Page 59 of A Crown of Tears and Treason (The Curse of Silver Secrets and Cruel Shadows #1)

Chapter

Fifty-Nine

EVIE

A dara promised to deal with the imposter.

She seemed rather adamant to do it, as if she wanted to get rid of the reminder of what she perceived as a mistake on her part, no matter how many times I told her she didn’t have to worry.

Zandyr told her to hide the body– not in the ground. This Elysia, who Adara called The Viper, was a master at potions, and wanted to study the replica.

We all left for our rooms. Leesa had given me an excited smile that dripped with exhaustion. “Tomorrow’s the big day.”

It was. I was getting married. For real this time, to someone I wouldn’t mind walking down the aisle to.

“It’s funny,” I said as Zandyr shut the bedroom door behind us. He needed to retreat to his tower soon, so he could start his own rituals and traditions at sunrise. Leesa had mentioned something about a great big horde of his Brothers testing the future groom’s strength before he could show up at the altar. “We’re really getting married.”

“We are.” He stepped behind me, enveloping me with his heat as his arms coiled around my middle. He rested his chin on top of my head. “Despite all the odds. Why is it funny?”

“Because I’m not afraid of it.” I turned around in his arms and looked up at him. “I don’t even want to kill you.”

He was as gorgeous as always, but a heaviness had settled on top of his shoulders, twisting the corners of his mouth. He was worried. I didn’t need the bond between us, flimsy and muffled as it was right now, to tell me that.

“That is unusual for a Clan wedding, I’ll give you that.” He palmed my cheeks once more, eyes darting over every inch of my face, as if he wanted to remember each single line of it. The intensity stole my breath away. I reached for his chest, fingers twisting in the leather of his armor.

“Promise me, Evie,” he said, an urgency in his tone I’d never heard before. “Promise me you will remember this. Us. As we are now. I am yours and you are mine.”

I frowned. That sounded like an omen. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“We will get married, as we must to protect you and the Clan.” His thumbs caressed my skin, careful not to get too close to the gauze on my nose. “Believe me when I say I would destroy myself to keep you safe.”

“Why are you saying these things?” I covered his hands with my own. “Zandyr, what’s going on? Will the Serpents attack tomorrow?”

“No. Even if they dared, my warriors would stop them.” He hesitated, mouth set in a grim line. “We’re dealing with something far more dangerous.”

A fragment of fury burst through the connection. It vanished as soon as it appeared, as if he’d strangled it back into the shadowy depths of his soul. But I’d gotten enough of a whiff of it to detect the dread beyond it. It wasn’t fear, oh, no. It was the wretched acceptance of the inevitable.

“The imposter tried to slit her own throat,” he said and my body seized. “Adara stopped her. Only then did she swallow the poison she had hidden in her mouth.”

I took a step back. Then one more. Zandyr let me go, his arms falling to the side. Then another, until I fell into a seated position onto the bed, the weight of the revelation beating through me.

“I was right,” I muttered.

“You were.” Zandyr approached, steps heavy. Perhaps the forest had left its mark on him, too. Or maybe my kidnapping had. “I’ve ordered my closest allies to find any scrap of text they can on the Quoriliths. More texts have to be out there and someone doesn’t want us to decipher them.”

“What does all this–” I flailed my arms at the chaos of it all. “Have to do with the death of my parents?”

I didn’t believe, not even for a second, my parents had slit their own throats. Mara and Falor Vegheara had been too proud to ever take their own lives, out of sheer stubbornness if nothing else.

“A message. Clans are masters at that. The question is…” He crouched in front of me in one fluid motion. “Who was it meant for? Not for us, we don’t know what it means. Yet. Not to strike fear in the hearts of civilians, nobody has claimed their murder.”

I frowned, my tired mind struggling to put the pieces together. “For whoever had ordered their assassination.”

Zandyr nodded gravely. “To know they can strike where they want, when they want. A show of strength.”

“I was the only witness.”

“You were the one they wanted to terrify.”

“Why? Nobody knew I was even alive.”

“Exactly. Someone has gone through a lot of trouble to get you back into Clan life–then take you out of it. That–” He tapped my forehead, then his. “Is what we need to discover. And we will. Together.”

A ghost of a smile lifted my lips; it felt like a lifetime since I’d smiled. “Together.”

“May the gods have mercy on whoever is behind this, because I won’t.” He grabbed the back of my neck, bringing our foreheads together. He inhaled long and sharp, as if he wanted to imprint my scent into his mind. It stirred something in my belly that had no business waking up now, when I was only half-healed. “I went mad when I couldn’t feel you. The breaking of a bond like ours is unfathomable. I was ready to strike down anyone and anything that would have stood in my way to find you. No mountains could have stopped me, no rivers could have swallowed me. I would have burned the whole continent to get to you. And when I finally found you, you were bloody and depleted…”

Another wave of fury rolled off him, so abrupt and raw, it sunk into my bones.

“Then,” he went on, voice now pulsing with barely leashed rage. “When you sat on the bed, Master Sylvannis mending your nose and lip, I would have marched straight into the palace and–”

The muscles of his chest constricted. A warning from the oath.

I ran my hands through his hair, willing away some of the shadows crowding his gaze. “I’m here. I’m alive. I’m safe.”

“You are.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “And I will always find you, for as long as you want me, this I swear. You are mine and I am yours.”

He made a move to get up, but I caught his shoulders. “Stay. We need a good night’s rest for tomorrow. Leesa has been warning me all these months that our wedding day will be exhausting.”

He hesitated for the slightest moment. Then he relaxed under my touch. “And wedding night, traditionally.”

“I do like the sound of that.” I giggled as I fell back on the bed, his weight comforting on top of me. Zandyr kissed my neck, my cheeks, my eyelids. Every inch he found, his lips pressed against it reverently.

When he finally captured my mouth, the kiss was slow and sensual, languorous in every swipe of his tongue against mine. Tasting me fully, like he didn't think he’d get the chance again.

Fatigue clawed at me when we finally settled for sleep in our favorite position, my back to his chest, his strong arm around my middle. I was so tired. My nose was still a mess. I’d barely scraped by with my life.

But damn it if I wouldn’t be walking down the aisle tomorrow.

Just as sleep overtook me, I felt Zandyr sighing heavily into my hair.

“You didn’t promise me,” was the last thing I heard before sweet oblivion took hold.

This wasn’t the calm, comforting sleep I’d become accustomed to since we’d started sharing the same bed. My dream of floating on a cloud quickly morphed into a miserable labyrinth. I ran for my life, a growl chasing me through the darkness.

A roar bellowed through the walls, rattling my mind.

“ She should have been dead by now. They should have all been bleeding at our feet ,” the voice bellowed. It sounded so distant, yet so familiar. But I’d never heard such venom in it before, I–

I woke with a start to an empty bed as the first rays of sunlight entered the room, bathing it in a warm glow. I only had the chance to place my hand on the indent of where Zandyr’s body had been before Leesa knocked and entered, ready to start the preparations.

Zandyr’s side of the bed was cold.