Lyrena winked, squeezed my shoulder, and went to answer it. Cyara handed me the shadowvein tea, though I doubted I would need it anytime soon. Arran’s beast may want to fuck me, but the male had looked at me with such contempt.
“He wants to see you,” Lyrena’s voice cut into my self pity parade.
I blinked.
He. Arran.
My eyes slid past Lyrena to the liveried guard standing in the arched doorway.
He didn’t even bother to come himself.
Lyrena turned back to the guard expectantly. He eyed her, then me, clearly hoping he’d be allowed to escape now that he’d given my Goldstone Guard his message.
We all stared at him.
The other two were surely waiting for me to speak.
The guard’s hand twitched. Then his jaw.
“His Majesty the High King requests that her Majesty join him in the study,” he repeated. No one moved. “Promptly,” he added, unable to hide his cringe.
His Majesty the High King requests that her Majesty join him in the study.
I could feel the pull in my chest, that incessant demand. I’d learned to trust it, to use it to determine how far away Arran was at any given moment. He was in this castle, maybe even in this same tower. No more than a floor or two away.
His Majesty the High King requests that her Majesty join him in the study.
We may as well have been on different continents. In different realms.
Cyara moved first. She reached for the heavy fur mantle she’d acquired in an ongoing attempt to keep me warm in this frozen hell.
I reached for my blades instead.
“Tell Arran that if he wishes to speak to me, he can come find me himself. No one summons the High Queen of Annwyn.” I watched the color drain from the male’s face as I strapped on my leather harnesses, then my belt with the scabbard and dagger.
Maybe it was cruel.
But if I stood in front of Arran just then, I did not know how I would keep myself from coming apart. And that could not happen. Not now, with the safety of Annwyn hanging by a thread.
I had already lost my mate.
I would not lose my kingdom as well.
43
ARRAN
“She saidwhat?”
“If he wishes to speak with me—”
“I heard you the first time,” I growled, slamming my fist down on the broad wooden desk. The oak groaned beneath the force but did not give. Less could be said for the messenger quaking before me.
He’d been sheet-white when he re-entered the chamber, one of my father’s unused studies. The place I’d chosen to meet my wife again, on my own terms.
Wife, mate, queen.Fuck. It was too much. My head was already pounding.
I’d chosen to focus on the latter—queen. High King and Queen of Annwyn. Surely there were matters of state to attend to. Hence, the desk. I could not imagine Uther Pendragon, the former High King, ever sitting at a desk.
