Page 87 of Ashen Wings

“I had a run in with some dead riders. I’m fine, just a little—woah.” Isra scoops me into his arms, biceps flexing across my back.

“Thank the gods. Where’s Jace?” He inspects each fang mark speckling my limbs.

“He was right behind me.” Over Isra’s shoulder, I glance toward the tomb. Jace emerges, stoic and silent. He takes a seat beside Tenebris, most likely preparing to receive an earful from the scowling dragon.

His eyes flick to mine, and as much as I will it, I can’t drop my gaze. Something like sadness flashes in those starlit irises, and I pull away from Isra’s embrace.

“I’m good. I promise.” I offer a smile. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

39

“I’ll send word of our offer to Mercora in the morning,” Jace says, now settled in a leather armchair beside the study’s roaring fireplace. “If he accepts, we’ll pack for the journey south.”

He traces a thumb over the delicate gold-plated circlet tucked on the table beside him, wandering through his own thoughts. The opal stone at its center gleams almost golden in the crackling fire light and casts an otherworldly aura throughout the room.

“And what if he refuses?” Roe sinks further into the settee cushion like a house cat opposite me.

“We’ll cross the border regardless,” Jace replies. “But Mercora won’t refuse. At our last unification council he asked me more than once about my mother’s circlet. A pathetic show of his hand if you ask me, but I’m certain he’ll agree.”

“Cosmic blessings aside, why is he so desperate to get his hands on it?” I take a sip of my wine.

The buzz of a full belly, dry fire, and a second glass hits me with a wave of exhaustion warming my cheeks.

My neck still throbs at each puncture mark, and the new bandages around my wrists cling a little too tightly, but I’ve fallen into a sleepy comfort. With each pop of the half-scorched log in the fireplace, my eyelids heavy. I tell myself I’ll revisit all of the events of today tomorrow. Tonight, I’m fucking tired. There’s nothing left to offer my spiraling thoughts, so I swallow them down with another sip of wine.

“Old grudges. Mercora always claimed it should’ve been given to Sea. The histories will write they were Sovereign's closest allies.” Jace doesn’t meet my eyes when he replies. He’s avoided me since we returned from the tomb, and I don’t blame him for it.

Fuck, I haven’t worked up the courage either, holding him in peripheral glances, but some traitorous part of me begs for his focus. Things feel different between us now, not in an obvious sense, but subtly—insidiously.

I can’t shake the feel of his lips against me, holding me one bite away from death. The thrill of it still tightens my belly even now, and I know it shouldn’t.

Gods be good, I’m in deep shit.

He’s lethal, monstrous, cold, but my pulse spikes when he enters the room. I stop breathing when his eyes land on mine. He’s the first face I search, and my chest aches in his absence. I tell myself it’s a reaction of fear, of hatred.

Maybe it’s not, though.

“What held you back in the tomb?” Roe asks.

My fingers grip my now empty wine glass “I don’t know. Something drew me to that burial chamber, and I couldn’t help myself I guess. Who’s buried there?”

“That’s Dracae Torr’s tomb,” Jace says.

The fireplace freezes over. “Dracae Torr? You mean the guardian rider? But the tomb wasn’t any different from the others. I thought guardian riders were buried with high honors.”

“Most of them are, but he wanted a simple grave, one indiscernible from the other riders who are laid to rest. Torr felt the burden rather than the honor of bonding the guardian. He was simply a rider, a conduit for the cosmic cycle.”

“There was a voice…barely a whisper when I placed my hand on his casket.” My vision blurs out of focus. Had Dracae Torr tried to communicate with me? No less than legendary, he brought Shadow into the first faction unification. The knot in my throat refuses to loosen.

Jace’s expression is utter disbelief. “You need to tell us exactly what happened in there.”

“What do you mean by a voice?” Isra leans over his knees.

My heart flutters like a caged bird as all three sets of eyes land on mine. “I couldn’t make out much of what it said, and what I had made sense of was nothing more than nonsense.”

“Fuck…” Isra mutters.

“I was half-crazed in there and creeped the fuck out. Maybe I imagined it or mistook the whistle of a draft for whispers? Why would Dracae Torr be reaching out to me? I’m nobody important.”