“Aren’t you going to stop me?” she said, panting, in a moment of reprieve.
His fingers tucked beneath her jaw. “No,” he hummed. “I’ll stand here all night if that’s what you desire.”
Maeve gripped his hand and peeled his fingers from her skin, shocking him with a purposeful bolt of electricity. He didn’t even recoil beneath the surge. He merely dropped his hand in surrender.
“‘How will she like it best?’” she quoted, each word enunciated by another punch to his chest.
“It worked.”
“You’re vile,” she hissed, stepping away from him and running her hands across her face.
“Yes,” he said, his voice laced with dangerous disappointment. “I am. And now you know he’s in there.”
“You don’t sound happy—”
“I’m not!” he roared, causing her to whip back towards him. “I haven’t been happy since I watched him stick his tongue down your throat in your father’s ballroom.”
The Vexkari markings along his neck and face screamed with ancient Magic. Giant dragon wings unfurled from his back, more substantial than she’d ever seen them manifest from his anger, completely disproportionate to his body. They were part mist and part glimmering scales of skin. His arms darkened and thickened, his fingers dipping into long, dripping Magic that would soon enlarge and become claws. He was changing—
Violet streams of fire swirled around him, forging his alternate form.
“Do you know how long it had been since I transformed before I met you?” he asked, his eyes alive with fury. Without waiting for her to answer, he revealed it to her. “Two hundred years, Maeve.” He rolled his neck, his body darkening and bulging beneath his rage.
“Spare me your blame,” she said. “I did not ask for this.”
Reeve laughed, dark and empty. “How convenient it must be to make the bed, and then claim it isn’t to your liking.”
His fire surged, and the hall fell into shadow as the makings of a dragon burst into being, forming from flames that rose as high as the towering ceiling itself. He shot out over the Black Deep in a swirling mass of flame. She rushed to the ledge, gripping a crystal pillar, desperate to see his beastly form, but dark mist covered his wake as his faint outline shot into the sky.
Chapter 34
Breakfast and lunch were canceled in an unspoken agreement between Maeve and Reeve. Unspoken being that neither of them entered the room where they customarily met for meals the following day. Maeve sulked all morning, barely able to read any of the books that kept appearing in her rooms. Books she assumed were from the library in Aterna, the largest in all seven realms. She also assumed they were from Reeve, which made them even more difficult to enjoy.
Despite his display before Mal, and despite the Dread Ring now on her finger, Maeve felt revitalized. She had been tempted in her fury to release and sever her hold on the thread of Magic connecting her to Reeve, but somehow that bond ran stronger in the hours after Mal’s departure.
“Spinel,” she groaned, resting her head against the crystal altar where Maxius lay and lamenting to her cat. “Why does he have to make it so hard? Why couldn’t he have prepared me?” She ran her fingers down his shining coat, answering her own question. “Because then you’re reaction wouldn’t have been genuine and wouldn’t have truly provoked Mal,” she said in her best impression of Reeve’s casually arrogant voice.
Spinel chirped an unhelpful reply.
Her thumb traced the underside of the band on the Dread Ring as she stood and made her way through the palace absentmindedly. Foolishly, the feeling of Dread Magic back in her grasp steadied her. She spent the morning in Reeve’s personal armory, alone, and able to hold smaller swords pumped full of his Magic that she’d previously not been able to lift. Her lightning, mixed with the Dread Magic the ring provided her, gave her strength. It wasn’t close to what her own Dread Magic provided her, but still. . . it felt like a gift.
Hope was a dangerous emotion in such dark times.
As the future became the daunting present, she questioned what the aftereffect looked like. Who would be there, and who wouldbe changed? So many, herself included, would never be the same. Abraxas would need to heal after Mal’s cruelty. Zimsy, if they ever found her, would be different after such horrible trauma.
Maxius.
She pushed down on that one. The guilt was too heavy. Rivaled only by her guilt for Mal. To understand Shadow’s possession, his slow death, according to Mely, was to accept that even if she removed him from the grips of that possession, what would remain?
She’s still infuriatingly yours.
Reeve’s words bounced across her mind. He was right, and he was wrong. Mal was hers to save. To honor. To redeem.
Past that, her mind remained blank of possibilities. Or desire.
She’d never been in a time like this, where tomorrow was so very unknown and unpredictable that there was little point in trying to picture it. Even the time after her father’s death had given her some promise of the future, dismal though it was.
And so, after a roundabout journey through the palace and due to that crushing feeling of uncertainty in tomorrow, but certainty that a certain Immortal stood a chance at warming her cold and hollow insides, she stood in the open threshold of Reeve’s palace wing.
