Page 72 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

Golgotha looked taken aback. “How do you know about Valinhel?”

“During a visit to one of Henah’s realms, I had the unfortunate luck of meeting a Shadow Guardian who’d gone to recruit a student for some academy of his.”

Kilian was waiting right at the castle entrance, a look of pure rage etched on his face and blacked out eyes. “You had no right to go down there!”

At the first sign of the darkening skies, I stopped right where I was even though his daughter was still in my arms. “And you know that I’d never let any harm come near her. Even if it meant giving my life for it.”

“That is it,” he shouted, taking steady steps towards me despite knowing he wanted nothing but to unleash on me. “That is it, Malik! Don’t you understand? Do you ever understand? I do not want you to be put in the position to ever make that choice.” He stopped only a foot away from me. “I equally wish to never lose a child or my only brother. Enough, I beg. Enough making yourself to be something I get to spare!” Unlike always, he made sure I saw the disappointment he felt this time. “I’d hoped…had hoped you’d found something to want to live for. Hope, anger, pity, anything, I hoped you’d clung to something. If not for the sake of my sanity, at least for one of those reasons,” he said, taking his daughter from my arms and pressing his lips to her brow, breathing a sigh of relief when she stirred in his arms.

“Forgive me,” I said, and his attention rose to me again, pulled in a strange confusion. “For all the times I’ve given you grief.”

“You’ve never given me grief,” he quickly replied.

“I wish you were a dick to me just once. At least once, please.”

He smiled, shaking his head. “Go back to your wife. She was looking for you.”

“She was?”

He stopped again and looked at me over his shoulder, raising a brow. “Should she not be looking for you?”

“I’m not her favourite person at the moment.”

“She can tell me all about it,” the bastard murmured to himself.

“Kil,” I called before he entered the castle.

“Yeah?”

“I’m doing better, you know.”

He nodded. “I know.”

Maybe I had lied to my brother.

Maybe I even lied to myself.

Because I was doing better. Just…not the whole time.

Like now.

She wasn’t there. The more I searched, the more I started feeling the weight of what I did to Golgotha. The cost an Empath had to pay. Violent regret. I’d felt everything I’d inflicted on him. It was like poison. You built a resistance to it the more you drank. But just because I was numbed to the effects of it, didn’t mean I didn’t feel them entirely. They didn’t hurt me anymore, but the memories always did.

She wasn’t in her room.

Not in her damn dressing room either.

But it was dark there and it smelled a lot like her, so I decided to remain there when my sight began fogging over.

Lightheaded, I braced both hands on a wall and tried to breathe in and out. It had been a while since I’d had to ride these waves of crushing panic out without numbing help.

Her footsteps were light when she entered the dark room. Tripping once or twice on her way to where I was. Carefully and slowly, she put a hand on my back, letting it rest there for a minute before she reached closer, sliding between my arms.

It was so damn quiet I could hear her heart and she could probably hear mine. “What happened?”

“Can’t,” I panted. “You might use this one secret against me.”

“I might.” Her hand dropped down my chest until her fingers rested on my stomach, reluctant to leave my body. “But you’d let me. Isn’t that why you told them all to me in the first place? Because one day you wanted me to use them against you?”