Page 26 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“There is only so long you can keep me away from burning your kingdom. But for now, I will pull them away and you will help me find the Octa Virga pieces.”

“We will be civil.”

That made her snort and then cackle, a dark sort, and a sound I'd never heard from her before. “Civil? Me and you?”

“No petty games and little threats using my stepmother like the charade of that day.”

“You’re boring, Adriatian.” She sighed, leaning forward on a window overlooking the mist. “Everything is boring me lately.”

She’d be rid of that boredom very soon. “You will resume your duties as my queen, attend meetings, rule by my side. Be my equal.” That got me a short chesty laugh from her and once she realised that I was serious, her expression tensed. “And you will spend your nights in Adriata, with me.”

Her attention snapped to me, for the first time since that day she had given me more than a blank reaction. Fury. “No.”

“It is one of the terms I am not willing to negotiate. Your duties to Olympia will have their daylight and the ones to Adriata moonlight. You are the Adriatian queen as much as you’re the Olympian one.”

“You said with you.”

“You’ve heard me correct. You will spend them where I do. Nightfall to dawn, you will be sleeping in my bedroom. Right next to me.”

Something like fear flashed in her tired stare while considering my words. Let it not be of me, I begged all gods. “Exactly what are you hoping to accomplish by having me do that?”

“That is for me to know and you to oblige. Remember—terms?”

“This is what you do, isn’t it? Coerce me into participating in a lie, forcing me to stay by your side. Forcing me to feel for you because you know I would have never even thought anything but disgust for you. You know I would have never let you touch me. I cannot seem to rub off the itch of you out of my skin. I am more disgusted with myself than you. I hate me more than you. I loathe my words more than yours. I still want to hurt myself more than you. Because at the end of the day, it was me being stupid not you. Is this what it is?”

I took a step to her, and she flinched, taking a step back from me. “Snow.”

“You will help me find my brother and sister. For that term this is what I offer.”

I froze. What? “What brother and sister?” Her hands began curling in a fist and I knew what she was about to do. “Snow, what brother and sister?”

“They are alive.” She swallowed. “During the attack, my uncle tried to bargain the truth for his life. He’d hid them from my father the night of the attack and planned to use them as his way to the Isjordian crown.”

It took me a moment to process what she had just revealed. “Are you certain?”

“No, not certain and I killed him thinking I’d be able to figure a way to find them myself. It could take me weeks to years, all that time I am not willing to spend away from them if they are truly alive. Time you are able to spare me.”

Numengarth was vast, with places not even marked by human touch. The two siblings could be kept somewhere even magic wouldn't be able to find them. But for her, I’d defy all rules of magic—all the rules of this realm. “I will find them.”

She gave me a nod. “Then it’s a bargain.” She took off her glove and extended her hand to me. I slid my warm palm across her soft clammy one and held it tight for a moment before repeating the seal of our bargain. A black band of runes curved around the top of her hand and then mine, a sting in its wake that would not be remembered compared to the sting its end would bring. Once this bargain was severed, there would be nothing tying us together.

“You can let go of me now.”

I held her a few heartbeats more, running my thumb across her flesh. “Till now, I thought you were a mirage. A play my sick heart was putting out for me. I refuse to sleep thinking I’ll wake to a day where that mirage has ended. But you are real.”

“You should have prayed that I wasn’t. You should have prayed that my uncle had truly killed me.”

I shook my head. “I would have chased after you. Every afterlife, heaven or hell, I would have searched it all.”

Her face twisted with emotion all of a sudden, dark brows drooping, and that golden stare rounded with sorrow as she looked up at me. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t read her. For the first time since I’d met her in Isjord I was confused again, and she’d become that same mystery. “Was that it?” she asked with a small voice that shivered. “How you expected me to react.” She snorted and then blasted in gales of laughter. “Oh, darling, you have no idea who you are dealing a hand with.”

Perhaps I didn’t.

“See you tonight, at nightfall.” Backing away, her body lit bright with electricity. The next second she was gone.

Chapter five

Nexilis