Page 19

19

Reyla

I t was time to leave to work with Lorant in the tower.

The walk there felt longer tonight. My guards flanked me, but I barely heard their steady footfalls or the gentle rustle of the castle as it settled into the quiet of night. Thoughts of what Erisandra could be up to churned through my mind, but I didn’t come to any conclusions other than that she hated me. She’d gladly see me dead to steal my crown.

She was willing to lure me from the protection of the veil shielding the castle and into the woods where I’d be on my own.

Tea time tomorrow was going to be quite interesting.

For now, I would focus on Lorant.

The last time I’d seen him, he was crafting yet another potion to help me survive the pain of my flow. Holding me in his arms. Would he be kind or snarly tonight ?

When I reached the base of the winding staircase, Surren gave me a subtle nod and pivoted, standing near the wall with the others to wait until I was ready to return to my suite. The stairs coiled upward, stretching endlessly toward the top. With each step, my boots scuffed against stone worn smooth by generations of kings, each swallowed by the curse.

As I climbed, I thought of Merrick’s earlier confession, the way he’d said, “Remember me.” It echoed in my mind, twisting around the memory of Lorant lying beside me on my bed, his rough hands gentle as he rubbed my belly. The way he'd sat with me in his arms at night, determined to be there if I needed him. And the way he hadn’t grimaced while helping me with things that would make me cringe if I thought about them too hard.

Gentle was not a word I'd ever associated with Lorant. How was it possible that when it came to me, he and Merrick could be the same?

When I reached the top, the thick iron door creaked open before I could raise my hand to do it myself. Fog spilled out like it had been summoned by the stark differences of this man and the other.

I stepped inside, and he turned from where he stood at the window on the opposite side of the tower room.

His silhouette cut against the silver moonlight spilling through the window behind him. As always, he wore all black, from his boots to his pants to his tunic—the last adorned only with a few hints of silver. And tonight, a cloak. The same he'd worn when he followed me through the village and welcomed me onto the ship? Everything about this man felt unreal. Dangerous. His frame appeared carved from stone, every muscle honed for battle. For survival.

For me?

The light caught the deep scar slashing from his brow to his jaw, reminding me of how much he’d endured, how he’d fought something horrible and survived. His green eyes, darker than Merrick’s, flickered almost ferally, making that storm he often claimed to be feel closer, as if his wind and rain had chased me up the stairs and now that I’d arrived, diffused into warm mist.

“Welcome, Wildfire,” he rasped, his voice a skate across my skin that brought out delicious shivers.

Wildfire.

The title should’ve reminded me of our push-and-pull relationship. Instead, hearing it from him warmed something inside me I wasn’t prepared to analyze.

“You’re late.” The way his brow arched, the faint sneer tugging at the corner of his mouth, reminded me again of who—and what—this man was.

I could tell he was trying to provoke me, to test my boundaries, like he always did. It should have made this feel familiar, but tonight, everything felt changed. The air between us was heavier somehow, crackling with things unsaid.

“I’m here now.” I stepped to the middle of the tower room. The door groaned shut behind me, sealing us in and sealing my guards out.

His gaze raked over me, assessing me in a way that felt more personal than any touch. “Are you all right? You look?—”

A blink and he’d flitted in front of me. When he latched onto my shoulders, I winced.

He reeled backward, his hands lifting. “What fucking happened?” he snarled, ripping forward to gently tug my tunic to the side. With a vein throbbing in his temple, he studied the slash on my shoulder. “They. Are. Dead.”

“I took care of it already.”

“Who?” he roared.

“I was attacked by a mirror. ”

“What mirror?” he slashed his head around the tower room as if a shiny silver glass would appear long enough for him to destroy it.

“It’s gone. I broke it. Sent the attacker back wherever they came from.”

“Tell me everything .”

While he seared the wounds on my shoulder and forearm closed and helped me tug my tunic back into place, I told him about following Erisandra and what I found in the meadow.

After, he cupped my face and stared into my eyes. “Do not do that again.”

“I need to know what’s going on here, and if I hide in my room, I’ll never figure it out.”

“I don’t care. Protection doesn’t go past the castle walls. Stay inside. Locked in your suite. Do not leave. I’m not worth the loss of even one strand of your hair.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong.” I lifted my chin. “I will continue to risk myself to fix this.”

“No,” he snapped, whirling away from me, stalking over to the window where he braced his palms on the frame and bellowed out into the night. His roar cut off. The world outside remained still before the soft whir of insects began once more.

Joining him, peering out at the nothing, I fiddled with the strap on my blade belt. “What will you do about Erisandra?”

“What I should’ve done when I was ten.”

“You can’t kill her,” I gasped.

He crooked his head to look at me. “I can.”

“Don’t. We’ll take care of it in a different way.”

“She. Tried. To kill you. I’ll rip out her throat in return.” He said it simply, yet killing the queen mother was anything but.

