Page 3

Something like hate darkened one of the watchers’s cerulean eyes. “Do it. Gods, I hope you do. Give us a reason to end you…”

His words died off. Roark stepped in front of me. His stance was one of ease, almost like he was irritated that he needed to intervene at all.

Roark raised his hands to gesture a simple but direct command. We have the queen’s word the melder enters the gates unharmed. Do you stand against your queen?

The watcher swallowed. “I…I don’t understand.”

With an agitated twist to his mouth, Roark looked to me and waved one palm.

He wanted me to…translate for him? I blinked, then repeated his words to the watcher.

The man seemed befuddled for a breath. “She can speak for you?”

Strange how she picked up my words swiftly. Others rarely can, not since my own clan ripped out my voice.

Damn him. Heat flooded my cheeks as I repeated Roark’s words, but I left out the reek of bitterness in his silent tone.

The watcher’s brow furrowed, but after a moment he stepped back. “She needs to keep up” was all he said before he fell in line with the rest.

For a few heartbeats, even surrounded by Draven warriors, it felt like Roark and I were alone.

I studied my hands, unsettled by his nearness. I’d felt the warmth of his bare skin pressed against mine, the heat of his mouth on my flesh, and now I hardly knew how to be in his presence.

For a man who’d sworn such violent devotion, he seemed wholly unbothered by the threats of the warrior. Tomas Grisen, the sod whose jaw I once melded shut, had threatened me, and Roark had forced him to eat his own finger.

Unbidden, a bite of pain lanced through my heart. Perhaps, surrounded by his own folk, the formidable Sentry was beginning to recall why his clan despised melders.

We need to move, Roark gestured and opened an arm for me to take the first step.

I didn’t speak, merely followed the Dark Watch procession. What was there to say? Fate would never be on our side.

Better to end whatever had only just begun before more lives were lost.

2

Lyra

Briars and nettles blanketed the forest floor. Night settled over the trees like a satin shroud. Evening mists entwined the thick oaks and evergreens like claws slicing through the earth. A heavy chill in the air lifted the hair on my arms and caused each puff of breath to billow like a cloud in front of my lips.

I hugged my middle. My thoughts were too wild, too frenzied, to think of something so inconsequential as the cold.

Roark kept a steady pace. His knuckles had gone white from grasping the handle of his bearded ax with such ferocity. Any notion of comfort among his clan had faded.

As though he sensed my study, Roark looked my way. A shudder lined his breath when he turned my palm up. The gentle brush of his fingers against my skin spoke words only meant for me. I need you to remain close.

I winced but kept my voice low. “You were the one who settled away from me on the boat at the fjord.”

Roark closed his eyes for half a breath, then barreled on, almost frantic. I cannot let on to the depth of my feelings for you. Not here. Last I confessed feelings for a melder, blood was spilled and my voice was lost.

Damn the gods. He was playing a role, a vicious prince who brought the melder along as something more like a prize he’d won.

Signs of his unease were all at once clearer—the way his shoulders never relaxed, the way his eyes kept scanning the rows of warriors, waiting for attack. The way his breaths were sharp and uneven.

Roark Ashwood was silently reliving the horrors of his past.

And I hadn’t even noticed.

Unable to stop it, I felt a knot of anger tighten in my lower belly, sharp as broken glass. Anger for the raids that destroyed both our houses. Anger for a boy who’d done nothing but confess he felt something for a girl, then lost his soul for it.