With a final squeeze to my palm, Emi retreated into the darkness of the corridor, leaving me alone with my tormented thoughts.
Lyra already feared her craft. To tell her the fate awaiting her, without a means to free her from it, would be cruel. I wasn’t certain that was the only truth Emi meant, but it was the one that mattered most.
The more Lyra used her magic for the greedy purposes of kings, the more they devoured the goodness of her own soul.
36
Lyra
There was a great dealwrong with me. Remorse and heaps of guilt should’ve plagued my thoughts, but my mind could not keep focused on Tomas Grisen. Instead, whenever the panic rose, I drifted to warm hands on my skin, lips against mine, the hardness of his body.
One finger absently twirled a lock of my hair while I sipped a bit of rose tea. Across the morning meal, Edvin taunted Kael over his drunken, reckless desire last night to confront Baldur’s disrespect of his half sister during the revel.
Astra was young and likely hoped to find a warrior lover during her visit to Stonegate.
I chuckled through the exaggerated tale and took another drink. Baldur the Fox likely didn’t even understand how to kiss a woman. No mistake, he would not understand the delicate balance of softness and passion, how to torment a body with only his hands, no words spoken.
I was not convinced Astra would ever find such qualities in a man, for they were owned by Roark Ashwood.
The hint of a grin played over my lips. I slipped back into the clean scent of his skin, the scrape of the stubble on his chin.
Until the peace was shattered by a missive delivered by a palace steward when he took away our plates.
“What’s that, Ly?” Kael tossed the belt holding his seax over one shoulder.
I read the missive under the table. It was a summons from the king to join him in his wing once all the other guests took their noon meals amid the games and entertainment in the courtyards.
My heart fell to my feet. I blew out a long breath and forced a smile. “Nothing. I merely need to perform for the Myrdans while you lot get to enjoy besting the Stav in ax throwing. Kael, if you do not win, I’ll never speak to you again.”
He scoffed. “I was practically born with an ax in hand.”
Edvin chuckled and clapped a hand on Kael’s shoulder, challenging him to a friendly competition before the actual games began. I feigned a grin, tickled one of Edvin’s daughters beneath the chin, and slipped his middle girl an extra sweet bun beneath the table.
I was well practiced in burying my disquiet behind false grins and laughter.
If I did not, those I loved would see the cracks in the facade; they’d see the fear I carried that day after day, the deeper I was rooted here in Stonegate, the sooner the king would discover I was not his ally.
Now I feared what I stood to lose if Roark discovered the same.
A bulky Stav Guard escortedme to the king’s wing of the palace. From open windows, laughter and chatter filtered through the somber corridor.
The guard had a rounded chest and protrusions on his skull that appeared almost horn-like. Soul bones. He was a melded Berserkir, but there was an emptiness about him I hadn’t seen in the younger guards I’d first melded.
The paleness of his eyes was cold and distant, and his mouth seemed permanently set in a stern frown.
He did not bid me farewell when the door to the first sitting room was opened, did not address me in the least. In truth, he seemed wholly aggravated with the air I breathed, and every time his gaze looked my way, his grip tightened around the hilt of his sword until his knuckles turned white.
Glad to be rid of him, I hurried into the open room.
There, the queen, King Damir, Prince Thane, Princess Yrsa, and her parents were all standing near the open hearth. Another man, dressed in a rich emerald tunic, with silver hair shorn close to his scalp, glared at me down the hook of his nose.
My stomach twisted at the sight of Tomas. Nursed by a few palace healers with numbing pastes and oils to soothe toothaches, he moaned more furiously than he had last night.
No doubt, he made the whole of his agony worse than it seemed.
Fingertips brushed across the curve of my back. I startled, then nearly crumpled in a fit of relief. Like a phantom, Roark stepped from the far edge of the room—a position I hadn’t seen—and stood at my side.
I wanted to take his hand, squeeze the rough skin of his palm until his fingertips went numb.
