Transfixed, I watch beads of light bloom amidst my gloomy insides. One by one they swell, like winking stars sprinkled across a dusky sky.
Small seeds grow into big, strong things …
The backs of my eyes prickle with the promise of tears as I marvel at the fierce, ethereal beauty. At countless seeds of the strength I need to brace my spine and save those innocent lives.
Plucking some with slow, gentle grace, I cup them close, worshiping each one like I do a perfect stone scooped from the shore of Bitten Bay. I squish them, smooth them, take my time molding them into small but mighty domes I stack inside my chest. All the while, that raw, shameful pain in my neck throbs with each hammering thump of my heart.
I can’t afford another mistake. Another weakness.
There’s too much on the line.
* * *
Every clipped step down the stairs echoes the tap of my heels, my chin high and spine as strong as my freshly soldered determination.
A reticule hangs off my wrist, Cainon’s cupla bound around the other, feeling heavier than it ever has. My hair is a crimped gush over my shoulder, my dress an intertwining maze of gold and blue strips that show too much of my sun-kissed shoulders, my legs …every other part of me.
But it was the one laid out.
Izel found me asleep on the balcony and told me I’d been instructed to get ready. That Cainon has something to show me in the city.
A gift I will receive before the people of Parith.
All I really heard wascityandpeople of Parithand a plan took shape inside me like a web of tripping wires—risky. Dangerous.
All I have.
I refused her help getting dressed so I would have time to make the appropriate preparations.
Walking past a tall hallway mirror, I catch a glimpse of myself and pause, struck by my eyes—bright with the sun’s luster, yet hard as flints. Like my soul has been snatched and stuffed beneath one of the many crystal domes nailed against my insides. A pretty graveyard for everything that makes me vulnerable.
I lift my hair, checking the bite mark; raised, raw, and angry-looking, throbbing with its own beat.
Reminding me of its shameful existence.
The bandage pulled too much attention—made me lookweak—but my hair is the perfect camouflage.
Draping my heavy locks upon the hurt again, I continue down, nearing the foyer, Cainon coming into view with his back to the stairwell.
He’s clad in a finely threaded tunic trimmed in gold, his arms crossed, hair brushing his broad shoulders in loose, salty waves that make him look a little different than normal, though it doesn’t trick my thundering heart. Doesn’t stem my urge to backtrack.
Torun.
He’s still the same predator whose eyes lost all their hue before he tore into my neck and almost drained me dry. Still an ancient animal forged from a time when power ruled the world.
I swallow thickly, lifting my chin as I round the stairs, like I’m stepping into a gilded Unseelie burrow. Reminding myself that I have a plan—I just have to grit my teeth and hold on until tomorrow night.
I just have to play the fucking part.
Cainon’s speaking with a woman dressed in a flowy gray robe. Her hair is woven into a crown of silky, golden locks, fine lines bordering dark-purple eyes, blue bursting from their pupils.
The same pretty shade as my friend Gael’s.
Her mother.
A few of my domes rattle, vicious, thorny emotions threatening to spear up as I remember the story Gael told me.
Remember the scars on her back.
