Page 27

B RIONY COULDN ’ T BE SURE if he knew she was awake, but she supposed it didn’t matter. She couldn’t move her muscles fast enough to run. Her heart pounded with the unknown.

“My mother says your voice was taken,” he said, breaking the silence. “Which doesn’t explain why your hearing failed you when I said you’d be harmed if you crossed the boundary line.”

She glared at his back. “Yes,” she whispered fiercely, voice throaty with misuse. “Because I had every reason to trust you.”

From this angle, she could just barely see his jaw clench.

Briony realized she’d been changed out of the dress from the auction and was now in a soft white nightgown. She hoped it had been a servant who’d done that.

She hissed through her teeth as she shifted to sit up, hating the way she lay supine before him like a rag doll. “Why is this such a hard recovery?”

His eyes were still on the view beyond the window.

“Crossing the barrier should shock the tattooed individual and give them a chance to withdraw themselves from the perimeter. You jumped through the barrier, your entire body beyond it. Then you managed to roll down a hill. You were outside the boundary for almost a full minute.”

She wondered if he would keep his back to her for the entirety of her imprisonment.

“Certainly took you long enough,” she said.

That did it. Toven blinked slowly and turned to face her with furious eyes.

Why did all self-preservation leave her when this man was involved? She was wearing nothing but a slip, in a bed, in his home. With no one to come running if she screamed. Why did poking at him come so naturally to her?

She swallowed and looked away. A full minute of being electrocuted. Her muscles twitched at the reminder.

“And you brought me where?” She nodded to the small undecorated room. “Is this my cell?”

“The closest location for your recovery was the groundskeeper’s cottage,” he said. “It’s temporary.”

She glanced over the cobwebs in the corners. “And where is the groundskeeper?”

“We don’t have one. Hearst Hall doesn’t require any servants.”

Briony blinked at him. A house that grand with no staff? Briony had heard of households cutting back on staff when gossip began creeping through the walls. Was it out of caution, then? The Hearsts were known to be secretive, but this was extreme.

She wanted to ask more questions, but Toven faced her fully and clasped his hands behind his back, a sour expression on his face.

“Mistress Mallow wishes to see you.”

Briony’s air caught in her chest. Her eyes flicked to the door, her muscles locked as she waited for it to open.

“We are to pay her a call as soon as possible,” he clarified.

Briony glanced at him in shock. “Now? I can barely move.”

“You’ll have to manage,” he said. “She has been kept waiting for three days.”

Her eyes widened. “I’ve been in bed three days?”

“Six, actually.”

Her mouth opened then closed, unsure how to respond. He stared at her, waiting. Would he drag her from the bed?

Briony shifted her legs, stretching them as she threw back the sheets. Her legs were bare, the nightdress twisted under her thighs.

Toven faced the window again, and she guessed that was all the privacy she would be afforded.

With shaking movements, she pulled herself from the mattress, bracing on the wall to help her stand.

There was a pair of hard-soled slippers on the floor, so she slid them on.

With the bed between them, he turned to her as she tugged her nightdress to fall to her ankles.

It was the only thing on her. She had no undergarments.

His unreadable eyes passed over her once before he brought his left forefinger to his right hand and magically sliced the pad of his thumb.

She recognized the cast for a portal. On private property, an inhabitant’s blood was needed to create portals in and out.

Without, visitors had to portal from outside the front gates.

The portal’s chasm grew wide in the empty room, and Toven gestured for her to come to him.

Briony moved on twitching legs, aware that she was about to arrive the waters knew where in nothing but her nightclothes.

“Your left arm,” Toven said.

Briony looked down at it. The ink on the inside of her elbow glistened. Toven Hearst.

Toven wrapped his hand around the ink. The cool press of his hand on her hot skin had her wondering if she had a fever.

Before she could wish for that sensation everywhere, he tugged her into the portal, and a flash of heat burned over the ink on her arm.

When the void finished pressing down on her, she gasped.

She stood on the ledge of a great mountain, overlooking vast peaks and valleys. Briony’s head swam with vertigo as she scrambled back from the edge. When she turned, there was a gothic castle carved into the side of the mountain.

“Come.” Toven started up steep stairs in the twilight.

Briony watched him climb, her body groaning in protest already. She braced herself on the rock to her left and slowly followed him, taking the steps one at a time.

