His Book of Secrets, rumored to hold all his transgressions, all his lies, even the key to his power. Which was now—technically—in our possession.
I didn’t know the name of the asshole who’d hired us, never thought to ask Ryland, not that it mattered now.
Because once the king caught us red handed with his book…Varian winced as something heavy crashed above our heads.
“The king’s guards take ten minutes to get here from the Keep.”
“How…how much time do we have left?” I calculated how long it would take to get my sister out of the city, then return. We had to fight, we had to do something. “What if we hid the book and wiped our scents? I could ambush the guards on the street…”
“Won’t work, and you know it. Six minutes, now.” Varian hesitated, pushing my long black hair behind my ear. “I’m not telling you what to do; fuck knows that’s a waste of air, but don’t stay for Ryland. He’s not worth your life and neither am I. If you won’t do this for me, then do it for Ariel. Save your sister. You two leave this shithole city and never come back. Do you understand?”
I didn’t leaveBlackcastle that night.
I spent the next week in the king’s dungeons beneath the Keep, having my ribs broken by two over eager guards with anger management issues and fists like hammers.
And the Shadow King didn’t execute me and the rest of our crew in front of the Keep as expected. He sent us to the front lines as cannon fodder in his endless, thousand-year war against his brother to the west, where, over the next decade, I watched my friends die, one by one.
As for Ryland and Varian, they didn’t end up in the dungeons, or even in the muddy trenches with the rest of us.
Before informing me what my shitty fate would be, the Shadow King himself made a personal trip down to the dungeons to inform me they brokered themselves a deal and walked free, betraying their oath to the rest of us.
And except for Varian collecting a generous bounty from the Fae King for my sister’s capture fifty years ago, I never heard of either of them again.
1
LYRAE
From the shadows behind Queen Anaria’s throne, every bone in my body screamed for blood as the two big males strode up the center aisle toward the queen, heads held high as if they’d truly come to save us.
To me, they were nothing but dead males walking.
And I would be their executioner the first chance I got. Fuck the judge and jury part. Fuck the part where I told myself the past mattered, because the phrase blood was thicker than water was nothing but bullshit.
These two would pay.
For deception and abandonment and for my sister.
A hundred years had passed since I’d last seen them.
A hundred years of wondering if they were dead or alive. Suffering or happy. Of wondering if they might come and save me from the muddy trenches and the gore and the suffering and of everything that came after.
A hundred years of crushing disappointment.
Varian Kronos hadn’t aged a day. With that playful cleft in his chin and not a single blond hair out of place, he was watchful to a fault, those keen gold eyes assessed the soaring vaulted ceiling, the fifty-foot-high windows framing the majestic mountain range, calculating, no doubt, the value of every last item in this room.
The Citadelle was thousands of years old, the glittering crown jewel of Tempest, the capital of New Valarian, the proud symbol of a realm reborn from the ashes. This gilded throne room was a long way from where the three of us had begun our thieving careers in the rotting slums of Blackcastle, two hundred miles to the east.
Only I would notice the miniscule shift in Varian’s expression when he entered, that practiced, smooth expression turning to awe when he took in the formidable royal court positioned around Queen Anaria like an impenetrable shield.
Shifters and seers, generals and mages. Dragons and wolves.
All of us fiercely loyal to our young, idealistic ruler.
All of us willing to lay down our lives for her.
Why does such a powerful female need me? I imagined Ryland asking himself as he prowled up the center aisle like a conquering warrior, cape flowing behind him.And how much gold can I leverage out of this situation? Varian would add.
The very sight of Varian Kronos made me yearn for the old days when heads rolled at royal audiences, one after another. When I’d been the one to make them roll with a lazy swing of my sword and a bright-red spray of arterial blood.
