Page 25 of The Queen’s Shadow

“The chameleon. You are speaking of Kasha.” She said softly, her voice filling with something close to compassion. The fact that she was able to deduce who I had been referencing off of that one statement alone, nearly made me physically wince.

“You love her.” She whispered, and I scowled.

That was the wrong thing to say to me. The last people I had loved were my parents, and I had to watch them burn alive in my childhood home.

Another unfamiliar feeling rushed through me. It made my blood run cold. My heart rate increased and my breath caught in my chest. I knew this feeling… I was just used to smelling it on others, not experiencing it for myself.

I didn’t like it.

“Don’t say stupid shit like that to people you’ve just met.” I snapped, before turning again to leave, pushing back the overwhelming cloud of fear that suddenly had me in a chokehold.

“I might be able to help you find her, if you can free me from this bond.”

I paused again, briefly, before shaking my head.

“If I knew how to get out of a bond, do you think I would fucking be here?” I growled, and left.

This time I didn’t look back.

Fuck that bitch. I didn’t need her help to find Kasha. I just needed Raven to hurry up and get back so we could make a fucking plan. Gods, I wished I had a cigarette. This piece of shit world didn’t seem to have tobacco, and I had run out of the stash I had brought back from our trip to Olkuyrbe already.

I stalked down the stone corridor towards the common room, knuckles cracking as I clenched and unclenched my fists. I couldn’t smell Raven which meant she was still at the volcano. I frowned, and poked at our bond.

It was quiet.

I wasn’t good at metaphysical shit, but I was familiar enough with our bond by now to know that something was off. It wasn’t pinched closed, but I couldn’t feel her as clearly as I normally did. Something was preventing me from reaching her. I didn’t have the strange extra layer of sensations that I tended to get from her when it was open.

Out of all the things I had to acclimate myself with, the bond had been the hardest. At first, it had felt oppressive, overwhelming, and cagelike.

It was never just my thoughts, never just my feelings. Every single thing she thought, worried about, or felt, lay like a second skin over my own experiences. I had just been drowning in someone else’s mind and body without any clear path forward or end in sight. It had been fucken exhausting.

Distracting.

When Kieran had first blocked the bond, it was like I could see the world properly again for the first time after days. Looking back now, of course I regretted it. There wasn’t much I wish I could take back in my life, but giving Raven to that piece of shit was definitely one of them.

It had turned out that like most things, the bond was something I had been able to acclimatize and adapt to over time.

I was used to it now, and it had even come in handy a few times. I was accustomed to the feeling of her mind, and I trusted her not to abuse her power over our connection.

There had been a few times where the bond had been blocked and I could literally smell the curiosity on her. I could see the thoughts painted across her face as she considered unblocking it to get a sense of what I was planning, what I was feeling. In these instances, she almost always resisted and left it blocked, allowing me to keep some semblance of privacy.

The times she hadn’t, had been when she had truly been worried I would betray her again. In these instances, I supposed I couldn’t blame her. I had done her pretty dirty.

Shit like that took a minute to get past. I honestly wasn’t sure that if the situation had been reversed, I would have ever forgiven her. She had forgiven me though, and I would never admit it out loud, but I was grateful. There were worse people, I guess, that I could be stuck with.

I strolled into the common room on my way to the training ring, but paused for a moment, catching sight of Jeremy standing by the large expansive hole in the wall. He was staring at Mount Frira, which was violently erupting. Black clouds stretched high into the sky and spread out like an infectious disease for miles around it, blocking out the light of the nearly set sun.

The blood red of the sunset mixed with the fluorescent crash of lightning as it crackled through the ashy smog, and I felt a small tinge of concern prompting me to poke the bond again.

Nothing.

“Hey Pops” I said, cursing myself for once again, letting myself be distracted. He turned back to glance at me. His tired expression immediately soured further when he realized it was me. He gave me a disgusted look and turned back to gaze out at the mountain. I sighed. The man needed a drink almost as much as I did.

I knew the Prince of Pricks kept a few bottles of whiskey in here. When we had first crossed The Veil, no one had been talking to me, and I hadn’t had much else to do other than sniff out all of the prickly Prince’s booze caches. I had refrained from draining this particular stash in favor of saving it for a rainy day. Taking in the massive amount of ash raining down from the sky around Frira, I decided that this counted.

Making my way over to the obsidian fireplace, I tapped on the smooth black surface until I found what I was looking for. The thin seam was nearly invisible, but when I pressed on it, an elegant bar cart popped out of the side of the wall and opened to a stand. Several crystal decanters with gold rimmed rocks glasses shimmered in the firelight. I hovered my hand over a few options, before choosing one that smelled like smoke.

This would do.