NO.
I pull at my magic, stretching and forcing it. What else? There has to be another path. I push past the visions of death, straining toward what’s beyond.
Salt water fills my nose, my mouth. I blink and shudder. My eyes open, and the water is gone: A rocky shoreline takes its place—and a tower, dark and ominous, stretching up and up. A flash and I’m inside the tower, walls moving in on me, crushing, crushing.
A female body—whose? Mine, Noemi’s? I can’t tell, but it’s unmoving.
Stark bent over it, shouting. Then: an empty chamber, with a shining jewel sparkling at the center of a spiraling mosaic.
The vision ends, and I gasp back into my body. Stark’s hands are on me at once, grounding me, helping me come back to myself. My throat is parched, my head pounding.
Placing my forehead against his chest, I breathe in his deep, male scent.
“I need to tell you something,” I croak out. “Lucien asked me to marry him in exchange for his support against Killian. He says he’s worried that I’ll try to take his Tears from him for power and wants to ensure that there remains a balance.”
Stark stiffens underneath me.
His gaze turns shuttered and closed off, and there’s an instant lump in my throat.
Is he about to tell me I should do it?
41
MERYN
Will you accept him?” His calm voice covers a dark storm within.
I rear back with the limited strength I have. “No!”
His jaw clenches underneath his dark stubble.
“If I were thinking like the Sovereign Alpha—” His voice catches, and I think again that emotion is brewing under the surface for him, thoughts about Siegrid’s death he’s not sure how to voice yet. “If I were abetterSovereign Alpha, I would tell you you should do it. You should marry someone politically meaningful, especially if it would save our country.”
Stark’s eyes meet mine, and now I’m the one who can’t breathe because there’s so much written in his gaze.
The weight of last night’s words linger between us. Hedidwant that for me at one point—to be with someone he thought better fit the image of a queen. I thought we moved beyond that.
Is he going to reject me again?
“But?” The word comes out of me as a whisper.
“I’d damn every last soul to stay by your side, Meryn.”
My cheeks heat, and something in my chest breaks open wide. I reach up to his face and draw a finger down his jaw, then kiss him gently. He responds with hunger, his tongue licking into my mouth like he needs to taste every part of me.
Eventually, I pull away, resting my forehead against his. “Well, thankfully for the citizens of Nocturna, you don’t have to make that decision. I can’t do it. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t. The foresight showed me that if we get married, it would still end the same way: Killian wins and everyone I love is dead.”
Stark’s posture changes, ever so slightly, as he takes in how serious I am.
“Did you figure out the path forward?” he asks gruffly.
I shake my head, confused. “I had three visions, but only one seemed viable… And I couldn’t understand it. You, Noemi, Venna, and I were at some ancient tower near a sea with our direwolves. Does that make sense at all to you?”
I don’t mention the body I saw. It might not come to pass…
Stark squints his dark eyes in thought. “A tower? No.”
“Me neither. But I do think Lucien is right about one thing,” I continue. “Whatever Killian is doing now, it’s something different from before. He can’t be thinking of invading Astreona, not with his depleted forces. There must be something else going on.”
