Page 52 of Reign of Stars and Fire

A new tear bubbled over my lashes, sliding down my face. “I love you. You better come back to me, or I’ll go back to hating you as I promised. I’ll make it worse for you, Ari, I swear I will. It’s really in your best interest to heal and wake up, so I can love you instead.”

I shifted down in the bed again and rested my cheek on his chest. My arms held him close, and I pretended we were merely going to bed after we’d spent hours touching and kissing and taking each other’s bodies as we did in the Court of Serpents.

I closed my eyes and soon sleep took me. For the first time, with my husband at my side, I slept peacefully.

Chapter18

The Raven Queen

“Saga. Wake up.”

I blinked. The fresh rain scent of Ari’s skin was pressed against my face. I tightened my hold around his waist, not willing to leave his side yet. I clung to his sleeping body.

My palm covered the deep, red, rune mark on Ari’s wrist. A few clock tolls after we’d arrived, Gorm marked the lot of us with Riot’s royal rune with a needle heated in a flame. Bjorn thought the High King’s mark was the true symbol of the isles, and Gorm was never one to argue with logic he determined as sound.

The blood cantrip in the rune kept us free to leave the blood court and return without trouble. It was also a connection to each other. Should we find ourselves in trouble, others would be signaled to come to our aid.

Ari’s skin was irritated, but it mattered knowing if harm were to fall to Ari, if somehow the court were infiltrated and he was in danger, we would know. He would despise being rendered helpless, and when he woke, I had no doubt he would refuse to know how much the healers had been coddling him or he might never show his face to any blood fae again.

“Saga.”

Another shove to my shoulder and I was forced to crack my eyes entirely. “Rune, what? I would like to sleep again.”

“Not tonight, you don’t.” Rune flicked my ear. Strange and welcome all at once. We’d never been close as Borough guards. Hard to get close to someone like me who’d had a cold heart, but since he’d fought Davorin’s corruption and returned with us to the Court of Blood, Rune had been a steady place for me, like a brother.

He hovered over me. “The fate teller you brought with you, she’s written something.”

I shot up in bed. The movement drew out a sigh from Ari as though he was stirring from a dream, but little by little my mind caught up with the truth. He was slumber’s captive. Without a cure, it was beginning to feel as if he always would be.

“Hold on a little longer, Saga,” Rune said, voice soft. “We have complex magic to mix.”

“I know.” I cleared my throat, pressed a kiss to Ari’s damp forehead, then followed Rune outside the longhouse. “Where are we going?”

“She went to the prison.” Rune’s jaw pulsed. “Along with your Alver thief.”

The prisons of the blood court were made from one of the many rocky caves. Steam from the hot springs kept the air muggy and wet, and torches in iron sconces lined the grated pathway into the cave.

A few bones and skulls littered the cells, but only one was filled with a living soul. Bo sat on the ground, his back to the stone wall. When we stepped into his line of sight, he glared at me, then Rune, and slowly slurped a thin broth from a wooden bowl.

“Ah, the traitors.” He licked his lips. “Take your pets away. This one talks too much, and this one thinks he’ll take my blood. I’ll kill him first.”

Niklas fiddled with a glass vial, but chuckled. “Oh, many folk have tried, my friend. As you can see, none have succeeded. Now be a good boy and give me your arm.”

Bo had no time to protest before Frey and Cuyler appeared from the shadows and yanked the cell door open. Bo was tethered to the wall, but struggled against their hold, trying to bite, kick, claw. In the end, Frey tossed him into the dirt and kneeled between his shoulders while Cuyler forced his arm out to the side.

Bo lifted his eyes and glared at Rune. “I always thought you had honor. You’re nothing to me.”

Rune stiffened. I rested a hand on his arm and urged Rune to turn away. Nothing good would come from the vitriol Bo would spew through the poison in his heart.

Niklas shoved his way into the cell, spinning a small knife and popping the stopper off the vial with his teeth. “This’ll be quick if you stop moving. If you irritate me, I’m more inclined to take my time.”

I turned away, doing what I could to block out the curses and shouts of Bo as Niklas worked.

Calista kneeled a pace away, her yellowed sheets of parchment were sprawled out in front of her, and the new quill pen scratched in a frantic pace across one sheet.

Seated on one of the jutting boulders, I noticed Sofia.

“Sof.” My heart skipped. Last I saw of her, she had been dazed and lost as she recovered from Davorin’s influence.