He waited for her at the next level, about fifty steps above her. When she was halfway up, she had to pause, panting. He made no effort to help her, but she eventually made it to the landing.

Before continuing he turned to her. “Mistress Mallow is now the supreme ruler of all Moreland. You will treat her with the deference she deserves.”

Briony tried to catch her breath. “Or what? You’ll electrocute me?”

Toven lifted a pale brow at her. “I know you’ve been asleep for six days, Rosewood, so you may not have grasped this,” he said silkily, “but heartsprings don’t need tongues.

They don’t need fingers. They don’t need legs, even.

Disobedience can be punished in whatever way Mallow sees fit, as long as your heart still beats. ”

Briony shivered, and it had nothing to do with the wind on the mountain.

He turned and continued up the next steps as she pieced things together.

It had been six days since the auction, and she was Toven Hearst’s heartspring now. That was her only purpose in this world—to make Toven Hearst’s magic stronger.

She slowly followed him up the mountainside.

Between burning torches on the next landing, there were two large stone doors adorned with an ancient Bomardi seal from the first civil war, and Briony realized where she was.

Mallow had moved into the original home of the first Seat of Bomard, the Dragon Lord.

He had been the first magician to ever take a dragon as his familiar—the same dragon that had bonded to Mallow.

As the stone doors opened, the firelight showed the entry guarded on either side by men in blue cloaks. One of them nodded to Toven as he approached and stepped aside, but the other’s eyes fell over her body. She turned her gaze down.

A second set of doors opened deeper inside the cave-like castle, and Toven led her inside.

It was a grand hall with stone floors and an open ceiling, big enough for a dragon to land inside. One long wall was made of enormous arched windows, looking directly over the mountain range, vanishing into a large drop beneath them.

Veronika Mallow stood at the far end of the hall, staring off out across the peaks.

There was no throne, no “seat,” as was the custom in Bomard for audiences with the leader of the realm.

Mallow simply stood in an empty room, wearing tight-fitted breeches, boots strapped up her calves, and a sheer top.

The whistle of the wind through the archways muffled the sound of their footsteps. Briony felt lightheaded.

Toven walked her to a spot on the stone floor, dark with dried blood, and dropped to his knee, dragging her down with him. He bowed his head, but Briony stared at Mallow’s back, watching her turn slowly toward them.

Mallow’s pale skin glowed in the rising moonlight, and Briony couldn’t help but wonder again how old she was. Her eyes were as black as her hair as they landed on Briony, piercing through her.

“Briony Rosewood.” The sound of her name sliding over Mallow’s tongue made her skin crawl. “Welcome to my palace.”

Briony breathed deep, the air thick in her throat. When she gave no greeting, Mallow continued.

“You went for quite a sum at the auction.” Mallow’s eyes glittered as her brows lifted, as if she and Briony had a little secret to themselves. “All those Bomardi men jockeying for you. I’m sure you were quite content.”

Briony pressed her lips together, but then a deep rumble of chuckling chorused through the room. She looked to the archways and realized they were not alone. There were Bomardi guards hidden in the shadows.

“Stand,” Mallow commanded, and then Toven was dragging her to her feet. “Toven.”

“Mistress.”

“You lost the auction, but then settled accounts with Reighven after,” Mallow said.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Why?”

Briony waited, wondering why as well.

“I’m always drawn to the most valuable possessions,” said Toven.

Mallow grinned and began to pace the room, continuing conversationally. “And is she everything you paid for and more? Have you completed the heartspring bond?”

“Not yet, Mistress.”

The Bomardi guards shifted, whispering. She felt a dozen eyes turn on her as she wondered what the bonding process entailed.

Mallow’s brow lifted.

Toven answered her unasked question. “She injured herself in an escape attempt, as you know. She’s learned her lesson now, but she’s been weakened.”

“Do it soon,” Mallow said swiftly. “What’s the point in having a golden heartspring if you can’t mine that gold?” She smiled. “Your father has resolved the issue with her collar, yes?”

“Yes, Mistress,” Toven said. “All that’s left is the bond.”

Briony’s mind was racing. The golden heartspring. That’s what Vein had called her during the auction. She assumed it was just a reference to the legend that the Rosewoods had gold blood. Was there more to it?