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I nodded.
“Forian should be outside waiting to take you to your rooms, then. Additionally, it may comfort you to know that we have guards patrolling both the city streets and the halls of the castle at night. They each carry a small inspection kit of their own and are under instructions to test anyone they see moving about at night.”
Dread sank over me. I worked to give no sign. “What a relief.”
Lord Thomas nodded. “Nothing touched by those Voidborn creatures will stay safe for long in Duteliera, princess. On that, you have my word.”
I made myself smile and nod in return, silently praying that—at least where Casimir and I were concerned—that wasn’t entirely true.
18
MELISANDRE
Ihad never doubted my own perception of the world.
Until now.
Places came and went in flashes, interspersed by Alaric’s taunting. Faces appeared in front of me like swiftly turning pages in an illuminated book—screaming villagers became dying soldiers, became a weeping old woman, became a farmer coming to find out what caused a ruckus among his livestock. I smelled their blood. Tasted the barest hint of it.
And then they would vanish and something else would take their place.
I refused to keep demanding an explanation. I was no frightened child begging for answers in the dark. I was a queen, and I would see Alaric writhe and die in screaming torment for doing this to me.
As soon as I determined what exactly he’d done.
I staggered as the ground lurched beneath my feet again. My limbs ached, and swaths of dried bloodstains now marred the faded blue velvet of my dress. None of it had been present seconds ago—though from the fact the sun was currently sinking below the horizon, the time that just passed had been much longer than mere seconds. An entire day, at a minimum. Possibly more.
An eye-blink ago, the world had been swallowed in the depths of night, and yet now the sun was setting.
Shudders coursed through me, and I suppressed them ruthlessly. Alaric was nowhere to be seen, not that that meant anything. But the monsters were still everywhere, lounging in the tall grass or drinking from the river nearby. I wagered there were fewer than before, but now human soldiers were among them too—an alarming sight. Their eyes glowed like the Voidborn and their expressions were twisted with a cruelty that matched those vicious creatures too. Beyond them all, mountains lurked on the horizon like jagged teeth, so far away they were barely more than a shadow against the edge of the evening sky.
I couldn’t tell at this distance, but they may have been the ones near Lumilia.
My heart began pounding harder. The closer we came to the capital, the more chance I might get to stop this madness. Alaric wanted to shatter the nexus there, yet every time he’d done that previously, he had needed my power—which had offered me a brief moment where his grip upon me weakened. And that had been when we stood in places I didn’t control.
But Lumilia was my territory. My Huntsmen waited there. My vampires too. The castle itself would try to resist me, just as that damned stone edifice always had. Its stones had once been soaked by Queen Eira’s dying blood, and it had spent the nearly twenty years since trying to warn its precious little Gwyneira about me—not that she ever realized what it was doing. But perhaps that damned pile of rocks would see Alaric’s presence as an even greater threat.
I was not above twisting its self-righteous intentions to my own end, especially when it would mean I could escape this wretched situation.
“See something you like, pet?”
I did not flinch at the sudden sound of Alaric’s voice. I did not gasp or retreat. That foul bastard would not see me react with terror.
Though when I turned, none of my self-control stopped him from grinning at me like he’d won a victory anyway.
By the gods, I would relish watching him die.
“I take it you wish to converse now,” I said coldly.
His brow arched. “Angry, pet?”
I refused to dignify that with a response.
Alaric chuckled. “Considering you tried to destroy me—and after all I’ve done for you, I might add—I find it amusing that you think you have the moral high ground.”
Death was too good for him.
“Where are we?” I demanded.
