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Chapter Twelve
Unable to sit still long enough to get lost in one of the books Thieran delivered, I pace the width of my room. I’m not sure how long it’s been since he disappeared, but long enough that this tingling sensation where he touched me should have subsided.
That foreign humming sensation in my veins that’s been present since I woke here has only gotten louder, more insistent. It’s fucking distracting. And I can’t afford to be distracted now.
He said he was letting me out of here. Maybe not out of the Shadow Realm, but out of this tower. And with that freedom, I can find my own way out. All I need is the time and the space to find my way back to Rhagana.
Once I’m free, I’ll take Meera and ride far away from the forest’s edge, as far north as I dare, before sheltering again. I need distance from the God of Death, and whatever plans he has for me he isn’t sharing, but there’s still the sun god to worry about. I imagine Pramis is busy looking for his priest’s murderer.
But I’ve been in bad spots before. Being trapped in the land of the dead might keep me safe from Pramis’s wrath, but it’s hardly a life I want to live.
A knock startles me, even though I know Kaia is coming for me, and I spin toward the sound just as she enters, a bright, cheerful smile on her face. I try to match her easy grin because I need them both to trust me enough to let me roam freely, but it feels foreign on my face.
“Come with me.”
She turns and disappears in a swirl of skirts. I hesitate, unsure if this is some kind of trick rather than reality. I wouldn’t exactly put it past Thieran to amuse himself by fooling me into thinking I’m free when I’m not.
When she doesn’t return, I advance slowly toward the door, toeing the threshold and then edging my way onto a narrow landing. I wait to be zapped or flung back into the room or whatever other awful tricks the God of Death might devise against escape.
“Elora?” Kaia’s voice echoes up the stairwell.
Surprisingly, nothing terrible happens to me for crossing the locks and wards, so I follow the winding stairs to find Kaia at the bottom. Her smile widens when she sees me, and she gestures for me to follow.
“Where are we going?”
“To your rooms.” She all but sings the words, her voice brimming with something that sounds like triumph.
“Rooms.” I peer behind me at the tower we’ve just left. “So I’m really being let out of there?”
Kaia waves a dismissive hand. “That wasn’t a room. It was a prison cell. I have the servants preparing a set of rooms down the hall from my own. It’s a nice, private part of the palace with a pretty view of the forest.”
I barely manage to swallow a snort. Nothing about that forest is pretty, not now that I know what lurks within it. And with the dull light streaming through the windows, I can’t imagine the rest of the Shadow Realm is all that exciting.
As we make our way down the hall, a familiar smell hits me. Cedar and cinnamon and woodsmoke. It’s a scent that clings to Thieran and invades my dreams, and it gets stronger the closer we draw to an ornately carved door at the end of the hall.
A heady pulse flutters behind my sternum, seductive and captivating, but I shake it off. That’s a new feeling too. Along with Thieran’s touch came the unmistakable sensation of something else. Something that belongs to me but doesn’t at the same time.
I thought it to be another way Thieran was trying to intimidate me, another show of power. But it pulses stronger the closer we draw to what I’m sure are Thieran’s rooms, and now I wonder if it’s something else entirely. Is it possible for Thieran to have marked me in some way when he pinned my wrists to the wall?
It would explain why I can’t stop feeling his touch on my skin or why the sensation of something calling to me won’t go away. I rub my fingers over my wrists where his skin came in contact with mine, and it heats under my fingers.
Annoyed with it, I yank the edges of my tunic down over my hands and cross my arms over my chest. It doesn’t matter what it means or why he seems to have this strange power over me. As soon as I figure out the way back to Rhagana for my horse and my things, I’ll be rid of him.
And the next time I step into the Shadow Realm, I hope to be dead.
“You’ll have free range of the palace for as long as you’re here, of course,” Kaia says, leading me down a wide staircase covered in thick carpet.
“Generous of him to let a prisoner wander around without a guard.”
Kaia huffs, her heels clicking when the carpet gives way to black obsidian floors polished to a reflective shine. “You’re not a prisoner, Elora. You’re a guest.” She falters on the last word, but I don’t bother arguing with her.
I’m allowed out of the tower, but I haven’t been permitted to leave the realm altogether. He might have agreed to set me up in a nicer suite of rooms and let me wander around, but he isn’t walking me to the veil and ushering me through. Or, better yet, delivering me back to Acaria himself.
What does that make me, if not a prisoner?
“Are you the only other god who lives here?” I ask, jogging to catch up.
“Most of the dark court gods spend time in their own territories in Acaria. I prefer the solitude and the quiet of the Shadow Realm. As much as I love my people, I thrive in the dark.”
