Probably not.
But I still hate him.
Wade and Arran show up on the heels of Maia and Danica. I’m surprised by the pairings, even though I don’t say anything. Why aren’t Maia and Arran flying together? And Wade and Danica? That’s the way it always was when I was there, which left me with Kellan.
Wade can’t keep the smile off his face, looking so happy and satisfied that I have to ask what’s different. He flashes his new ring—mated to the older dragon shifter he met that night at the tavern.
I jump up, squealing, and throw my arms around his big, strong body. I squeeze him tight and feel the first moment of true joy since I woke up tied to that pillar.
Their visit ends without the same joy. Before they leave, they give me a note from Bale.
I’m eternally sorry. Please talk to me. I’ll meet you anywhere.
I fold the parchment back up, rip it in half, and return the pieces to them to give to Bale, pierced through with Embersol’s severed feathers. They didn’t regenerate, so her body finally dropped them. There’s a hole now in her colorful neck plumage.
I hope Bale sees the broken, bright-yellow feathers and weeps. I hope he somehow knows that Sol doesn’t make cute little huffing, warbling noises in her sleep anymore but wakes up squawking with nightmares, just like me.
Exactly one year into my blood reign, I give the Fanghaven crown to Rexton Hale. We make a whole ceremony of it at our mutual border, the audience huge, the stars brighter than usual, but I walk through it numb, barely hearing a word. We work closely together, and I know and rely on him now. He’s helped me build an army I can trust for Bloodwold and root out the rot that made crimson gold worth more than people’s lives here.
But no more. Trafficking is done. Raids are over. There’s blood commerce, not blood violence. And I still hate my new home.
Maybe I’d like Fanghaven better, but I don’t feel that it’s mine. Rannigan Bloodthief only wanted the vote he stole from me and an eventual heir to dominate the entire east. He wasn’t truly interested in Fanghaven or its strong, determined people who hated him and his ways. Rexton kept Fanghaven together and safe for two centuries and defended its borders, its traditions, and its vampires. He’s their king more than I’m their queen. Besides, the idea of living in the house where my parents and siblings were murdered makes my already cold blood run like ice through my veins.
I know it now, that corridor from my dream with the billowing drapes and the ballroom at the end of the long hallway. I’ve walked down it several times and had to force my feet forward, the echo of a happy past I barely got to taste layered over with the grisly memory of the massacre. I wish I didn’t remember, but I’ve learned that’s part of my starborn power.
Rexton asks me to marry him not long after the ceremony, wanting to join the vampire kingdoms in truth and in peace and rule equally. He suggests calling the new land Bloodhaven. I decline. We’re only vaguely related, so that’s not the problem. I’m pretty sure feeding off each other and fucking wouldn’t be a problem, either, but I don’t love him.
Sybil and Stuart arrive one rainy evening and don’t leave. They bring everything they own and sweep into my night-cold castle like it’s a perfectly fine home. It’s my second moment of true happiness since I woke up tied to that pillar. Now that they’re here, I don’t hate these black walls as much, and I take all the severed heads down. Rannigan’s is barely recognizable, and the flies are driving me crazy. I set up my chosen family in lavish quarters and make them head healer and head sorcerer immediately.
I guess I will see Sybil grow old and go blind. My premonitions don’t lie. They’re another aspect of my starborn magic and growing stronger by the day.
Which is why when I start to dream more and more often about making love to Bale in a room I don’t recognize, his strong arms around me, his body moving inside mine, and his amber eyes burning with passion, I can’t quite convince myself it’s a memory and not a glimpse of the future.
His betrayal constantly aches in me, cold like a winter night and hot like a blazing sun. I wish I didn’t love him still.
I see the night of the Fanghaven massacre and things from before it more clearly now. My too-good memory, even from my earliest days, shows me royal parties, laughing older brothers and sisters, and a beautiful mother smiling down at me. She had golden eyes and blood-red lips. My father had jet-black hair, just like me and my siblings.
The recollections are vague—I was tiny after all—but my starborn magic helps me understand how that awful night went, and sometimes, I still feel the blood of my family on me, the pain of Rannigan’s wedding bite, and the warmth of Bale’s inner fire turning utter terror into safe, exhausted sleep as we flew through the night. He held me close, far above the ravaged land as Bloodwold vampires looted, pillaged, and stole free people to keep or sell as blood hosts.
I know now that Rexton rallied forces and drove them out. It took years. But I was safe, high above it all in the thin air, rocked to sleep by the motion of flight, Bale’s body and blood keeping me warm.
Bale chose me and let the kingdom burn.
My fang-punctured arm must’ve bled on Bale’s damaged scales, maybe on one more than the others, giving Fyrestar my golden eyes. Bale could’ve healed instantly if he’d shifted, but enemy forces crawled below, he had me in his talons, and a long flight ahead. I’m the reason for his only scars. He waited until we were safely into Torridaig before he shifted, and by then, it was too late. His skin never perfectly healed, and neither did his scales.
And then he made our firebirds.
I saved the best for you. Closest to the heart.
Tears well in my eyes every time I hear his voice in my head. He planned it all. He created the Elite Wing for me—to teach me how to fight and protect me right under Rannigan’s nose. No wonder he took me straight out of school, trained harder with me than with anyone else, talked the strategies of monarchs with me and only me, and made sure I could think like a starborn queen.
Because I am.
For decades, if not centuries, I could’ve been helping Bale and Torridaig and innocent people in ways that had more impact than individual battles against fanatical werebeasts or blood-trafficking vampires. I would never have voted with Rannigan, even without knowing what he did to my family or how he forced marriage on me before I could speak.
But when Bale Cinderheart could’ve given me my seat at the Council table, right there in our own Drayke Mountain, he didn’t. He kept me in his bed instead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
