Page 81 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

SAPHIRA

T he evening light felt good on my body as I walked through the garden, eyes tired from spending the day with my head stuck in books in the library.

Malachi had been there when I had arrived, and had politely apologised for what had happened.

I knew he meant every word he had said, but my wolf side had been snarling within me from the moment I had set eyes on him, and whenever I had glanced his way during my time in the library, I had wanted to growl, warning him away from Kaeleron.

And maybe once or twice I might have actually growled at him, the soft snarl slipping from me before I could contain it.

Despite my frosty attitude towards him, he hadn’t been scared away and had kept me company for hours, a brooding tower of silence in his armchair.

As the day had worn on, the mood between us had softened.

It might have helped that he had gone to the kitchens and returned with a tray of tea and sweet things, and a few meat pies with some cold cuts and bread and butter.

When I had eyed the pies and meat, he had confessed he had run into Kaeleron and had been given intelligence on me.

I had been tempted to find Kaeleron and growl at him too, but had shrugged it off and devoured the peace offering instead.

Malachi had helped me rearrange the furniture, moving a smaller wingback armchair into position opposite his near the fireplace and adding a low wooden table next to it where I could keep my stack of books and cups of tea.

Today, I had scoured the books for any mentions of lich, wanting to know what I might be up against if I managed to wear Kaeleron down.

According to Malachi, Neve had received another vision, one that had again seen both me and Kaeleron in the Forgotten Wastes, hunting for An’sidwain, and had warned Kaeleron that if he didn’t take me with him that his mission would fail.

And Kaeleron had decided to recruit Malachi in my place regardless.

That had stung a little, and I wasn’t proud of myself for refusing to speak to Malachi after he had announced he would be going with Kaeleron instead, dropping that little bomb on me just as I had been growing comfortable around him, or how I had spent a good hour plotting ways to make Kaeleron pay for doubting my strength and my courage.

I sighed as I leaned against the wall in my favourite spot in the garden, my gaze taking in the magnificent wall of white water that thundered into the bay below and then the ships that bobbed on the gentle waves, heading towards the port.

A few minutes later, Kaeleron came to rest beside me, his body braced on his elbows on the balustrade and his eyes on the ships too.

I ended up watching him instead, the silence we shared comfortable.

Too comfortable. I was beginning to feel at home by his side, as if it was where I belonged, and I was sure that wasn’t a good thing.

“I looked into the Forgotten Wastes today, and also into the lich.” I picked at the stone wall, but managed to keep my gaze on his face rather than obeying the urge to avert it and avoid him as I said, “I still want to go with you. Neve told you that you had to take me, and I’m not afraid. I’m not.”

He just heaved a long sigh at that.

“You haven’t come to train me. I get that you’re busy, but?—”

“Your training is on hold for now,” he interjected.

Earning a frown from me. “Because you want an excuse not to take me.”

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Because I am busy.”

“You’re too obvious,” I muttered and jabbed at the stone wall, my mood taking a dark turn.

“Of course I would see through it. You can blame it on being busy all you want, but I’m not stupid, Kaeleron.

I know you stopped it so you can use my lack of training as a reason not to take me with you.

Is it really so dangerous for me to go to the Forgotten Wastes? ”

He exhaled again, as if his patience had a puncture and I was squeezing all the air out of it, and looked over my head at the mountains to our left. “Yes.”

That wasn’t answer enough for me. Before I could press him for an explanation, he continued.

“I found Neve in the Forgotten Wastes, long ago. She was near mad from her time there, trying to evade the beast who hunted her. A starving, vicious little thing that tried to kill me when I came upon her in a cave, fearing I was in allegiance with the one looking for her and terrified that I would lead the creatures that roamed the Wastes to her if I was not.” His handsome face darkened, his silver gaze distant as he kept it fixed on the jagged maws of the mountains.

“She had been brutally beaten by those creatures, had brushed with death more than once before she had holed herself up in that cave, too terrified to leave it. Neve fears that land. You would be wise to fear it too.”

I shrugged, trying to let images of beautiful, powerful Neve all broken and scared roll off my back. “I get what you’re saying—that no one in their right mind should want to go there—but I can handle myself.”

He scoffed and shook his head. “It is not a matter of handling yourself. The Wastes are dangerous, and I did not want to take you there before. Now that I know the dragon stone is in the possession of an ancient lich, I have half a mind to reinforce the wards that shield my court from that wretched land and prevent you from even thinking about heading there. I will find another way, one that does not involve taking you there.”

“You mean taking Malachi?” I glared at him as he tensed, eyes widening a fraction. “I heard about that plan, and again… Neve saw you taking me. Not the demon. Finding An’sidwain is important, yes? Vital?”

