Page 4

KYRIE

T he temperature of the room drops as soon as the Sword—Hrakan—leaves. Still, a light sheen of sweat makes even the thin material of the shirt stick to my lower back.

“This is delicious,” I tell Shae, who’s giving me a look I haven’t seen in a very, very long time.

Frustrated—but with a sort of motherly affection.

It makes my fucking chest ache.

“He’s a good male,” she tells me.

“He—” I start, then shake my head and force another bite in my mouth. She doesn’t want to hear about how we made love—no. Not made love. Fucked.

That’s all it was.

It’s all it could have been, because you don’t just stab the person you love to save their life without warning them.

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through,” the Fae says, the tips of her ears showing through her greying hair.

I touch my own, so foreign and strange under my fingertips.

She notices the motion, a pained look crossing over her as she kneads. “Do you want to talk about?—”

“No.” The single syllable cuts across the room, as sharp as any of the kitchen knives in the wooden block on the table.

Shae looses a heavy sigh, her shoulders slumping, and regret immediately slides through me.

“Maybe later,” I amend softly. “Thank you for caring enough to ask.”

The words are true, though it’s difficult to say them, difficult to make myself speak them—but they seem to shimmer gold in the air between us. I blink and the illusion recedes.

Probably just a trick of the light beaming through the window. Outside, green trees soak up the sun, a huge variety of flowers cascading from every possible surface. I frown.

Shae follows my gaze, and a small smile blooms on her face. “Weren’t expecting that, were you?”

“I thought Hrak was a desert.” I help myself to some of the herb-crusted meat on my plate, and my stomach growls. “Mountains, rock, and a whole lot of nothing.”

“It is. This is… not, though. It’s a place that he brought us to, Hrakan, I mean, a long time ago, when Sola and her followers hunted us. It’s one of the few places we could be safe.”

“We?” I ask, curiosity, as always, getting the better of me.

“The last of the Fae.” Her gaze slips to the points of my ears again, and I shove another bite in my mouth to keep from answering. The fire crackles in the hearth, and the flames lick the bottom of the cast-iron pot.

I finally swallow and make myself speak.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, and again, I mean it. Again, it’s truth. Unfettered and honest, like the words can’t wait to be out of me.

Shae heaves a sigh, still kneading the dough. Flour clouds the air as she sprinkles more on the surface, rotating the ball while she works. “You have nothing to be sorry for, child.”

“It’s been a long time since I was a child,” I say on a mirthless laugh, spearing another piece of roast. “This is so good,” I tell her, trying to soften my grief-stricken words.

“You are brand-new. The world has never seen one like you. You might be far from your childhood, but to me? To one like you will be? You are newer than you’ve ever been, the threads of fate winding around what you will become.”

I digest that as I chew, because I can physically hear the ring of truth in it. It seems to reverberate through my very bones. A bizarre sensation, and not one I’m sure I like.

Maybe it’s just the after effect of… oh, I don’t know, being brought back to life by the male who betrayed your trust in the worst way possible.

Maybe I’m just more dramatic than ever, now that I’m not human.

“Hrakan led us here,” she continues, barely glancing at me as she puts the dough back in the bowl, covering it with the same cloth.

“You and me?” I ask, purposefully misunderstanding. “To the kitchen?”

I don’t want to hear about why this woman, who seems about as nice as they come, has any sort of faith in him .

She snorts, raising an eyebrow as she wipes her hands on her apron. “No. The Fae that Sola tried to kill. The few factions that resisted her. He brought us here, and Dyrda erected this oasis in the middle of his wastes.”

“The desert’s a natural barrier,” I say slowly, finally catching on.

“Sola might want anyone who supports Hrakan dead, but she’s also content to bide her time.” Shae purses her lips, giving me a meaningful look.

One I don’t quite understand. “Right.”

“All I’m trying to say is…” She drifts off, her lips twisting to one side. “I don’t know that you’ll listen, if you’re as stubborn as Hrakan says.”

