Page 29 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

She perched on the edge of the chair without waiting for an answer.

Suley remained standing. She joined the birds, opening a cage and offering her finger until a small, rose-colored songbird hopped onto her outstretched hand.

She cooed at the bird, and the bird tilted its head back and forth, the bright red feathers around its eyes exacerbating its curiosity as it eyed her.

It chirped in return, both woman and bird ignoring Dwyn wholly.

“Have you met the neutralizer?” Dwyn asked.

“I have,” Suley said.

“And? Will he be amenable to our cause?”

“She,” Suley corrected, “is both comforting and disappointing in how easy she’s been to manipulate. I am lovely, am I not? She’s invited me to her room for drinks tonight, as I expected she might. Do you know the worth of an evening without noise?”

Dwyn shook her head.

“No, because there is no price. There are no silvers or crowns equal to a silent night.”

Dwyn didn’t bother to argue. Instead, she asked, “I know you prioritize your quiet night, but perhaps you could try to make an ally? Stay friendly long enough for me to borrow her gift for manufacturing. I assume you’ll have her won over by the morning.

This time tomorrow, I could have something made for you.

I can’t guarantee its effectiveness, but I’ll try.

Bring your neutralizer to meet me and we’ll make our first attempt. ”

“Good,” Suley said, still looking at the bird. It hopped up and down the length of her finger, cocking its head from side to side as contemplated its shot at freedom. Rather than attempt to take flight, the bird was content to be returned to its cage.

Dwyn stood, face ripe with discomfort. She wasn’t used to being so wholly ignored, but she’d said what she’d come to say. She rested her palm on the cool iron of the doorknob before she heard the voice behind her.

“On the topic of manufacturing?”

Dwyn paused, hand on the door. The music beyond stretched between them, bars spanning into a full verse as the musician plucked his tired notes.

“On good faith, I’ll offer you a piece of knowledge that you do not deserve and that you have not earned. But I appreciate your apology, and for that, there’s something I’ll share with you. The woman, Cybele? Do you know of her?”

Dwyn’s fingers tightened on the handle. Her heart kicked against her ribs. She turned, looking over her shoulder. “I do,” she said.

“Then you know her gift?”

“I do.”

Suley considered this. “The bands she offers Ophir do not strengthen bonds, as they claim. These rings fuse bonds.” Suley closed the door to the birdcage and met Dwyn’s eyes for a meaningful moment. “Do you understand the implication?”

“…I do.”

“Tomorrow is the last full day before the recess has ended and the summit resumes,” Suley said, voice free of feeling.

Dwyn’s insides froze, down to her toes. She turned back to the door. Without looking at Suley, she said, “I’ll meet you tomorrow. We’ll put an end to your noise.”

***

Ophir nearly swallowed her tongue in her surprise.

She’d expected Dwyn had returned with tea and run out of hands, rendering her unable to open the door.

She’d expected the knock to have come from impatient kicking, not from a well-dressed guard.

She was glad she’d tucked herself into tall socks and a nightdress meant for sleep.

Opening the door in her towel—or worse, following Dwyn’s insistence on nudity when in the bedroom—would not have improved conditions.

She stood at the door, eyes wide, staring at Harland.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

Ophir looked over her shoulder at the room that had become her entire world.

Her four-post bed, her writing desk, her mirror and armoire, her bathing room, and the heavy curtains that blocked the light of the garden.

If it weren’t for the servants’ insistence on getting her up and out of bed, the sheets would be a rumpled mess, her clothes would be on the floor, and empty bottles of water and wine would be strewn about the chamber.

Instead, she looked at a profoundly clean, empty room.

Dwyn had left on some unknown mission, though given the empty teacups, she assumed it was for a fresh pitcher.

Tyr had set out to announce himself to the castle as a new arrival.

This might be the only opportunity for true privacy with Harland. But did she want it?

He didn’t push. His hazel eyes, green dotted with flecks of brown and gold, turned down with an intimacy that she knew all too well.

The dark stones of Gwydir cast a dramatic backdrop against his gold-brown hair, creating a stark outline for the fair fae in her doorway.

Nervous tension kept his shoulders back, his muscles rigid.

It told her that Harland had no idea whether she’d let him in or burn him with a ball of flame.

Despite his concerns, he faced her, prepared for the consequences.

Ophir released a breath. A sadness washed over her. He had been her friend. Her ally. Her confidant, drinking buddy, and lover. Now he faced her like a man quite literally prepared to burn.

