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With painful care, she gathered the torn edges of her gown over the wound as though modesty still mattered after everything they had done to one another beneath moonlight only hours before. Blood stained her fingertips. She stared at it for a long while, watching it gather in the grooves of her skin.
How strange, Lucan thought. Last night he had looked upon that same blood as though it was salvation.
Now it looked like judgment.
At last, she lifted her eyes. There was no fury waiting for him there. No hatred, either.
This…
This quiet grief…
Gods, this was unbearable.
His feet carried him forward before thought could follow. She stepped backward—only the smallest of movements, yet Lucan felt it as though the earth itself had opened beneath him. She feared him again; expected the Blooded Prince even when he desperately wished to be the man who had whispered against her hair while dawn gathered beyond the palace windows.
His stomach lurched violently.
Outside, thunder rolled across the Evermist as if in reminder that Aurelion would soon come.
Lucan looked at the blood upon her gown, the fading bruises around her throat, and the half-healed bite beneath her ear. His scent clung to her, blood flowing through her veins like the sweetest perfume. If she left these rooms now, Lucan knew he would never see Elarian again. He saw it in the twitch of her fingers how she ached to flee. Not while every corridor in this palace had eyes.
Not while Aurelion’s shadow stretched ever closer.
“Elarian, please listen to me.”
She turned toward the shattered doorway.
Panic swallowed him whole, and his shadows answered before he could stop them. They flowed across the marble like black water escaping a broken dam, winding around her wrists with dreadful familiarity before slipping gently around her waist.
She stiffened but did not struggle.
The surrender of it, the absolute certainty that she had been right to stop believing in him, hurt more than if she had driven silver through his heart.
When the shadows lifted her from the floor, she did not scream. She did not curse him. She simply whispered, almost too quietly for immortal ears to catch, “I knew he wouldn’t survive.”
Lucan nearly unraveled.
The corridors beyond lay empty as he carried her back toward his chambers, wrapped in living darkness because he no longer trusted his own hands.
Servants vanished into alcoves before he reached them. Guards lowered their eyes, and the lords and ladies wandering through the gardens remained blissfully silent. Only the echo of his boots followed them through Gairan’s ancient halls.
Each step sounded less like a prince returning to his chambers and more like a man carrying his own corpse to its grave.
forty-six
Burn For Her
Morning arrived slowly upon the forest.
Silver mist drifted between ancient pines, wrapping weathered stone in soft veils until the forgotten shrine and forest became one. Frost clung to every blade of grass. Moss glittered emerald beneath the first hesitant rays of dawn. Somewhere far below, unseen waters sang the same song they had carried since the mountains were still young enough to remember their birth.
The old woman did not open her eyes.
The mountain exhaled with the sunrise. Ravens quarreled before the light touched the eastern cliffs. Flocks of wrens flitted through the air, their songs rousing the rest of the world to awaken and greet the day.
But today, the birds did not sing.
Silence slipped through the forest like a patient hunter. One by one, the ravens abandoned the branches surrounding the shrine. Black wings beat against the pale sky until not a single feather remained. Called back to the forest by their absence, the old woman finally stirred. Slowly, she lifted her head.
