In the early hours of morning, I still couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning on my firm mattress, which I’d dragged to the floor of my sleeping quarters again.
Belatedly, I’d realized I hadn’t minded sleeping on a raised bed with Alaryk. Those nights, as long as his heat had been seeping into my skin and his presence had been strong and certain behind me, I’d felt perfectly content and at peace, lulled to sleep by his even breaths.
A sharp pain in my chest made it hard to breathe, and so I tried to forget, rolling again on my mattress, feeling the hard press of stone just beneath it.
I wondered how much longer it was until dawn. I could get the morning chores done now because I knew that sleep wouldn’t come. Maybe it would exhaust me enough so I wouldn’t constantly think of Alaryk’s magic, like a striking serpent, seeking in my mind. It wasn’t the magic that made tears drip down my temple, onto the pillow. It was the betrayal. The shock that he would willingly and knowingly do something that he knew would hurt me.
I’d hidden something from him, yes.
But he’d gone too far.
He’d thought he could control me. Thought he could control me like he’d controlled Kamora.
The realization was heinous. Cutting. It would fester and ache for a long time, especially when my heart had been involved. Especially when he had splintered it apart with a single decision.
Tap, tap, tap.
A series of soft thuds at the window. My breath hitched, and I tilted my neck back sharply to peer through the darkened glass.
Was it him?
I cursed myself for thinking it might be Alaryk. Come to apologize. Come to…take me back to his bed, when all I wanted was to forget that this night had ever happened. I wanted him to wrap me in his arms and tell me that it’d just been a nightmare, that it hadn’t been real, that he would’ve never done that to me or that he didn’t think of me as a whore, slipping into his furs for his secrets. That he didn’t think I was as wretched as Kamora…a vicious person who’d hurt him, who’d preyed on him, who’dusedhim.
A weak part of me hoped for that. That none of it had happened.
But the face I spied through the glass, cut sharply in moonlight, wasn’t Alaryk’s.
My heart gave a lurch when I shot straight up, my mind reeling.
Ryak.
He tilted his head, his meaning clear. He was out on the courtyard behind the hatchery. Had likely scaled the half wall.
Dread crept in my belly. For a moment, I debated even going out there. For a moment, I debated waking Tarkosh, who would undoubtedly find Alaryk. Ryak could be captured again tonight.
I could prove my loyalty to the people who I called my friends.
Not to a murderer, who’d threatened my family.
But it was the memory ofthatthat had me quietly tugging on my boots by the door…and sneaking out into the hallway, heading toward the bolted door that led to the courtyard. I only prayed to Kakkari that no one was awake at this quiet hour, in the dead of night.
I winced when the door hinges creaked, but I left it open a smidge after I wiggled through the crack.
Ryak was waiting for me beneath one of the trees, away from any of the other hallway windows, just in case someone woke and decided to peer out at the moonlight.
And he wasn’t alone.
Nevin was with him.
There was a tightness to Ryak’s face, a mottled bruise over his cheekbone that had me thinking his guards might’ve taken their frustration out on him during his imprisonment.
I felt like I was walking into my own.
“Listen to me carefully,” Ryak said, his voice hushed like a whisper but somehow even more frightening. “After I’m done speaking, you will go back inside the hatchery and you will take three eggs.”
I stiffened, all the blood rushing from my face as I felt rooted to the stone beneath my feet, unable to move. Behind him, Ny’am seemed to spin.
“One I will carry. The other Nevin will carry. And the third you will carry,” Ryak said softly.
