Page 60 of Antiletum (The Nocturne #1)

The thought makes me snatch the note back, rip it to shreds, upsetting my injured hand, and fling it out the window.

I yank linens off the bed. With a sheet wrapped around my waist until I can make it to my own chambers, I quit this room that loves to steal my wife. The fucking traitor. Maybe I should contact a mason. Ask them if they can cleave the tower from the manor .

A shocked maid passes me in the hall, glancing with confusion at my bare torso; my mussed, wild hair; my tired, sleepless eyes; the linens I hide myself with.

“My Lord,” she says, surprised. “I didn’t know you would be accompanying our Lady!” She sounds horrified at the prospect of being unprepared. “I’ll have your chambers emptied and prepared at once.”

Her shock morphs into a more pleasant, sly thing. Knowing.

She’s essentially driving a knife through my ribs, her subtle smile giving away that she believes my current state of undress and unkemptness is due to being tucked away in bed with my wife, lost to the throes of newlywed passion.

“Don’t bother,” I say flatly, not slowing. Not even looking at her. “Delaney isn’t here yet. And I’ll be gone before she arrives.”

I leave her confused in the hall.

Alaric blocks my path when I round a corner for the hall of my chambers. He steps back quickly, not expecting a soul to be haunting this wing while he occupies it, back at the manor again after transporting another load of offerings. “Val! Shit! What are you doing here?”

Void of his typical attire made specifically to minimize potential contact with his deadly skin, Alaric steps away to give me a wide berth.

Can’t even find it within myself to care that I was barely saved from a nice bout of cancer.

Maybe it would be less painful than this slow, agonizing death I’m experiencing now.

Alaric’s eyes narrow. “ Deos, are you alright? You look terrible.”

Breezing right past him, I reply numbly, “I can imagine I do.”

“I was informed that your wife was coming. And coming alone.” Sounds more like a question than a statement. “Still not going well then, friend?”

He follows me into the Lord’s chamber that he’s been occupying during his esteemed tenure to oversee the feeding of the Heartstone .

Not answering, an inconvenient little vice clamps tighter around my ribs. Abysmal would be a more fitting description.

“Val, if you just told—”

“She knows,” I say, cutting him off. I pause in the middle of the room, my back to Alaric. Jaw grinding. I don’t even sound like myself. Dead. Emotionless.

Fitting.

I was never alive or feeling without her.

For as long as I could remember after my mother abandoned me.

Delaney pulled those emotions straight out of my soul and I couldn’t quiet them in her absence, even when I wanted to.

The only way my heart continued beating during our years apart was from the hope that we’d be together again. And now? Now there’s nothing left.

My friend’s silence is weighted, reading my demeanor. “Ah, Val.”

Alaric’s pitying tone has me turning towards him, irrationally angry.

“Don’t,” I whisper with a sneer. “Just—just don’t.”

If he tries to show sympathy or comfort me right now, I think I might fully come undone.

Worse than the night he and Mallin took me to get the owl tattoo on my back.

Young, drunk, and lost to the morbs. That night aside, Alaric is generally not the affectionate, fuzzy type.

Not like Mallin. Probably due to the whole issue of not being able to enjoy physical touch unless he’s willing to see the subject of said comforts die.

It’s important to have range within your friends. And right now, I need Alaric to stay firmly in his designated box.

He sighs, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m sure at this point she won’t be surprised you’re already here when she arrives.”

“I’m only stopping off for clothes before going to Vulpes .”

Alaric quirks a brow. “For? ”

“To confirm the Heartstone location and existence myself before dragging Delaney on a mission to save it. Check in with Xavien and make sure he’s prepared.”

He laughs. “Glad to know you’re over your tantrum saying you won’t raise the Heartstones after your fight. Though I don’t think anyone actually bought into your dramatics.”

Clearing my throat, I still sound hoarse with exhaustion when I tell him, “Parliament is ready to dispose of me. I’ll fly to Vulpes and back before suspicions are too high about me being gone. We’ll raise Rainah. Find the Panthera stone. And then Delaney can be free of me.”

He drops his humor. “Be free of you?”

“That’s what she wants.”

Alaric gapes at me. “You’re really not here to head off your wife and refuse her denying you?”

“Appears that way.”

“You’re giving up ?”

