My lips rise as I continue with a cold promise. “I’ll be sure to steer you away from danger.”
Unless the danger is me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Antony
Iexpect Thyra’s cheeks to pale. She must realize the vulnerability she’s admitted.
Disclosing that she can’t move during her Oracle visions is bad enough. Telling me she’s completely unaware of what her body’s doing during a blade vision is potentially catastrophic.
For her, that is.
She peers up at me, searching my eyes, no doubt for any hint of my true intentions.
I’m on the cusp of asking her how long the blade visions last, but I have some idea already. Not more than a few seconds in the forge. Longer on the roof.
Slowly, she draws herself to her full height, but instead of trembling in the face of the harm I could do her, her head rises at a defiant angle.
“Point me in the direction of the bathing room.” And then she adds, “Protector.”
I can’t help my guffaw at her bravado, gratifiedby the glare she aims at me. “Inside.”
Without a backward glance, she strides in the cabin’s direction once more.
I scoop up my armor and follow her at a leisurely pace, watching her ascend the front steps, after which her boots beat across the porch, before she shoves the door open.
I’m curious to see if she’ll defy my rules and let the door close behind her, blocking her from my sight, but she pauses there with the cabin’s internal darkness nearly swallowing her.
To me, her figure is as clear as if starlight were pouring directly onto her.
I rarely light lamps when I’m on my own. I don’t need them.
When I was younger, I tried to hide my ability to see in the dark, uncertain if it would be distrusted. But it seems my people are willing to believe that all manner of powers are bestowed on me simply because I’m king. Thyra will probably believe the same.
I pick up my pace, reaching her within seconds, grazing past her as I enter the room. After depositing my armor onto the floor near the wall, I quickly reach for the mechanism inside the door that will open the roof.
As the panels separate overhead, revealing a thick, glass ceiling that protects against the weather, starlight floods into the cabin.
I wonder what Thyra will think of the big bed covered in a single blanket, the fur rug on the floor, the single plush chair, or the fact that there’s nothing much else in here. No cooking facilities. No surfaces dedicated to eating. No heat source, like a fireplace.
I built this cabin for myself, and I don’t need any of those things.
Thyra’s head is tilted back, the starlight reflectingin her blue eyes, her posture so still that, for a moment, I wonder if she’s about to have another vision…
Then she glances around the room, seeming to quickly get her bearings before she heads to the door on the far left, which leads to a larger-than-normal bathing room lined from floor to ceiling with smooth porcelain. It contains a toilet, a bath, and washing facilities that produce only freezing cold water. Because I’m cruel like that. Even to myself.
She pauses in the doorway to the bathing room. “I’m closing the door now.”
I give her a single nod. I’m not concerned. There aren’t any windows inside the bathing room. No way to slip out of it.
As the door closes, I consider that she must be starving.
I grimace at the fact that I don’t have any food for her.
Just as I puzzle over a solution for this, I catch the distant swoosh of beating wings, the thumps to the air that speak of an approaching eagle, and I open the front door in time for my bird to alight on the grass in front of the cabin.
He holds a broken branch in his beak, which he drops near the bottom step.
