Page 24 of A Blade of Blood and Shadow (The Ravaged Kingdom #1)

Chapter

Sixteen

M y stomach was a tangled knot of dread by the time I staggered into the misty garden, clutching the cipher to my chest. It was small enough to fit into my outstretched palm but surprisedly heavy — much heavier than any mundane object should have been.

It was as if the magic within had its own weight. Or perhaps I was just feeling the weight of the bargain I’d struck with Caladwyn.

I’d fled with the cipher the moment the bargain’s magic had released me. It had seemed too risky to return to the ballroom, but now that I stood out among the whispering willows, I realized I had no idea how I was going to let Kaden know it was time to leave.

I needn’t have worried. As soon as the thought popped into my head, I felt the familiar hum of his magic along the back of my neck.

I wheeled around to find him standing a few yards behind me. His glossy raven locks gleamed in the moonlight, and his black velvet jacket was still immaculate. He certainly didn’t look as though he’d been in a brawl with another male.

A warm flush creeped up my neck as Kaden’s eyes roved over me. They seemed to smolder with some unspoken promise, and my lips tingled at the memory of our kiss.

But then his gaze landed on the cipher, and those stormy eyes widened in surprise. “You got the cipher.”

“You sound surprised,” I managed. I still felt slightly numb, and my voice came out all wrong.

“I’m more impressed than surprised.” Amusement twinkled in his eyes, but then his expression turned serious. “We should go,” he said. “Before Caladywn realizes it’s missing.”

I swallowed, but it did nothing to relieve the scratchiness in my throat. “That’s not going to be a problem.”

Kaden’s brows knit together, and something swift and dark flitted across his face, like a storm blowing in over the mountains.

He closed the distance between us without a word, those powerful wings materializing from the shadows as if they were made of darkness themselves.

He scooped me up, cipher and all, and alighted from the garden. Wind whipped my face as he swooped toward the clouds, and I could feel the weight of his assessing gaze as he flew us back to the House of Guile.

I didn’t dare meet his gaze. I was afraid one look would reveal what I’d done, and I wasn’t ready to admit it out loud.

Now that I held the cipher in my hands, I had to wonder if it had been worth it. Could I have found some other way to rescue Imogen without binding myself in a bargain with a faerie — even one I didn’t fully understand?

The heaviness in my gut made it impossible to appreciate the shimmering beauty of the Quarter as Kaden began our descent. He didn’t speak until he touched down on the black stone balcony, his footsteps faltering as he landed.

He set me on my feet and looked me over with an assessing, clinical gaze. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

Something in his voice made my chest tighten, but I just shook my head.

Kaden loosed a breath. “Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Then how did you . . .” A line appeared between Kaden’s brows as he tried to piece together the puzzle. “When I saw he’d left the party, I came looking. But then I felt a blast of power, and I sensed you outside.”

Troubled as I was, I didn’t question how he’d sensed me. Instead, I felt the truth spilling out of me before I could stop myself. “Caladwyn caught me trying to steal the cipher from his study,” I confessed. “He felt it when I unlocked the drawer where he was keeping it.”

Kaden’s eyes widened, and I looked down at the cipher cradled in my hands, wondering if it had been worth it.

“He let me take it.”

At those words, the horror and dread in Kaden’s eyes intensified. “He let you take it?”

I nodded.

“Why?”

I took a deep breath. There was no point in hiding it. That wouldn’t erase what I’d done. “I . . . made a bargain with him. ”

“You what ?”

“He said he was going to kill you for trying to steal from him,” I snapped. “What was I supposed to do?”

Kaden made an aggravated noise in his throat and raked a hand through his hair. “I could have handled Caladwyn.”

“He wasn’t going to let me leave that study,” I shot back, angry that he was making me feel even worse.

“You know better than to strike a bargain with a faerie!”

I opened my mouth to say something nasty in return, but the desperate, almost pleading note in his voice made me pause.

“When I first found you in that alley, you wouldn’t even tell me your godsdamned name!”

Panic and frustration swirled inside me, but I knew Kaden was right. It had been reckless to make a bargain with Caladwyn — even if I didn’t understand the full ramifications of it yet.

A muscle in Kaden’s jaw twitched, and he closed his eyes as if trying to summon patience. When he finally spoke, his voice was ragged. “What did you promise him?”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him — not when I knew nothing of the Otherworld or what reason he might have for barring me from the Quartz Palace.

Perhaps I’d been under some sort of thrall from the moment I’d entered Caladwyn’s estate, because the terms of the bargain that had seemed so inconsequential now felt like manacles.

“Lyra,” Kaden croaked. The sound of my name on his lips made the panic swell in my chest. “What — did you — promise him?”

He opened his eyes, and the desperation in his stormy gaze stole the air from my lungs .

“He said that no harm would come to either of us if we left with the cipher.” I swallowed thickly. “In exchange, I agreed never to set foot in the Quartz Palace.”

