“Do you mean your declaration to court me?” Dyna raised her eyebrows. “I admit, I was taken aback.”
“Forgive me, I could not help myself.” Raiden worked his jaw. “You flinch every time he calls you his wife.”
She did?
Well, it hardly surprised her. The very reminder of who they used to be was a constant pressure against an invisible wound.
Dyna brushed the hair out of her face, looking away. “There is a past between us, I suppose. But?—”
“Before you say this is between you and him, I am aware I have noright to intervene. Nonetheless, I wish to continue the pretense of being your suitor.”
Dyna stared at him. “Why?”
“Because he hurt you.” A sharpness entered Raiden’s tone, and his hands curled into fists. “He hurt you when he abandoned you, and he hurts you more so when he is near. I hear how much your heart races in fear that he will hurt you again.” He loosened his fists and folded his arms behind his back. “It is against my honor to stand by while a lady is in need, most importantly one who is my guest.”
Dyna didn’t know what to say. Raiden wanted to help her because he felt indebted, but it was also more than that.
She canted her head. “Is this because of your mother? Because you believe her also abandoned?”
He opened his mouth to respond, then closed it with a resigned sigh.
Dyna nodded. “You have shared with me what it was like to watch her suffer because she was alone. How you must have hated not having the power to protect her.”
Raiden looked back at the camp in the distance. “When you brought us the news of my father’s capture, that was the first time I saw her break. Yet she didn’t allow me to comfort her. She sent me away, so she could weep in private. Now the veil of the perfect princess is back in place, for the court watches.” He scoffed faintly, but she heard the resentment behind it. “She suffers still but does so in silence.”
His mother sat beneath a velvet canopy outside of her tent, speaking with Eldred and Camsen with a polite smile. Gone were the tears from the carriage or any sign of distress. Sensing his stare, she met her son’s gaze, and her face brightened.
Seeing her struggles and how she faced it with such kindness, Dyna learned the definition of grace. “The reason she hides the vulnerable part of herself is not because of the court, but because of you. A mother’s instinct is to protect her child before herself.”
Raiden sighed dejectedly, and his shoulders slumped. “Am I a terrible son?”
She gave him a small smile, and they walked along the pool. “No, I wouldn’t say so.”
“As for my offer?”
“I appreciate it, my lord, but Cassiel is not someone to challenge.”
He hummed thoughtfully. “Due to his abilities, you mean. I have come to wonder how he wields such power. Those blue flames, the might behind them is…”
“Catastrophic.” Dyna remembered clearly the destruction of Cassiel’s power when he defended the Estate. He was much stronger now. “Seraph fire is a detrimental force. It burns through anything.”
“Except for the metal used in the wine cellar,” Raiden reminded her.
Dyna kept to herself that she was also immune to it somehow. “Skath metal is the only kind that can withstand Seraph fire.”
“And no other Celestial possesses this power? Or is it only because he is the High King?”
Dyna bit her lip, frowning. “The past kings didn’t wield Seraph fire. Except one, long ago. The first High King…”
King Kahssiel.
The name reverberated through her mind, and she felt her heart shake. The sense that she had forgotten something important came over her.
At the familiar flutter in her chest, Dyna looked up at the gray skies. They watched Cassiel slip out of the clouds like a drop of black ink. He was hundreds of miles above them, but she felt his gaze on her as well.
“He’s dangerous.”
“So am I,” Raiden said.
