Moons above, I’d take it if he did.
It’d mark me as every bit the Cavendish king I’d always feared becoming—a man who would drain the life and joy out ofthose around me and leave the world so much worse than how I’d found it.
At least this, him leaving, spared me that.
I watched him go, unable to tear my eyes away from the swing of his soft gold hair.
“I’ll talk to him,” Tristram offered quietly, “once he’s had a chance to calm down.”
I shook my head. “Leave him be.”
“He’ll come around,” Bet promised.
I couldn’t say aloud that I hoped he wouldn’t, for his sake if not my own, because it wasn’t even true. Selfishly, I did want him to come around. Yes, I’d crawl into my oversized, ridiculously luxurious bed and sulk, but sometime that night he’d slip beneath the covers beside me, just like always. He’d put his hand in mine, and maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all, but everything would be all right again.
Only, he didn’t.
Aderyn didn’t come to my room. When the moons were high in the sky, and I still couldn’t sleep, I tiptoed to the door to his hoard room and pressed my ear against it.
There was no sound inside. When I opened it—no, he wasn’t there.
He was upset, my every heartbeat throbbed with it, and even my presence was keeping him from his hoard.
I needed to get it to him. These feathers that might give him comfort—he needed them, at the very least.
It was probably ill-advised, that early the next morning, I knocked on the door to Hafgan and Bowen’s quarters.
The sound was soft, and the way the door banged open a moment later was not. The sneer on Hafgan’s face was downright serpentine. I flinched back, and he stalked out into the corridor, all but snarling.
Bowen followed in his footsteps, closing the door gently behind them.
I backed up, step by step, until my shoulders hit the wall.
“This fucking place,” Hafgan snarled as he stalked toward me.
I’d never heard him so angry, I’d hardly ever heard him curse, but right then, there was no doubting he was a dragon with an inferno trapped behind his ribcage.
“I can’t tell if it’s the walls that are cursed,” he spat, “or just the people within them.”
I wanted to laugh, but that was too likely to get me roasted, so I swallowed down the morose impulse.
“What the fuck do you want?” he demanded, bearing his sharp teeth.
“Aderyn’s—”
“Don’t say his name!”
I grimaced.
That was?—
That was fair. I’d betrayed Aderyn in every way that mattered. Hafgan had trusted me with his safety, and I’d jeopardized it.
“His hoard,” I whispered. “I wasn’t sure how you wanted to?—”
“Take it back?”
My teeth dug into my bottom lip and I nodded. “If you’re leaving?—”
