Page 23 of When Ashes Fall

“I think he was curious.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you helped me through it. I think he took it to mean that you fucked me, and I left him with that conclusion, but I didn’t lie to him.”

She directed those last words at me. They were her way of saying she hadn’t lied about telling her mother about us either… or so she claimed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Knox

“You didn’t trust him enough to tell the complete truth of it?” I inquired.

“No. I can’t have that getting back to my mother.”

“Why not?”

“She already hates me; if she learns I’m even less like her and the others than she believes, she’ll do everything she can to destroy me. I’m sure she’s already plotting something now.”

“I’m sure she is too,” I murmured.

We’d have to prepare for whatever Marina might try to pull, but without the collective powers of the night casters to back her, there wasn’t much.

“Lyra, Pierce, and Dromon won’t say anything to the tribunal, will they?” she asked.

“No.”

“Can you make sure of that?”

I glanced at her as she peered up at me from under the thick fringe of her lashes. “I can, but they won’t shift back until they return to the castle.”

“And the sprites?”

“The sprites want nothing to do with any eternal outside of this kingdom; you don’t have to worry about them. Besides, I’m sure they’ll do anything you ask of them.”

Probably with more enthusiasm than they would if I asked them.

“Yeah, you’re right,” she murmured. “What happened in that building? What’s to become of me?”

“The other kingdoms won’t agree to giving the night casters their collective power back. I didn’t expect them to.”

“Then why are you so mad?”

I wasn’t about to tell her it was because I’d watched her stroll out of that building with her arm hooked through another man’s and emerged to find them standing close together. They’d been like two conspirators exchanging their deepest intimacies.

I also wasn’t going to tell her that being near her mother again had brought forth a rush of suffering I’d spent years trying to bury. Every nerve ending in my body was raw, but she helped to soothe the worst of it. I wouldn’t tell her that either.

“Because my kingdom remains in ruins,” I stated.

“I’m sorry for that.”

“Are you?”

I didn’t understand why I constantly antagonized her. Because you’re broken and fucked in the head. And you both know it.

“Fuck you, Knox.”

I hadn’t answered about what would happen to her now, but she was too livid to ask me again.