‘He needs to sleep, to rest. But I need answers. Benny and I looked through the library here yesterday, but there was nothing to help. But maybe in the main one …’
‘You’re going to ask Caroline? Can you trust her with this?’ Jonas says, as if I had actually invited him into this conversation rather than allowed him to remain in order to keep the peace.
‘She doesn’t need to know the details,’ I tell him. ‘Just enough. And I’m not going to tell her about William,’ I say with a glance at my brother. ‘The fewer people who know about him, the better.’
When Jonas nods, I just about manage to stop myself from rolling my eyes. As if I need his approval.
Kay lets out a sigh. ‘You’re going to the library now? Straight away?’ she says in exasperation. ‘I was hoping we could talk about the ball. Youknow, where the king will announce our marriage.’ She pointedly laces her fingers with Jonas’s.
Fucking hell. Unless she wants to know exactly what alcohols I’ll be drinking to get through the night, I’m not really sure what she thinks I’m going to add to the discussion.
‘Later,’ I promise. ‘I need to go to the library now.See if I can find out anything about our powers.’
‘Be careful,’ Jonas warns.
This time I do roll my eyes at him. ‘I survived the Retterheld. I think I’ll be okay withdrawing a book.’
The groundaround me is littered with deep puddles as I head to the library, although it’s not until I’m outside of the courtiers’ arc that I realise something is different.
It’s no longer raining. There’s not a hint of a peridot cloud in the sky. Instead, it’s a blazing azure. Bright, pure, and cloudless.
So it took the prince all of two days to get past his broken heart. Well, fuck him. It’s not like I’ve been weeping into my coffee with everything I’ve had going on.
Pushing him back out of my mind, I fill it instead with thoughts of where to start my research – so much so that I don’t see him until he’s there, standing right in front of me.
Kyor.
My feet stop on the soaked earth, my body not sure if it wants to run to him or away from him. Instead, it chooses neither. It’s as if he has the power to paralyse me utterly. He’s not seen me yet because his eyes are very much elsewhere – on the petite redhead who has her arm threaded through his.
As I stand there, frozen and mute, she throws her head back and laughs as though the prince has said something hilarious. I scowl. Kyor is many things, but funny isn’t one of them.
My breath catches at his answering smile.
So that explains the end of the rain clouds, if they were even for his broken heart in the first place. No, it was probably just another ofhis fucking games. A way for him to toy with me without even being close.
I would laugh, but I’ve lost the ability to breathe properly.
He’s not even trying to pretend what we had was real, but maybe that’s because it never was for him. Not the way it was for me.
It’s only when the redhead’s gaze shifts away from him that he finally looks in my direction. The effect is instantaneous. Clouds boil in the sky and lightning flashes overhead, the bolts so bright they light up the sky. And the roar of thunder that follows is enough to shake the ground beneath my feet. Waterpours.
Perhaps he’s not so unaffected after all, I note smugly.
And yet, I still don’t move.
As a second low rumble follows, I’m suddenly aware that the pair are not alone.
Elska pads down the path by his side, huge and dripping from the sudden onset of rain. That second rumble wasn’t thunder at all; it was a growl, and one almost certainly directed at me.
Nice to see you too, Elska, I think sarcastically, only for the dire wolf to continue her growl and then bare her teeth at me.
With a sniff, I turn back to look at her bonded human, wishing my eyes weren’t drawn there so instinctively.
Kyor’s dark hair is loose around his ears, falling in artful waves. His shirt is open to an obscene point on his stomach, exposing hard, cut muscles that look as amazing as I know they feel.
The clear expression on his face suggests that the rain he’s summoned since our separation is nothing more than an artful performance, and I doubt my certainty that seeing me has affected him. Surely his face would show some evidence of heartbreak if that was truly what he felt? Dark eyes. Sallow skin.Something.
But he is perfection, just as he has always been. Physically, anyway.