She pushed the door open, stepping away and gesturing for Harland to enter. He looked uncertainly about the space.

“He’s not here, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Harland looked at her.

“I know that you two know of each other’s existence—you know, beyond Henares. Tyr’s introducing himself to the court at present. It was time for him to make friends in the castle.”

Harland’s lips parted in a question, but he closed them again.

Clearly, he’d come with something else on his mind and now was not the time to be sidetracked.

His eyes raked over her with aching slowness.

It wasn’t the lust she’d seen gleam from time to time, nor the jolly friendship, the coy banter, or even the cat and mouse of ward-and-charge. He looked at her with nothing but pain.

“I failed you,” he said.

She looked away. They hadn’t been alone like this in a long, long time.

For years, Harland had been the only person who’d rivaled Caris for her attention.

She’d had friends, and parties, and social circles before the incident.

She’d enjoyed alcohol, dancing, and lovers before the sharp end of a dagger had sliced through an abdomen and ended life as she had known it.

“I’ve failed you in so many ways, Firi. But the thing I regret most?”

Ophir looked at him with weary eyes. “Letting me out of my room the night of Berinth’s party?”

Harland sank noiselessly against the stones, echoing the motion he’d done on the wall in Aubade so many times.

He’d never been one for the bench, or the chair, or the bed.

A stone at his back and a smile on his face was how she knew him best. The only thing missing now was the joy.

His arms rested on his knees, eyes fixed on an unseen memory as he said, “The night I came into your room and you were covered in sand and bandages and blood. You had manifested that night, Firi. And I… I regret what I said to you when you were in pain. I…the things I said…”

“You were in pain, too,” she responded. Ophir resisted the familiar, unhealed impulse to sit beside him.

Muscle memory longed for her to slide into the comfortable place near his heat, to breathe in his familiar scent, to feel safe in his company.

A part of her realized that she could. They could just be Ophir and Harland again.

She leaned against the intersecting wall only three arm’s lengths from where Harland sat.

Ophir lowered herself slowly until she hugged her knees, eye level with the man who’d stood beside her longer than any other.

Aside from Caris, he’d been the most consistent fixture in her life. Until he wasn’t.

“I miss you,” Harland said.

The words were a jagged thorn puncturing her heart.

She slowly bled into her chest as she stared at him.

She could make the pain go away for them both.

She could end his suffering. She could make herself feel better.

She could crawl into his arms, rest her head against his chest, promise a life free from chaos, dedicate herself to calm, to rationality, to a world without monsters or flame or turmoil. But her words would be lies.

“I could move to Gwydir,” he said quietly. “I’d serve as your escort wherever you went, Firi. I’d respect any relationship you do or don’t want to have, friend or guard… I just want to be with you, whatever shape it takes. I’d rather be here as a silent sentry than not be in your life.”

“Harland…” She squeezed her knees to her chest.

“Things are different,” he agreed, keeping his voice low.

“Everything is different. I know. I’m not asking for you and I to shoot the shit on the wall like we once did.

I’m not asking for us to watch the sun go down over the western sea.

I’m not asking for…” His words caught, the russets, emeralds, and golds of his eyes snagging on her as he stopped himself from whatever memory threatened him.

She knew precisely what tempted him. She could almost feel the calluses of his hands brush against the skin of her hips, his kisses on her throat, the tug of his fist against her roots as his fingers balled in her hair.

Their sex had been spectacular—and it had been a mistake.

She wondered how much of its pleasure had stemmed from how profoundly inappropriate it had been.

Would he have felt as wonderful, would she have felt as full, would she have seen the All Mother in the same explosion of tantalizing stars, if it had been a casual affair?

They’d never let it happen again, so perhaps she’d never know.

Ophir extended a hand, wrapping her delicate fingers around the broad hand that had remained tucked against his knee.

“I understand,” she said, voice scarcely above a whisper.

“I know you miss her, but the girl you cared for doesn’t exist anymore.

And I want you to be happy, Harland. I do grieve those moments.

I grieve Caris. I grieve the days before I knew tragedy.

I grieve a lot of things. But they’re a part of the path that forged me.

Would I take her back? Absolutely. Every moment of every day, I would take her back, but it’s a bell, Harland. It’s a bell that can’t be unrung.”

His gold-brown brows furrowed. He asked, “Do you ever get sad? Over…this?”

She matched his frown, her face crestfallen as she held his gaze. “It does make me sad,” she said. “It hurts to see the ones I loved mourning the pieces of me I left behind.”