Page 76

A small, garbled chuckle slid out. Skul Drek spun on me, eyes narrow, head tilted.

“Mockery.” Slowly, he peeled away from me and returned to studying the queen. “Princely brothers taunted he and we. Had to be shown how wrong were the words he spoke.”

“What else?” Elisabet pressed.

Another breath, another heartbeat, and the dark, shadowed features of Skul Drek appeared almost…wistful. “A fever’s rage and stolen cakes.”

“As a boy, Roark loved saffron cakes.” Elisabet’s chin quivered when she looked to me. “The frost of his eighth season he took ill, deathly so. Nivek snuck him a saffron cake every evening. When he recovered, Roark believed the cakes were what healed him and insisted we eat one at every evening meal for at least a full season more.”

My heart squeezed. Once, my husband’s life had been…peaceful. A time when he was not the Death Bringer, when he did not need to bend the knee to greedy kings. When he was merely Roark Ashwood.

An odd warmth flowed on a gust of breeze. The cracking walls seemed a little brighter. The new thread curled inward, as though something on a different end drew closer.

“Never could stomach the damn cakes after that season.”

Skul Drek’s eyes burned a cruel shade of red when his unyielding regard held tightly to a place in the shadows no more than ten paces away.

A man was there, draped in fading mists. Dozens of shimmering fibers and ribbons of connections rolled off him like the shadows rolled off Skul Drek.

His iridescent flesh was lined with the same gold of the souls in the mirror. Handsome features, bright, and a little sly. A sharp nose and jaw, with thin lips, but those eyes—gold and fierce like Roark’s.

His hands were clasped behind his back when he took a step forward. “I do hope it’s all been worth it, brother.” For a breath, he paused and looked down at me. “Seems it has.”

Nivek. The man who saved my life. He was here…or his soul was, at least.

My lips parted and closed, words dry as ash on my tongue. What could I say to adequately express anything to the one who’d sacrificed it all for a girl he did not know, a girl his younger brother insisted held his heart?

“Princely brothers,” Skul Drek said in a sort of hiss.

Nivek grinned. “As monstrous as ever. You always were a little terror. I wondered if you’d ever have the damn stones to summon me. I’ve missed our talks where you idolize every word I say.”

Skul Drek snapped his teeth in response.

This was…strange. Nivek seemed so alive yet hardly there. His voice was low and strong, yet all the while it echoed, as though we were hearing him in a dream.

“Mother.” Nivek beamed at Elisabet.

The queen had said nothing, but my chest cracked at the sight of her. Stalwart, formidable, but her brilliant cheeks were stained with a golden flush to hint that tears were spilling beyond the mirror.

Nivek reached out a palm and placed it against her cheek. Elisabet covered it with her own.

“I would do it again,” he said, voice low.

A sob split from her throat. She turned her face into his hand and pressed a kiss to her son’s gleaming palm.

“Who darkened your soul?” Skul Drek’s harsh voice cut through the sweetness of the moment. He glared at Nivek, not out of hate for the fallen prince, more like a building rage for those who’d killed him.

“I don’t know, or do not recall. Should you find whoever slit my throat, make it painful. There were those I was forced to part with much too soon.”

Two strings I’d not seen before, both tethered to his chest, pulsed in light. My throat tightened. Connection bonds, though one seemed to spread like the delicate web of my own bond with his brother.

“They darkened your soul for taking my melder?”

Nivek stared into the distance, a touch of whimsy on his face, before he faced us again. “I cannot say. I suppose it’s possible. But there is something that brings me to pause, a tale I’ve forgotten. Another reason for bloodshed, perhaps. Either way, I am glad my death was not for nothing.” Nivek looked at me again. “The melder. You stand with him, every part of him.”

“Yes.” I slid a palm around Skul Drek’s shadowed arm. Ribbons of cold slipped between my fingers like he was tangling his grip around my hand in return.

Nivek dipped his chin. “Good.”