“Maybe it wasn’t her.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Do you truly believe that? ”

I shrugged. “This wouldn’t be the first time someone took on the face of another. That person lured me out there. They tried to kill me. It seems rather odd that they’d make sure it was her face I saw. It thrusts the blame directly at her as eagerly as you are to thrust your blade through her…you know.”

“Her right eye. Her throat. Her back or her chest. Any place will do as long as the blow’s lethal.”

“We need to be strategic about this. Attacking her now will only make us look bad and her the victim. We don’t need a martyr to rally the lords and ladies to her side.”

“She’ll have no side when she’s dead.”

I sighed. “Talk to Merrick about it. If we act, it needs to be as one, not just you storming through the castle to slit her throat. They’ll accuse you. Condemn you. There will be no defense of your actions.”

His hand jerked out, but it slowed, and he delicately stroked his fingertips across my cheek. “She hurt you.”

“And I’d love to seek my own revenge, but I’m going to make sure we’re looking at this from all angles before I do anything.”

“So wise,” he whispered. “So fragile.”

“I’m stronger than I look.” Stepping back because his touch was much too disconcerting, I strode to the middle of the room and turned. “Thank you for what you did.”

“I would heal your wounds both inside and out if I could.”

“You’ve done a great job already. Both right now and… You know.”

Easing away from the window, he dropped his back against the wall and raked his hands across his face. “No thanks are necessary.”

Awkwardness settled like an unwelcome guest between us.

“It’s strange.” I glanced at the flickering sconces casting a warm amber glow on the stone walls. “Talking about things with you. I mean, with him…” I swallowed because I refused to compare them out loud. “Yet with you?—”

“It's harder.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, but the way his fingers tightened on his elbows said more than his words.

“Well, yes.” My gaze slid sideways, fixing on a crack in the wall by his shoulder. “Maybe that’s because of—” I wasn’t sure how to phrase it.

Did he know what I’d done for Merrick in the parlor? Leave it to my brain to focus on that rather than on my…odd experience in the woods. But I needed to let that rest a bit. Brew. Ferment into something I could more closely examine. And fermentation took time.

His lips tightened. “What you and… he share is yours, Wildfire.” Easily said yet jealousy strained through his voice, plus a touch of bitterness.

And somehow, that stung worse than if he’d snapped at me. I wanted him to care. Slam his fist into the wall at the thought of me being with Merrick.

Snarl or something.

Fragile or not, messy or not, I wanted every part of this man to crave me as much as I did him.

I straightened my shoulders and met his gaze. “About the curse. If I—” The words tangled my tongue. “If we can find a way to break it, what will be left?” I couldn't bear to lose either of them.

His jaw tensed. He didn’t look away, but his expression shuttered, the dangerous edge of him returning in full force. “Reyla,” he growled. “Don’t?—”

I held up a hand and thought for a moment, scrambling for the right way to phrase it. “If the curse is broken, will you and he—” My throat tightened again, and I forced the rest out. “Will both of you still exist?”

His shrug was a lash, a sword cutting deep, delivering a visceral, overwhelming pain that drove me to my knees. I cupped my face, unable to look at him, to see the same fear in his eyes.

Stepping close, he dropped down in front of me and pulled me against his chest. Like over the past nights, he held me.

I didn't sob, but I sure wanted to.

No, I turned my sadness into anger.

“Fuck this curse,” I shrieked, reeling my head back so fast I nearly took out his chin.

He snorted. “Yeah, fuck the curse.” Choking, he wiggled his neck, loosening the knot.

“Don't say a damn thing! Let me do the talking for us both.”

He jerked out a nod, his gaze fixed on my face.

“I'm determined, Lorant.” I stroked his scarred cheek. “No matter what either of you say, I'm not giving up now, tomorrow, or in five weeks.”

He held up four fingers.

“Four weeks?”

He blinked and lifted his other hand to display three more fingers.

Only four weeks and three days, and I was no closer to fixing this than I’d been when I arrived in Evergorne.

“You’re not going to die.” I said it firmly, as if it was a vow. I was surprised that lightning didn't light up the sky.

I struggled to my feet, looking down at him still kneeling in front of me with too much emotion in his dark eyes. It swamped me, lifted me up, and tossed me onto the shore, leaving me bereft.

He was as tortured as me, and I couldn't stand it.

“Up, up.” I tugged on his hands and almost reluctantly, he rose, towering over me, watching me, linking our fingers together. “I don’t know where to start.” The words spilled out before I could stop them. Pieces of information floated around me, but I couldn’t grasp them, let alone fit them together. “I will find a way. Because—” I broke off, my chest tightening again. “There is no choice here. I will not pick between you. That’s what I feel like this is coming to, and I can’t.”

