“Sylaira, I didn’t–”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” I hissed, crawling away from him and toward my best friend. With trembling fingers, I reached for her lids, lowering them so she appeared as if she were sleeping—at last.
Vaeron’s heat poured into me, his shoulder brushing mine. “I didn’t realize she meant to attempt to power share today.”
“Why didn’t you come sooner?” My voice cracked on the question that had slipped out of me before I could stop it. “Why weren’t you here? I called for you. Ineededyou.”
Strong arms wrapped me up. I went stiff, shoving at the cage, as salt pricked the back of my throat. Vaeron held firm, stormwood filling my nostrils. The tidal wave of grief crashed through me, too powerful to resist on my own, and finally, I stopped fighting him.
“I know.” His voice fractured on the words. “I know, little fugitive.” He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. And then, his pain flooded down our bond. The self loathing. The fury. The tremor in his chest betrayed what he so rarely showed. “I felt you breaking, but I was too far. Too late. As I always am when it comes to you.”
He turned me, forcing me to look at him. Our foreheads pressed together. His face blurred as more tears claimed space.
“I am so, so sorry, Sylaira. You are the only one I’d raze this realm to protect. And I failed you anyway.”
His confession shattered my heart into a thousand tiny raindrops. I collapsed forward again and sobbed. He held me like that, a storm of sorrow and regret raging between us. He stroked my hair, whispering soothing, affirming words. He squeezed my arms, grounding me amid the tempest.
Until eventually, the squall silenced.
I picked my head up, and he wiped away my tears. Kissed my swollen eyelids, then my forehead.
“I will arrange for Heraphia’s body to receive full rites and a pyre fit for a Korona,” he swore. “Are there any prayers or rituals she would have wanted?”
Because she was so young, her funeral should never have been a thought at all.
“Peace,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from crying. “She would want everyone to pray for peace.”
The word tasted like ash now. Was this the price the Goddess had told me I would pay? If it wasn’t…I didn’t know that I had the strength to bear what burden awaited me.
“Then I will find a priestess who can do that,” he promised.
He pressed his lips to mine, and I fell into it—willingly, desperately—because the alternative was replaying Heraphia’s last words and the way her power had consumed her.
Never had I wanted thisgift; the trauma of my first visions put me on that path.
But watching my sister burn out because of it?
That solidified the belief that Sight was a curse, more than a singular vision forced upon me ever could.
Vaeron peeled himself away, then hauled me to my feet. “Let me take care of you, Sylaira,” he murmured, reaching like he was going to heft me into his arms.
I nodded, too weak, too drained to protest. So he scooped me up, and I rested my head against his powerful chest. The steady beat of his heart was an anchor as we wound throughservant passages in this Goddess-forsaken palace of nightmares.
Until he placed me in our bed and curled around me like he alone could hold back the deluge drowning my soul.
He would raze the realm for me; I would become the maelstrom the monarchs could not survive.
The storm was still gathering inside me. Watching. Waiting. Working out exactly when to strike. But when it finally broke…
It would level everything in its path.
54
“Sylaira,” Vaeron breathed in my ear, his arms tightening around me. “You need to get up and get dressed.”
I groaned, my eyes stiff and swollen. Once again, I’d spent most of the night crying. My mate hadn’t protested in the slightest, not in the days that had passed since Heraphia died. Each time a sob slipped out of me, he was there, holding me tight, telling me everything would be okay.
He absorbed my rage. My sorrow. Mypain. He didn’t flinch as I blamed his sister, blamed him, for her death.
