“Mine,” I said without hesitation.
She gave me a pert nod.
I didn’t deserve her.
But fates help me, I needed her.
54
ISI
“Iwant to share the burden with you,” I said.
“I can’t ask you to do that.” The raw emotion in Trew’s voice made my throat close off.
“Please don’t push me away.”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments before he sighed. When his arm tightened around me, and he curled forward to kiss my cheek, I knew I’d won. Not that this was a battle.
Or maybe it was.
He was king of this court. I was a runaway princess from another.
But she was my sister, and I knew Addie.
“I’d bet anything she volunteered,” I said.
He stilled.
“Addie’s smart. Conniving. And ruthless.”
Humor bloomed in his voice, and that eased my tension more than anything else could. “She got all that from you.”
I snorted, the sound whipped away by the wind. “Careful, Your Majesty. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
His chest rumbled with a laugh, a warm, solid vibration that chased away the sky-high chill. “It was. Don’t get used to it.”
I leaned into him, the dragon’s powerful glide a steady rhythm beneath us. The world unfurled in a tapestry of emerald valleys and silver-ribbon rivers. From up here, it was impossible to imagine the wasteland existed, that Skathes tore through places just like these. This was a land worth fighting for.
And Trew was a king worth fighting beside.
“There’s more,” I said, deciding to hold nothing back. “You know about Addie’s journal. It was in code, but Kerralyn was able to read it. She wrote that she was safe, that she’d found love here with your cousin.”
And then she was murdered. I swallowed but the horror of it wouldn’t go down. “How did she end up dead in my court if she was on a border mission?”
His golden eyes darkened, the easy humor replaced by the sharp focus of a king sifting impossibility. “Your father blamed us. You said a large bird delivered the body, that it disappeared with magic.”
Thebody.
“Magic’s forbidden in all the courts except yours,” I said. “What else would we believe? I can’t believe that now, but someone killed her. They dumped her…” I plunged on, wanting to tell him everything before I fell apart. “I also found a book about the Skathes in the library.” I winced. “Sort of found. It was inside a hidden room, behind a wall. I also…interfered with your library sentinels.”
His arm tightened around my waist, and he leaned in, his voice a low growl in my ear. “Are you telling me you broke something inside my castle,Amarissa?”
“I didn’t break anything.” Or maybe I had. “I…circumvented the wards.”
“You circumvented ancient, layered, sentinel-forged wards? How?”
I shrugged. “With magic. I unbound the threads, and the sentinels stopped trying to kill us.”
