“Watch yourself,” Sylvin warns, shocking me at the way his tone drips with an icy threat. “She did help my people, at the expense of her own heart in the fallout of that choice.”
Azyric turns and heads toward the tentflaps, pausing long enough to look back and say, “She could be the reason we lose this war, and none of you would notice until it was too late. You’re too wrapped up in her body, her power, and her lies.”
I open my mouth to speak up for myself finally, but he’s gone before I can.
The remaining three kings move as one, seemingly furious and ready to drag him back until his disrespect is resolved, but I raise my hand.
“Don’t, please.” My gentle plea cuts through their anger and I offer a smile at each of them. “Thank you for seeing my heart and understanding why I can’t choose your side right now, but I think I need to talk to him alone. This has been brewing for a while.”
I head through the flaps without waiting, not wanting to give them a chance to try to convince me otherwise.
Azyric’s shadow moves ahead of me, disappearing around the curve of a tent’s edge, and I quickly follow. I hesitate at the entrance to his tent only for a breath before ducking inside.
This has been a long time coming.
I stop just inside, seeing his back turned to me. His shadows have slipped free from him entirely, their thick, writhing tendrils coiling through the space with aimless fury, lashing at the walls, the ceiling, and the floor like they can’t find where to settle.
They’re wild in a way I’ve neverseen, yet they don’t attack me. Instead, a few seem to sense me here, like they’ve been waiting for my return to them.
One brushes my ankle and another climbs up my shin. They don’t tighten or hurt me, they simply exist. I breathe out slowly and let more of them come, lifting my hand like I would for an old friend, watching as one of the longer strands twines around my wrist with slow curiosity.
A growl tears through the shadows like thunder splitting through the sky as he turns.
His body is tense, his shoulders rigid and his back straight, but as he takes in the shadows curling around me, I watch both the veins in his forearms and one in his forehead bulge.
“Why did you come here?” His voice is low and guttural. “To rub it in my face that you seem to have control over three magical factions? That you’ve managed to twist every crown but mine?”
The words sting, but I don’t flinch. I listen and truly hear the pain in them. I hear the vulnerability in his words. It opens up my own hurt that I’ve locked away from the night in the shifter lands.
“I thought I saw you that night,” I say quietly. “At the edge of the forest after I had Torryn invite you all to dinner. I was so hurt when you didn’t show at first, and even more confused when I thought you decided to linger atthe edge.”
The shadows swirl around us, curling tighter as his jaw clenches.
“I thought you wanted nothing to do with me,” I admit softly, letting my own vulnerability shine through in a moment where I fully expect him to laugh at me.
He’s made his thoughts of me clear, yet I still hope that what I hear in them is different than what he admits out loud.
He stalks toward me. Each step is deliberate, shoulders squared, silver eyes pinned to mine like he’s trying to burn through the layers I suddenly offer him.
Shadows slither with him across the ground, curling over his boots and winding back up the length of his legs, yet some still linger around me, like they haven’t decided whether they belong to him or me now.
When he stops in front of me, the tension in the room draws taut. When he finally speaks, chills spread through my body.
“You think all of this,” he hisses, the words low and full of heat, “has been because I wantednothingto do with you?”
The shadows climb higher on me then, brushing up my thighs, along my waist, curling in tendrils across my chest as if summoned by the same fury lacing his tone. I don’t back away and I don’t flinch. I stand rooted where I am, watching thefury flash through his silver eyes, feeling like, just maybe, he’s finally showing me the real Azyric.
“You think it’s been disinterest? Distance?” he growls, the words unraveling now, each one louder than the last. “It’s because I wanteverything, Wren. I tell myself I don’t. That you’re a risk, a threat, a variable we can’t afford to miscalculate.”
My heart stutters and I force my breath to stay even.
His jaw clenches, nostrils flaring as a muscle twitches in his cheek.
“But every waking minute,” he bites, stepping even closer, “I’ve spent planning for this damn war has also been accompanied by thoughts of wondering where you are. Who you’re with. What piece of yourself you're giving them.”
The words aren’t soft or romantic. They’re twisted up in resentment and longing that feels sour with restraint. Yet I just stand here, staring into his eyes as he gets it all out, because I don’t know if he will ever show me this side of himself again.
“I can’t stand the way they look at you like you belong to them. As if they’ve already claimed the very thing I’ve had to claw myself away from since we first found you.”