“He’s one to talk,” I grumble into the bread, trying to hide the way I kept flinching at his real name.

“You two are much alike in that way, it seems.” Shae offers me a smile, but I can’t quite return it. It would be easy to wear the lie of the smile, but I’m too tired.

It seems like too much work to pretend, to slip on another mask.

What’s the point of it, anyway?

What do I have to hide?

Shae seems to know more about me than I do, and I wonder how long I’ve been in the dark, fooling myself.

The thought’s depressing, and I set the bread down on the plate.

“Are you done?” she asks as I stand up, plate in hand, moving to take it from me.

“I can wash up,” I tell her.

She gives me a long look. “You are the lady of this house. You do not wash up.”

My nose wrinkles. “I’m Kyrie, and I’m used to looking after myself. I’m pretty sure if I want to wash the dish, I can wash it myself.”

Shae’s lips curve into a thin smile, and a whisper of magic floats over me. “Well, now you don’t have to.”

I glance down at the dish. It’s clean, all evidence of the meal I just ate gone from it. Gone too is the flour that coated her hands and apron.

“Oh.”

“A bit easier this way,” she says. “If I’d known you two were headed here, I could have done the whole castle. But no, Hrakan didn’t even bother to send word.” She sniffs, then brightens as she takes the dish from me, stacking it with the rest. “There will be more Fae here tomorrow, getting everything aired out and cleaned up for you.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary?—”

“We owe our lives to Hrakan. We will owe a peaceful afterlife to him as well, after everything Sola did. He sacrificed everything, everything, to make sure we were safe. That our knowledge and culture and books were safe, here in the oasis and Tessaway Keep.”

“Tessaway?” I ask. “That’s the name of this place?”

“Pretty, isn’t it? Named after?—”

“Nana, Nana, is there bread yet?” A tow-headed boy of indeterminate age scrambles through the doorway, ruddy-cheeked and somehow sticky-looking. The Fae boy’s mouth widens in surprise as he registers my presence.

“Hi,” he breathes, stopping in his tracks.

His attention whips from me to Shae, his nana, I presume, in an almost comical fashion.

“Hi.” I can’t help smiling at him. He’s just a little thing, no taller than my hip. A painful ache reverberates through me. He’s the same size my brothers were the last time they drew breath.

I suck in air, trying to steady myself.

How is it they can tell me I’m new when it feels like I have more than a lifetime’s worth of grief weighing me down?

“You’re the one everyone’s been talking about,” he continues, all wide blue eyes and blond curls. “The one who saved Hrakan.”

“There’s bread and honey if you want a snack, Tarron,” Shae tells him, her mouth twisting up in amusement.

“I don’t know that he needed saving,” I finally manage.

“Everyone needs help sometimes,” Tarron tells me gravely, taking a slice of warm bread and honey and shoving it in his mouth.

“True,” I manage.

“Like me,” Tarron says brightly, grinning, a gap where his two front teeth should be. “I can help you find your way around here. It’s confusing if you don’t know where you’re going,” he says, except it comes out more like ‘Iz cofuzing fif ou dunno’ thanks to the overly large chunk of bread in his mouth.

“It can be confusing,” I say on a sigh, my gaze trailing over a series of images etched into the wall. My brow furrows, and I squint in confusion at the motif that continues all along where the wall meets the ceiling.

“I will show you around,” the little boy says with all the confidence of a grown man. “You like the dragons?”

“Huh?” I tilt my head at him.

“The dragons,” he repeats, dragging each syllable out as if I misunderstood him.

A forceful memory of my brothers hits me, the way they’d do the same thing if I couldn’t parse what they were saying, the way they would get increasingly upset until I did understand them. I rub the ache in my chest, but it doesn’t go away.

I don’t think it ever will.

He sighs impatiently, and Shae laughs quietly from where she’s mixing a new batch of dough with a sticky wooden spoon.

“You were looking at the dragons on the wall.” He points to the relief, and I see them then, my brain finally making sense of the random shapes. “Do you like dragons?”

