“Not to me,” I counter. I feel my blood boil at his tone but lower my voice a smidge, though I’m sure that those closest can still hear me. “You can’t control everything, Roshan. Stop thinking that you know what’s best for me or that you know better. I am perfectly safe.”
His eyes narrow when steam pours from Razulek’s nostrils. “Are you?”
“I am safer with him than any of your militant guards.”Or with you for that matter...I don’t say those words, but I feel them like lead ballast tearing through my heart. When did I no longer feel safe with Roshan?
From behind his cousin, Aran steps forward, and the azdaha releases a bone-chilling growl of warning. At the king’s short nod, my stomach dives. “Aran, don’t hurt—”
But it’s too late.
The runes on Razulek’s collar and cuffs glow from red to a sickly yellow. In the same moment, a savage paroxysm rips through our muted link, making my spine bow from the agonizing force of it. I whimper, eyes darting to the azdaha, whose wings are curled down, his entire body shaking.
“Stop! Aran, stop! You’re killing him. He’s already weak. He won’t fight back!”
Razulek whines as he cowers and finally crumples into a shuddering heap. The bracers don’t only limit his magic, I realize thinly. They are designed to inflict nerve damage, packing enough of a punch to render a massive beast useless.
Belatedly, I realize that if he hadn’t throttled our connection, I would likely be in a similar state. Razulek is no longer moving, his huge body twitching uncontrollably as a strangled sob bursts from me. The smell of charred flesh fills the space, the jadu collar continuing to blister the already patchy scales at his neck. He keens in agony.
Gods, why won’t theystophurting him? I have to do something!
My own runes burst into light, my simurgh roaring at the barbarity.
A tornado of air magic from one of the runecasters slams into me from the back, knocking me to my knees as if I’m a secondary threat, and I scramble groggily to my feet, feeling like my spine has been snapped in two. A feral growl emerges from the nearly unconscious Razulek that lifts the hairs on my neck, and his tail slashes in a burst of strength. It catches the man who struck me in his ribs with the barbed end, and within seconds, molten red boils spread over the man’s skin.
“Take the beast down now!” someone commands. Hamid, I dimly recognize.
No.I feel my magic surge, snaking between the bodies before me in gleaming ribbons, on the verge of incapacitating them all.
Roshan’s gaze darkens. “That is treason, my love,” he whispers so softly that I almost don’t catch it.
Half delirious with pain, I scoff. “What will you do, Your Majesty? Lock me in the dungeon? Put me in straps like a horse to be broken?” My throat tightens as I stare at the heaving azdaha. “Or fit me with a jadu collar like his?”
“Enough of this nonsense. Cease this ridiculous display.” The king’s eyes spark with anger, and I recoil at his frigid tone, my heart trembling at a stranger I suddenly don’t recognize.
“Tell your guards to stand down. I don’t want to hurt anyone.Please.”
My magic thunders in my veins and I struggle to rein it in. Razulek is near death, his pulse too faint to take much more, and with weapons pointed at us, my simurgh wants nothing more than to eliminate the obvious threat.
An imperious stare bores into me. “I saidenough,Starkeeper.”
Starkeeper.NotSuraya,notSura,notmy starling.
My heart fractures.
Not so long ago, my gardener-prince turned king would have dismissed everyone and taken me into his arms, no matter how upset we were. He would have kissed me, stroked my cheek with his calloused fingers, whispered words of reassurance and affection. Soothed me, trusted me,lovedme enough to know that I couldneverhurt him.
But this king with the dead eyes doesn’t move.
“Roshan.” His name emerges as a faint plea.
But my gardener is gone, and the king of Oryndhr is cold, that shadowed brown gaze so devoid of empathy that it’s an arrow to my chest. His answer is in his rooted stance and stony silence.
My instincts are screaming for me to leave before things get worse and before I do something I regret. I need to go home, back to Coban... to the last place I felt safe.
The beginnings of my portal begin to form, sparking into an oval shape. I ignore the gasps. The only reason I haven’t created one before is out of deference to Roshan, as well as a lack of practical experience.
Portal magic is dangerously precise. But I’d rather risk ending up in the middle of a lava pit in Droon than stay here a second longer.
“I’m leaving,” I whisper. “Don’t try to stop me.”
