My spine stiffens, every nerve in my body tingling in all the wrong ways.
The lantern overhead rattles—like something inside is trying to escape. One of its tiny panes pops, a shred of flame fluttering down into his cupped hand and cradled before my face like a mold of clay.
His thick black brows collide, his face blanching as my teeth clamp together, heart seizing.
Eye bulging.
I look at that flame like the spitting, scalding enemy it is, waiting for him to drag it across my flesh and paint a puckered trail.
A choked sound slips out of him, like his lungs forgot how to work.
He lifts a trembling hand as if to cup my cheek, leaving an inch of space separating us—the heat radiating off his palm akin to a ray of sunshine.
“H—” His stare blazes back and forth across my face, tracing the slopes of me with devastating precision. “H-how?”
Something about the way he rasps the word cuts me down the middle, like he’s stuffing those big, strong arms into my frosty depths, churning my lake into a storm of slush.
I open my mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a blow of frosty air.
Tension stiffens in the space between us.
The hand so close to cradling my face pulls back, crunching into a ball. He punches the wall behind my head with such force a hairline crack forms in the stone, weaving across my ceiling.
A litter of mildew rains upon us.
“How?” he bellows, and I growl, upper lip peeling back from canines aching to snap forward and sink into his flesh.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snarl, wanting him out.
Gone.
Wanting the flame in his hand extinguished before it tills up any more of the hurt I’ve worked so hard to rid myself of.
“She speaks the truth,” comes a wobbly voice from the opposite cell. From the dark-haired Truthtune who only stopped crying eighty-nine ceiling drops earlier.
I thought she was asleep.
The male frowns, rips his cinder stare off me, and stabs it over his shoulder in her direction. “You a Truthtune?”
“I am. The female is confused by your interest. She is also petrified of—”
“That’s enough,” I snip, my words ricocheting off the walls.
The male turns his attention back on me, his all-consuming stare etched in so many shades of disbelief.
He crushes the flame in his large, calloused hand, though I have only a brief moment of reprieve before he pulls a metal weald from his pocket and flicks back the lid, revealing a bloodred bulb of Sabersythe flame.
My throat constricts, a strangled sound squeezing through the tightening space. A sound I want to crush from existence the moment it leaves my lips.
He raises his other hand, the rough tips of his fingers sweeping a tendril of hair from my forehead, leaving a wake of tingling flesh.
“Get your hand off me,” I seethe as he tucks the fall of inky locks behind my ear.
His chest boils with a sound that makes me picture the ground shaking, the tip of his finger tracing the jagged scar on my forehead. A scar that can be seen by dragonflame—the only substance in existence that can ignite a trail of long-ago runes and unearth their glowing ghosts.
“Your head,” he rasps. “You’ve been mended.”
Mended …
Such a funny word, signifying the end of something. But every hurt has an echo if you look deep enough.
A wound is never fully gone.
“Don’t remember getting that one.”
Not a lie.
His gaze dips. “Your eye. What happened?”
“Tripped on a stone.”
His head banks to the side. “Did it reach up and punch you in the face?”
I offer him a faux smile. “Strangest thing.”
A beat of silence before he continues, so smooth and soft it chills me to the bone. “Who are you protecting, Moonbeam?”
My frail, suffocating vengeance, flailing as it is.
Perhaps my skewed vision is making me see things, but he has a look about him. Like if I tell him who really punched me in the face, the kill will no longer be mine, and I’m holding on to that promise of hope until I’m masticated by a dragon’s maw or sliced from throat to navel.
“That’s not my name. And I don’t need you to fight my battles any more than I need your presence in this cell.”
He steals a single step back, snapping the lid shut on his weald, sealing the flame back into the runed metal vial. “Prove it.”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
“Turn around, lift your tunic, and show me your back. If a stone can cause such damage to your face, I’m very interested to see just what it’s done to pack this cell with the smell of so much blood.”
My heart plops into my gut. “I … No.”
“Always so stubborn,” he bites out, cradling the words like he fucking knows me.
He reaches forward—
Somebody sprints down the hall, cloaked in another white Runi robe akin to the one this male wears—an obvious ruse, given his weald and affinity with Ignos. Unless he’s multitalented, I guess.
The approaching Runi slows by my cell, peering into the shadowed depths. “Sire?” he whisper-hisses, the word pinching me. His eyes are wide with panic, stare bouncing between us both. “Guards are coming. Lots of them.”
My brows pull together, gaze cutting back to the male standing before me—unmoving.
Unblinking.
Sire.
Fucking Sire.
Realization washes over me like a dunk of icy water, whipping all the warmth from my body. “You’re a … king.”
“As I said.” There’s a brief pause as he flicks up his hood, casting his face back in a shroud of shadow, though his eyes still glimmer like a crush of embers caught in the orbs. “Is that a problem, Moonbeam?”
A swell of fiery rage packs my chest and mouth so full it’s impossible to speak. To tell him yes, that’s a problem.
The Shade, The Fade, and The Burn are each ruled by a different Vaegor brother, each cut from the same vile cloth.
I’ve seen King Fade from a distance—Cadok Vaegor. This male is not him. Meaning he either rules The Shade or The Burn.
The Shade is said to be even more rotten than this kingdom, if rumors are anything to go by, the cold, shadowed expanse governed by King Tyroth Vaegor. A cruel king with a heart said to fester from the loss of his queen.
The Burn … well.
Few who venture deep into the sunny part of the world return to tell the tale, though it’s said King Kaan is savage and bloodlusting. That Rygun—his ancient Sabersythe—was too big to fit in any of the city hutches the last time he came to Gore. That he lets the beast hunt freely across his kingdom, firing cities with his blazing breath and feasting on his folk whom he cares little about.
I’m not sure which option is worse. Who I’d least prefer to be sharing this cell with right now, breathing the same filthy air.
One thing’s for sure—I wouldn’t bow to any of them, even if a sword was notched at my neck.
A stampede of booted steps echoes down the corridor while I hold his stare, the racket coming to a halt before my cell. In my peripheral, I note the shadowed silhouettes of heavily armored guards.
“Runi,” one of them bellows, “what are you doing in cell seventy-three?”
The King doesn’t break my stare as he says, “I’m the resident healer. I was instructed to inspect this prisoner’s wounds.”
I give him an incredulous look.
“Impossible. Everyone is under strict instruction not to enter that cell. She is our most dangerous captive.”
I would be flattered, but there’s no room for it beside the bubbling well of undiluted rage piling up my throat like a dragon about to wield its first flame.
“I must order you to exit her cell. She’s expected at trial before the Guild of Nobles. We’re to escort her straight there.”
Music to my ears. I don’t want to spend another second in this monster’s presence.
“Yes, resident healer,” I say, serving him a sour smile, “kindly step out of my chambers. I have no need of your assistance—now or ever.”
The air between us becomes impossibly tight, and he grunts, stepping back.