“Oh. Dragons.” I blink. “Right. Yeah, dragons are… they’re something, aren’t they? I wish they were real. My mother used to?—”

“They are real.” He frowns at me, his smooth brow wrinkling in annoyance.

Right.

“I would love for you to show me around,” I say blithely, deciding the topic of whether or not dragons exist isn’t one I want to debate with a… “How old are you?”

“Six and three quarters and old enough to know dragons are real.” He narrows his eyes at me, and I bite back a laugh.

“Show her the library, Tarron,” Shae instructs, grinning widely at us both, the muscles in her forearms flexing as she starts to knead the new loaf. “And then show her where she can get cleaned up.”

Tarron nods eagerly. “And I’ll show her the dragons,” he adds.

I lob an indulgent smile at Shae to humor Tarron, because obviously dragons, if they ever existed, are long extinct?—

Shae just nods seriously at the little boy.

I clear my throat. Right.

“Sounds good to me.”

“Dinner is in a few hours,” she tells me. “I’ll send Tarron to fetch you after you’ve had your tour and bathed. Tarron, she’ll probably want to see her mule, too.”

“I know , Nana,” Tarron tells her tartly, clearly put upon by the idea that he needs to be told what to do.

Shae just smiles warmly at him as he grabs my hand, lacing his small, chubby fingers within mine.

“Be kind,” she says.

Shae isn’t talking to him—nope. That’s fully directed at me.

I nod once, slightly hurt that she thinks she needs to warn me against being unkind to this kid.

We just met; I haven’t even had time to disappoint her yet.

“She will be,” Tarron tells her as he tugs me out the kitchen door. “I can tell. Hrakan wouldn’t have married her if she weren’t nice. Fated mate or not.” The last word is garbled, and a snicker crawls out my throat as I realize he’s pinched one of the sweets that were cooling on the table and is chowing down on it now, crumbs trailing after him.

Hrakan’s name though, as well as Tarron’s supposition that we wouldn’t be married if I weren’t ‘nice,’ sours my amusement at him, reminding me all too quickly of where I am.

Hrakan’s keep, in Hrakan’s territory, as a bride of the death god who killed me.

Who I thought I loved.

Tarron’s grip tightens on mine. “I know you’re sad.”

I swallow past the lump in my throat and reevaluate the little Fae child towing me along behind him. “How’s that?”

“I can feel it. You are very sad.” He nods his head in agreement with himself, then looks at me over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll like it here. I know it’s hard to be somewhere new. My mama told me that she was sad a lot when she and Nana came here after the war.”

“Right,” I say, my heart squeezing in response to his innocent empathy. He fully means it, without any vestige of manipulation or lies, and that, for some reason… makes me feel better. “Can we see the stable first?”

“You don’t want to see the dragons?” He sounds distinctly put out, and I hold in a chuckle.

“Sure, show me the dragons first, that’s fine. But I’d like to check on my friend at the stables.”

“The mule,” he nods in agreement. Then, without warning, he drops my hand, taking off at full speed down the empty, cobwebbed corridor.

“Shit,” I mutter, my eyes wide. I do not want to lose this kid. I have a feeling Shae would be incredibly pissed off if I just abandoned him.

Life’s taught me several important things, and one of them is to never piss off the person baking your bread.

Well, Lara taught me that, actually.

My grin turns to a scowl as I jog after Tarron, who is wicked fast considering his short little legs.

Lara, who lied to me about the curse. Lara, my best friend, who must have known I was going to die anyway.

Her betrayal hurts as much as the Sword’s. Maybe more.

“Why are you mad? We’re here. At the dragons,” Tarron calls out.

I don’t like that he’s picking up on my emotions, and I don’t have a clue how to stop him from doing so.

I round the corner, slightly breathless from our race down the dusty hallway, and what’s left of the air in my lungs disappears as my mind wraps around what Tarron’s so proudly pointing at.