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Danger! Danger! Danger!My mind screamed with every pulse of that wild power.

“No,” I answered, hating how small my voice was. “No, you’re not lying. You never have.”

The expression that ghosted across her face was almost too quick to catch, but it almost looked like… guilt. “I would not lie to you about this, Irin. And I hope the same is true for you.” Haron took a deep breath in through her nose and held it for a moment before exhaling slowly through her mouth, like shewas centering herself. That threatening aura slowly folded in on itself until the oppressive feeling left the room. “Just because we fucked once doesn’t mean my goals have changed. Or that you have any semblance of ownership over me and what I choose to keep private in my personal life. Have I made myself clear?”

My head bobbed automatically. “Very. I’m sorry if I offended you. I was… out of line.”

Gods, that apology tasted bitter… but it wasn’t a lie.

Haron leaned back into the chair and plucked her glass from the side table. “Apology accepted.” The rest of the goldtine—not that there was much left—slipped past her lips when she threw the drink back, and she set the glass carefully on the side table. “I should go. I have plans later this evening.”

“Of course,” my answer practically fell from my mouth. “Will you be back tomorrow? Or sometime this moon phase?” That gave her seven days to cool off. I hoped it wouldn't take that long for her to forgive me.

She pushed herself up smoothly from where her body had sunken into the soft chair cushion. The smell of damp earth, moss, and heavy fog—the scent I now associated with Haron—wafted by as she passed, and I found myself breathing deeply to trap it in my lungs. If I couldn’t keep her here with me, I could at least commit her scent to memory to comfort me when I lay alone in my bed. Haron was already swinging her cloak around and pinning it beneath her throat by the time I rose to escort her from the study. Still, she refused to look at me. It was a risk, I knew, but I couldn’t help reaching my left hand out to run the backs of my fingers down her arm.

Fuck my pride at this point. “Haron?” I asked softly. Her jaw muscle fluttered from how tightly she clenched it.

“I don’t know,” she finally answered, though I had almost forgotten my question of when—not if—she would come back. Her response wasn't a lie.

Haron pulled her arm from my touch and reached out to rip the study door open. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it felt like she was running away. Fear and insecurity clambered around in my head and tinted my vision red as I stood staring at that door. Never in my life had I experienced the overwhelming urge to capture and…possesssomeone, like I did with Haron Val Toric. Not even when I’d learned who my mother was and approached her for the first time. Pila Monato was happy to operate as a stand-in for my wet-nurse on occasion. She would sit by my bedside, brushing hair from my forehead as she told those stories passed down by her Julran ancestors that lulled me to sleep. But when I’d turned to her for any kind of comfort or support, her gates had slammed shut as if responding to a violent siege. Like showing any kind of affection or motherly care in public was a weakness in her eyes. Maybe it was. When Father told me of her sudden death fifteen years ago—almost to the day, I remember it was the Chilled season when I turned eighteen—it was as if he’d told me one of the barn cats had passed. I was just as emotionless as he was, the both of us sitting at the small table in his private receiving chambers and sipping goldtine. Looking back, that was the first time Father sat down to drink with me outside of a political meeting or meal.

As a man myself, I longed for a partner to share my burdens with. Someone who did not look at me and only see what they could receive from helping me. Someone more than what my mother was to Father, just a woman to help pass the time and give him heirs when his own wife did not. Queen Belva had died shortly after Pila was taken on as his mistress, her suicide a well-kept secret in the palace walls. The poor woman felt she was no longer useful to him. Her only purpose was to give him children, of which she tried for the better part of ten years into their marriage. My birth was practically her eviction notice.

Haron filled all those painful, bleeding cracks created by my cold and distanced upbringing. She soothed my soul with her unwavering pursuit of the truth and her unapologetic but empathetic honesty. Haron didn’t need me. I was the one who sought her out, after all. But she kept pulling me in with some unnatural attraction I couldn't ignore. Never would I have anticipated meeting someone like her when I went looking for the country's strongest necromancer, someone so full of life and fire and driven to achieve what she set her mind to. It felt like an honor to be needed by Haron, to be wanted by someone so independently successful.

And I felt like I was letting her down.

Chapter Thirteen

Haron

Today is the one-year anniversary of the fall of Julra. The 30th day of the month of Hirath, right in the middle of the

Thawing season. That may have been the refugees’ only saving grace that day, that the usual chill of Julra had been

chased away by the warming season of the Thaw. From what the refugees have said, Julra is a frigid and merciless

land, but beautiful in its inhospitality. A land that people are allowed to live on if they adapt or die if they do not.

-"The Tragic History of Julra," by High Scholar Yuret Wend, Year 39 of Ber's First Reign

Iknew the guild's summon would come within the moon phase, but color me shocked when a scroll waited for me at Gaion’s bar by the time I made it back to the tavern this very night. I had to walk around the lower streets of Gilamorst to cool my head from my meeting with Irin. I was caught between the uncomfortable feelings of attraction and duty whenever it came to him, and there were times it was truly a struggle to keep my goals firmly planted in sight when he tried so earnestly to sway me to his side. I knew he wanted more from me. It just felt… wrong, taking advantage of his ignorance of who I really was to make this version of a woman that didn't really exist. There were things churning beneath what I thought was a simple discovery of truth about Trisne's death. Something I feared Irin getting involved in anymore than he already was, being associated with me.

Gaion’s brows were drawn low before I even darkened his doorstep. He seemed troubled. And I wasn’t in the right headspace to console him right now. “Is this for me?” I reached for the scroll, clearly marked with the Necromancy Guild seal, when his weathered hand reached out to grab mine. In the five years I’d known the crotchety old man, there were only a handful of times he’d actually touched me.

“Haron,” my name rumbled low in his chest. “Girl, I’m worried for you. This is the second summons ‘n three days. What kind o’ trouble are you getting y’rself into?”

I sighed heavily. “It’s nothing to concern yourself with. I promise, I can handle whatever the guild throws at me.”

His brow drew even lower over those pale blue eyes. Most Resparians who had blue eyes claimed some Julran ancestor, and looking at Gaion’s made my chest warm in fondness. When I’d stumbled into his tavern five years ago—alone, with little more than the clothes on my back soaked through with the rain of the Growing season — he’d immediately taken me under his wing. He never poked into my past or tried to curb my sense of vigilante justice.

“This is something I have to face head on.” I laid my other hand over his, trying to be as gentle as I could in slipping the scroll from beneath his grip. “I’m pretty sure I know what it’s for, regardless. That crotchety old guildmaster won’t get the best of me.”

It was all a lie, of course. If this summons truly was about my stunt with Trisne's revenant, I would definitely be thrown in confinement as a wild practitioner. Turning away from Gaion’s prying eyes, I moved to the far corner of the tavern to tear open the sealed scroll. There was no point in taking it all the way up to my room.

Reading it, however, gave me an off feeling. For starters, Nebold always stood on formalities and long-winded elaborations. This letter was two short sentences, followed by his guildmaster seal. No signature, no explanation.

Come to the Necromancer’s Guild at first daylight. If you do not, you will be tried and sentenced.