I jerk upward and head back toward my room. After eyeing my unappealingly lonesome bed, I arrow out of my quarters and toward my brother’s. I don’t even know what time of day it is when I trounce his door with my fists. All I know is that I desperately need an activity to channel my frustration.
Ilya isn’t alone, though. However, one look at my bedraggled mien has him buttoning up his shirt and instructing his bedmate to let themselves out. Without asking what ails me—surely because he knows—he accompanies me to the undergroundtraining room where Salom taught me how to wield my first sword, and where I taught Ilya.
Tonight, we spar with bronze blades instead of wood.
Tonight, I don’t go easy on him. Neither does he.
We duel until we’re both drenched in sweat.
As we chug down tall glasses of water ferried over by one of the palace guards, Ilya sends a burst of magic into my face, startling me. His devious smile makes me respond in kind—naturally.
“She’s coming back,” he says, after we’ve respectively splashed and blasted each other a few more times.
I sweep my hand over my forehead, springing my watered-down sweat onto the mats. “Of course, she’s coming back.”
What if she doesn’t, though?
What if the prophecy has changed, and the Cauldron now sees her finger bare of my ring?
He grips both my shoulders like I gripped his the day he told me Tiana was gone. “She’s your mate, Kostya. Mates cannot live apart.”
Guilt suffocates me. I order the guards to leave the room, and then I confess that Isla isn’t my mate. Though Ilya’s hurt at first, his indignance veers to anger when I offload more secrets. Anger toward Alyona, Svyato, and Ksenia.
He begins to pace. “Do you think our runaway sister knows about Mestyla?”
“Probably.”
He jams his fingers into fists.
“Ilyusha, Isla doesn’t know that Ksenia vanished, that Tiana is dead, or that the Volkovs are involved. Please don’t…don’t tell her when she comes back.Ifshe comes back.”
He purses his lips, then walks up to me and cuffs my shoulder.
“What was that for?”
“For being so dense, Kostya. And secretive. But mostly dense. That girl’s coming back. She’s mad about you.” Under his breath, he adds, “Gods only know why.”
I crack a small smile, the first since she left me.
Ilya drops onto the bench. “It’s a boon that you’re not mates. If you were…” His brow suddenly furrows. And then he’s emitting a hypothesis that sends my mind into a tailspin for days.
I lapse into a state of such frenzy that I bark at everyone I cross paths with, resort to moistening my throat with as much vodka as water, forgo meals, and spar with any willing partner until bloodshed.
I become a geyser about to blow.
A pitiless beast.
A moping shadow.
I’m so unwell that Ilya suggests I head to Luce with Izolda. But to head there and arrive in time for Isla’s birthday celebration, I’d need to be flown.
And to be flown, the necklace needs to come off.
I wrestle with the decision to remove it. In the end, I leave it be, and not because of concern for my survival or because of the promise I made Isla, but because I fear Ilya is wrong.
I’m not ready to find out whether my talisman is muting a mating bond.
Not yet.
