“Indeed,” I said, then hesitated before asking what I really wanted to know. “Do they ever… die?”
Soren’s head snapped toward me. A furrow appeared between his brows, faint but unmistakably wary.
“Is this about the…delivery the palace received?” he asked.
A shudder slid down my spine. The barrels. The heads. The smell I would never forget.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised that he already knew. Barrels of dismembered limbs were never going to be a discreet or well-guarded secret.
He nodded as if I’d spoken the thought aloud, and shards, perhaps I had.
“Nothing that gruesome stays a secret for long. And I make it a point to know when heads begin arriving uninvited.”
I closed my eyes and took a slow breath in, trying to force the memory out as I exhaled.
Soren’s expression was softer when I opened my eyes again.
“Anyone who serves their Court in that capacity understands the risks,” he continued. “Your spies were trained for what they encountered. They would have known the dangers long before they crossed into the Wilds.”
I pursed my lips. “You sound exactly like Draven.”
He let out a low, dry laugh, his eyes crinkling from the movement. “I’m sure he would be pleased to hear you say so.”
No. I’m not.Draven said through our bond, and I might have been amused if I wasn’t so irritated at the interruption.
Returning my attention to Soren, I shrugged. “I think he would be flattered, actually; but you didn’t answer my question.”
Soren hesitated for a moment, his amber eyes cleverly assessing me. I wondered if he would deflect again, if maybe asking him something like that here in this room with the weight of Nevara’s life hanging over him was the last thing I should have done.
But then he surprised me.
“You’re not really asking whether I’ve lost people,” he said softly. “You’re asking whether I know what it’s like to send someone into danger and then live with the knowledge that they didn’t return.”
I swallowed hard before answering him with a single dip of my chin.
“Yes,” he said, offering up a sad smile. “In the past. But I have since learned not to rely on communication that is so… mortal.”
I blinked at him, confusion knotting between my brows.
“What does that even?—”
A sharp pop cracked through the hearth. And I turned just in time to see the flames leap higher, arching subtly, purposefully, as though something inside them had stirred at the sound of his voice.
The fire coiled upward, its shape fracturing into brief, flickering patterns that felt unsettlingly intentional.
Soren didn’t look at the hearth, but his head angled ever so slightly, as if listening to a whispered report rather than the crackle of wood.
My breath caught.
Oh.
Oh.
A light flicked on in my mind, illuminating something I should have noticed ages ago.
I thought back to the flames he’d summoned in the gardens when we fought the Mirrorbane, and the stories Wynnie told me about the Frostdrake attack, and the way the fire in the hearth always seemed tobendtoward him, leaning in like an eager listener rather than an obedient weapon.
I’d assumed it was just the difference between Winter and Autumn mana, the natural pull between elements and the fae who wielded them…
