What is the point of this?The strain in my voice was impossible to miss, even in the privacy of our own shared bond.
Veyka licked her lips.I can feel your need through the bond. You want me.
I wanted to suck her tongue into my mouth. Fuck. I had to get control of myself.Wanting you is not the same as trusting you.
I felt her bravado flicker. The next thought was softer.We’ve built a foundation on less.
What does that mean?
You used to hate me. And now?
The need to shift was becoming stronger with every beat of heat and meaning between us. Once I was in my fae form, I did not know what I would do. But I hardly trusted myself. And even though my wolf wanted to, and the bond in my chest practically demanded it, I could not quite bring myself to trust her.
That’s what I thought.
I couldfeelher sadness. Not just sadness, but pain. Pain that I recognized. I could not remember. But I knew what torture felt like.
And maybe I was just as much a monster as the world thought, every inch the Brutal Prince. Because instead of offering the female who was my mate, wife, and queen comfort, I let out a thought that should have stayed buried.I did not invite you to share my mind.
Veyka stumbled backward a step. I might as well have struck her. For just a moment, I glimpsed the devastation on her face. But that was all she allowed me.
For all that I valued my control, it was Veyka who showed all the restraint as she shut off my access to her feelings, to her soul.Your beast did.
Don’t worry, Arran. I won’t bother you again.
She completed the exodus by turning and stalking away into the darkness, depriving me even of the sight of her. Her golden knight shot me a look that promised painful death before following her queen. When there was no sight of Veyka left, not even an outline in the dark, not even a hint of primrose and plum that only my beast could detect, only then did I shift.
The camp slowly resumed motion around me, but I stayed still, fixed at its edge.
I had what I wanted. Then why in the Ancestors-damned hell did I feel so bereft?
51
VEYKA
We’d traveled for months with little rest in our quest for Avalon. When I was in Baylaur, and later in Eilean Gayl, I spent hours each day in the training ring. But the three days journey between the lake-locked castle and the amorite mines on the edge of the Split Sea felt like they lasted foryears.
Being so close to Arran, yet having this yawning void between us… it left me drained at the end of each day. Honestly, I was drained by midday. Lyrena had taken to supplying endless hot tea in the special cup that Osheen had fashioned for me all those months ago, magically keeping the tea warm even as the snow thickened beneath our feet. I suspected she’d appealed to Vera for the brew. It wasn’t poison, so I didn’t ask.
Lyrena shared my tent, but she always took the first watch of the night. Which meant I was alone. The exhaustion should have helped me sleep, yet each night I had still been awake when Lyrena crawled into the tent hours later.
One more night, and we would arrive on the coast. That, according to Vera and Kay. I’d asked Barkke about the terrestrial lord who held the amorite mines, but he’d been useless, as usual. Only commented that the male had killed the previousguardians about a year ago, snuffing out a lineage that had stretched back thousands of years. I was preemptively exhausted by the negotiating that awaited me.
One more night of staring up at a tent, shivering in the cold. A thousand more nights until my mate was here to warm me. Maybe. If I was lucky. If he ever remembered. Or decided to love me again, despite his missing memories.
Fuck.
I rolled over to my side, trying to find some sort of comfort. Even the padding of my curves was not enough to make the hard ground comfortable.
A painful lump poked into my back. When I’d shared a tent with Arran, I’d barely noticed the rocks beneath our bedroll. I was much too distracted by the warm, hard male pressed against me.
I was depressingly used to sleeping with lumps in my back after all the traveling. But this one was particularly sharp and stabby. I dug around, shifting up onto an elbow and arching my back, trying to shove it out of the way. My fingers brushed against it, just out of reach, only to find it was smooth. My fingers closed around the column of faceted quartz, realizing before I saw it what I held.
The communication crystal.
Cyara had suggested I bring it with us so that I might stay apprised of their work with the priestess at Eilean Gayl. Another carefully laid piece of her plan to convince me that Percival and Diana could, if not be fully trusted, then at least used. She’d been terrifyingly clever in how she presented that proposition. If we survived the succubus, Cyara would become one of the most cunning and effective courtiers Baylaur had ever seen. She’d even convinced Percival to fully explain how the crystals functioned, step by step, as a show of good faith.
I pulled myself up to sit, holding the crystal in my palm. The light from the fire Lyrena kept burning all night in the center of the camp was scant, but I supposed I did not need light to hear.
