Page 83 of Wolf Caged (Bound to the Shadow King #1)

Shadows rose and rippled around me as I looked from her to Morden. “You wish to leave with him.”

She hesitated, and then shook her head. “No, but?—”

Morden slipped his hand into his pocket and withdrew something—a silver chain. Saphira’s blue eyes lit up again at the sight of the bracelet, as if it meant the world to her and so did the male who had brought it to her.

“I thought I would never see it again.” Joy shone in her eyes, brightening her face, her happiness so fierce that something within me snapped, hissing at the sight of it and how she took several steps towards the wolf.

A wall of shadows shot up between her and the male, keeping them from each other, and she glowered over her shoulder at me.

I held her gaze, darkness pouring through my veins in response to that insidious, poisonous thing that writhed in my chest, snapping fangs at Morden as he glared at me from beyond the veil of shadows.

“Take our guest below.” I did not take my eyes from Saphira’s as I issued that command to my guards and to Malachi.

Hurt flashed in her blue eyes, revealing she knew what I meant by that. I was sending Morden to the dungeon. That hurt morphed into anger as she stared me down.

And bit out, “You mean to stop me from seeing my friend?”

Friend .

I despised that word.

I had not missed how the wolf had looked at her before I had stepped into her path, halting her.

I had not missed the banked heat beneath the relief as his gaze had swung her way and taken her in.

I had not missed his desperate attempt to take her attention away from me by producing something he knew would steal it and bring it to him instead.

“Until I know more about this wolf—this threat—the male will be staying somewhere he cannot harm anyone.” I watched as Malachi seized hold of the male and the wretched wolf fought admirably as a black hole opened beneath them and they fell into it together, Mal teleporting him to the dungeon.

Saphira’s glare was withering. “Morden wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

She said it with such confidence, as if she knew this male so well that she could say what he would and would not do.

But she did not know him. Morden wanted to take her from me.

Morden wanted to hurt me. It had all been there in his eyes when I had been speaking with her, when he had been seething with a need to make her look at him instead.

She went to walk away from me.

I grabbed her arm with one hand and my pack with the other.

And teleported.

She stumbled from the suddenness of the teleport as we landed on a sliver of plateau high on Noainfir, close to the peak of the black mountain, the loose gravel crunching beneath her boots as she turned on me.

“Why did you do that? What will happen to Morden?” She looked from me to the castle far below us, and the treacherous stretch of jagged rock, steep cliffs and loose shale that formed the only path back to it.

I growled, “Malachi will deal with him.”

She whirled to face me again, her damp silver braid swinging with the sharp motion, and scrubbed the rain from her face so she could glare at me. “Mal? The same Mal that helped you hurt those seelie?”

I slid her a black look as the storm pelted us, because she knew I had needed to deal with those seelie, that by entering my court, they had not given me a choice. They had known the second they had crossed my border that being caught was a death sentence.

“Answer me,” she bit out as worry and anger clashed in her eyes. “What will happen to Morden? Are you going to have him killed? He’s my friend!”

“Friend? Or lover?” I gritted from between clenched teeth.

She reared back, her eyebrows shooting high on her forehead. “You’re jealous.”

“I am not.” I adjusted the pack on my shoulder, hoping to draw her attention there instead. “It was simply time to leave. Malachi will deal with your friend.”

“The same Malachi you had been preparing to take with you instead of me?” She clenched her fists at her sides as the rain soaked her flimsy navy blouse and saturated her leather corset and pants, clothing that gave her far too little protection for where I was taking her, and I arched a brow at my astute little wolf as she tipped her chin up.

“Just give me a moment with Morden. Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking. ”

She was asking for five minutes too many. I was damned if I was going to take her back to that wolf.

I shook my head, sending cold rain slithering down my neck. “I have waited too long for my revenge as it is. You can wait a day or two to see your friend .”

“Will he even be alive when I return?”

I growled now, rounding on her, my mood taking a dark turn as she averted her gaze, her air growing awkward and a flicker of regret crossing her face.

“I am not a monster, little lamb. Your precious friend will remain unharmed.” Despite the dark urge I had to remove his head from his shoulders.

“Promise?” she whispered and glanced up at me, her brow furrowing as worry glittered in her eyes.

She worried so much for this wolf. This friend of hers. Her precious Morden.

Would she worry so much for me if I were missing, if we did not see each other for a time?

I doubted it, and I did not care. Saphira was a tool in my arsenal, the key to my vengeance, that was all.

Morden’s arrival was nothing more than a timely reminder that I had a goal that required my attention, one I had been working towards for too long now to get distracted by nothing more than a female.

I stared down at her, not revealing anything I felt as I built a wall around my heart, replacing the one she had been tearing down stone by stone. Closing it off just as she had accused me of doing.

