“And what has it cost you?” she asked.
My jaw worked before I found the words. “More than I care to name,” I said, letting the weight of it close the door behind the answer.
Her brow furrowed, the first edge of heat flashing in her eyes. “That’s not an answer. This won’t only fall on you. If the cost waits, it waits for me too. And I have every right to know what else it could take.”
I held her gaze but didn’t answer.
I leaned back in my chair, letting the silence stretch, thinking to protect her by saying nothing more.
She pushed her plate away, the scrape sharp against the stone, and stood. Without another word she turned and strode back inside.
The balcony air was bright, but the chamber waited in shadow, the fire guttering low in the grate. She stopped there, the flames painting her in dim gold. When she turned, her eyes burned brighter than the firelight.
I slowly stood and followed her inside. “You don’t need to carry this yet,” I said quietly.
She froze; shoulders stiff. When she turned back to me, her voice was sharp. “Don’t you dare tell me what I need.”
I straightened, my own restraint cracking, voice low but edged. “You think you want the truth, but you don’t know what it will make of you. What it will strip away.”
Her chin lifted, eyes burning as she stepped back, putting distance between us until the firelight stretched shadows across her face. “Strip away?” Her laugh was short, bitter. “It’s already stripped me of everything but my life. My parents, my peace, my very name. And if this court takes more than I have nothing left to lose!”
“Maybe I should leave now, before it claims the rest.”
That tore the last of my restraint. I crossed the space in a heartbeat, until only a breath separated us. My hand braced against the stone beside her, my head tilted down to meet her eyes. Close enough that if either of us moved our lips would brush.
Her eyes blazed into mine, and everything narrowed to that fire.
My voice came out rougher than I meant. “Don’t think it hasn’t taken from me, too. This court has stripped me bare, again and again, until nothing was left.”
Her face shifted, just a flicker, but I saw it. The pain in my words struck something in her and she turned her head as though she couldn’t bear to meet me.
Carefully I lifted my hand, my fingers finding her chin. I tilted her face back toward mine, refusing to let her slip away from this truth.
“In all its history,” I said, my voice low and steady, “this court has given nothing but loss… until you.”
Chapter 20
Where The Silence Waits
CAELIRA
Ihad given up on sleeping properly days ago. Long before dawn the Storm Court breathed around me, even in the dead hours, quiet, constant, alive. Every sigh of wind against the windows carried an echo I couldn’t shake, his voice, his touch, the way the storm bent when he did.
I told myself to stop thinking about him. About the look in his eyes when he said my name, as if it cost him something. About the way the air had cracked between us, too charged to be coincidence.
But the harder I tried to shut it out, the more the room pressed in. The walls seemed to hum with the same restrained energy that lingered beneath my skin. The mark on my palm tingled, faintly warm, as if it remembered him even when I swore I wouldn’t.
I had started noticing small things over the past few days. Stormglass lanterns brightened when I passed beneath them. Once, a door opened before I touched it, the latch lifting with a soft click as if the castle had grown impatient waiting for me to decide.
I needed space. Air. Anything but the feeling of being caged in a place that felt like it had already known what I’d done. WhenI rose the floor was cold under my feet, the kind of cold that chased the last trace of sleep away.
I wrapped a cloak around my shoulders and slipped into the corridor, telling myself I only needed to walk, to move, to think. The corridor outside my room waited in darkness. Sigils traced along the stone faintly glimmered, like sleeping eyes. When I stepped across the threshold, something shifted.
I froze.
Then another pulse, stronger this time, rolled through the floor and up my spine.
Just the wind, I told myself. Just imagination.
