Page 231 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“He is,” I said, my voice almost a whisper. Did I like hearing about him? Did I like torturing myself by knowing more of him, only to lose him? Silence fell between us, almost too grave. “And the lovers?” I asked, hoping to liven the mood.

Mal laughed. “I would be dead before I could mutter even the first name.”

“Ah, so there have been several,” I teased, in fact half jealous, now I really wanted to know all of their names. “I hoped with the personality and emotional range of a rock he would have found that difficult.”

Mal’s laugh rolled over all around the garden before he turned to me. “It is hard to know what he really feels, do not judge what you see. I read his shadows almost every time because I cannot understand him without. They are filled with so much colour, more than you could imagine. When he sees you,” he interrupted himself, shaking his head, “it would be difficult to even paint what they turn when he sees you.”

My skin rose to his words, it was either the flowers making it hard for me to breathe or my lungs forgotten to inhale, his words had me almost panting. “He didn’t come with us, did he?”

“Forgive me, we didn’t mean to lie but he had to return last night, with duties to report back and the agreement is so close, he had to.”

“Why didn’t he tell me, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” The word goodbye shattered on my lips.

“He thought you would panic if he was not there, so he made me promise to tell you he was watching you.”

Did he know how I felt, he could not read my shadows to understand, and I had never told him truly just how he makes my heart tremble and falter at his sight, how his presence masks the rest of the world away, how nothing mattered anymore. I hated and feared that deeply because I still loved my family, my world now had come crashing and the choice I had take. It pained me to think and admit to it, but it was still them. My choice was always them—my family, they overridden everything else, it didn’t matter if it would hurt him, that I was about to hurt him. My fingers tugged on the folded handkerchief—a piece of him. Tomorrow I would marry the king of Adriata. Tomorrow I would end us.

Chapter 43

Stars and Night

Snowlin

It still stared at me, the black fog of my sight, today darker and hungrier than ever. It needed feeding, it needed satiating, or it would devour me, but this beast fed on carnage, the mist of whom I was meant to be.

Pen stood behind me, devoured in a daze, examining the white painting of me.

The dress was simple, a bright white that contrasted my dark hair perfectly. It flared in soft layers of tulle and scarcely stitched in rose embroidery. Today there was nothing to hide, so I bared my scars openly, the dress stopped short above my bust nothing to cover the straight slash that ended just down my shoulder.

“Well done, Pen. I look a bride.”

She tidied the sides of my hairdo pinning all sorts of jingle at the back, I’d refused to wear a veil so she’d convinced me on the pins.

“Are you not afraid?” she asked breathlessly, holding in a cry.

“Yes,” I said, tracing a finger over the rose embroidery on the skirt of the dress. “He is my fear.” I was terrified. If one could ever fall in a pit of suffocation without light, four crashing walls slowly tightening around, air slim with scent of sulphur and death, a crawl of scales over every inch of skin, then it would slightly resemble how it felt to be under my bones right now. But what was fear but another emotion, a controllable one, one I’d escaped once, twice and a thousand times, even that inflicted. Fear was chains, and I’d broken out of those too.

“You don’t have to do this,” she blabbered, pacing afront me nervously. “Kill him, I mean. Maybe not now, you will be surrounded with soldiers and Empaths and Umbra and…and he is an Obscur,” she said, putting a hand over her mouth in sudden realization. “He can…he will kill you without even seeing light.”

“He can only try, Pen. Remember, I am never alone.”

She frowned. “But you dismissed Nia and Cai. Where on Hodr have you sent them off too, especially today?”

I stood from the dresser and threw a glance over the balcony framing a grey morning full of unloaded thunder. “I was talking about me. I have me, perhaps the greatest weapon of all.”

“This is such a terrible time to be speaking in cipher.”

A knock sounded by the door and the little read head’s paces of breath grew heavy, sending her in a fit of panic clutching her chest tight.

“Believe it or not, it was not cipher.” I cupped her shoulders. “You do not move, once Nia returns you will leave with her.” I handed her one of my daggers. “In case you need to be brave one more time today.”

The last time perhaps, once I’d kill the night king there would be nothing in Adriata but ruin.

She held my wrist not letting me go, emerald eyes filled with beads of silver. “Promise you will come back for it.”

“You have my promise, little carrot.” A promise this time I intended to hold and attain.

The heavy doors creaked open and light footsteps chased inside the room. I expected a squadron of Aura to drag me out to him, perhaps a tasteful lashing, a public stoning, maybe a quick beheading for dramatic effect of crowd pleasing, but they sent a lone woman. Perhaps she was to do all three of those? A garroter in a dress, nothing more tasteful than that.