“The wolf will live.” I pivoted away from her, hardening my heart, trudging up the barely visible path that would take me around the jagged peak of Noainfir.

I tracked her with my senses through the lightening rain, and when she did not move to follow me, I looked over my shoulder, the part of me I failed to kill fearing she might attempt to return to the wolf, abandoning me.

She stood with her back to me, gazing down at the world as the rain cleared, as the storm rolled south-west towards Belkarthen, crimson lightning striking at the sweeping farmland beyond Falkyr.

“Where are we?” She glanced over her shoulder at me, her expression soft, no trace of anger remaining in her blue eyes as they met mine.

“You stand upon Noainfir, the sacred mountain of the Shadow Court, on Dagger Overlook. This is as far as I can teleport us. We must walk down the other side until we are beyond the magic wards on the border and I can teleport us again.” I opened the pack slung over my shoulder and pulled out the one thing I knew would make her believe I had considered bringing her rather than Malachi with me, revealing I had been torn between them until the last moment.

She stared at the dagger I offered her.

Her dagger.

Her hand shook a little as she reached for it and gripped it tightly, drawing it to her and looking between me and the weapon I had made for her.

“Try not to stab me in the back with it.” I turned that back to her, heading for the path to the border.

Only she did not move to follow.

When I looked back at her this time, she clutched the dagger to her chest, her eyes on my court.

“Come,” I said, and she still did not move.

I walked back to her and came to stand beside her on the narrow plateau, studying her as she surveyed my kingdom, her lips parting as she drank it all in, from the western Wraith Wood and the mountains blazing with an orange glow beyond it, to the southern shores of Belkarthen, and then down at Falkyr where it nestled among woods and water below us.

“If you are considering traversing the mountain to reach your friend, I would advise against it. This side of the mountain is rather unforgiving,” I said.

No reaction.

I could not decipher that look in her eyes as she stood silently above the world at my side—above my world.

“Saphira.” I risked murmuring her name, one I had used so rarely, rather than calling her by a pet name I had created to keep space between us, to tease and keep her distant from me.

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed.

I looked at the Shadow Court, trying to see it through her eyes, my kingdom laid out before her, ensconced by treacherous black peaks on three sides and an ocean on the fourth, the rolling lands stretching out beneath the aurora-kissed sky.

Her gaze shifted to me, soft and warm, and filled with a light I could not name.

One I found bewitching.

“Now I understand why you built your castle on the side of this mountain.”

The wall I had been erecting around my heart crumbled a little as she said that, as she gazed at my court and called it beautiful when many in this world found it frightening and dark. But then she always had seen things differently to many in Lucia.

Things including myself. She had never truly been afraid of me.

Her gaze lowered to the dagger. “I don’t intend to stab you in the back, Kael. And Morden is just a friend.”

Kael.

The wall did not just crumble upon hearing Vyr’s name for me on her lips, it exploded into dust, leaving my heart far too exposed.

Part of me wanted to ask her what she saw me as if Morden was only her friend, if she called me by a nickname my sister had given me. Something more than a friend?

Her lover?

Or something even more than that?

I lost my nerve when she looked up at me, averting my gaze to the dagger she gripped.

“You seem to like it,” I said instead of the words that wanted to leave my lips, ones that would leave my exposed heart far too vulnerable, and ones I should not even be considering. I reminded myself that Saphira was a tool of vengeance. A tool.

Not a beautiful, bewitching wolf.

“It’s not every day a dark fae king gives you a dagger crafted by his own hands.” She toyed with it, her words warm with a teasing edge.

“I am not sure whether you are more pleased by the fact I gave you a dagger, a weapon you could easily wield against me, or that I made it for you.” I turned my cheek to her, taking in the view of the Shadow Court, easily able to pick out the blacksmith in Falkyr where I had made the dagger with her in mind.

“Probably the latter. Maybe the former.” She smiled at me when I glanced at her and shrugged. “I don’t know. I honestly never thought someone would give me a weapon, let alone the training to wield it.”

“Training you deserved, and training we shall resume when we return.” I looked at the dagger in her hand and wondered if she knew how precious it really was. “The blade is a smaller twin to the one I forged for myself centuries ago.”

I drew that blade from the sheath hanging from my waist, showing it to her, and her eyes darted over the grip and markings that matched her dagger.

“The metal used to make it is the same as my armour and crown, and Vyr’s weapon and armour too. It comes from this sacred mountain, and each ingot is blessed and reserved for royalty.”

She almost dropped the dagger, fumbling with it as her eyes clashed with mine.

“I don’t deserve something like this.” She tried to push it into my hands, shoving it against my chest when I refused to take it. “Give it to Vyr or someone special.”

I reached out and swept my knuckles across her cheek, my eyes locked with hers and my voice softer than I had heard it in a long time.

“There is none more deserving of it than you, Saphira.”