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Her eyes didn’t glow with desire—couldn’t, I knew now, because of her utter lack of magic. But I recognized the invitation in her eyes well enough.

I unbuckled my sword belt, tossing it to the side. My axe next.

Then the tunic, on the floor.

Veyka unbelted her scabbards. Released the harness snapped over my shirt.

Until we were both naked except for the blood and sweat that clung to our skin.

I understood the invitation her eyes, better than anyone. The need to erase the pain, to push it away just for a little while. As her arms slid around my neck, I read the desperate urge in her eyes to replace death with life.

The glint of silver caught my eye as she slid her hand down my muscled bicep. The ring I’d slid on her finger. I’d meant to tell her what it meant, where it came from. But the night had slipped away from us, only to be stolen by the bloodshed and brutality. To talk of my mother’s ring now… it seemed blasphemous.

But I caught her hand anyway, holding it in place. Veyka turned her eyes up to mine, questioning.

“Don’t run.”

Veyka’s nails dug into my flesh. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.”

She didn’t argue that time, didn’t lie to me.

“Promise me, Veyka.” I had no right to demand it, not really. Not after I’d let her down so spectacularly, railing at her instead of standing at her side when her secret was revealed. Even now, I kept the words for how I truly felt away from her. Not for her wellbeing, but my own. I didn’t deserve anything from her, and yet I made the demand again. “Promise me you will stay.”

She bit hard on her lower lip.

So clearly, I could see the spools of thought unthreading and spinning within her mind. I couldn’t read them, not unless she chose to speak into that strange shared space between our minds. But the sense of her thoughts unfurling before me was as real as the specks of blood on her cheeks and the tangled white hair I twined around my fingers.

“I promise to walk out of that tower and return to this palace,” she finally said.

We both recognized it for what it was. A half-truth. A clever elemental twisting of words. But I also knew it was the most I would get.

I lowered my mouth to hers and took everything I could.

78

VEYKA

It took too long to skirt around the Gremog’s strip of destruction and death, along the outskirts of Baylaur, to where the Tower of Myda loomed at the center of the Effren Valley. Every minute that passed, then lapsed into hours, I wondered if more of my courtiers were being butchered.

What if a second force had come while they slept, lost to the cost of their own magic?

How many would the healers be able to save? How many would die alone, their own well of magic too shallow to heal them without help?

Which of my royal councilors was the traitor, sitting there in the council chamber, savoring the sounds of my kingdom dying around them?

On any other day, the thoughts would have sent me toppling headfirst into the dark abyss. But not today. Not now, with so many depending on me.

As we walked and jogged, we debated what those levels of terror might hold. What enchantments would bar the door at the base of the tower? I’d never seen physical guards, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there, in hiding, waiting for someone to attack the tower before striking.

But in the end, it was all for naught.

The simple wooden door at the base of the tower wasn’t even locked. It felt like a joke.

Or a threat.

For those arrogant enough to walk past the door deserved whatever pain and punishment they’d receive.