Page 47 of The Crowned Queen

“I’m not.” Raelle shrugged. “I would never have survived carrying some human mage’s spawn.” She paused, still not quite looking at him. “Some of us make other choices. Find another way to endure. Like Araya did with Jaxon Shaw.”

Loren’s shadows stilled.

“I don’t think she understood what kind of man he was,” Raelle continued, her voice softening. “She would have been young when she met him. He showed her another face. Offered her safety, protection—a way out.” Her mouth tightened. “That kind of offer is hard to refuse for people like us.”

Loren had never known that version of his mate, but his heart ached for the girl she’d once been. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Because,” Raelle said, exhaling slowly, “when she came here with Serafina, she didn’t look away from what the Arcanum does to us. She didn’t pretend she was above it.” Raelle finally met his gaze. “Someone who grew up in Kaldrath—who understands desperation, and survival, and what it costs—” she gestured down at the city below them, with its laughter and light and music. “I don’t believe in fate or pray to the Goddess anymore. But someone like that is exactly the kind of queen our people are going to need.”

“Our people?” Loren asked.

“I think so.” Raelle smiled. “You claimed us, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Somewhere far below them, someone started playing a reed flute, the tinny music rising into the night. “And if I leave you here, I’m abandoning you to the New Dominion. But if I stay—” Loren shook his head miserably. “I’m abandoning her.”

“Do you think we’re going to crumple as soon as you leave?” Raelle raised an eyebrow. “We’ve been fighting this war a long time, Your Majesty.”

“I—” Loren blinked, stammering. “But without the shadows—didn’t Kai say they were sending their High Commander back to oversee the operation to take back Farhallow?”

“High Commander Redmond.” Raelle bared her teeth in a bloodthirsty smile. “He might be surprised at what he finds waiting for him here. You’ve given us the best chance we’ve ever had to strike a real blow against the Arcanum here. We won’t waste it.”

“You could all die,” Loren protested.

“We die every day, Your Majesty,” Raelle said. “Either slowly—worked and bred until our magic and bodies give out—or quickly, at the end of an iron blade. I know which death I prefer.”

There was nothing Loren could say to that.

“Caela was the first to volunteer to go with you,” Raelle continued. “I picked a few others from the others that volunteered.” She stood, brushing dust off her pants. “Bring our queen home, Your Majesty. Whatever happens here, you’re going to need her. And so are we.”

Chapter

Seventeen

They’d been on the road for a week.

Araya only saw it in flashes—thin slices of pale sky peering between the seams of the canvas covering her cage. Every jolt of the wagon rattled the chains connecting her wrists and ankles to the iron collar locked around her throat. The soft lining kept the metal from blistering her skin, but did nothing to protect her from the constant chafing that had left her raw and aching.

It did nothing for her heart, either.

The first two days, Araya jumped at every strange creak of the wagon or shout from outside—certain that this was it, that Loren had come for her. She held her breath, waiting for the screams as his shadows tore into flesh and bone. She imagined the canvas splitting, tumbling out of the cage and into his arms⁠—

But it never came.

By the third day, she stopped hoping. They were too far outside the city now. Loren probably couldn’t even sense where she was anymore.

Or he could. And he’d chosen not to come.

Araya tried not to consider that possibility. It was better like this anyway, she told herself. If Loren had tried to come for her, they would have taken him. She could picture it too easily—soldiers spilling out of the trees, the shadows tearing themselves apart trying to reach her as cold iron snapped around his wrists.

It was better that he stayed away. Better that he lived.

She couldn’t feel him at all now. Whether because of distance or something else, she didn’t know. But Araya couldn’t stop herself from pressing a hand to the hollow place in her chest when she closed her eyes—clinging to the foolish hope that this time it would be different. That she would feel him, even just for a few minutes.

But she never did.

Sometimes she’d hear Jaxon’s voice outside, speaking with the soldiers responsible for her care. But to her desperate relief he was never there when the guards pushed back the flaps to the wagon carrying her cage.

They checked on her twice a day—once when they stopped for the evening and again in the morning. She got the same ration of hardtack each time, accompanied by a dented tin cup of water. If she asked, they would pass the bucket too, watching without comment as she struggled to crouch over it with her chains.