“You could help,” Dorian argued as he cut the chest of the first.
“What do you need?” Grey asked.
“Three bags,” Dorian managed, pulling the first’s heart from his chest. He tossed the still beating muscle into Grey’s hands, and Grey nearly dropped it as he realized what it was doing.
“What—“
“Bags, Grey,” Aydra reminded him.
She watched her brother work, the determined expression on his face that she knew he’d earned while on his time with Draven vanquishing those in the village towns. Draven was pushing him to do this on his own, as she was sure he’d done while he and Dorian had been on the road together. Grey brought forward two more bags for them, and Dorian took them from his hands.
The blood spattered on his young features, sitting stark against his alabaster skin and large white blue eyes. His thick black hair was quickly matted, the tips of his bangs falling into his right eye. He had a firm clench of his wide mouth, teeth showing as he worked determinedly to get the heart out of the second Infi.
The ribcage broke, and Dorian pulled the heart out, pushing open the bag on the floor with his elbow. The beating heart dropped inside it, and he moved on his knees to the third.
—The Infi surged back to life.
Its shriek made Aydra jump.
The creature grasped onto Dorian’s cloak and yanked him forward. It snarled in Dorian’s face, saliva dripping from its pointed teeth.
“Dorian…” Aydra said slowly, not wanting to interfere if he didn’t need it.
“I’ve got it.”
Dorian resisted the pull of the creature, and—
His knife plunged into its neck once again.
She watched him take the last heart, as as the bodies lied limp on the ground, the rope around them unfurled. Dorian sighed and sank back on his knees, apparently willing his breaths to catch after having to wrestle with them.
“Look at that.” Draven gave Dorian a firm clap on his shoulder. “A king worthy of the crown not yet on his head.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
THE ORDEAL OF the Infi was exhausting on them. It was well past midnight by the time they wrapped the bodies up and stowed them away in the stables so they could take them to the Hills of Bitratus after the meeting. Aydra walked with her arm around Dorian back up the streets, and she sent him to bed, insisting he remember to wash himself up.
Draven didn’t speak as they walked back into the castle. Once Lex left their side, Draven turned as well, and Aydra stared at the back of his head as he descended down the hall.
“Where are you going?” she called.
“My room,” he said simply. “I shouldn’t like to think the Queen wants to consort with the enemy king now that she thinks I’ve unleashed terror in her streets.”
Her stomach knotted, and a sourness poured into her core. “How exactly did you expect me to react?” she said in a voice higher pitched than she realized.
Draven stilled, and when he turned to look at her over his shoulder, she saw a fear and surrender in his eyes that made her weight shift. Her breaths shortened, but she swallowed hard and turned the ring over on her hand.
“You once asked me a similar question,” she said slowly. “Did you not think such a thought would cross my mind?”
“I asked you that well before—”
“It shouldn’t matter when it was,” she cut in. She paused a moment, her body feeling numb of the positivity she usually felt around him, the equableness that normally filled her core. She felt as though her core were breaking, as though persons were stretching her in different directions all at once.
“I worried about this,” she managed under her breath.
“What?” he asked, turning full to face her.
“That we would be forced to one day choose between each other and our people. That the mistakes of our past kings would come between us—”
