Page 33 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Not now. Gods not now. In and out I breathed, attempting to soothe air onto my spasming lungs like Cai had taught me. Focusing my attention ahead like Nia had told me. Steeling strength like Alaric had trained me. Once cool drops of earth scented pattering hit me, my feet stopped on their own. I stood in the drizzle that turned to rain then thunder, basking in it till it perked my senses back to reality. Or maybe it was the feel of new wounds tearing in my palms marking yet another day I had to use one pain over another. Whichever it was, it sent a realisation that snapped me like whiplash.

“Don’t run.”

I froze. Chills racing along my spine at the nearness of the gravelly cold voice behind me.

I waited. Counted. Counted for too long a while. They normally disappeared by now, but they weren’t.

A warm hand slipped over mine, linking fingers with mine. I could recognise this man by touch alone. From his warmth. His scent. “I’ll take you to Olympia.”

Turning around, I dared to crack my eyes open and look at him, expecting to find the figure of the monster I always saw before these nightmares ended—a scaly creature of dark with hunger only for me. But when I turned, I only saw him. Drenched dark brown locks hung over his beautiful eyes—eyes that looked like they were only ever meant to look at me. No claws, no warping dark. Just him. Him and that damned look he only ever gave me.

Panic stretched in his expression, and he cupped my face as if to search the trouble in my eyes. “What is it, my love?”

I think I’m scared of you for all the wrong reasons. “You reminded me,” I lied easily, anger rolling down my tongue. “That I still have to run.” Pulling out of his grip, I took steps backward, enjoying how his face began to fall. Then I disappeared with the thunder.

Everyone that passed me along the Taren castle corridors pulled back, giving me a wide berth as I made my way to my bedroom.

I was breathing fire. I had to be. My lungs were burning, my vision steaming.

Slamming the door shut, I paced the distance back and forth the room till I’d worn my soles out and gotten myself dizzy enough to collapse.

The hells was happening to me? The hells was I doing?

The hells.

The hells.

The hells!

My fingers dug in my hair, and I screamed, the outside storm drowning the noise with strident lightning hitting the ground over and over till I decided my vocal cords had done me no wrong and that I was wasting energy I could put elsewhere.

I was losing my mind.

It was like every thought of mine was slipping away.

Grabbing a dressing gown, one of my daggers and plastering a smile on my face, I made my way to the dungeons.

My mother’s voice echoed all around me, pleading and begging me as it had been for the past week, but my mind was slowly crawling with a blanket of numbness and soon…her calls disappeared.

Chapter six

Attono

Snowlin

It had been barely days since the bargain, and I was exhausted. Not only from lack of sleep, but from working my brain overtime on how to deal with two mad kings at the same time. Father had persistently kept sending attacks to Myrdur, his soldiers roamed Highwall looking for the smallest spot on the wall to slip by and enter Adriata. Urinthia was highly likely aiding my father. The sceptre pieces were like fog in wind—for each step closer, we took three back. The Fogling were surfacing and doubling like frogspawns. And Kilian…he’d made me prisoner again. I wanted out of his cage. I wanted out of feeling like my brain wanted to split in half, like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. I hated that I was not afraid of him but still feared who he was. And I was right back at the square where I was running from him. This time, however, I was just spinning in circles inside bars made of shadows. How could I get out of this one cage when we were both hunters?

The gurgling sound of drowning made me come back to reality.

My boot was on the back of someone’s neck, holding their face inside a bucket of water while they thrashed for air. The room had been too dim to recognise who, but I’d make the count later. I watched with a crooked smile on my face as he squirmed and wiggled till the glorious moment his body went slack as a dead fish. So little fight. So little life. So disappointing.

A soldier pushed the door slightly open, casting some light into the empty space. “Someone is here to see you.”

See me? Even Cai or Alaric refused to interrupt me when I was down here. Nia usually could stomach it, but I’d forbid her from coming down here. I knew what went through her mind. She would want to talk to the bastard who had sired her. “Tell them my visiting hours are closed.”

“Snow?” A light voice called for me and my attention perked up.

My, my, right at the mouth of the wolf and I wasn’t even that hungry.