She’d been afraid earlier today, fighting for her life in that pit. But at least in the pit, she could see the threat.
“Stella.” Teddy’s voice broke her trance.
She rose to her feet and met his eyes. He looked almost concerned. But then she remembered what he’d said before they’d found the body, and she didn’t want his pity.
“Yes, Your Grace?” she asked, intentionally loud.
The closest hunter captain took notice and immediately stepped up to Teddy’s side. “Your Grace, you should really be inside at this hour. It’s clearly not safe in the streets this evening, especially for you.”
“I can handle myself,” Teddy grumbled.
Stella could tell he was trying to keep it together, but the hunter was close enough to smell the booze on him, so it wouldn’t be terribly convincing for someone with enhanced senses.
Teddy grabbed Stella’s arm as she made to push by him. “Where are you going? You’re in shock.”
“I’m fine, and like you said, I’m off to begin my vigil,” she snapped.
She took off at a brisk walk, but by the time she rounded the bend in the courtyard wall, she began to run again.
Stella prayed that Leo and Nathan had taken Rosie home before the commotion broke out. The whole sprint home, her mind bounced between the message from the Sons of Endros and Teddy’s words. She should not have felt shocked by his cruelty after she’d been so kind to him in the face of his vulnerability.
As the businesses and apartment houses of the city gave way to larger sprawling estates, Stella slowed to a brisk walk. She labored to catch her breath, wanting to blame the stitch in her side on the cramp and not the fact that she felt abandoned by one prince and wounded by another.
As soon as she reached her family’s estate, she dashed through the front door and up the stairs. Her pain faded when she saw Rosie, already sprawled out asleep in her bed.
A creak in the hallway startled her, and she paused. She turned to see Leo leaning against the doorframe of his room.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“Is everyone asleep?” she asked.
“I think so. Mama might still be up reading.”
She nodded. “Everything’s fine. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “You did well today, but you could tell me if something was wrong.”
“Just a long day.”
The lie came with alarming ease. The harder lie would be the one she had to tell herself in order to get to sleep:Everything will be less scary in the light of day.
16
STELLA
Arden was not waiting for Stella when she woke up the next morning, or after she’d braided her hair and prepped for her swim.
In the cool seawater, she tried to avenge herself against the growing anxiety in her chest with every stroke of her arms.
Arden didn’t love her anymore. Arden didn’t even care that she’d been hurt. Arden didn’t know what her favorite flower was.
It couldn’t be true. If he didn’t know her favorite flower, then why had he brought her daisies when he first started walking with her in the mornings? But ever since Teddy had said it, Stella could not shake the fear that it might be true.
Fuck Teddy Savero. She would not have some bitter prince spreading poison in her mind.
Each twist of her body through the water was agony, her side still savagely sore from the already healed wound. Though her goddess bloodline meant she healed faster than normal people, even without actively using her magic, it didn’t prevent her from feeling pain. The fact that it still hurt so badly and that she had needed help from a skilled healer was a clear sign of just how close she’d come to dying.
On her walk home from the beach, the visual she’d been trying toavoid all morning refused to stay buried any longer: Victor Schwoebleman’s bloody body. She wondered about the timing and if Rett and his friends could have had enough time to kill Victor after seeing her and Teddy. She replayed the memory in her head of when the death whispers had started and peaked, but she’d been burning Drew’s hands when they were loudest.
