I hadn’t moved. Couldn’t. I barely registered Malachi’s arm still around me. The scent of him embraced me: smoke, myrrh, ash. Familiar in a way it shouldn’t have been. The edges of the room rippled—faces warping into smears of gold and shadow.
We were moving. The castle halls blurred, going in and out of focus as voices rose and fell around me.
“…she said bride?—”
“Did he mean it?”
“She can’t…”
“She’s burning up.”
“She’ll recover.” Malachi again. Sharp. Final.
The warmth thickened around me. Something soft cradled my body. A bed. Clouds, maybe. Silk brushing over my skin, weightless and slow.
The hum in my ears quieted. The scent of lavender and cedar wrapped around me. Heat pooled at my feet, and my fingers curled instinctively into the softness beneath me.
For one breath, I felt safe.
And then the voices melted. One by one. Gone. And I fell fully into the stillness that swallowed everything.
18
Malachi
The hallsof the upper wing were quieter now. My footsteps echoed too loud against the floor, shadows slithering in my wake. I didn’t bother to temper the sound as I walked.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
The words I’d whispered to Kaelith still echoed in the marrow of my bones. A threat. One that would not go unanswered. The look in his eyes when I said it—that momentary flicker of something real beneath the court-polished facade—was almost worth it. Almost.
But I knew better than to poke a predator and expect it to walk away.
He’d play it off for now, but Kaelith wasn’t stupid. He would retaliate.
I ran a hand over my face, exhaling slowly as I reached the corridor near her chambers. My fingers twitched, still remembering the weight of her body in my arms—far too light, far too mortal. Her scent still lingered in the fabric of my coat: wild rose, old paper, something faintly electric beneath it all.
She had collapsed the moment Kaelith said it—bride. He’d known exactly what he was doing. He always did.
The shadows around me curled tighter, reacting to the roil beneath my skin. I pushed them down. Controlled. Contained. Lurking, as they always did, just beneath the edge of my restraint.
She should’ve been just another complication. A pawn to move or remove. And yet…
I had felt it the moment we met—a tether. Something that pulsed in her bones. Threads of fate knotted around her like a snare, humming with power I hadn’t heard in centuries.
Eryndis. No one spoke her name anymore. But I knew the taste of her magic. The scent of secrets buried in twilight.
“You’re pacing,” came a voice from behind me. Lysara. Still dressed from dinner, her shawl had slipped from one shoulder, revealing the pale curve of a scar I knew well. A relic from another rebellion. Another lifetime.
“I’m not pacing,” I said.
“You are. Which means you’re either plotting something reckless, or regretting something you already said.” She crossed her arms, her crimson hair catching the warm glow of the sconces. "Please tell me it’s the latter. I’m too tired to clean up a war tonight."
“I warned him,” I muttered. “He needed reminding.”
“So you whispered threats in the prince’s ear in front of a hundred nobles and half the Keepers?”
“Just a few words.”