Page 26 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

The Thread pulled me out towards the near exit as everyone around us had the same idea and bolted from their seats. Langnathin had just killed four men, and not just any men. He had killed a prince. His own cousin. Why would he spare any of us?

I looked back over my shoulder, then, unable to resist.

One of the squires was in the arena, one stupid and plucky enough to defend his fallen lord.

He shakily lifted his sword, and—with a yawn—Chaethor melted it to the hilt, leaving his hair and shoulder pads singed with it.

He dropped the heated blade with a gasp and retreated, hauling melted metal in the shape of a man out behind him.

But it was the Dragon Prince who made my heart stop. He was staring straight at me, and I didn’t have to be a Sightlander to understand his expression. Satisfaction, and something of a challenge. One corner of his mouth lifted.

You must marry the victor of the upcoming Laithcart Games.

What if there was no victor?

Thread Ersimmon pulled on my arm once more, and then I ran. Truly, I ran as fast as I could, and the Thread ran with me .

Once we made it out of a sandstone arch and into the fresh air again, the Thread heaved in a breath but did not stop. “You’re doing well, girl. Keep going.”

He didn’t let us stop running until we rounded the corner, the arena falling behind the rocks.

Then he pulled me off the path and stopped abruptly.

Beside us, a veritable stampede of other visitors poured down the pathway, holding belongings and the arms of their companions with terrified eyes. “Look at me.”

I had run without thought, without knowing. I didn’t feel here, I couldn’t understand why he would do it, why he would rip the world from me and any chances I had with it.

“Tanidwen Treleftir, look at me.”

For the first time since I’d left my homeland, someone said my name right. He elongated the first syllable and bodied every part of it. He took letters and made them a name, and I raised my eyes to him without hesitation.

The Thread’s face was as hard as stone. “You have to leave. You understand his intent, yes?”

I breathed hard, too. “The suitors are all dead. I was supposed to—Who do I marry now? He just killed them. Did he just Break my Fate?”

The Thread scanned my face. “You tell me.”

I sucked in a wobbly breath and looked down at my gloved hands to see them shaking. I pulled one off before I could fully comprehend what I was doing, what I might have already lost. I had to know if I was Broken.

I thought I would feel it without knowing, like the awareness you were about to be sick. A feeling with inescapable obviousness, but there was too much horror to know if I was myself or not .

I reached out my shaking fingers, and I touched the Thread’s forearm. I gasped in a ragged breath, the relief so profound my vision blackened at its edges.

The Thread held me up. He was nervous for me. I felt it. By my blood, I still felt it. “You must leave here. He has to believe he has succeeded, it’s the only way you’ll survive this.”

I felt underwater; not removed from the events unfolding around me, but pinned down by them, drowning under the weight of it all. “Where am I supposed to go?”

“There is a boat to the very left of the docks, past the barrels. I paid a man to wait there, in case things went foul,” he explained. “You should be safe to leave. He won’t know what happened here yet.”

I struggled to take a few breaths. The men and women fleeing the arena paid us no heed. I may be Moontouched, but I was a woman first, and of course, I would need air after such violence. “And then where?”

He sighed. “Anywhere. Far from here. You cannot return to Eavenfold, we must cast you out as we would a Broken. You can never contact us again.”

I sagged, and he continued to hold my arm. “Can I go home? To Torquan?”

“Not there,” he said, and I felt the inches of my spirit diminish even further.

Langnathin had not Broken my Fate, but what difference did it make when he had taken any possibility of a true life from me?

“They are thorough. Someone will check to see if you are Broken. You have to wait until the heat dies down, until you are forgotten. A year. Maybe two.”

I couldn’t comprehend the words. Not ten minutes ago, I had been trying to decipher which of the warring men would win me for his bride.

And now, all of them were dead. My Fate at the edge of ruin.

How was it still alive? What hope could there be of me marrying the victor of the Laithcart Games when all were dead?

“But my Fate—”

I hated how my voice cracked, and I swallowed hard, asking the very questions I didn’t understand. “He killed all of the suitors. Every last man in the arena. How is my Fate still bound?”

