Page 131 of Of Iron and Moonlight

Yaoaya began rifling through Kora’s belongings, then stopped abruptly when she found what she was looking for in an apron pocket. Her shoulders went rigid. She faced Duncan with fire in her eyes.

“Out.”

Duncan blinked against the sting in his eyes. “I can help—”

She pointed at the door hard enough that even the guards shifted.

Isander, who had been standing next to him all along though Duncan had barely noticed, caught his sleeve. “If we stay,” he said quietly, tone light, “she’ll throw us down the stairs.”

“I would,” Yaoaya said, returning to her steaming pot.

Duncan’s jaw clenched, but he let Isander guide him into the corridor.

“Come downstairs,” Isander encouraged him as they watched the door close. Then, more gently, “You need to eat something.”

Duncan could not seem to hold a single moment long enough to understand where he was. He remembered meat and bread pressed into his hands, the dull scrape of cutlery against a plate, the low murmur of voices around him. Isander speaking. A woman clapping as a child wobbled through his first steps. Two lads laughing over cards in a corner.

He found himself more than once pacing outside Kora’s room, though he never remembered climbing the stairs. And only when his shoulder struck a doorframe did he realize Isander had steered him into another chamber. Someone—Isander?—had brought his trunk.

Duncan sat on the edge of the bed fully dressed, boots still on, hands hanging between his knees. Lamplight made the room sway. His thoughts slid out of reach, breaking apart until even trying to follow one left his head aching.

He meant to stay awake.

To be ready the instant Yaoaya called.

Sleep took him anyway.

His dreams offered no reprieve. A carriage overturned in the forest. His father, brothers, and nephew pinned beneath splintered wood. The hollow knocking of a mine ringing like a funeral bell. Then Kora upon his father’s bier, dark hair spilling across her face, a moon orchid at her throat as though she were being returned to the cursed celestial bodies themselves. He lunged for her, but iron closed around his wrists. A spear of ice slashed through his heart. Cold hands dragged him backward. The shadows swallowed her first.

He woke with a gasp, fists throbbing as though he had spent the night fighting chains.

Dawn smeared grey across the window.

Kora.

Only habit made him snatch up his cloak before tearing down the hall. He nearly slipped at the turn, caught himself on the banister, then took the stairs two at a time. His heart hammered like a war drum as he ran down the last corridor.

He threw open the door.

Chapter 62

Duncan

The shutters were closed, the side table wiped bare—no vials, no cups, no trace of Yaoaya’s frantic care. The bed had been stripped and remade, the linen pulled tight and smooth. The quiet markers of a life already gone.

She was gone.

No one had woken him, and she was gone.

Duncan’s knees struck the floorboards as the room tilted. He dragged both hands through his hair hard enough to sting. If he did not anchor himself to something, he feared he would strike the wall, the door, anything solid, just to feel a pain he could understand.

A year ago his entire family had been slaughtered, and he had believed no agony could rival that loss. He knew now he had been wrong. This was unfathomably worse. A despair so consuming it burned through bone and soul alike, stripping the air cleanly from his lungs.

Sound drained away until only the pounding of his pulse remained. He bent forward, clutching at his chest as though he could hold his heart in place. He tried to pull a shallow breath and could not. Each attempt failed more violently than the last.

A small gasp.

A scrape of skirt.