“If you saw her, you’d already know where shewas.”
Fuck. This is going to be difficult.
Not that I’ve made it any easier. “I saw her in the Frost Kingdom.”
Antony’s forehead puckers. “In the Frost Kingdom?”
I take a step closer to him, my fire blazing more brightly. “She had bite marks on her neck. It looked like they were made by a fucking vampyr.”
She was about to hit the rock behind her. Stellen was moving fast, wrapping his hand around the back of her head, but I didn’t see if he caught her in time.
She could be bleeding out right now, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
Antony’s shoulders slump. Then he squares them. “I’m responsible for those bite marks.”
I didn’t expect him to admit it, and now I wait for him to make excuses. He was thirsty. He wasn’t in control.
But he says, “There’s no redemption for me.”
A stunning admission for a king to make.
I blow out an exhale.
Hell, but our entire history is a mess of wrongdoing.
I take a deep breath and stop my pacing. “My father was wrong to do what he did to your family. I accept, at some point, that you and I will need to settle the score between us.”
“Again, agreed.” The tension in Antony’s shoulders remains intense as he returns to the subject of Thyra. “I saw Thyra in a dark place. Maybe a field in the far east. Not the Frost Kingdom, where I expected her to be. She was asleep. Floating in the air in front of a tree with dark wood and no leaves.” His brow furrows. “Shadows were cutting through one of the branches?—”
“Dark wood?” The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “Did you see the knife that killed Thyra’s father? Was it the same kind of wood?”
“See it?” Antony scoffs. “An assassin came after Thyra with a knife just like it. I carried that fucking blade around with me before I learned that?—”
He stops. Narrows his eyes at me.
“Learned what?” I ask before I quickly decide I’ll have to give information to get information. “That my fire can’t burn that wood?”
Antony looks at me blankly, and then with a curious light in his eyes. “You can’t burn it?”
“An assassin came after me, too. I turned him to ash, but the knife’s handle remained.” I take a chance to say more, watching Antony’s reactions carefully. “That assassin was part of a group led by a man named Stanimir.”
“Stanimir.” Antony’s snarl is full of rage. “He’s the man feeding Hadrian information. He gave Hadrian an amulet made of that same wood.”
“That would explain why Hadrian’s follower was wearing a wooden amulet,” I say. “I took it off him. He also had a very particular iron burn. Two slashes.” I demonstrate with my fingers across my forearm. “If they mark themselves with an iron burn, why carry an amulet, too?”
I peer at Antony, but he doesn’t voice an opinion. Instead, he asks, “Where are the amulet and the blade’s wooden handle now?”
“Close.” I’m unwilling to say where they’re hidden because that will mean revealing the dragon’s hide they’re wrapped in. “Safe.”
Antony begins pacing again, stalking the rock back and forth, and with every step he takes, I sense our impossible peace starting to slip.
I’m not sure what changed. It could have been the mention of Stanimir, or of Hadrian, or even of the amulets or the wood-handled knives.
“We’reenemies, you and I.” The tips of Antony’s fangs gleam in the smoldering light of my fire. “We will never be anything else. But now I have a decision to make, and I don’t know—” He sucks in a breath. “I don’t fucking know which path will help Thyra and which will hurt her.”
I remain ready. My muscles tense as his agitation visibly rises.
If he chooses to fight me again, I face the reality that my fire alone can’t kill him.