The Thread looked up to the skies. “Because the boy is a soldier and not a scholar. We Threads weave Fates with the truth of things, and not the spectacle of them. He’s a Sightlander, he thinks all that matters is how something looks.”

“I don’t understand.”

He rubbed my arm, and I felt that same emotion through the touch again. It made me want to burst into tears. “Think it through. Breathe. What just happened?”

“He burnt them all,” I replied immediately, my words monotonous, needing no inflection because their horror spoke for itself. How could he do it with such ease? “He killed them all.”

The Thread leaned in close, his mouth near my forehead as he whispered. “ He killed them all.”

It sank over me then, the realisation of what he meant. “And then he stepped down from his dragon,” I responded. “And stood in the arena.”

I tipped my chin back and stared at the Thread. Our white eyes met, and the mutual understanding there widened my gaze ever further. By the Twins, it was so.

He nodded. “Exactly.”

I took a step back as it hit me with full force.

Langnathin, the Dragon Prince.

He was the last man standing. He was the victor of the Laithcart Games.

“But he didn’t joust,” I said, softly, trying to find any new reality but this.

Thread Ersimmon shrugged. “Whatever element your Fate has bonded to clearly doesn’t care for that triviality.”

“Does he know?” I asked, my voice barely more than a ghost in the wind now.

The Thread shook his head, just once. “I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone will think past the deaths to consider it.”

I swallowed. “But what now? I am the last woman he would marry.”

He grimaced. “Then become something he needs, the bride he cannot refuse. But first, you must leave this place before anyone realises you are still bound, or kills you just to be sure.”

I stared at him, realising this might be the last time we ever saw each other. “And you?”

“I will return to Eavenfold.”

Doddering, old Thread Ersimmon. Bearer of a path I’d never wanted, let alone respected.

I had ridiculed his offering along with everyone else, huffed at his sleepy demeanour.

I had barely known him in the two spans I’d spent on Eavenfold.

Yet he had protected me in every possible way, even those I would never have thought of, and now I had to leave him forever.

I was overcome with the feeling that I was terribly, horribly, naive. And yet I didn’t know how not to be. Tears pricked at my eyes. “It is strange. Eavenfold was always a prison to me, and now I crave the sanctuary of it.”

The Thread reached his arms out, and I fell into them. It had been so long since anyone other than Seth had offered me an embrace. I sobbed out when he patted my hair. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. You did not deserve it, and I hoped for better for you.”

I shuddered as another sob wracked my body. “Thank you.”

“I will be there,” he said, his chest rumbling against me. “When you bring this world to its knees. ”

I pulled back from him as he offered me my cloak. I’d forgotten it entirely; he must have picked it up in the arena for me. I touched its grey hood, the scratchy fabric yet another home I hadn’t appreciated. “I’ve never been alone before. Not truly.”

“Stay true to yourself, always. And remember, this is your Fate. It was dealt to you for a reason, and it will give you the power you need. You are a Brother of Eavenfold, now and forever.”

I pulled the grey cloak around my shoulders, feeling its comforting weight as I lifted the hood. I stared at the Thread, memorising the grooves of his face. I hoped I would see them again, before they had time to set in much deeper.

Then I turned towards the docks and ran faster than I ever had, as the acrid smell of smoke made my eyes water and my stomach roll.

Love.

That was what I had felt on the Thread. I knew it was for me, and I don’t know when I’d earned it, but it broke something in me to feel it and leave it behind. He was the fourth person who had loved me, and I was losing him too.

My parents were lands away, and Seth was nowhere to be found. I had no one once more.

But I had something to hold tight to, as the screams and the flash of burning flesh jolted behind my eyes every time I closed them.

I still had my Fate.

And I knew its condition, now, in full and with no chance for further alterations.

I must marry Langnathin, the Dragon Prince of the Sightlands. I must marry the man who had just killed four men so he could watch my Fate Break before his eyes.

Become something he needs, the bride he cannot refuse.

The Thread’s words rolled in my head, and as my feet pounded down the wooden jetty, I knew exactly where I needed to go. For I knew what Langnathin sought, and by my blood, I would not let him get it.