I hadn’t slept.
I rarely did, but last night I hadn’t even tried.
Sweat covered me, even though the yard was still shadowed from the rising sun. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see Owain’s stricken face, hands clutching his throat. With wide eyes and trembling hands on his back, Isca stood between us, not backing down even while the monster was in control.
I had gone too far.
A show of force had been acceptable. Expected, even. A conjured weapon in the presence of a cursed prince? Banishing Owain from Darreth entirely would’ve been a legitimate action on my part. But I hadn’t stopped there, had I?
The monster never stops until it tastes death.
I’d gotten too close to that destruction. It was fortunate that Owain hadn’t unleashed the dark power his bloodline could summon on me,on—gods forbid—her, even if only accidentally. I owed him gratitude for his composure in the face of my complete lack of it. By the gods, I should’ve thanked him on my knees for it.
I snarled and slammed the blade into the dummy’s neck. Straw burst forth in a shower. I yanked the weapon free and circled again.
What I’d done was unsettling enough. Yet how she’d handled it was…queenly.
Isca had stared straight through my curse, past the rage, past the creature I became. She hadn’t recoiled, hadn’t begged. She’d commanded me. Commanded the curse.
And we’d both listened. That thought had consumed me all morning, and the more I considered it, the more of it I craved.
There was also the magic she’d used… That feeling of regret she’d cast over me like a cloak of mourning, not understanding that it was one I carried constantly. She’d looked so surprised when I hadn’t flinched at it. Which was exactly why I couldn’t let her in. What I struggled with daily, she viewed as excessive, as something she could use as a weapon.
Even so, that she could replicate the feeling so perfectly meant she was no stranger to the emotion. My heart wanted to take that as a sign that I didn’t have to be alone in bearing the burden of my curse, but experience had taught me otherwise.
Still, something in me refused to let the thought go. I knew I wasn’t safe for her, but she’d shown me something I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It wasn’t just her power or the way she’d held her ground against me. When others would’ve spat my name like a curse, her voice had held a warmth that revealed a rare type of understanding. Even as her tone had turned cold with command, her eyes had softened…like I was still worth saving.
And that was the problem. I hadn’t wanted anyone in years. My curse had transformed desire into risk and any form of intimacy into harm. But Isca…
She made me want when I’d wanted nothing other than a release from my torment for a very long time.
I didn’t know what to make of her, but it was becoming harder and harder to keep running away.
I swung again, and the dummy’s head toppled clean off.
“You’re murdering straw, Emrys,” came a voice from the edge of the yard, followed by the sound of a score of sabatoned feet. “Should I be worried? Or grateful it’s not my lungs this time?”
I turned. The barb was hidden behind Owain’s smile, but it still landed. I’d earned worse.
He stood just beyond the railing, arms crossed, brow raised in amusement. Six guards flanked him. A bit excessive, but probably something they hadn’t given him a choice about after my poor showing the night before.
Already stripped to the waist, he looked every inch the warrior he was. A thin sheen of sweat clung to his collarbone like he’d spent time warming up, a few shadows of his magic danced along his skin, waiting to lash out if I so much as flinched the wrong way.
Had I been so distracted by my own self-loathing that I hadn’t heard him training on the other side of the yard? Even in her absence, Isca made me lower my guard.
Dangerous.
“I came to apologize again,” Owain said, jumping down into the fighting ring. “I wasn’t thinking. I have no desire to insult a man in his own hall.”
I paused, watching him for any signs of dishonesty. Seeing none, I nodded once. “Apology accepted.” The next words scraped my throat raw. “I regret…my excess.”
He gave a slight smile. “I half-expected to find myself flung across the courtyard on my approach.”
“You’re not worth the effort, Shadowborn.”
“Still the same charmer.” Owain grabbed a wooden sword from the rack. “Swords and shields? Or just blades?”
He even joked with ease. He was skilled, to be sure, and he wore his crown comfortably like Nisien. It was the kind of smoothness that made people—made her—look twice.
