I gasp, scrambling backward until my fingers clutch the gilded edge of the chair. A few long, pale strands have slipped free from the slicked-back bun knotted high on his head, falling across his gold eye. His face is all hard lines and barely leashed fury, canines bared, the runes carved into his knuckles glowing an ominous cobalt as one arm braces against the chair behind my head, caging me in.
Then his other hand reaches for me, but it is not me he takes hold of.
It is the book on my lap.
He snatches it by the spine and shakes it at me, the pages flapping helplessly.
“You hadno right,” he roars. “Do you hear me?No right!”
Then he commits the cruelest act I have ever seen him perform. Something so petty, so vicious, so deeply wounding that whatever fragile, misguided softness I’d begun to feel toward him shatters instantly.
He tears the book straight down the middle.
Rips it clean in half with a crack like breaking bone, and flings the pieces across the room.
Tears well behind my eyes as frost spills from his skin, drifting in cold ribbons through the air. I brace myself. I wait for the next thing he’ll break to beme.
I squeeze my eyes shut, breath trembling. Please let it be quick. Please, if he is going to shatter me, let it be painless.
But no blow comes. Only his ragged breathing, the cold rolling off him in violent waves that soak straight through to my bones.
“Go to your room,” he growls. “Pack your things. You are going to the Aurevault tomorrow. And you will never return.”
My eyes snap open. Aurevault. No.No. Not the mines. Not Vein Three, where the thing with my father’s voice waits in the dark, where its claws could wrap around me and drag me screaming into the black.
“My lord,” I stammer, choking on the words. “Please.”
“Get out!” he roars.
He’s too close. There isn’t enough space to stand without touching him, so I curl, slide under his arm and scramble over the side of the chair, hitting the floor hard on my knees. A tear breaks loose, but I swipe it away before he can see.
I lurch to my feet and run.
I tear through the stacks, but there are too many, endless aisles of towering shelves, twisting and splitting. My tears fall faster, blurring the rows into smears. I turn a corner blindly and crash into something stacked beside a bookcase. Wood scrapes my thigh as I stumble forward, and behind me, the tall stack of paintings topples.
One frame hits face-up.Through my watery vision, I meet the eyes of the woman painted there. A female with raven-dark hair and steel-gray eyes, beautiful and ethereal in a way that can only be Fae.
But there is no time to imagine who she is.
Not when I hear Luceran’s footsteps pounding after me, not when the cold begins creeping through the library, frost racing along the floor and devouring shelves a row at a time. Books freeze solid in an instant, transformed into glittering blocks of ice as his magic lashes out, uncontrolled.
I run faster, my heart clawing its way up my throat. Every turn is wrong. Every row a dead end. Panic scrapes up my spine until, finally, I see the door.
I sprint through the doorway, down the corridor, past the rose garden windows, up the stairs, to my room. To where I should have stayed.
But I do not crawl into bed. I do not bury myself under blankets. I crawl into the wardrobe instead and shut the door, wedging my feet against it so he cannot pull it open, even though I know it would not stop him. Nothing would.
I curl into a ball amid furs, and dresses and I cry. Every tear I have left, every one I have held back since the night he saved me on the lake. I cry until my throat aches, until my eyes burn, and I wait for morning.
For the day I will be sent to the Aurevault. For the life I will live in those mines because I could not resist a damned library. Because I could not resist a moment of wonder.
The hours crawl by and I do not move. Not when my stomach twists angrily, begging for food. Not when my back stiffens from being curled awkwardly in the wardrobe. Not even when my backside goes numb against the cold wood. I am not stepping foot out of this damned wardrobe, not after what he said, not after what he did, even if the world collapses around me.
Eventually, the handle clicks. The door of my room swings open. Through the thin gap between the wardrobe doors, I see a figure drift into the room. My heart stutters, and I instinctively brace my feet against the wood again, trying to keep the door shut. But thefootsteps aren’t his. They’re too light, too quick, and the air doesn’t sharpen with cold. Whoever it is, it isn’t Luceran.
“Girl,” Atilia calls as she steps inside. “Neve. Where are you?”
I hesitate, torn between answering and staying hidden. What if she’s here to drag me to the Aurevault on his orders? But she had tried to calm him, not fuel him. If anyone in this cursed place is on my side, even a little, it seems to be her. I lower my feet and push the wardrobe door open with a stiff hand. Atilia stands there, taking me in with a tilted head and an expression hovering between concern and disbelief.
