So we just sat. Breathing in sync. The autumn sun warm on our skin and my children’s laughter painting joy over the jagged edges of everything else.
And for those few stolen moments, it was enough.
28
The castle halls stretched before me like the inside of some ancient creature’s ribcage, all arched stone and shadows that breathed. My boots thudded against marble that probably cost more than my entire life back home, and I tried not to think about how easily I’d gotten used to that. To wealth I hadn’t earned, safety I hadn’t fought for, warmth that didn’t come with a blade pressed to my throat as payment.
The garden moment with Varyth clung to my skin like smoke. His hand on my thigh. The way he’d leaned into me like I was the only solid thing in a world made of mist and lies. The quiet between us that had felt like understanding instead of the usual battlefield of words neither of us knew how to say.
But Merrick’s voice kept crawling back through my thoughts with all the persistence of rot.
Varyth isn’t who he seems. You deserve to know what you’re caught in the middle of before you make any irreversible choices.
Fuck tender moments. Fuck the way Varyth’s thumb had stroked against my leg like he was trying to memorise the shape of me. I needed answers, and I needed them before whateverfragile thing was building between us collapsed under the weight of secrets I was too stupid to demand.
Cindrissian would know. Had to know. He’d been at Nyxaria when Merrick was there, the venom in their exchange in that cave had made that abundantly clear. And if anyone in this gods-damned castle was going to give me unvarnished truth wrapped in cryptic bullshit and a smirk, it was him.
A servant appeared around a corner, young, maybe nineteen.
“Excuse me,” I said, and watched her nearly jump out of her skin. “Do you know where I can find Cindrissian?”
Her eyes went wide. “The Master of—” She caught herself, smoothed her expression. “His chambers are in the eastern wing. Third floor, end of the corridor with the stained glass window of the moon phases.”
“Thank you.” The words came out softer than I’d intended, remembering what it was like to be that young and that scared in places where you didn’t belong.
She dipped her head and scurried off like I might change my mind about being civil.
I found the corridor easily enough, the stained glass window was impossible to miss, all silver and deep blues that caught the evening light and threw it across the floor in patterns that looked like water. The door at the end was plain compared to some of the ornate nightmares I’d seen in this place. Dark wood, simple iron handle, no embellishments or warnings or whatever the fuck immortal fae usually put on their doors.
I knocked before I could talk myself out of it.
Silence. Then the cadence of footsteps that suggested whoever was coming had already known I was there long before my knuckles hit wood.
The door swung open.
Cindrissian stood there in what I could only describe as comfortable disarray. No formal court attire, no leather armour,just a simple black shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and navy pants that looked like they’d been lived in. His dark hair was slightly mussed, like he’d been running his hands through it, and those crimson eyes fixed on me with that familiar mix of amusement and assessment.
“Isara.” My name curled off his tongue with that infuriating smirk already forming. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“We need to talk. About Merrick.”
Cindrissian’s smirk widened into something that was almost genuine. “Well. This should be interesting.” He stepped back, gesturing into the room with theatrical flourish. “Please, come in. Try not to judge my interior decorating choices too harshly.”
I stepped past him into the chambers and promptly froze.
This was?—
Not what I expected. Not even close.
I’d been braced for cold. Clinical. The kind of space that screamed,I interrogate people for a living and keep my emotions in a locked box under the floorboards.Maybe some tasteful weapons on the walls, a desk covered in maps and correspondence, the aesthetic of controlled menace.
Instead, I walked into a space that felt almost...lived in.
A fire crackled in the hearth, casting warm light across furniture that looked like it had been collected over centuries rather than purchased as a matching set. An armchair upholstered in deep burgundy velvet sat next to a reading chair covered in worn leather, both positioned to face the fireplace. A low table between them held an empty glass and a book left open, pages crinkled from use.
Books. Everywhere. Stacked on shelves that lined two walls floor to ceiling, piled on the floor in teetering columns, scattered across surfaces like he’d been reading three at once and couldn’t be bothered to put them back. The covers were worn, the pages dog-eared, these weren’t decorative. These were loved.
Papers covered a large desk in the corner, filled with cramped writing I couldn’t read from here. A worn throw in shades of grey and blue was tossed over the back of the burgundy chair. And on the wall above the fireplace, a painting.
