Page 88 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“My throat stings. It feels like I drank fire. But I’m fine.”

“Really?” I pressed an eye open at him from the side.

Kye paused, frowning as he studied me. Then cleared his throat as he took hold of my waist, lifting me from my feet. “What does he want with Leihani?”

I hooked an arm around his neck. “You never told me his ring was magic.” I tried not to make it sound like an accusation. But it came out as one anyway, thin and simmering with disbelief. Kye’s mouth parted, but he kept his gaze diverted ahead, watching the line of stairs shorten before he turned the corner and descended again.

My cheek thumped softly against his shoulder with every step. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“My mother’s rings were infused with alchemies tied to Truth. In order for anyone to learn the properties of her jewelry, they’d have to witness its magic firsthand.” He flexed his fingers, the sapphire of his premonition ring glinting brightly. “It was never complicated to tell you about my ring. You’d seen me use it before. A lot of people have. But its power is more subtle. Harder for someone to witness and recognize it as magic.”

I turned my head into his cool chest. “You explained our soul rings easily enough before we used them.”

Kye’s brow lifted, his eyes darkening between humor and a brand of provocation he reserved for only me.

“Not right now,” I snapped. “Your mother willingly gave Emilius that thing?”

His smile had widened, but it dropped at that as he landed on the last step, turning to push the swinging door open with the back of his shoulder. “No. Her father gave it to the King as part of her dowry.” We landed at the top of the ballroom stairs, the sweep of it wide and deep. Even with the open windows, shadows lay across the polished floor, drinking in the echoing silence without the torch fire that usually graced the walls.

“Most of her jewelry was steeped in Truth’s blessings to protect the wearer from becoming a target should someone attack them to steal it. It’s the same reason I can’t talk about Hadrian or Jonet’s rings with you. The ring I gave you on our wedding night belongs to a mate. Truth didn’t bless our set of rings.”

“All right.” The mention of Hadrian and Jonet stroked my curiosity, but I resisted the urge to let my thoughts wander. “Who did?”

Kye glanced sideways at me. “Love.”

I scoffed softly, closing my eyes, listening to the pounding in my head, which I couldn’t decide was growing or diminishing with the passing minutes. Somehow, my fingers found the ring in question, worn smooth and warm with my own body heat. I turned it slowly. “Will I be arrested?”

“He’d have to explain how he’d allowed a woman to overpower him enough to maim him.”

“Is that a no?”

Kye didn’t answer. I glanced up at him to find him staring ahead, contemplative with something like worry, his lower lip caught under his teeth.

“What exactly does his ring do?”

He exhaled through his nose. For a moment, the muted click of his steps and pattern of hard pulsing in my temple joined in tempo, the rest of the palace as still as the night. “I haven’t seen him use it since I was very young, and I didn’t realize at the time that it came from him.”

I raised my head to ask who he’d seen the King attack with that power. But the answer lay in the hard set of his eyes, the dark shadow between his brows. My stomach convulsed, a tight squeeze at the basin of my body.

The doctors said she died of pneumonia. Of fluid in her chest, leaving her weak with cough.

Kye grunted softly, as if his own memories had lodged in his throat. “Hade thinks it’s toxic air. That the King converts his victims’ breaths into poison that they must cough out, and if they can’t expel it fast enough, it will eventually invade their blood. It only takes minutes.”

“So,” I said, my fingers trailing just under the hem of his shirt, “he’d already stopped attacking you by the time I helped him.”

What a predictable little pawn I’d been, fighting so hard to heal a man I’d love to rid the world of. How like the dog Emilius considered me: unintelligent yet obedient, trite yet trained, loyal to a fault and expendable all the same.

I realized where we were then, only steps from the base of our own tower. “Not this way,” I said, pulling myself out of his hold.

He set me down, stepping back to look at me. Something in the way he leaned onto his hip, a fist balled into his side, made me wonder if he wanted to argue. But he inhaled, mouth quirked to the side. “Where to, then?”

Selena might have been surprised to find me at the opposite side of her door, but if she was, her cool, crystal eyes betrayed nothing. She glanced me over in an instant, cataloging my disheveled hair, rumpled silk dress, and what I imagined to be the gradually burgeoning veil of purple from the corner of my temple.

Without a word, she stepped back, offering us an invitation inside.

Pheolix sat at her table with Cebrinne and Aegir. Their conversation floated to us before we reached them, light-hearted and humorous. The air went still as we stepped into the room.

Cebrinne’s sharp gaze narrowed in immediately, flicking between Kye and me. Aegir’s jaw clicked. “What happened?” the Videre said.