Page 131 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

I threw my head back and laughed, and she smiled, too. It was all I needed to see before I pulled her to me and kissed her again. We weren’t going to make it back to Isjord today. Possibly not tomorrow either.

“Thora?” someone called, and I muttered a prayer to the gods that it was just the blood poison doing my head in.

Elias flashed a lantern down the tunnel and then thanked about a thousand deities as he ran towards us, even the ones no one really prayed to.

My teeth grind against one another. “Please tell me I’m hallucinating him.”

When he got closer, she threw my arm over her shoulders again and gestured to Elias to do the same. “He needs a healer immediately.”

“Put a finger on me Elias Venzor and it will be the last time you have fingers.”

Visha was not one to fuss over people, but she was fussing over me for some reason. “Sit back down,” she ordered as she searched through her cabinets for more stuff to rub on me.

“If death wanted to come for me, it would have already done so,” I said, standing up from her uncomfortable rock table of torture.

“I’ve never seen blood poison like the one I found in your blood, so get yourself back down again. It was too—”

“Specific? Like it was made for me?” I asked, buttoning up my shirt.

She stopped fiddling with her potions and turned to me. “You knew?”

“Hard to miss when you can sense death and its ways.”

“That would mean the Isline Queen is purposefully aiming for you. Perhaps the attack was not to draw in Thora after all.” She picked up a massive mortar and pressed some seeds into it. “Have you told her that?”

“I will deal with it.” I stood, heading to leave, but she lifted a wall of red, blocking me,

“I need to study the poison.”

“I need to see my wife.” Thora had been attending funerals all for the kids who’d been killed at the academy, and I had not even been there for her to lean against, to console her, to held her up straight, to not let her crumble into the grief that had slammed into her the second we’d stepped back inside Isjord.

Her mouth twitched, the wall lowering. “Oh.” She pointed a finger to the door while she browsed through her grimoire. “Then get out.”

“Lovely as always, Visha Delcour. I see what the lordship sees in you,” I said, putting my belt back on. “He must have a kink for torture.”

Her mouth twitched and she almost showed me a sneer. “Likewise.”

“Mhh,” I hummed, making for the door. “My torture is sweet, V. So, so sweet.”

The witchling rolled her eyes, her magic giving me a shove outside before pulling the doors shut with a bang.

The urge to run off to my safe space was held back only because I didn’t wish to invade it with my morose thoughts, so I slowed myself on the way to her. Thinking away thoughts of anything but her. And it wasn’t hard at all.

My excitement died off a little when I found her sleeping in her room. She must have been exhausted to have fallen asleep or the damn tea Nia had given her was working a little too well. “Hi, little bird,” I whispered, kissing her cheek. “Didn’t miss me at all, did you?”

She stirred a little, adjusting her head on the pillow and I laid close to her, my nose brushing hers. “Do you dream of me as I dream of you?” My hands tangled in her hair. “Do they haunt you as they haunt me? I hope they do. I am a cruel man like that. I’ve never been so glad for my cruel heart. A softer heart would have crumbled before this. How could it not? Look at you. How can anyone with a soft heart do this to you? How…how can someone with a soft heart lie to you? To you out of all.”

I was so tempted to read her. To see what she was feeling. But there was a promise I had made. A bargain my cruel heart made to remain cruel. If I knew how she felt, I’d be tempted. Tempted to hope. Tempted to take her pain. Tempted to stay away. Temptation would have made my heart soft.

She stirred again, snuggling against me this time, her cheek pressed to my chest.

My eyes drew shut. “Don’t make my heart soft, little bird. I don’t think I can lie to you for long.”

Chapter thirty

Red Roses

Malik