AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her heart beat heavy in her chest. “Then don’t.”
He led her to the bed, drew her down until they lay face to face, his arm sliding once more around her waist to draw her close. It was awkward at first, until she found the way she fit against him, the place where her head fit in the crook of his shoulder. He smelled like he always did—like his magic—of earth and flowers and the unique sweetness of horses. He was warm and solid, and every part of her relaxed against him.
She didn’t mean to fall asleep.
Chapter Eighty-Six
Don’t Tell Me What I Care About Is Cheap
She woke in Numair’s arms, not because of the sunlight streaming in through the glass balcony doors, but because something was different. Wrong.
He woke with her, his eyes opening into hers, a question in them. And then she heard the footsteps down the hall and realized that what had woken her was the Song’s abrupt withdrawal to its prison.
“Alaric,” she whispered. Why hadn’t she stopped to think that as soon as news of Renault County reached his ears, he would return to Veralna? And that he’d been gone so short a time that his return would take none at all?
Magic tore from Numair. The vines on the wall surged with new growth, reaching for her, pulling her flat against the wall, covering her mouth. Another vine grabbed the bag with the Siren’s Tear and placed it in her hands before the rest grew completely over her. She couldn’t move or blink, so tightly and thickly were they woven around her, binding her to the wall and hiding her from view. Her only sight came from the tiniest slit between vines in front of her left eye.
Numair vaulted out of the bed, hastily throwing the covers over the pillows to hide the indentation of her head in the pillow next to his. She watched his anxious energy melt into an air of casual, bored indifference. He began lazily unbuttoning his shirt, as if he’d been out all night and only just returned home. He was two buttons down when the door to the outer suite exploded inward with a cracking of wood, and the Song recoiled within her as Alaric Tolvannen strode into his nephew’s room.
He appeared calm, for all that he’d just shattered a door as if in a fit of pique, and Numair was mirroring that calm. Alaric’s gaze roved over the room before settling on him. “Where is she?”
Numair lifted one eyebrow, as if unaware of the fury that lurked beneath the king’s facade. “I am afraid you’ll have to be more specific. There are so many they tend to all run together.”
“You know precisely to whom I am referring. And think very carefully before you tell me she isn’t here. That bloody mare is in the paddock.”
Numair shrugged. “Marquin dropped the horse by yesterday. Something about Clare going out of town. Per her lease agreement, Kialla stays in my stables if she leaves Veralna. The horse is worth too much to be treated like a pack animal.”
Alaric did not speak. He simply advanced until his nose was an inch from Numair’s, threat and magic coalescing in the air around him.
Numair’s eyebrow lifted impossibly higher. “Very well, then. If you are so convinced she is here, perhaps I hid her in the wardrobe.”
The wardrobe exploded outward, slivers of black wood sinking into various walls. The greenery deflected most of them from Clare, but two made it through. One thudded into the wall a hairsbreadth from her left eye. The other buried itself in her shoulder. She could not move to inspect it even had she dared, but she did not think it had hit anything vital. Its continued presence in her shoulder meant it would not bleed more than the vines could obscure.
The Song trembled from its hiding place far, far within her, its terror trying to leach out into her.
Take hold of yourself, Clare snapped. Or are you so afraid of what you have made?
The Song did not answer. It did stop trembling.
Numair looked about the room as the dust settled, his gaze intent. “Not in the wardrobe? Perhaps she is under the bed.”
The bed flew across the room, breaking against the opposite wall.
Numair snapped his fingers. “I must have tossed her in the cedar chest, then.”
The chest levitated into the air, flipped over and dumped its contents.
“Or perhaps,” Numair continued, his voice calm, cold steel, “she is not here.”
Alaric ignored this. The room continued to tear apart beneath his fury, every drawer and door opening, every item in the room shifting its locale, the plants the only things he did not deem worth searching.
Only once the entire room lay in splinters did Alaric’s magic turn directly on Numair, pulling him to him, the king’s fist wrapping around Numair’s throat. “I gave you the opportunity to make this easy on yourself. On both of you. You could have had everything you wanted.”
“I told you. I don’t want her.”
“You can’t hide the way you look at her, boy. She could have been your last. I would have let you quit all the others, for her.” His fist squeezed. “Would it have been such a burden to make her love you? To fuck her until she’d do anything for you? Until she’d tell you every secret rattling around in that pretty head?”
Numair’s voice came out strained. “She’s a simple girl from some simple nowhere village. She wants pretty things and for people to like her. The only secrets she’s likely to tell me are silly dreams.”
