It still baffled me how being late for a meal could make him that angry. Maybe punctuality was sacred here, or maybe cruelty was. His eyes had looked darker than usual when they met mine, full of disgust before he left. As fae they changed with his temper.
Wrapped in a thick duvet, limbs cold and heavy, I felt my dragon reaching through our strained bond. But I was too tired to answer. What could I say to her anyway?
Chapter Nine
Avari
‘Get back!’ Anya roared in my mind.
My chest tightened when I confessed, ‘There is no way to get back…’
‘I’m coming to get you! Send a spark so I can find you.’
No, I wouldn’t risk her freedom. ‘He won’t let me leave. I won’t risk him imprisoning you, too.’
‘He can try… Do you not understand how strong I am, child?’
‘Don’t come,’ I pleaded, my voice barely louder than a pathetic whisper.
‘I’m coming for you; I’ll be there tomorrow—’ she hissed in my mind. ‘What have you done?’
She roared so much. Too much. I feared my ears would start bleeding. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t you dare! Reveal your location right now, you insufferable girl! Right now.’
‘I love you.’ And for the first time ever I shut my dragon out completely, our bond goingdark.
The courtyard was eerily silent as I stepped out of the castle for the imminent training session. It almost felt as though my sour mood had spread to the surrounding vegetation, which stood unnaturally still and cold, as though bracing for a storm.
I noticed a few more members of the staff on my way down, and an elderly woman in a pink apron even offered me a shy smile. Such a small gesture, yet it warmed something inside me. I might have appreciated it more if my heart hadn't felt like a heavy black hole ever since I'd shut Anya out.
The king stormed past me into a clearing and dropped his usual book on the ground; I watched it land with a loud thud. Anger bled from him, as I feared my body soon could.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ he demanded, fists clenching at his sides, a promise of my early demise.
Terrified of his neurotic behaviour, I asked meekly, ‘What have I done now?’
‘Are you poisoning yourself? You think if I see how depressed you are, I will let you go back to your fucked-up kingdom?’ Dracon shouted in my face, invading my personal space entirely once more.
Though I wanted to step back, my legs wouldn’t obey. He looked like a monster; veins bulged on his forehead and arms, and his fierce, frantic gaze froze me in place.
The last remnants of my fire and green rose to the surface in warning, as his sinister power radiated from him in waves. One blast, I feared, could send me to an early grave.
‘I would never poison myself—’
He inched closer. ‘Then what the fuck are you doing? Is it so bad here you can’t spend a week without trying to kill yourself?’
‘I’m not…’ He thought I was doing it to myself? He was the one who tried to kill me. My neck still hurt fromhisassault. ‘Please just let me go home.’
It was my last plea. He was probably used to people begging for their lives anyway.
The grimace and look of pure disgust on his otherwise stellar face made me recoil and finally put some distance between us. He was losing control of his powers, as heat continued to radiate from him in increasingly large rolling torrents.
‘I already knew how underhanded witches were, but making yourself this miserable to have me release you is really something… Did you take it out of your mother’s playbook?’
‘No—’ He never gave me a chance to respond. ‘She’d never make herself weak to prove a point, I mean, you really have to be stupid to do that, right?’ He sneered and pushed my shoulder, wincing as I landed on my ass.
Weakened as I was, there was no way of telling if he had used his fae strength or whether the curse had already hollowed me out that far.
