Page 49 of Sworn to the Shadow Throne

“Muffin warned me,” I said instead, a shaky laugh escaping as I swayed to one side.

As if summoned by the sound of his name, the little veska came bounding up, breaking the spell we were both under. On the way he stopped to sniff then hiss at both the bodies.

Muffin wove his long body around my legs in a way that almost felt like he was saying thank you. He scrambled up Lunette’s cloak to perch on her shoulder.

I thought this meant we had a truce again, but then I felt the blast of his breath as he hissed at my hand still on her chin. Staking his claim on her.

I finally lowered my hand, exhaling carefully as my ribs protested.

Her gaze darted to the bodies then back to me. “They were looking for you.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “You need to leave before anyone sees you.”

“I’d heard the Assembly was in the area, but this…” Lunette’s assessing gaze flicked back to the corpses. Then she said confidently, “We’ll leave them here. No one will question an attack on this road.”

I’d known conditions were bad in the borderlands, but I hadn’t expected her attitude to be so cavalier. What had she endured to make her this unflinching?

What she said next nearly knocked me off my feet.

“If we don’t take their horses, someone else will. They’re the fastest way off the road. And a way for you to return home.”

Home. The castle hadn’t felt like home in twenty years. Part of me never wanted to leave her tiny cabin in the woods.

Despite the pain and the danger—both of which would only get worse riding a horse for days on end—something unmistakable and inexorably dangerous settled deep in my chest.

Mine.

She was mine.

Mine to protect. My role had always been to make difficult choices. I would willingly embrace that duty for her, etching it into the very fabric of my soul.

Yet on the heels of that, another thought arose: She’s unlikely to let you after watching you murder two men.

Sure, she seemed fine so far, but once the shock wore off, she’d remember everything. Limbs flying. The fountain of crimson when I’d sliced open the artery. Impaling his head on my blade like it was nothing.

And I’d add to the memory by playing the demon robbing a corpse.

I looked down. There on his index finger, as promised, was a gold band streaked with lines of glinting ruby. It had to be an artifact, because the air close to it pulsed with magic that hit my senses like a blast of hot sand. I didn’t want to touch it—not yet. So I sliced a piece of his undertunic off and pried it off his finger. Even through the cloth, it was freezing in my hand.

The blood and lingering magic had set the horses to stamping nervously. Lunette murmured to them in a soft, steady cadence that soothed the animals instantly. Another reminder that everything about her bent toward caretaking, exactly the opposite of what I’d just shown.

We both mounted—me slowly, painfully with the ring tied to my belt by the strip of cloth—and led them down the road until the faint hum of magic prickled along my skin. A wave of disorientation crashed over me so abruptly that I had to grab the horse’s saddle to stay upright. Lunette’s ward was doing its work on me and doing a fine job of it. My mind became a cacophony of warnings, each one a shout that I was heading in the wrong direction.

“I’ll lead. Just keep the horse fixed on me,” she said, sensing my struggles.

I did, but my gaze settled on the gentle curve of her hips, the water dripping from her hair. And just like that, the disorientation ebbed, and the warnings ceased.

Crossing the barrier, I felt a shift in the air and a return to normal sensation. I drew a slow breath, blinking at the abrupt clarity. “It only reacts on approach, not departure,” I said, thinking aloud.

She nodded ahead of me, steering her horse down a narrow path through the trees even before we saw the first house in Selmont. In my current mental state, I’d probably start a fight with one of the villagers, so it was a good thing.

“Being trapped in here would be truly awful,” she said with a shudder.

“Incredibly sophisticated magic,” I murmured.

She kept her eyes ahead, but there was a hint of self-deprecation in her voice that I didn’t like. “It’s just what my mother taught me.”

Just. As if the ward she’d maintained all by herself was anything short of a masterpiece. Exhausted and wounded, I still felt a profound sense of wonder at this humble woman. “It’s exquisite,” I insisted.