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Silas popped a shoulder in a shrug. “Then don’t be stupid and let words make you doubt those things that make you, you.”

I could recall so many moments of his brisk, boyish words. His protectiveness. His laughter. The way he pretended not to like picking blood roses but was always the one to suggest we go to the gardens. The way he mocked my childish lisp, then always told me I had a nice voice.

I recalled moments when gentry boys taunted him, calling him names for being an orphan. I’d been hiding outside the walls of the old schoolhouse, listening, as they’d made up lies that the king planned to get rid of his ward since he was so worthless to the royal house.

I closed my eyes and leaned my back against the wall.

“You think the king’ll keep you? Why? You don’t do anything but eat up his table scraps.”

Silas frowned and turned away, trying to leave, but Bragi Helverson was relentless.

He gripped Silas’s arm and forced him to wheel around. “Bet your mam was glad to go to the Otherworld.”

Silas’s face boiled in an angry red. His fists clenched. Bragi wanted it. He wanted the king’s ward to react, all so Annon and the other commanders would punish Silas to stable mucking for a month.

“Bet your daj tossed himself over too,” Bragi went on, “after he found out what a whore your mam was. You probably weren’t even—”

A strangled cry escaped his throat when the first pebble flew from the loft window. Then, another, and another.

“Arghh. Go, go!”

Bragi and his stupid gaggle of bullies tried to flee. Pebbles kept flinging, striking their faces, their arms; one boy stumbled forward, sobbing, when a small gray stone struck him in the teeth.

“Princess! No. Stop this right now. Gods, help us!” A servant had her skirts bunched in her arms, sprinting from the green lawns next to the stable.

Bragi and his wretched gang bolted, bleeding and simpering like little pups.

Silas peeked up at the loft window.

“Your aim needs work, Little Rose,” he said. But in the corner of his mouth was a smile.

A smile I never truly forgot. Silas looked at me like I’d saved his damn life. Much the same as I’d looked at him the night Davorin attacked my mother. The way he’d hidden me, brave and stalwart, standing in front of the armoire. The way he’d been forced to leave my father to a fight he couldn’t win, and face Davorin. He’d nearly been killed by the strike of that blade, all to keep me hidden, to defend my bloodline.

I closed the book of drawings, swiped the tears off my cheeks. What the hells was there to think about?

So, my heart bonded with the boy who’d always cared for me, the boy who’d always seen me as I was and never tried to change it. What did it matter? I’d picked him before fate bonded us together.

The Norns were the slow ones in making their decision. I was more cunning and picked him before we sang our song of destruction.

So why was I still here?

I glanced in the looking glass on the wall. My hair was disheveled, but manageable. My eyes were red from tears, but I didn’t have the patience nor the care to wait for them to clear. In three strides, I crossed the room to the door and yanked it open.

Silas, my phantom, my whisper, he wanted me to decide if my heart ached for him.

It didn’t ache for him. Itlivedfor him.

Chapter22

The Storyteller

He was wearingthe black satin mask again. In the upper hall filled with the instruments, Silas was alone, facing the window. The light from the moon glimmered over the surface of the masked cheek from where he sat on the bench, thrumming a small lyre.

His dark hair was loose down his neck, falling to his shoulders. He’d removed the cloak and thick leather belt around his waist. Dressed only in a dark tunic and trousers, he almost looked free in the darkness.

Then again, perhaps he was.

I winced at the thought of Silas locked away, watching the world live on without him, with only shadows as his company. My heart cinched in a fierce need to defend him, to shield him from the call to loneliness and solitude.