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Lorant

“ S he. Is. Not here! Why isn’t she here?” I ground my teeth, the silence, the lack of progress, shredding my nerves.

“She’s coming. I know it. This is going to work.” There was Merrick in his true form. He clung to hope during the day, while I was the viper. The assassin. Hope’s flames don’t flicker in the night.

“How do you hold on to the feeling that this will turn out right?” I asked, truly wanting to know.

He paused. “I have to.”

Because I couldn’t.

If only I’d… It was too late for recriminations. “We’re either fucked or we’re… Actually, I believe we’re well and truly fucked.”

Because of me. I was cruel to her. It was my nature. My share of the curse. But I’d flayed her with my pain. Hurt her because I was being tortured myself.

I didn’t know how to fix it. Like always, that fell to Merrick.

“We’re not fucked,” he whispered. “This is going to work.”

“She hates me,” I said with a glum sigh. “Not you.” Never him.

“I don’t believe she does. She’s the one. It’s finally happening.”

If only I could grab on to his hope, his unfailing belief that Reyla could do what no one else had.

But then, it wasn’t in me to feel optimism. Or kindness. Even love, I supposed.

Except for my wildfire.

“Where is she?” I glared at the door.

“You’re too impatient.”

“We don’t have long.” Despair was another feeling I’d wallowed in until I met her. To get this close only to fail would hurt all the more because it would mean I’d ruined things for us both. “There isn’t enough time.”

“It’ll have to be, right?” As if we’d switched personalities for the first time, bleakness came through in his voice. The fact that Merrick had picked up on the feelings churning through me showed me how close we were to losing everything. “When she gets here, be nice. Apologize and tell her…whatever it is you can come up with that’ll make her smile at you again.”

If she’d speak with me. “I’ll try.”

“Thank you. If only you’d seen her at the coronation.” His excitement bloomed once more. “The dinner. Even our first dance. She was amazing.” The pride in his voice made jealousy lash through me. I wanted all her smiles. All her touches. Everything that was his that might never be mine. “She was so happy when Justifar placed the crown on her head, making her my queen.”

“ Our queen,” I snapped.

“Same thing. ”

It was, yet it wasn’t. Not yet. Maybe never. I ached to be everything instead of essentially nothing.

“She’s close, and frankly, that humbles me,” he said. “I don’t deserve her.”

He did more than me.

The faintest ripple whispered along the edge of my senses, a distortion I wouldn’t have noticed if my fury wasn’t already blade-sharp. I paused, listening.

No sound. No creak of footsteps. No shift in the wind.

Just silence. Unnerving silence.

Merrick turned his head to stare toward the corner where I’d swear shadows had slithered. No…there wasn’t anything there. A trick of the mind stretched by nerves.

But I still fought the urge to bare my teeth at nothing.

“What is it?” he asked, his hand sliding to the blade he—and I—always kept by our side.

“Nothing.” I wrenched my attention back to the conversation, though unease bit like insects coating my skin.

“Lorant—”

“I said it was nothing.”

“Alright.” I could feel his scowl. “Back to the ball. You haven’t told me how you handled things after I left.”

Could I avoid telling him a bit longer?

“Lorant,” he grumbled when I remained silent. “Please tell me you were at least civil to her.”

“Mostly.”

I could picture him rolling his eyes, and I hoped acceptance still lurked there.

How could I tell him that I’d dragged her onto the dance floor and taunted her with her feelings for me? Because I was angry that she’d avoided me, I’d pushed and pushed until her walls collapsed, and she snapped and ran away .

In trying to break her, I’d shattered myself.

I agreed with Merrick that we needed to keep nudging this where it had to go. Every other method taken by those who’d come before us had failed.

But if this didn’t do it…

“I found her standing on the balcony with moonlight stroking her hair,” I said softly. Did he hear the longing, the hopelessness in my voice? “It was all I could do to breathe. Seeing her there, bathed in silvery light… Her dark green gown clung to her like it belonged to her silhouette alone. I swear the stars had woven themselves into the fabric of her gown for this night and this woman alone. Her auburn hair shimmered with fiery whispers.”

So much longing. Craving. I’d lived with stark desperation since I met her.

“Never suggest you don’t feel the same for her as me.”

I couldn’t. Not ever.

“She stood there,” I said. “Alone. Her gaze lost somewhere beyond where I could see. But I sensed her uncertainty.”

“I hated leaving her. I always hate leaving her.”

Even more, I suspected, leaving her to me.

Her loneliness had echoed mine, a thing I’d found both profound and strangely unsettling.

“She didn’t know I was there, not at first.”

“Until you snarled.” His usual humor had fled. Maybe my mood was transferring over to him, or he also felt the same fear that clenched my bones to breaking when I thought of how much there was still left to do with so little time.

“I did.” No use denying it.

“I hope you danced with her after you’d gotten that out of your system,” he said.

“I made her dance.”

“Lorant,” he sighed .

“You would’ve acted the same.”

“I would not have acted the same.”

“I couldn’t help it. She didn’t come to me.” She only eagerly went to him, and the pain of that gouged deeply.

Soon, I’d start pacing, snarling, slamming my magic against the walls if only to reduce some of my stress. I’d rush to the door with a savage determination to seek her out, only to hold myself back.

