Chapter 65

Chapter 65

M ariah woke to the darkness of early morning before the sun’s rays had peaked over the mountains. She was warm beneath her down comforter, limbs tangled with Andrian’s, the gentle rise and fall of his chest telling her he still slept.

She wanted to go back to sleep. Knew she would need it. She had plenty of time to rest; they weren’t planning to leave until midmorning when the sun had fully risen. Their bags were already packed and only the gods knew when she would get her next chance to really rest.

Mariah squeezed her eyelids closed, trying to slow her breathing. Focused on Andrian’s skin against hers, the steady beat of his heart, the rhythm of his breaths.

But none of it chased away the racing thoughts beginning to take flight. The momentary peace from the night before was forgotten, replaced by panic and fear and anxiety.

She didn’t know which was worse: the fear or the rage.

Slowly, Mariah untangled herself from Andrian. It took nearly all her strength to pull her skin from his, craving his warmth, but she couldn’t stay lying there. Her heart was racing, her mind spinning, and she needed to be outside.

Andrian grumbled, rolling towards her as she moved. She stilled, placing her hand on the side of his face. He nuzzled her palm, sighing into her skin.

It made her smile to see him so happy. So content. Something that she wasn’t sure she would ever see in him.

His darkness was still there, but despite all they’d endured, she was glad they’d found this again. That she had learned to trust and heal herself, and he had learned to find joy.

The bond stretching between them danced and shimmered. Mariah pushed as much of the love and gratitude she felt for him across it, along with four words.

Sleep. I love you.

Mariah wasn’t sure if he heard them or why she tried. But this bond felt so different and changed every day.

Maybe one day, they really could trade words across it. She still didn’t know what to make of it—if it was just because he was her consort, the one Armature she’d always been drawn to over the others, or if it was something … more.

Her consort . She didn’t doubt it. In truth, she’d always known what he was to her. But there was something about it that felt almost too inconsequential, a too simple title to describe this thing burning between them.

With a sigh, she pulled her hand from his and turned to the bathroom. She grabbed a warm cotton robe hanging on a hook, wrapping it around herself before silently padding through her suite and to the glass balcony doors. She lingered there for a moment, staring out at the mountains, breath fogging on the glass. Clenching her jaw, she pulled the handle and stepped out into the early morning air.

Mariah walked across the patio, the wide space outfitted with tables and chairs beneath the roof. She left the covered area, striding out into the open, her feet crossing the very place where she’d bonded with six of her seven Armature. The winter snows and spring rains had washed away all traces of those nights, any droplets of candle wax long since scrubbed from the tile.

Mariah wondered if she would ever feel so clean. If she could one day stand beneath those rains and have every mark and stain and scar washed from her body, sluicing off like that wax from the ground.

She doubted it, but it was nice to dream.

Reaching the edge of the balcony, she leaned against the chest-high railing circling the space. The drop was devastating. The valley beneath the palace so far, she could hardly see the brush of the mountain wind through the treetops. She lifted her gaze to the Attlehons, to the streaks of pink and orange beginning to spread behind them. The sun would be up soon, its triumphant light sending them all not to celebration but to something that was as close as she’d been to war.

A breeze floated past her, brushing her cheeks and lifting the ends of her hair around her face.

She thought of herself, no more than half a year ago, as the girl who wanted nothing more than to be free of a society that despised her. But that girl, the one desperate enough to abandon her family and vanish into the edges of the world, was dead.

All who remained was the woman with scars across her back gifted to her by the hand of one whom she loved, a woman who now ruled a country of people who didn’t know she existed. A queen who was prepared to tear the world down in order to keep those dearest to her safe.

Mariah drew a deep inhale, holding the air in her lungs. She closed her eyes against the rising sun, its rays warming her cheeks and the exposed skin of her neck. Her fingers tightened around the railing, grounding herself against the dawn of the new day.

A new day that could bring with it so much change.

Hope that she might rescue her family.

Belief that the love she’d found would not fail her again.

Power that she would assert as her own, squashing those desperate and hungry lords once and for all.

But somewhere, far away from that balcony nestled between the mountains and the sea, Mariah could feel it. Could feel something dark festering in the world. She didn’t know what it was or how she felt it brushing against her with vile and greedy fingers, but it was there.

That beast shifted beneath her skin. It was not angry, did not claw for freedom. It only watched, looking back at her with burning eyes of silver and gold and forest green.

Mariah’s own eyes shot open, heart hammering against her ribs. The sun had risen higher as she’d stood, its light bright across her face. She gasped in a lungful of the warm morning air, beads of sweat running tracks down her temple.

Something fluttered above. Her attention darted up as a black butterfly floated and fluttered through the air mere feet from her balcony, dipping and swirling in the breeze.

Each time she’d seen it, she’d been convinced it was not the same butterfly. It was impossible; insects couldn’t fly that far or live that long.

But now … she couldn’t be sure. Something settled in her soul, that beast calming with her, as if it, too, watched the butterfly’s delicate dance through the sky. It floated across her vision, her head following it from left to right.

She lost it when she turned all the way, but not because it vanished from sight.

A golden Attlehon eagle was perched beside her on the balcony railing. So close that if she wanted, she could reach out and touch those gold and white feathers, the filaments still shifting as they refracted the morning light.

The eagle was massive, nearly three feet tall. Mariah met its unblinking golden gaze, its stare intense and probing as it watched her.

As she watched it back.

Mariah didn’t know how long it lasted. How long she watched the eagle, unsure which of them was the beast, and which was the queen.

Perhaps , Mariah thought, it’s one and the same .

Her fingers twitched and she lifted her hand. With a massive gust of air, stirred by powerful wings, the eagle launched itself into the sky, shooting over the edge of the balcony. Mariah only caught the barest glimpse of her black wingtips before her feathers opened fully, blending into the sky above and the valley below, vanishing her from sight.

She didn’t search for the eagle after that. It was futile.

But she did tilt her head to the sky, past the rising sun. She stretched her awareness up to the moons disappearing behind the light of day, to the two goddesses who frustrated her beyond belief, but she still knew, without a doubt, were with her. Always.

“Thank you,” she whispered into the morning wind, just as a tear laced with silver-gold light fell from her eye and splashed on the railing, rolling off and falling to the valley below.