It was then I realized it—he was on my father’s payroll in more ways than he let on. There was a reason my father trusted me with him. He was no groom or stable boy.
“How long have you been one of my guards?”
“Since you were twelve.”
A low gasp escaped me as he pushed my hands back down to my sides—that was theirproperplace when interacting with one’s guard, after all. He pulled his hands away from me, as though he’d touched hot iron.
Emmerick had always seemed to take any job my father gave him without complaint. He had spent years mucking shit from stalls and acting as a servant. He could blend in seamlessly, aside from his size.
“You shouldn’t be wandering around the North Court alone,” he said.
I gave him a flat, sarcastic smirk which he countered with a deep sigh. “You kissed me back,” I tried.
He shook his head of now disheveled black curls—his infuriatingly beautiful face hardened into a resolute frown. “You can’t do that.”
“What?”
“You can’t just come in here and kiss me out of the blue, Sybilla.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Just promise, don’t do that again. It isn’t fair.”
I allowed myself only a glimpse into what he was thinking—he was afraid to disappoint my father, afraid to be made a fool by me. “So your loyalty is to him then?” I knew it was an unfair question.
He winced. “Sybilla…”
I glared then—his rejection sitting heavy on my heart. But, instead of wallowing in sadness, I saw red. “Fine then.” My tone turned icy as I began to storm out of the stables. He didn’t follow me, which only ignited my fury as words tumbled coldly over my shoulder. “No guard of mine is to shovel shit and carry bags. You are appointed full-time as a Knight of the Central Court and my personal guard. In a permanent capacity. For now, it has been requested that you stay in the stables and avoid being seen. The King of the North does not like outside staff on his grounds.”
If he was going to outright reject me, he deserved a front-row seat to every suitor that came knocking, every horrible match that my father tried to push. If he couldn’t love me back in this moment, could he ever?
He stared me down with a stubbornness I’d grown to love about him—but at that moment, I loathed that part of him. The part that would put duty above wanting me.
Pissed off, dejected and raging at him for not chasing after me, I decided not to tell him the one thing I’d learned that could change his fate.
My father would later convince me it was for the best that he didn’t know—a bastard son of the North King did not make a match for me. Plus, it put Emmerick in danger of being outcast to the Wastelands, or worse.
I made the first mistake toward losing him that night in the stables and had kept making it every night since.
After my father succumbed to illness and a crown touched my head, nothing but the Corridor mattered. Not even my selfish, misguided heart. I would not become my mother—drunk, sidelined, bruised and betrayed.
I would never marry a man who could weaken my position. I may have married Em the stable boy but never Emmerick the King.
Royalty has a way of being poison to one’s character, allowing all the rotten bits to rise to the surface and leaving a shell of the person you used to be. It was a blessing from the Sources that Em was not raised that way.
In the fray below, Emmerick’s rage was roiling, but beneath that rage was ash-tasting, curdled heartbreak. I was so deep in feeling his turmoil that I nearly missed my opportunity to down a soldier as he rounded over the battlement wall.
Stepping back, I lost sight of Fenris, Emmerick and Firose in the commotion unfolding below. The Griffiths’ cries as they took arrows from archers and spiraled to the ground made my hands shake. Every flash of power used below was an assault on my nerves.
Then, a roaring sound began to cut through the night air coming from the gates of Luz—hoofbeats. So many horses that they created a thundering effect on the ground. The cavalry approached the city with whooping shrieks, ready to attack. Thousands of lanterns flickered from the horsemen, but as they neared, I realized the lights were not coming from lanterns at all.
No, the horsesthemselveswore flaming armor—each mount looked as though they were made of steel.
My throat closed.
White flag.
Firose’s army was about to decimate the city my family long promised to protect. It would all end with me and my fucking stupidity in thinking my father’s deathbed ramblings could possibly save us. It was doomsday for Luz.
