s Hollow in the morning. Griffin, still glued to Mari’s bedside like a barnacle on the bottom of a sunken ship, had brushed off the call to supper, choosing to eat in his leather chair that surely held the distinct imprint of his backside by now.

But I was starving.

Now that I didn’t fear Mari’s impending death, air flowed through my lungs more easily, my tight limbs had loosened, my appetite had returned . . .

Along with a flood of emotions that must have been kept at bay by all my worry.

Memories of Kane and me, shouting at each other in the wet, muggy jungle. Accusing and admitting in equal measure things I was sure we both wished we hadn’t said.

And Fedrik, urging me to abandon Kane for my own safety.

And Kane, still believing Fedrik had kissed me. Which he had, but—

Believing it had meant something entirely different than it had.

After bathing and dressing, I descended the stairs to find Kane and Fedrik in the dining room, and Briar, dressed in a fine navy gown and decadent fur shawl. “I have a dinner engagement of my own tonight, but Cori’s roast is scrumptious,” she said to Kane, as if she hadn’t just threatened his life mere hours ago. Then she closed the front door primly, leaving me with two beleaguered men and one glistening, savory roast.

The three of us sat down in silence and began to eat, the sound of metal on porcelain a conflicting accompaniment to the harp that played itself in the next room. I brought my fork to my mouth and tried to appreciate the rich flavors, but each bite curdled on my tongue as I thought of all the pain I had brought the three of us.

I tried to cram those thoughts into some cluttered corner in my mind, but the recesses of my psyche were becoming too crowded—each painful thought I shoved in forced an even less pleasant one out.

More cutlery grated on porcelain. More haunting harp music, the strings in the next room plucking themselves. More insufferable silence.

I could think of nothing at all to say to Kane, so I turned to Fedrik. “Have you been to Willowridge before?”

“Yes, a few times, actually.” He finished his bite and looked from Kane to me before continuing, if not a little awkwardly. “The city is quite special. You would love it, Wen. The art here—the galleries. The sculptures alone are some of the best crafted marble I’ve had the pleasure of viewing. And the food. I once had this entire rack of lamb, served out of a—”

“Yes, it’s my favorite of my cities,” Kane said, as he sipped his wine. “I quite like that herb-crusted lamb myself.”

Fedrik frowned, clearly not having intended to directly compliment Kane’s capital. “Where else do you and Briar like to go when you’re here visiting her?”

I lifted a brow, to which Fedrik only shrugged. But he knew what his question implied. That Kane was a cad, a dog—that he wined and dined beautiful witches and took them to bed after visiting galleries and eating racks of herb-crusted lamb.

Kane’s expression was one of unflinching calm as he put down his fork and said, “There’s a charming bacchanal off Till Street where they fuck sheep and drink the blood of virgins. Shall we stroll by after dinner?”

Fedrik smiled stiffly, but I could tell he wasn’t sure if Kane was joking. I was about to relieve him of his concern, when the mention of Briar brought a strange thought to the surface of my mind.

Kane had slept with his dead mother’s closest friend.

Briar had slept with her friend’s son after she died. A boy she had likely watched grow up.

Suddenly the relationship that had felt so sensual and threatening to me was imbued with sorrow, remorse, and shared grief. It gave me a dull, cloying stomachache, like a too-hot, winding carriage ride.

“I’m full,” I said as I pushed my chair from the table without poise. Fedrik stood, too, polite as ever, while Kane’s silver gaze from his seat stripped me bare. I let my feet carry me down the candlelit hall and up the stairs. Closing the door to my room with such force the books quivered, I dumped myself onto the bed like a rag doll.

But the silence was too loud up here, too. Too oppressive.

I appraised the walls and walls of books, leaning closer to read their weathered spines. A pink-hued leather tome that had clearly once been cherry red reminded me of Niclas and his family’s story. A History of War in Rose.

I pulled it from the shelf and walked down the hall to Mari’s room. I didn’t know if she’d be able to hear me, as I didn’t fully understand the comalike state that she was in, but Cori had encouraged us to talk to her, and Griffin had to be going mad with boredom in his corner. The book was as much for him as it was for Mari.

He appeared to be sleeping when I sat down—those huge hands motionless against the arms of a chair that, in comparison to his large body, appeared comically small. I read aloud quietly so as not to wake him, the troubled history of Rose a welcome reprieve from my own mind.

The kingdom was like a continent of its own, with such a large population spread out among so many varied landscapes that its people had developed two different ways of living. In the south lived a simple, peaceful people. They weren’t too different from the men and women I grew up with in Amber. Which made sense, as we were practically neighbors. The lower hemisphere brought warm weather and bright, consistent sunshine. Amber would have enjoyed the same sun and temperate heat had it not been tucked into the insulated valley that kept us in a permanent state of autumn. The southern people of Rose relished their bountiful crops, which they sold in vibrant outdoor markets. Their year-long produce was so robust, the entire region abstained from animal meat altogether.

Conversely, in the north of Rose lived a people of industry and hedonism. Influenced by the nearby unruly Opal Territories and culture-driven Onyx, this region of Rose was focused on commerce, finery, and decadence. Though I liked reading about the sultry melodies that came out of unfamiliar metal instruments, and the short sparkly dresses the women wore, I skimmed over the section about the sensual dancing in hidden, smoke-filled rooms, as I worried Griffin was only pretending to be asleep.

