It felt as though it called me.
I slid it out with careful fingers, moving as silently as I could so I wouldn’t wake the male sleeping behind me. The cover was warm beneath my palms. When I opened it, my breath caught.
A first edition.
Centuries old.
Pristine.
I turned another page and found the handwritten note I never got to finish reading the night in the library, the one Lorik had taken from my hands before I could see more.
“For my love,
O.S.”
This note didn’t seem to fit with the first edition. The ink seemed strong and unfaded; it was evidently done recently.
Then, I felt something shift behind me, a faint brush of movement along my back. Maybe it was just the draft from the window. Maybe it was Lorik walking.
I didn’t wait to find out.
On silent toes, I slipped toward the door, careful not to let the floorboards betray me, leaving the serpent-bound book wide open on the table.
Then I ran.
I bolted out of the Natch Tower, where Sunhearts had no business being and didn’t stop until I reached my room. The halls were mercifully empty; it was still early on a Sunday, and most students were asleep.
Soehl wasn’t there, of course. She was probably with Jan. Whatever was between them had turned into something dangerously close to love and obsession, almost overnight.
I changed quickly into my green pants and cropped uniform top, intending to grab breakfast, when the door swung open, and Soehl, Tran, Rowan, and Shakari piled in and still wearing the tavern clothes from last night, looking as if they hadn’t slept at all.
“You are safe,” Shakari said, running and hugging me.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I chuckled nervously. “It’s six in the morning. Did you guys even sleep?”
“Your mother sent Thalen to look for you in the tavern yesterday. She had a vision that night that a royalist had intentions to kill you and that he almost would, but she knew you would be saved by someone; she just couldn’t see who it was.She just assumed Thalen was going to save you since she had sent him to you.” Shakari explained.
“When Thalen came, desperate to look for you, we didn’t find you, just the Sunheart flat dead at the back of the tavern and a lake of blood next to him,” Rowan added.
“We looked for you everywhere, the whole fleet of Emberkeep guards are looking for you everywhere,” Soehl said, worried.
“What happened? Clearly someone helped you and it definitely wasn’t the uptight blond Emberkeep,” Tran said, joking as always, even in the darkest moments. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Shakari rolling her eyes.
I told them everything. Well… almost everything. I left out the humiliating part, the want, the ache that had twisted through me under the potion’s influence. The rest I laid out plainly: the Sunheart slipping me an aphrodisiac potion, my eyes turning red, running into Rory in the washroom, stepping outside for air, the royalist Sunheart coming at me with a dagger, and Lorik Draventh stopping him.
But I did leave certain things out, the Tucana serpent venom on the dagger, the way Lorik had healed me, and the fact that I’d slept in his room afterward. He had saved my life, and until I understood why, I wouldn’t expose his abilities to anyone.
I hated keeping anything from them. They were my people now. But there was too much I still didn’t understand…and too much I wasn’t ready to admit.
Because part of me already felt something for him and I couldn’t bear the thought of them seeing it. Questioning it. Questioning me.
“Lorik Draventh?” Rowan lifted a brow, genuinely intrigued. “Now this gets interesting. Why would he save you? No offense.”
“None taken. I asked myself the same question.”
“I don’t trust him. He might have done this to get a royal favor,” Shakari said, her words slicing clean through me. The possibility hit hard, I hadn’t even considered it. How could I have believed it was a genuine act? Lorik most definitely had an ulterior motive for saving me. The aphrodisiac potion had blurred too many lines last night, leaving my thoughts twisted and unfocused.
“He still saved her, right? That has to count for something,” Soehl offered, always ready to see the good in people.
