"You should have just killed her then,” Selnor hisses.
“If I killed everyone who was an inconvenience to me, you wouldn’t be breathing.”
“Luckily for me, you can’t.” Selnor gives a satisfied smirk and lets the woman with the tray of food feed him a bright red berry.
I angle my head to look at Zhoric, wondering at what Selnor means, but he pays me no heed.
“I’m all too aware.” Zhoric lets go of my hand then, tucking his arms behind his back. “Never the less, your request has been denied. I’m taking no steps to retrieve Kaisa from the Realm, nor do I ever intend to.”
“You’re giving them a powerful weapon against us, Zhoric.”
“The better to keep you occupied. It seems it worked well the other day. Almost had her then, did you?”
“Untilsomeonestopped my forces in their tracks. Our agreement includes no interference on your part.”
Is Selnor suggesting that Zhoric stopped Dyeus’s forces that day Ozias and I went over the wall? I’d heard a voice in my head, one I assumed was Ozias. My eyes widen. Could it have been Zhoric?
Zhoric touches the center of his chest, where the god scale resides. “Well, we can’t know for certain what happened out there. She is powerful.”
Selnors scowl deepens. “What wedoknow for certain is we need more rogues. We can’t keep using our own tomake into collectors. Having her there will only hinder our efforts and our numbers will suffer because of it. The women will mourn the loss of their sons in their lifetimes when they were meant to live forever. What will we do to placate the women when that happens?”
Zhoric’s chest hitches, like Selnor’s words struck him deep, but he covers it well enough with a pointed sniff. “Let the draconem bond and relieve some of the plight, then.”
“And you speak of me acting like a child,” Selnor guffaws. “Where are these old refrains coming from? With another elite dead you feel bold enough to test me?”
Zhoric considers Selnor for a long, perfuntory moment, his eyes cold. Then, he turns on his heel. “Take those humans back where they belong. Forget about Kaisa. Mourn your son. There’s nothing else left to do.”
Selnor’s glower could light a dry bush as he watches Zhoric walk away. I stay in the room as long as I can stand before the line connecting me to Zhoric pulls hard and I’m forced to walk away, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MY JAW ACHES from how tightly my teeth are clenched as I stalk after Zhoric down the cavernous halls of the castle. The sentinels have all risen by the time I walk by them, and Zhoric doesn’t need to look over his shoulder to be sure I’m with him. He waits by his open door until I’m through, then closes it behind me.
Striding past him, I walk across the wide room until I’m outside on the balcony. I know my body isn’t here, but it feels like it. I can’t catch my breath, my heart thrums in my chest, reverberating like a drumbeat across the ground. My emotions rest on the surface, riding a rising wave that will crash in on itself and cause destruction to anything in its wake.
Zhoric sets his elbows onto the railing beside me. I can’t feel the coolness of the stone undermy arms, but I feel like I can sense the heat of his body radiating off of him. I track the clouds drifting across the sky, luminous as they cross the moons. We stay like that for a time in silence, taking in the night.
“What are you thinking?” he asks, gently breaking the quiet with the soft timbre of his voice.
I shake my head as slowly and softly as his question before turning to him. “What are you doing? Mocking me? Confusing me?”
“I’m trying to get you to stay away, Kaisa.” The air stills around me as he locks me in his gaze—one filled with desperation. “I want you to keep coming.”
My fingers tighten on the railing so hard my knuckles turn white. “What does that mean?” I’ve never much enjoyed puzzles or riddles in the way Ninon does, but something about the mystery of him feels like it’s beginning to consume my every thought. I remember the bond and I grow frustrated—these can’t be my own feelings, and yet, from everything I know of the connection, it’s only supposed to heighten that which I already feel. It’s impossible.
“The other night you stayed with me while I…” He trails off, unwilling or unable to say what it is he does on the balcony every few nights.
“While you what?” I prompt.
“While I wastending,” he says, enunciating the word, “to what I need to do. No one has ever seen me like that before. Not even Thrace. I’ve always been alone. With you there, though, feeling my pain, seeing what I do on those nights, it made me feel…” His words leave him again, and I see the struggle to get them out with every swallow he takes to drum up the courage or conviction to say more.
“Feel what?” I know I should brush him off and tell him it was nothing, that I would have done it for anyone. That must be true. If I can stay at someone’s side in their pain, knowing they’re a monster, it must be true that I would do it for anyone. But I wouldn’t. Not for Selnor. Not for Alixor. And a horrible, spiteful part of me thinks I might not even do it for my own mother for all that she’s put me through—all that she neglected.
Zhoric’s jaw works as he looks down and away from me. “Like I wasn’t so alone.”
I don’t know what to say. Zhoric isn’t the man I supposed he was, and I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t believe the moment with Thrace or Selnor was an act. I think he was showing me more of himself. Is it so he can lead me like I’m meant to lead him? Or, is it because he’s developing feelings for me? I need to get the upper hand, but I’m unmoored, an uprooted stalk taken by the gale. I need him to feel comfortable around me, but I’ll have to take care to guard my own heart.
“I’m not much accustomed to loneliness,” I say in an attempt to turn the tide of the conversation away from dangerous waters. “Wherever I go, I’m surrounded by those who care for me. My village. My people.”
