“I don’t think they’ve been easy on any of us,” he replied.
Autumn’s honey gaze found David, and she widened her eyes as if to sayYou need to fix this!
But he didn’t. He had no prerogative to fix anything at all. If Isobel wanted to act this way, it was on her. David had known from the moment he’d met her the sort of rancor that lived in that woman’s heart. It wasn’t his responsibility to make Sean unsee it.
Autumn gave up on him and faced Sean. “I know she can be difficult, but her heart is in the right place. She just…”
Sean raised a brow. “Wants to keep me in a bubble for her own safety?”
Her bare smile extinguished entirely. “I’m going to check on her.” She kissed his temple and whispered something into his ear. He nodded and squeezed her arm before she slipped away.
Sean returned his attention to the pyre, the Light gleaming in his eyes. The two of them stood alone on their side of the dais, and though gazes from the crowd occasionally flickered their way, no one approached, likely out of respect for Sean’s loss.
“Nish says they’ll need to coronate me as soon as possible,” he muttered after a moment.
David’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.
“I know you don’t want the crown,” Sean continued, “but you’ll have to take it. I won’t take mine without you.”
He crossed his arms and dropped his gaze to his feet. “They’ll hate me more with a crown on my head.”
“For a while,” Sean said, tone even. “Until they start confusing you for me.”
David winced internally, imagining it—a crowd of people looking at him but seeing Sean. “We’ve still got a while for that, I think.”
Sean’s answering smirk lacked any shade of warmth. “Youthink?” He leaned David’s way, matching his stare. “I talked to Anna earlier today, and she did the oddest thing.”
He refused to react, though his heart picked up its pace at the mention of Anna.
With a deep sigh, Sean said, “She called me byyourname.”
David’s mind went blank. “She…what?”
“She didn’t even realize she did it.”
Ugh.He didn’t like that. Not at all.
“So then I started thinking about Anna,” Sean said, voice low. He took a moment, his gaze returning to the pyres even though he didn’t seem to actually see them. “She’s…emotional. Even more than you.”
David made the connection at once. Anna had no ice, no shield. If she stepped foot into Viterra, the Indies would hunt her just as they’d hunted him. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.
“Yeah,” Sean said. “She’ll turn into prey the moment she enters Viterra, and the idea of her as prey to those fuckers makes me…angry.”
As the horrid image of her at the mercy of Indies cascaded through his mind, David locked himself up, but it was useless trying to hide from Sean.
How had it not occurred to him how Anna’s magic would drive the Indies mad? A single slip of his ice brought an entire horde down on them. If his own undiluted magic was a shiny lure, then Anna’s would be a fucking feast laid out in the middle of a famine.
They’d crawl over themselves to reach her.
David narrowed his gaze at his soulmate. “Angry, huh?”
Sean lifted a shoulder. “It’s Anna,” he said, as if that was all the explanation necessary.
And it kind of was.
Despite what David had done to her, despite that he’d destroyed everything that existed between them, he couldn’t deny that part of him that still whisperedminewhen she drew near. If an Indy tried totake her, ifanyonetried to take her, he’d put his long-lost skills at torture to good use.
Sean rubbed his face. “If I try to keep her from going to Viterra the way she’s been training to do, she’ll maim me.”
