I shift again, the leather groaning under my weight. See, this is what royal-born pricks like Rian and Berolt and even Vale himself never understand. They think peasants are simpletons desperate for their favor; but I grew up on the streets. Surrounded by these same people. They don’t need rescuing—they only need the damn royal boot lifted off their necks.
I pivot slightly to look out the window. They’re far, but I can see Sabine and Woudix in the garden, still flipping through that dusty old book. Her hair glints like sparks in the sunlight. From this distance, her words are hard to make out, but I can pick up the lilting rise and fall of her voice. It’s light. Curious.
I feel a tug in my chest. A tether between us. The bond tells me,she’s all right for now.
The refugee leader watches me. Waiting.
“You’ve done the difficult part already,” I say, bouncing my foot under the desk. “You kept your people alive. You didn’t give up even when the fae refused help. That tells me everything I need to know. You’ll have what you need to start over. I’ll speak to the castle steward today.”
I nod to dismiss them.
They leave holding their heads a little higher—and damn, if my own doesn’t feel a little lighter, too.
Maybe, just maybe, I can do this whole run-a-kingdom thing after all.
Each night, Sabine and I tumble beneath the sheets, making love and clinging to one another in our sleep until dawn. But during the days, we’re apart. A space stretches between us the more she trains, and I work with the river valley refugees. I reassure myself it isn’t a growing crack between us. Hell, she still drinks my blood for breakfast. Falls asleep with my cock inside her.
But I can’t shake the way Woudix looks at her.
Hungry, plotting.
For more than just her body.
He hovers too closely during lessons, smirks too easily when she missteps. And she—gods, she laughs, too. As if she’s forgotten what we both know.
The fae are fucking liars.
Before the Gloaming, Sabine used to say the same. She would spit the word “fae” like it burned her tongue. But now, she makes excuses for them, says that Woudix has shown her amazing sides to their powers that could help people.
It frightens me how easily her doubt is slipping through her fingers. I try to remind her of everything we've seen: the bodies,the betrayals, the knife in her own chest. But she only sighs and cups my face and says I'm tired.
So, while she's training with Woudix, I start to walk the castle halls and listen at keyholes. After all, someone has to figure out what’s really happening in Volkany, and I seem to be the only candidate. I want to know therealfacts about the fae, not the cleaned-up myths they spoon-feed to Sabine like honeyed milk.
Unsurprisingly, the damn castle is locked down like a prison.
Fortunately, I know a lock-picker.
Getting help from the forest mouse is a slow, maddening process. I can’t talk to animals like Sabine, not even with our acolyte bond. Still, that hasn’t stopped them fromtryingto communicate with me ever since her Awakening. Nuthatches dive bomb my head. Caterpillars fall from their silken threads to land on my shoulder. Like they fear how Sabine is changing—like they wantmeto do something.
In an attempt to communicate with the forest mouse, I draw questions in the dust, pantomime like a lunatic, and all the while the damn furball just twists her head and stares.
But after days of this, the mouse finally scurries to the door, then pauses to look back at me as if to say, “Coming or not, asshole?”
“Coming,” I mumble.
She leads me through a first-floor hallway in the Stormwatch Tower wing, whose dusty floor appears to have been long overlooked by the maids. We pass through archways thick with cobwebs. At an iron door, the mouse climbs thick bolts to reach the lock. A few quick maneuvers with her deft paw, and the latch clicks.
The door groans open, breathing out a gust of ancient air.
We descend uneven stairs lit by a single candle flickering in a wall sconce, burned so low it’s nearly dead.
The air is stale down here. Cold in a heavy, still way, as though it hasn’t felt a breeze in a hundred years. Down, down, down I follow the mouse. Fuck, how deep do these stairs go? Finally, the mouse reaches the bottom and disappears down a lightless hallway, vanishing into shadows.
I toy with the idea of going back for the candle, but I don’t want dripping candle wax marking my path, giving away the fact that someone was down here.
Fortunately, my night vision gradually adjusts until the shadows are clear but drained of color.
Impossibly, we head evendeeperthrough the tunnel, until I can hear the Ramvik River rushing outside the heavy walls. Moisture drips down the ancient stones. There are no more bricks here. This passage is hewn directly into riverrock, strange blast marks that couldn’t have come from any human pickaxes.
