Stellen
Thyra’s shaking uncontrollably.
Seconds ago, her eyes flashed open and she launched herself out of my arms to throw up what little was in her stomach. Barely anything.
Gasping for air, still facing away from me, she leans back on her heels. But now she seems to realize we’re alone.
“Where’s Antony?” Her question is urgent, her pounding heartbeats more so.
“He refused to stay.”
She twists to see me, tears spilling down her cheeks. I imagine she thought she’d come back to find us deep in battle—or one of us dead.
“You asked him to stay?”
Her disbelief is warranted.
“Youdid,” I reply. “I asked him to respect your wishes.”
She turns away again, her breathing erratic, and her silence…
Painful.
“He left me,” she says.
I’m wary of the strains of anger in her voice, the signs of the damage his choice is doing to her.
She drops her head into her hands, rocking forward, but she is agonizingly silent.
Her silences matter.
I slide my arms around her, holding her as she presses the heel of her palm to her mouth and muffles a scream against it.
Fuck.
Her stifled cry… Broken. Angry. Lost.Fearful. All of it shatters my hearing.
“Thyra—”
Rapid footfalls break the quiet behind us, and I quickly move to shield Thyra from view as a group of soldiers runs toward us across the snow and between the thin trees.
“Lord! Lord!”
Not one but many of them shout for me, a chorus of cries.
They reach me within seconds, bowing, but only briefly, before their eyes rise to mine.
A startling action on their part.
My soldiers have always avoided looking anywhere near my ghostly face.
“Lord, we’ve had word,” one of them says, a man whose name I don’t know, but he’s covered in soot and was one of the first I liberated from the smoke. “Lilis has been taken.”
My jaw clenches, but fear is not mine to feel.
Given Lilis’s history with Iker Silversten, the threats he’s made over time, and the whispered conversation Thyra and I overheard between Lilis and the nameless man, I draw the inevitable conclusion. “Iker Silversten has her.”
“Yes, Lord,” the soldier replies. “What would you have us do?”