Eventually, these two sides found themselves imbued in an endless war until the north triumphed via . . . I flipped through the pages twice to see what I had missed. Serrated scraps dotting the book’s spine told me a handful of pages had been ripped out.

“Sorry, Mari,” I said to her motionless face. “I know you don’t like cliff-hangers. Maybe Briar has another book on the subject.”

“The Scarlet Queen had a secret weapon.”

I turned to Griffin in his worn leather chair, but his eyes were still closed.

“I knew you liked story time,” I said, unable to hide my smile as I put the book on the table beside Mari’s bed. “Why do they call her that? Queen Ethera?”

Griffin sat up slowly, blinking his eyes open and scratching his jaw in thought. “Because the streets of the south ran scarlet with blood after she won the war for the north. The southerners say it like an insult, the north like a badge of honor.”

“Do you love these dry history books as much as Kane?”

“I’m not much of a reader,” he said mildly. “It hurts my eyes.”

It was by far the most personal thing Griffin had ever told me about himself.

“So how do you know about the queen’s secret weapon?”

“He was a friend of ours.”

“Was?”

“He pledged to fight beside us in the rebellion. But he turned us in to Lazarus days before, in return for his freedom. And his army’s.” Griffin scowled at the memory. “For some reason, once he made it to Evendell, he and his people fought for Ethera. He’s been in hiding from Kane ever since.”

“A Fae?”

Griffin nodded, rubbing his neck.

“Griffin,” I said as gently as I could. “That chair looks uncomfortable. Go sleep in one of the guest rooms. I’ll stay here with her.”

“I’m all right.”

“You think about me constantly. As I do you.”

Kane’s words rang though my mind like a church bell. All the time we could have saved, the pain spared, the suffering. Griffin was no better.

“Why do you fight it so hard?”

Griffin furrowed his light brows. “Fight what?”

“Your feelings for her.”

I had expected him to balk, to argue, to ignore me completely. But he cleared his throat and said, “If I never try to have her, I never have to lose her.”

He angled his head toward the window that Briar had shattered with her magic only hours earlier—Cori had cleaned up the shards of glass, but the cool night wind still funneled into the room, blowing wisps of hair around my face.

I wasn’t sure I agreed with the commander. We had all almost lost her. And had the unthinkable happened, Griffin never would have had the chance to tell her how he felt. He would have had to live with that his entire, near-unending Fae existence.

When I realized he wasn’t going to say any more, I reached for the book, but my eyes had grown weary and I couldn’t see the fine text.

“I think I’m going to bed,” I said.

But Griffin had finally dozed off. His golden hair fluttered across his forehead with every unhurried exhale, his face melting into his hand, which sat propped on the chair’s stiff, cracked arm. When I stood, I noticed a spine-creased book next to the chair that had become his home, tucked beneath one of its clawed feet.

I smiled. Griffin must have been the most fiercely loyal person I had ever met. He was honest beyond belief, probably to a fault, but still. He didn’t suffer from pride or ego. I was lucky to call him my friend. So was Mari.

I stood and kissed her forehead before walking back to my small, book-filled alcove.

The bed depressed under my weight and my eyes fell to the glass doors of the balcony before me—the soft blue curtains that hung imperfectly around them allowing a single sliver of the world outside to slip through.

I rolled to my side, cool sheets on my face like a kiss.

But sleep never came.

“You’re terrified of letting yourself feel anything real.”

“Nothing matters if you’re going to die.”

I turned to my back and let my eyes focus on the dainty cobwebs and cracks on the ceiling above me. I had loved Kane, once. And he had broken that. Broken me. Lied to me, used me, tricked me, stolen me away—

But even as I rattled off his offenses in my mind as I so often did, they carried little weight. Maybe I had spent too long blaming Kane for every profoundly awful thing that had ever happened to me.

And worse than blaming him for my misfortune, maybe I had been using him.

Using him as a catchall for my pain, my suffering. As a punching bag when I needed to feel fury. As an answer when I wondered, Why me? Why did I have to die?

And buried deepest of all, bared wide open in the silent, dark room that smelled of bound leather—maybe I had been saddling Kane with all my pain, using him to diffuse it, long before the battle of Siren’s Bay.

At Shadowhold, when so little made sense to me. When the world as I knew it was being dismantled minute by minute, piece by piece. When all Kane wanted was to show me the rest of the blossom while I was fixated on the stem. And I had fought him tooth and nail.

Maybe now that he had done the one thing he always swore he wouldn’t—try to let me in, allow for the vulnerability he always saw as weakness—I owed him some vulnerability of my own.

Or at least an apology.

I couldn’t watch him fight for me, protect me, desire me from afar—all while I hid my feelings for him. That was true cowardice.

What those feelings were, I didn’t fully know. Attraction, chemistry, friendship . . . I wasn’t sure I could feel anything the same way I once had. Not when this numbness, this darkness, this bleak, revolting dread slithered through my veins.

But maybe I’d say exactly that.

That I hadn’t figured out what I wanted or how I felt—but that I missed him. In the depths of my soul, in my hands when they twitched to touch him, in my ears when they searched for his voice in every room. I missed him. If it wouldn’t be too wrong to ask him to be patient with the selfish, fragmented parts of me. To give me a chance to discover what I wanted, even if we both knew I didn’t have much time left to do so.

Maybe I’d just ask him to try.

It was all he’d ever asked of me.