For an instant, Kaden’s expression went totally blank, as if I’d knocked him unconscious. Then a burst of cold rage lashed across his face.

“Why would he want me to promise that?” I asked in a shaky whisper.

I wanted Kaden to tell me that it was inconsequential — that it amounted to no more than a paranoid old faerie trying to keep his enemies at bay –– but the look of stony calm that settled over his features told me that wasn’t what he was going to say.

“If you did not know,” he said, “then you should not have made the bargain in the first place.”

Bitter shame unfurled in my gut. Of course I knew he was right — knew it had been foolish to make a deal with a faerie. I just didn’t know why.

“What does it mean?” I rasped, my voice breaking on the last word.

“He told me that the Quartz Palace was the home of his forebears — an ancestral site in Anvalyn.” I dragged in a breath.

“Why should it even matter? The portals between the mortal world and the Otherworld have been sealed for centuries.”

“It doesn’t,” said Kaden coldly, his jaw flexing.

I blinked, taken aback by his reaction. Clearly, the Quartz Palace meant something to Kaden, even if it meant nothing to me.

“Then why make the bargain?”

When he finally met my gaze, Kaden’s eyes were cold steel. “Did you not think to ask yourself that question before you agreed to my cousin’s terms? ”

His voice was so quiet, I found myself wishing that he’d shouted instead. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

“You know how dangerous it is to make a bargain with a faerie,” Kaden murmured. “And yet the moment Caladwyn had you backed into a corner, you went and made him a promise that cannot be undone, no matter what other magic is at work.”

Acrid shame spilled into my gut. I didn’t know what to say. I’d known bargains like the one I’d made were unbreakable, but it wasn’t until I’d felt the strength of the magic that bound them that I fully understood.

“You haven’t told me why it’s important,” I pressed. “What is the Quartz Palace, really? And how would I even get there?”

“If Caladwyn asked you to make the bargain, then he has already foreseen how this will unfold.”

“C-can he do that? See the future?” I’d never met anyone with the gift of precognition — no witch, vampire, or faerie.

“No,” said Kaden, his expression distant. “But he is frighteningly perceptive. More than I ever gave him credit for.”

I shook my head. “What does he think is going to happen?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kaden gritted. “We have the cipher. You should go. Tomorrow we can work out how to use it.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“I’m the one who made the bargain,” I spat back. “Clearly, it is my concern.”

“Not anymore. ”

I ground my back molars together, furious that I was being dismissed — and that he was hiding something. “Why didn’t you tell me Caladwyn was your cousin?”

Kaden shrugged. “It didn’t seem relevant to our mission.”

“Didn’t seem relevant ?” I repeated, narrowing my eyes. “You brought me to his estate — an estate I assume you’d visited before — and didn’t think it could be useful to share everything you knew?”

Kaden rounded on me then, his face as hard and unforgiving as stone.

“Let me make one thing clear,” he hissed.

“You are a huntress. I am fae. I thought you might be useful in retrieving the cipher tonight — just as I thought you might be useful in other ways when I first saved your life. You are a means to an end. Do not make the mistake of thinking that I owe you any explanation — that I owe you anything beyond what I have already given.”

His words sliced through me like white-hot daggers. Rage and hurt I hadn’t known I was capable of feeling leeched from the invisible wounds his words had inflicted, and I felt my cheeks heat.

“I will find you tomorrow, and we can continue to plan our assault,” said Kaden. “Once Silas is dead, we can go our separate ways. I think that is what we would both prefer.”

I bit down on the inside of my lip so hard I tasted blood. I didn’t speak — didn’t dare give away the burning lump that had formed in my throat. I just nodded. Those precious seconds bought me time to re-erect the walls of stone and ice that I’d stupidly let fall around Kaden.

His gaze was cold as he looked me up and down, and I felt the dark caress of his magic.

Tight warm leather replaced the gauzy fabric that flowed around my legs, and when I looked down, the gown was gone.

In its place were my fighting leathers and boots.

My weapons, too, were sheathed at my thighs exactly where I always put them.

It was as clear of a dismissal as any, and I hated how much it stung.

Without a word, I turned and strode back into the house, heading straight for that magnificent staircase. Down, down, down I climbed, tears blurring my vision.

The muggy air of the Quarter hit me like a wall the second I stumbled through the front doors and left Kaden’s glamour behind. The cloying scent of freesias clung to my skin — maybe some residue of the magic left from my bargain with Caladwyn.

A leaden weight settled in my stomach as I realized I no longer had the cipher. Kaden must have whisked it away when he magicked me back into my clothes.

Bastard .

After everything, I couldn’t think why I’d aligned myself with a faerie. They were all the same. Manipulative. Scheming. And ultimately, not to be trusted.

Kaden had the cipher now, which meant he held all the power. Even worse, I had the feeling that Kaden was somehow entwined in the bargain I’d struck with his cousin.