Page 143 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“You called for me,” he said, burrowing his face on my hair.

“I knew you’d find me.”

“What are friends for?”

I chuckled, despite fear still making my limbs shake. “I’m going to kill you, Malik Castemont.”

“Don’t know who that is. I only know of Malik Krigborn. Crowned and wed to his loving friend.”

“That was a silly thing to do.”

“I’m a dedicated friend.” He leaned in to kiss my ear and whisper, “I also want everything of yours. You see, I’m a little obsessed with my friend.”

I was obsessed with him first.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I rested my cheek on his shoulder. “Your friend might be going a little crazy.”

“Nonsense. She already was crazy.”

I laughed, pressing my face to his shirt that smelled so deliciously like him. My heart hurt—it hurt so much from holding back on telling him those cursed three words that started with the first pronoun and ended with the second.

He suddenly froze in my hold.

I froze too. Scared he somehow had found them out. Or maybe I’d spoken them out loud and not noticed.

Pulling back, I looked up at him and frowned.

Malik’s gaze had trailed towards the window. He dropped a kiss on my brow and stood, pushing the window glass panes wide open. “What the fucking hells?”

“What is it?” I asked, rushing after him.

My feet came to a stop before I ever reached the window. Hundreds, no, thousands of animals were standing beneath. Not just any animal. Isline creatures. Of all sorts. All around.

“How did they get past the castle walls?”

“My dead cannot feel them, they’ve easily slipped through.”

When I stepped forward, all of their heads rose up to where we were standing. “What do they want?”

“Not sure. I can’t read something that has no soul. You think they will spare me if they know I’m friends with you?”

The intensity of the situation lessened and so did the panic in my chest as I chuckled and reached for him. Immediately, his arms banded around me again and I heaved a sigh of relief.

I’d never felt safer.

Maybe I’d scared them with my evil laugh, but the animals began backing away, either slipping past the gates in the castle walls or flying and climbing over it, disappearing away into the white landscape ahead.

“They are tied to you,” he said. “Maybe they felt your distress.”

“I’ve never seen them do that before?”

“Maybe because the part of you that could feel it was taken away. The connection between you and them was cut off. When Nia restored what was taken, it returned.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t freak out.”

“How have you not?”