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Calista let out a shriek of surprise when I lunged. My body pressed against her, pinning her back to the wall of the mausoleum. Each draw of air came sharp and heavy. Each brush of my chest against hers sparked anger and passion, and I could not stop. “You knownothingof bondage. Nothing.”

“Let me go, Silas.” She didn’t falter, didn’t waver under my nearness. Calista placed her palm on the hand I’d used to cover the scars. “Let me go to my people.”

Her people. I was not numbered among them.

Jaw tight, I stepped back. “Go then. I will not stop you. Fight a battle you cannot win. Go be with your fools who are missing you.”

Calista regarded me with a touch of suspicion. Gaze on me, she crept toward the entrance. In the doorway, she paused. “You could come with me. You could fight.”

I stepped back into the shadows, silent and unbending. Calista’s eyes flickered. Not disappointment. How could she be disappointed when she did not wish to be here with me anyway?

When she disappeared into the mists of the tangled garden, I waited for ten breaths before slamming my fist into the side of the tomb. “She doesn’t know what it’s like!”

You’re going to simply leave her there?

“Of course not,” I snapped at the darkness. “I’m not a damn fool.”

I quickened my pace and abandoned the solitude of the mausoleum and sprinted for one of the numerous side entrances on the palace. The lower corridors were musty and covered in weaver webs. Twists and sharp, angled corridors branched off in a maze of rooms and warded chambers, but I’d memorized every crevice.

I shouldered through a door into a small room where I’d spent endless hours tanning hides from rabbits or small rodents that crept through the gates. On a peg near an open hearth, I snatched a black cloak. The hood was oversized, enough I could tuck it around my marred cheek and still see.

Motion was instinct. A need to protect her, a need to keep watch over her, but by the time I reached the gate, I came to an abrupt halt.

Bleeding gods, I could . . . I could leave. There was no agonizing pull to remain behind the iron bars. In one way, she’d set me free.

And I was terrified.

The world was vast, too vast. My skin lifted in sharp chills. Gods, all I wanted to do was return to my chamber, lock the door, and draw the damn shade. But she was out there. The tale was at the end, and none of us truly knew what that meant. There was greater danger than there had ever been, and I couldn’t let her face it alone.

Shattered as I was to know she recoiled from me rather than embraced me, she was mine to protect, mine to guide. Mine.

I ducked my head, and for the first time in centuries, stepped into the world.

Chapter13

The Storyteller

Raven Row looked. . . different. Buildings were straighter, more cobbles lined the muddy roads. There were wider stretches of sturdier walls, and forests that once were dry and sickly were lush and full beyond the main roads.

Illusions? A trick of the mind?

How bleeding long had I been behind the damn walls of Hus Rose? I shook the questions away and took note of my folk staggering free of their trance.

But the sea had changed. Murky water lapped against the shore, like dark oil glistened over the surface. Storms near the horizon rolled in angry clouds.

I let out a gasp, squinting to be certain I was seeing the truth this time. Bleeding hells. Once more, dozens and dozens of strange, jagged, cruel-looking ships were splitting the surface of the waves, then sailing toward the Row.

The snap of sails. The spray of mist from the coming maelstrom. All of it was real on my skin. This was no vision. This was a damn attack from bleeding sea fae.

“At the shores!” I screamed to the disoriented folk of the Row. “Sea fae! Protect yourselves!”

I’d never forget diving under the dark water when that dead bastard of a king summoned me with that strange little gold disc of his. The sensation of the sea crushing me, yet never fully robbing me of my breath was horrifying. If my Golden King had not been at my side, I might’ve succumbed to death from nerves alone.

There was power in the seas, and we’d sent Davorin straight to it when the coward turned himself into a slimy eel.

“Cuyler!” I skidded around the bend in time to watch my friend stumble out of the trance I’d leveled against him. “You all right?”

He coughed and gripped my arm. Damp hair stuck to his forehead, his clothes were soaked from the storm that had beat around him, his breaths were heavy, but he gave me a brisk nod. “What happened?”