The room felt smaller, every word I spoke crackling with a truth we couldn’t name. Lorant’s eyes were as turbulent as a stormy sea, pulling and thrashing. Rising, he took my hands in his own, and the strength of his grip kept me in place when everything inside me was determined to splinter apart.

His expression shifted, his jaw tightening, his lips parting. I thought he might say something, but he stopped, biting down hard on his lips. His fingers left mine, moving up to cradle my face as if he could hold me together through sheer will alone.

“You're reckless, Wildfire.” His raspy words eased across my skin. “The fates help me, but I need that. I need you.”

He tilted my face upward, his thumbs brushing my cheeks, his touch achingly tender. His forehead pressed against mine, and the world stopped. The curse. The looming weeks left.

The fractured pieces of us balanced on that stillness.

“I need you too.” My voice was breaking far too easily under the pressure of it all. Pain slammed onto my chest like a wave crashing down. “I can’t do this without both of you.”

His fingertips grazed along the side of my neck until they curled around it, like he was holding something impossibly fragile. The pad of his thumb brushed the hollow of my throat in a touch that felt both possessive and tender. Tightening his grip on my neck, he pulled me into him, and his lips fell onto mine with stark desperation.

He claimed my mouth in a way that was both fierce and unyielding, like he was afraid it might be the only chance he’d ever get to kiss me again. I rose onto my toes, tilting my head to sink into the kiss, refusing to let anything hold us apart. I dug my fingers into his forearms, the tension in my grip mirroring the way his lips moved against mine.

There was no hesitation here. No space between us for doubt to seep through. We were heat and desperation and the brutal ache of two people fighting not to come undone. His teeth grazed my bottom lip, pulling a gasp from me, and I answered by tugging him closer, needing him to feel how much his touch meant to me, even when everything felt like it was careening out of control.

He made a low sound in the back of his throat, one that sparked along my skin and filled my chest with something reckless. His hands slid down, gripping my waist as though to steady us both, pulling me against him, the hard planes of his body fitting against mine. It wasn’t enough. I needed more. Needed all of him. I slid my fingers into his hair, tangling them and my soul in the silky strands. His response was a low growl, the kind that reverberated through flesh and bone.

There was something in the way he kissed me, something more than the passion that tangled between us, something that was too fragile to name out loud. He drank from me as if my kisses could somehow replace whatever he thought he’d already lost. I melted into him, breathing against his mouth. Every gasp of air between us felt charged with fire.

I released his hair and scraped my nails down to his shoulders hard enough to make his breathing hitch.

He lifted his head and stared down at me. He didn’t give me space to recover, his lips grazing my jawline, his exhalations hot against my skin. His hand slid from my waist to cradle the sides of my face again, holding me in place, even as I arched closer, my arms looping around his neck to keep him near.

“Reyla.” It was low, almost guttural, a sound more emotion than word. His forehead pressed against mine again, his breathing ragged. “You ruin me. ”

“Good.” The single word carried more defiance than I’d intended, but it was true. “I think you need to be ruined.”

His laugh broke across my cheek, too worn to carry much humor. He pulled back enough to look down at me, and the wild disarray of emotions in his eyes made my chest hurt. “I would strip this world down to the stone for you. Be all for you. Die for you and beg the fates to revive me only so I could die for you once more.”

His words crushed me, and I clung to his arms, holding on to keep from falling apart.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “I don't want that sacrifice.”

“It's already too late. The promise is yours.”

He kissed me again, slower, gentler, though no less filled with need. His hands framed my face like I was something fragile, yet his mouth told a completely different story. He kissed me like he was sealing the memory of my lips to his very soul.

I could taste it now. The despair he wasn’t saying out loud. The knowledge we both carried but wouldn’t name. The unspoken truth that whispered louder than anything in the room.

Four weeks and three days until I lost them both if I couldn’t end the curse.

It wasn’t fair. Not when there was so much left between us. If I couldn’t find a way?—

I kissed him harder, sharper, my nails biting into his forearms to remind myself of the space he still occupied here and now. This moment was ours, and I wouldn’t surrender it to the weight pressing down on me.

When he finally pulled his mouth away from mine, his eyelids lowered. I worried he couldn’t bring himself to look at me.

“This cannot be all we are,” he rasped.

“It won’t be.” I said it without hesitation, because I needed him to feel the same certainty I clung onto. “We’ll figure it out. ”

His silence told me he doubted there would be enough time to find the answers. But Merrick was hope and Lorant was despair. Merrick clung to the belief that we would have a future, while this man faced the stark reality that it might never exist.

“Time to stop playing around, woman.” He tapped my ass, and his crooked smile rose, though it didn't reach his eyes. “I'm going to work you hard tonight. You need to master everything I teach you. No hesitations. No mistakes. There's no time for crap like that.”

He didn’t need to say it out loud for the weight of it to sink into my chest.

If I couldn’t fix this, I’d lose them both.

Forever.