Blake mounted behind me in one fluid motion. He cleared his throat, reaching down and tucking my skirt in as much as possible, leaving part of the fabric bunched around my thighs. I shifted uncomfortably at the intimate touch.
“I don’t need your help,” I snipped, cheeks warm with embarrassment.
Then Flame stood, the movement making me sway. My bound hands reached for nothing as I tipped to one side, when Blake wrapped an iron arm around my middle. He splayed his large hand across my stomach while the other reached around me to hold on to the tygress’s thick fur, caging me in. His thighs clamped around Flame, firm behind me and keeping us steady.
Blake’s voice was rough. “You don’t know what you need.”
6
There was silence as we traveled, blanketed in a light snowfall. In the distance, I caught a glimpse of the Iron Sea.
After a time, we passed through a handful of outlying huts, and then we were in the midst of ramshackle shanties creaking underneath the weight of the snow on their flimsy roofs. The buildings grew sturdier as we rode into the township that surrounded the castle. The wind bit into my cheeks, sharp as knives. I curled my fingers into the fabric of my cloak, but the rope binding my wrists made it awkward. I could feel the warmth of the Ambush Master at my back.
“Why do you hate us Azures so much?” I asked. “Or is it me you’re so frustrated by?”
“I have no personal grievance against you.” Blake’s voice was neutral. “I am only doing my duty.”
“Right, of course. Chasing a weak yin through the woods because she ran from a loose tyger. That is the picture of duty,” Iscoffed, shifting, my bound hands brushing against the enormous tygress beneath me.
Blake’s grip around me tightened imperceptibly. His words fell quietly from his lips, cold and stoic. “My brother, Zayden, was killed in the Annihilation.”
His twin brother, if I remembered correctly.
Zayden and Blake Axefire had both been Zeniths. They’d been the favorites of the king, his Twin Blades.
“A lot of people were killed in the Annihilation,” I said quietly. “We lost homes. We lost family. Some of us losteverything.”
Blake’s voice snapped like a whip against mine. “We were lured there by the Dominion of the Azure Dragon. Byyourdominion.” His hands twitched, as if resisting the urge to do something more violent. “For that so-called wedding. The great unification of two dominions.”
The Wedding of Flame and Sky.I had heard the tale, a dream of world peace. The prince of the Azure Dragon Dominion and the crown princess of the Red Phoenix Dominion, to be bound together in hopes of lasting harmony for the first time in history, finally overcoming the prejudices that divided us.
A dragon and a phoenix.
They said it hadn’t been a purely political alliance but one of true love. It would have been the beginning of a wave of cross-dominion royal marriages, to secure peace and, above all else, balance.
But the Annihilation decimated those hopes for peace. Rage was all that remained between the warring dominions now.
My voice turned hollow. “Our own people suffered the most. We lost our royal family. Our homeland.” I swallowed. “I lost all of my memories.”
His head tilted slightly as I looked back, just enough for me tocatch the edge of his profile. Full lips, surprisingly sensual against the hardened lines of his cheeks and square jaw. Here I could just make out a bump along his nose where it might’ve been broken before.
“I was there.” The weight of the conversation thickened the air. Flame shifted beneath us as though she could sense it. “No one was prepared for the swarm of demons. We were told it was a peaceful event,” Blake continued. Bitterness dripped from his voice. “That, as a sign of goodwill, we would all be unarmed.”
There was a twitch to his lips, like an invisible string trying to pull a smile that wouldn’t come. “But I’m never unarmed.”
The image of him at the Arena with those swirling blades like a halo above his head flickered across my vision.
“What did you see?” I asked, voice low. He was the first person I’d ever met to havebeenthere. To have experienced the moment that changed the course of my life—the Annihilation that had killed my family, taken my past. I wanted to pull every memory he had from his brain, like it might bring me nearer to my lost family. To my people, before our dominion crumbled.
“I watched the soul of the Red Phoenix crown princess get devoured before my eyes. Zayden and his tyger were standing right there. They tried to protect her.” His voice was controlled, but there was something raw underneath, something dangerously close to breaking.
A tremor ran down my spine. “Devoured?”
“There was a new kind of demon there,” he said. “Something we’d never heard of. Bone white. Enormous and insect-like, much taller than a man. It is called the Starved. Intelligent. It could speak. And it ate souls.”
Cold horror slithered through my veins.
His knuckles had gone white. “My brother—” He cut himselfoff, his breath sharp and uneven as he shook his head. “None of us could combat it. Even if we’d been prepared, I don’t know what we would have done if the Azure bridegroom hadn’t started grappling with it. The destruction it wrought in but a few minutes was devastating.” His voice was cold and measured. “And let me tell you, Azure, who we actually know died. Whose bodies were recovered.”
