I’d heard him climbing the stairs leading to the top of the highest castle tower, his footsteps too heavy to be hers, and I'd ground my teeth together.
She. Was.Refusingto come to me.
Again!
Merrick told me things were alright, that she was listening, speaking with him. She'd even allowed him to touch her.
Him. Not me.
Never me.
“My lord?” Surren shuffled his boots on the stone floor. “Did you hear me? I said that QueenReyla would not?—”
“Yes, yes, I did,” I snapped, spinning, my irritation a tidal wave roaring toward shore.
This man was the perfect choice to head up her guard, because he did not flinch at my scowl or the blast of my power.
“Where is she now?” I barked, though I already knew.
He blinked. “I'm afraid I cannot divulge her current location, Lord Lorant. You know this.”
I advanced on him, my hands lifting. “I am also her protector.”
“You are.” His chin lifted and his steely gaze met mine. “ButIam the head of her guard. No one, and I mean no one other than the king is entitled to this information.”
“Then go.” I thrust my hand toward the stairs. “Leave me alone.” Where I could wallow.
She wasn't coming to me tonight.
She would never come tome.
ButIcould go to her.
Surren retreated, his boots thudding on the stairs and along the halls at the base until I could no longer hear him.
I tugged in power and sent it back out, drawing in the night air around me, cloaking myself in it.
As I stomped down the stairs to the base of the tower, I built my fog, tugging moisture and the very ether itself from the cold walls of this stark, lonely place. I stalked through the halls, curling my fog in lazy tendrils, gliding it along the smooth floors. It wasn’t natural, not like the thin mist that whispered at the castle walls after a cleansing rain. No, this was all mine. I wove shadows with the dampness drawn from the air, thickening it, bending it to my will.
Each step I took made my irritation build, and I fed my anger into the murky gray. When I reached Reyla's floor, I drew my fog in, enfolding it around me—hiding me from view. The vapormuted the sound of my boots and concealed me. I was invisible. Quiet. Just as I intended to be.
If Reyla thought she could avoid me, she would find herself sorely disappointed.
I fed more power into the fog, and it thickened, swirling, pulsing in rhythm with my anger. She didn’t want to come to the tower? Fine. I’d go to her. While Merrick might coax her with soft smiles and horig-sweet words, I wasn’t made to beg. She would feel my wrath whether she wanted to or not, and she would respond tome.
Her guards didn’t deserve to feel the brunt of my mood, but neither did they stand a chance of stopping me. With my elemental aegis cloaking my shape, I slipped past Surren and the others stationed near her suite, their sharp-eyed watch not keen enough to track something as inevitable as the night itself. Their soft chuckles at some private joke faded as I reached the solid frame of her door without so much as a ripple in my stride.
Slanting out with my power, I created a sound on the other end of the hall. The scrape of a boot, then someone calling out for assistance.
“Go.” Surren waved to one of Reyla's guards.
The woman strode down the hall. “Who's there? Reveal yourself.”
Surren and the others took a few steps behind her, though they remained close to Reyla's door. With only one other suite on this level, and Merrick “asleep” for the night, they were justified in believing they could take their eyes off her entrance, if for only a few seconds.
I struck, cracking open her outer door and slipping inside her sitting area.
The remnants of her presence hung like static in the air, though the room remained undisturbed, with only a faint silver-bluish glow leaching in through the closed drapes to outline the cushions scattered on the furniture arrayed in front of the cold, empty hearth.
