“They’re confined to the pure darkness of their land.”
The tension in her shoulders dissolves so visibly that she slumps forward. “That’s good.”
My left arm snakes around her waist before she can dare to slide away from me, ensuring she remains right where she is, her backside pressed to my pelvis, her torso to my chest, the back of her head to my shoulder on the side where my face is partly exposed.
Her hair tickles my chin, and the salty tang of the sea coats my tongue. Beneath it is an alluring scent.Floral. But not light. It’s heady, like the thick scent of a rose garden.
I slide my free hand along the back of herright arm. It’s infuriating that I can’t feel her skin through the steel of my gloved hand.
She doesn’t pull away from me as I wrap my hand around her wrist, right where the blade’s cross-guard envelops her limb. A golden bracelet.
“You and this blade,” I snarl in her ear. “You’re going to do my bidding now.”
I have everything I need to change the course of my future. Not only to save my people from annihilation and stop the attacks from the Frost Fae and the Ember Fae, but to take charge of my own fate.
It doesn’t worry me that she would have only come into her power hours ago when her father died. He’s bound to have trained her in all things. She has knowledge and power, and she will give both to me.
She trembles in my hold. Perhaps it’s a reaction to the rush of air against her body, or maybe she feels cold, or maybe…just maybe…she’s as afraid of me as she should be.
My voice is a throaty growl as I turn my lips to her ear once more, but this time, I call her by her name. “You’re mine now, Thyra, and I’m never letting you go.”
Chapter Fourteen
Thyra
Ishiver in the wind, Antony’s name churning around in my mind. As soon as he spoke it, I sensed his regret, the tension in his body, almost immediately.
At nearly the exact same moment, a soft fluttering filled my chest, the sign of my oncoming Oracle power, but the vision was brief. A mere flash.
In it, I heard my own voice asking him again,What should I call you?
That vision ended as quickly as it began, leaving me only with a sense of unease.
Then Antony lifted himself off me, and I’d taken a deep breath before I sat up, trying to process the terror of the flight through the bloodlands.
Unlike my fleeting vision about his name, my Oracle visions in the bloodlands were sustained. A sequence I couldn’t deny.
First, I saw the blue eagle broken and covered in blood, then the vampyr swarm hiding behind the mountainside, then the tunnel at the end of the valley, and finally, a visionof light, an explosion of silvery rays. That last made no sense to me, but I trusted the impulse to fly toward it, even if I couldn’t explain it.
Now, Antony’s black armor presses once again against my back as he reminds me that he’s never letting me go.
“I promised you I wouldn’t fight you.” I tilt my head, intending to force him to look me in the eyes, but, frustratingly, succeed only in snuggling my head closer to his neck.
“For how long?” His voice is hard, his lips brushing the top of my forehead. “I live in a world of lies and liars, Thyra. There is not a single promise that doesn’t come with strings or conditions, or limitations.”
My brow furrows that he thinks my promise could be short-lived. I wonder how he imagines I will fight. My physical strength doesn’t come close to his. I have no eagle or serpent to escape on. No family or friends to escapeto. The villagers may have treated me like one of their own for a time, but I was careful never to form deep attachments with any of them, and as it turns out, one of them betrayed me by killing my father.
Perhaps Antony believes that, in the space of time between my father’s death and now, I foresaw my entire future. Or that my father foresaw everything years ago, and we plotted out a path of manipulation and subterfuge.
Maybe Antony believes that, like the path to safety I foresaw through the bloodlands, I have a mental map of every push and pull, every remark and gesture to ensure I win whatever game he thinks we’re playing.
Except I don’t.
Each of my Oracle visions so far has now transpired. Those events have passed.
I’m left with a handful of blade-induced visions of iron, ice, and flame, and a whispertelling me that the kings must earn what they desire, which seemed to imply that they must also earn the blade.
The blade that is now embedded in my right arm.
