But it was a heartbeat.
My cheeks flushed. My skin prickled. I inhaled, and the air finally felt like it went somewhere instead of just sitting in my useless lungs.
Two hours. Maybe three. That’s how long the effect would last.
Hopefully long enough to survive the journey to his lands without him pressing his hand to my chest and finding nothing there. Long enough to reach the Veil, where human law couldn’t follow.
Four petals left.
I closed the box. Tucked it away. Stood.
The Raven King waited at the mouth of the alley, a dark shape against the fading light. Beside him stood something that had never been a horse.
It was shaped like one, with four legs, a long neck, and a proud head. But its body was made of smoke and shadow, black vapor held together by will alone.
Muscle rippled beneath a hide that shifted between solid and mist. Its eyes burned like dying embers, red and ageless and knowing.
“A Shadow-Steed,” the Raven King said. “It will not harm you.”
I wasn’t afraid of the steed.
I was afraid of the journey. Hours pressed against his body.
Hours of the petal’s false warmth warring with whatever cold he carried.
Ahead lay uncertainty. Behind I knew too well what waited for me.
I’d take uncertainty every time.
He mounted in a single motion that looked efficient. He moved like a man who had done this so many times the movements had become part of his body’s memory, as automatic as breathing.
He extended a hand.
I took it.
His grip was firm through the leather glove. Strong. He pulled me up in front of him as though I weighed nothing, settling me between his thighs with my back against his chest.
His arm wrapped around my waist and I recoiled. Not as cold as I’d expected. Warmth lingered beneath that frost-touched exterior, and against my dead flesh, even tepid felt like a furnace.
Every dead nerve ending sparked and misfired, sending confused signals to a brain that no longer knew how to interpret any temperature that wasn’t the grave’s emptiness.
It was too warm. It was wrong.
And beneath the discomfort, something else stirred, a pull toward his warmth, a hunger that wanted to reach out and take. I held it back, terrified of what I might do if I let go.
He leaned down, his breath stirring the hair at my temple, and even that was warm, warm and damp and alive in a way I would never be again.
“Do not tremble,” he murmured. “I do not bite.” A pause, weighted. “Unless asked.”
I closed my eyes, and the Shadow-Steed surged forward, and the Bride Market disappeared behind us.
OLWEN
We rode for the better part of two hours.
The world changed around us in slow gradations, faded and sickly.
First came the outskirts of the market town: crumbling walls of pitted stone, desperate faces peering from shadowed doorways, children with hollow cheeks watching our passage with eyes too old for their faces.
