Did Aderyn want to marry me?
My heart fluttered at the thought. I’d get to keep him by my side forever. No more of this traveling back and forth across all of Llangard while I was stuck at the Spires.
I’d taken him to bed. If a commitment was what Aderyn wanted, he could have it. I’d be happy to give it. I didn’t want to keep Aderyn from his family, but they were welcome here, and I’d hardly lock him up in a tower. He could come and go as he liked, of course, but I hoped if we were married, he’d want to stay close more often.
That would be so wonderful.
Only... there were things Aderyn didn’t know about me, secrets I’d kept from him as long as we’d known each other.
And perhaps this wasn’t about me at all. Aderyn might simply wish to marry.
He spent so long away from Atheldinas that he could’ve met someone else. It wasn’t impossible, and it was presumptuous of me to think that he wanted anything that binding with me. He kissed me, and we had... but that was—that was just us.
And I was, no doubt, trying to excuse my duplicity by pretending I did not know his true intentions.
Aderyn was my best friend. If he’d longed for another, I’d have known of it. Not once had I seen him smile at another in a way that threw into question the way he felt about me, but if we were to proceed with something more, I would have to come clean about everything.
If he wanted me, he deserved all of me—the full truth. Once he learned it, he’d never forgive me.
I couldn’t forgive myself.
A sudden gasp gripped me, but try as I might, my tight throat kept me from inhaling the air I desperately needed. I stumbled back, clutching my chest, and claws pierced my doublet and it tore as my body changed. I rushed away from Tristram’s office as a familiar pressure gripped me and my mind buzzed, caught inthe space between fear and the scattering of mice claws in every tiny nook in the Spires.
Mindless, I fled to the end of the corridor, to a tower that cut down and down and down into the earth in a narrow, steep spiral staircase. I took the stairs down, until the dark of the unused space swallowed me up.
At the bottom, I pressed myself into the shadows beneath the stairs and tried to breathe. I was safe down here. No one would find me.
Aderyn wouldn’t see.
Above, I could hear footsteps, but there was only one narrow window in the tower, high above where I was hidden, and the light didn’t touch me.
I closed eyes and listened—three mice, maybe more. Their tiny sniffling noses. The sound of servants floors above, shaking out fresh linens and chatting with one another.
The Spires was alive.
Was I, still?
I shouldn’t have been.
“Roland?” The voice, so tentative and soft, drew a hiss from me as I pressed back against the wall.
It didn’t matter. Tris had never been afraid of me.
I wanted to think that was because I was no one to fear, but he hadn’t feared my father either. Perhaps Tristram Radcliffe simply had very poor judgment.
His golden eyes shone, even in this dark place, when he found me beneath the stairs.
“I thought I saw you in the corridor,” he said gently.
He reached out, and I flinched back.
This was—Rhys had said it would get worse, but I didn’t want them to see. To know.
Not anyone. Not even Tris.
“Show me?” he said gently. In the end, there was so little judgment in his voice that I had no choice in the matter.
I held out my shaky hand. Even in this dim light, the golden scales snaking down my arm shone.