“Do you hear her coming yet?” How forlorn I sounded. If nothing else, we drowned in our shared melancholy.

“Not so far.” His head tilted, and he frowned. “Wait. Maybe. Yessss. She’s coming to me. To me .” This time, I could feel the heat, the utter satisfaction, the joy in his smile.

Envy clawed through me, and I allowed it to snap. “She’s only coming to you because you two are married.”

“She’s coming to me because I treat her as she deserves.” His own control cracked and pitched, stretching thin. “I don’t snarl. I don’t make her do anything she wouldn’t do freely. And that’s why she’s coming to me .”

“Yet she’ll find me waiting.”

“Don’t—”

“You have no say in this, not now.” The nights were mine.

“Lorant.” The pleading in his voice struck through the jealousy and anger whipping around inside me.

“We’re together in this.” Unlike all the others. “Always. I mean it. I will not betray you.”

“Thank you.”

I could almost feel him shifting on the bed.

“You're ready?” His voice echoed in the room, and now I could hear it.

He flung back the blankets and eased off the bed, striding over to stand in front of the mirror .

There you are.

Don’t mess this up, he said in our mind. I’d hoped, when this time came, it would be me, but perhaps, in this, it should be you. I’m excited no matter what. Remember everything because I need to know. He stared into my—our—eyes. Please, give her what she needs. Don’t be mean.

I told you I’ll try.

Alright. His soft sigh bled out.

“It's yours,” he said into the mirror. It took us nearly ten years to discover we could actually see each other at dawn and at dusk as long as we could stare at the other’s image.

Another change with this generation of the Evergorne king. As far as I knew, no one else had figured that out.

Don’t do anything foolish, he said, his voice whisper soft. Fading.

The sun winked from view, and the change fell upon us.

He stretched and…

… I stretched, savoring taking over once more. The first time it happened, pain scorched through me. I’d dropped to the ground, curled into a tortured ball, and bellowed until I was hoarse. Now, it almost felt seamless, but that could be due to our age and the reality creeping closer.

In the mirror, Merrick’s face and body shimmered.

The sun cringed away from the night and candles lit themselves inside the blooming darkness, a magical trick I’d set in place years ago to ensure we could see each other until the last moment.

Merrick’s image no longer showed in the mirror. He’d become Lorant. The scar I’d received at ten gouged across my face. I’d added more through the years while Merrick remained almost untouched.

He was gifted with light.

I was gifted with darkness .

Please, Merrick echoed in what was now my mind, distant enough I could barely hear him. She saw it happen! Don’t ruin this. Be kind. Be…me.

There was no chance of that, not unless…

Only now did I hear my sly, calculating, and exceedingly clever wildfire who, like on the ship, had chosen to arrive by unconventional means. No storming the door for this woman. In every situation, she blazed a new path.

It was all I could do to keep the feral smile off my face, to act natural, to pretend that I didn’t know she was watching, seeing what we needed her to discover.

But then scrapes and shuffles drifted from the open window as she retreated.

Surely she wasn’t leaving already? Not when she’d finally learned what we’d been desperate to share but could not tell her.

How I longed for release from this relentless grip of tension squeezing the last wisps of sanity from my mind. I hovered on restraint's edge, subject to the whims of one woman.

One exquisite, perfect wildfire of a woman.

Ah, there she was again, creeping up and through the window. I should’ve known Reyla would not run, not even from this. She challenged everything with all she was and would ever be, and she would not turn away from this—from us .

I turned to face the mirror, giving the impression I was staring at my reflection while, instead, I watched her every move in the glass.

The pad of her footsteps rippled toward me.

Nearly time.

Never time.

Now.

I spun to face her.

As she shrieked and gouged her blade toward my heart, I snapped out my hand and bound my fingers around her wrist, bringing her plunge to a halt.

The sharp tip poked my chest, drawing one droplet of blood. A growl ripped up my throat.

While she snarled and kicked, trying to knock me off my feet, I wrangled the blade from her hand. I flung it aside and stole the other, shooting it out of her reach as fast as I had the first.

She smacked me, tried to bite me.

This woman was very good—and equally bad.

I lifted her and flung her onto my bed, following her down, caging her with my arms and legs and my naked body.

With one hand pinning hers above her head, I disarmed her, one lethal knife at a time, grinning ferally while I did it.

“Wanted to kill me, did you?” I drawled against her throat. “Not tonight.”

“Fuck you!” She shrieked and flailed, her response dragging grim satisfaction from my soul.

Merrick was right. Love could bloom from hatred’s ashes.

I savored how sweet and flustered and… aroused she looked lying beneath me on my bed.

She speared me with a glare, the only remaining weapon in her arsenal.

I slid my nose from her chin to her ear, savoring the scent of her sweaty rage, her heat, and the realization that she would always battle for control. This woman was a queen unlike any other.

“You’ll win no match with me, Wildfire,” I rasped.

Lorant ruled the night.

“I hate you.” Her eyes blazed with traitorous tears. “I hate you! Let me go.”

While she bucked and kicked, I feathered my words across her ear. “Do you truly hate me, my pretty little bride?”