“Neve seems to believe so.” He didn’t look pleased that the dragon had decided the stone was necessary, or that I was insisting on going with him, determined to find a way to break his resolve and make him agree to take me, or that his spymaster had been so quick to divulge their little secret.

“Then we should go and find it.”

His silver eyes narrowed on me. “Why are you so invested in this?”

“Because I’m coming to realise how important vengeance can be… how it can give you a form of closure that just letting it all go can’t sometimes.”

He growled, “You speak of the wolf who sold you.”

I nodded and prodded at a small worn dip in the stone before me, my focus on it now as anger simmered in my veins, as I thought about Lucas and my wolf side didn’t howl in pain.

It snarled in rage, hungry to sink fangs into the bastard.

He faced me, a wall of muscle that radiated darkness as his shadows twisted around his legs and forearms, and caressed his shoulders, his handsome face hard and fierce. “What lengths would you go to in order to have your vengeance?—”

“Anything.” I cut him off, my voice a thick growl that startled me. I had never sounded so vicious, so dark. “I’d do anything to make him pay.”

He lifted his right hand and feathered the backs of his fingers down my cheek, concern breaking through the steel in his eyes, his voice low as he said, “Vengeance is a dark and bloody path, one that requires you to cut out parts of yourself and not one I would recommend.”

I fell silent as I looked at him, deep into his eyes. How much of himself had he cut out, and how little would be left of me if I followed in his footsteps?

His gaze lifted to the garden and then the castle. “I built this castle here because of the view—this vantage point over the entire kingdom. I knew the moment I saw the view from up in these mountains that I would build my home here, but I had not expected to move the capital to this location.”

Because he hadn’t expected to rule.

“I thought the castle was old… built centuries ago.” I looked at it too, at the colossal black towers that rose from it, at the arched windows and beautiful carvings on columns and around some of the doorframes.

He slid me a look, a soft and amused one. “It was. I completed work on it around four hundred years ago. It took half a century for the court’s finest craftsmen to build the palace, and another half a century to complete the town to the point you see it today.”

I looked at the monument to darkness, a castle designed to strike terror into the hearts of his enemies, but one that managed to still feel like a home.

I had the feeling the sense of this being a home had taken time to take root, that at first it had been a cold and merciless place, much like its master had felt.

“How old were you when you became ruler of these lands?” I shifted my gaze to him, catching the pain my question caused in his eyes before he concealed it, lowering his mask once again.

“I was a boy… No more than sixty. I looked as you might have at the time.” His gaze fell to me, a hard edge to it, as cold as a blade of ice, and I wondered what terrible things he was remembering as he drifted away from me, falling into the darkness of his past.

He would have looked like a teenager. A boy barely as old as his brother had been in that painting. The brother that should have ruled this court.

“What happened to your family?” My voice wobbled as I asked that, betraying the nerves and the feeling I shouldn’t have asked, that it was rude of me to bring it up and make him relive the pain.

He turned his cheek to me, his face hardening once more and the air around him growing cold, and a glance at his fingertips revealed they were stained inky black at their tips. He flexed them, revealing a thin line of fae markings that ran down their undersides to his palm.

“They were murdered by seelie.” His deep voice was empty, emotionless. “And my brother was taken.”

I looked from him to the castle he stared at, a monument to his pain and rage, and then reached for his hand. “I’m sorry.”

Before I could make contact, he pushed away from me, heading for the castle.

“I do not need your pity,” he snarled over his shoulder. “I need revenge.”

He stopped at the entrance of the white wooden pergola and looked back at me, darker and more menacing than I had ever seen him as his crimson eyes met mine and he growled.

“Can you give me that?”

I didn’t like how I felt in that moment as I looked at him, as I saw all that pain and that violent need for vengeance in his eyes, and I wanted to do it for him, despite the fact I knew he wanted the heads of those he believed responsible for his parents’ deaths and his brother’s abduction.

When I failed to find my voice to answer him, he disappeared in a swirl of inky night glittering with gold and silver stars.

Leaving me alone.

I looked at the city, at the home he had built for himself and his sister, for his people, abandoning the one he had shared with his parents.

Deep in my heart, I felt the truth of him.

He had run away from his pain—his grief—and had moulded it into a hunger for revenge rather than dealing with his hurt.

He had built a castle to escape it, so he didn’t need to see the constant reminder of the warm home and loving parents he had lost. He had locked it all deep inside him, using it as fuel for his wrath.

How would he feel when he found the fae who had murdered his family and killed them?

Would he find the closure he needed in their brutal deaths or would he find only a hollow kind of victory, one that wouldn’t ease the pain he continued to carry in his heart?

Like a festering wound that was slowly poisoning him.

I looked back at the castle, desperate to understand him, to understand the strength of the hunger that consumed him and had done for centuries .

And I wondered.

What would I do if my parents were taken from me?