I turn the knob of my closet door hard enough I’m surprised it doesn’t twist right off. “What else is there to do?”

“After ten years of pining for this woman, you’re just… letting her go?”

“I don’t know.” I’m overwhelmed. Every inch of my being is screaming to go back to Delaney. Beg on my knees again and pray that it’ll be different this time.

“What do you mean you don’t know ?” Alaric asks.

Why does he sound like he’s angry with me? Even after I murdered Rainah, he was more relaxed than this. Held every confidence in my ability to pull all my mistakes back together.

“I mean I don’t fucking know!” I slam a drawer in my closet shut, moving on to another .

“How did she learn the truth?”

A sliver of shame eats its way through me.

Seeing myself faced with Delaney’s clit, about to shove a needle through it.

Saying those tender words that we shared in a much happier, more pure moment.

I sullied them, right then and there. Lost to my own insanity.

Heartbreak and longing owning Delaney’s features, aching for me but in a twisted way.

“Doesn’t matter.”

Though I’d say it absolutely does.

“Let me guess, you told her in some wonderfully Val way that was probably incredibly difficult to digest?”

Silent, I shove clothes in hues of grey and white into a small bag, nothing showing my station as Lord of Noctua . I hate the title. More and more with every day that I hold it. It has no weight at all.

“Give her time,” Alaric says softly. “You were a ghost she believed dead for ten years, Val. Give her time.”

I glare at him in warning, trying to stifle that grating, kind tone. His optimism.

Returning to my task, I’m generally better at packing, consolidating everything into the smallest version of itself that it can possibly be in order to carry it in my talons as I fly. Small enough that the pack could be mistaken for prey from afar.

Already, I stand out in the skies far too much as my barn owl, being melanistic.

Hated and inconvenient though they are, the packs of clothes are a necessary risk in certain situations. I’m not bothered by my nakedness after a shift, but the masses seem to disagree and are generally suspicious of a person who is fully nude in public for no discernibly good reason.

Learned that lesson early on .

It will be interesting to see the adjustment period when shifter gifts are returned to the masses.

I let my sheet drop, sick of holding it and trying to pack one handed. One shaky, unusable hand. Alaric is unsurprised, having seen my cock more times than he probably cares to have at this point and usually without any warning.

“I don’t like this side of you. You’re too… blank,” he says, watching me with concern, his worry pulling at the long scar across his face. “It’s unnerving.”

His voice sounds like it’s traveling to me through water. I really should try and sleep. I’ve lost track of just how long it’s been. “And how do you propose that I be?” I murmur.

“Angry. Incensed.” He rounds my side, keeping ample distance, but peers into my face. “Petulant. Literally any version of your usual highly emotional self. Have you even killed anything since Delaney outright rejected you, knowing who you are?”

It is out of character that I haven’t. Even before I slaughtered her family, I was quick to draw a blade. Or if a weapon wasn’t available, just use my bare hands. She bore witness to that herself.

Didn’t mind then.

“See,” Alaric barks, pointing an accusing finger towards my face, “you aren’t even arguing that your emotions are, in general, completely off the fucking charts unstable. This isn’t you.”

“Do you need more prisoners?” I ask abruptly, changing the subject, abundantly aware that he doesn’t.

“There’s plenty. Wanna go feed one to the Heartstone?”

“I’m in a hurry,” I state, clutching the small pack in my hand and making for the window.

“Val. You can’t leave right now. You’re not yourself.”

“I can. I am. ”

“You’re not going to fly during the day right? You look like fucking death. At least rest until tonight,” he says with alarming concern, but I’m at the window, unlatching it to let myself out. “Valledyn!”

Ignoring him, I’ve already shifted, grabbing my pack out of the air with my talons before it hits the ground.

The trip is long and arduous.

I haven’t been to the Vulpes borders in years, and never this far north. Required focus to not lose my way is a balm, giving me a much less dreadful subject to occupy my mind that doesn’t have hazel eyes speckled with blue.

Forced to hunt and rest more than I would like to, our meager bodies require food and sleep for some reason. That’s no exception in my owl form. Not that I’m able to really absorb either. My stomach is tied in intricate knots like a knowledgeable sailor saw to them himself.

At least I have no need to shift after hunting, letting digestion take its intended, natural course. Best not to ruminate on expelling pellets as a man too much. I certainly try not to.