Page 9

“Joy,” the mouse grumbled on my lap. As soon as Felicity had bounded off again, she turned her little beady eyes up at me. “Please save me.”

I snorted. “I think you’ll survive a friendship bracelet, Willa.”

“Not if it jingles. I can’t be jingling when I walk, Rayna. All my prey will hear me coming.”

“What prey? I still bring you all the cheese your heart could ever desire.”

Willa’s whiskers twitched. “It was a hypothetical.”

Snickering, I deposited her back onto my pillow and took the yellow fabric from Felicity with a soft thanks. I got dressed before Cilia could properly wake up and take note of my knives, dragging the sheath from my nightstand and strapping it around my thigh, shimmying into the redesigned dress, and letting Felicity braid the top half of my hair into a crown. The rest still fell in wild curls over the back of my neck, hiding the second brand marring my skin.

The heart does not falter.

At the thought of that Sorronian saying, I plucked my favorite piece of jewelry from my bedside table and draped it over my neck: the string of black pearls Coen had hand-picked and gifted to me one by one last year.

“Whoa.” Emelle gaped at my new outfit as soon as I was done while Felicity nodded with smug satisfaction.

I glanced down to find a comfortable, crisscrossed halter lifting my breasts while the bottom half hugged my hips snugly, cinching together in a tight V formation. A welcome change, to be honest, from the stuffy, constricting clothing I’d arrived at the Institute in and the modest dresses Dyonisia Reeve had thrown at me last year.

I felt free in this. Like I could run and climb and jump, if I had to.

Like I could fight.

“Felicity’s one talented designer,” Emelle said. “You look…”

“Sexy!” Cilia sat up blearily, her voice slurring slightly—hungover from some party last night, no doubt. “You look goddamned sexy, Rayna.” She pointed a finger at me. “And any guy would be lucky to have you. Or girl. Or whatever boat you want to float…” She slumped back down with a snore.

Emelle and I giggled at each other, but my subconscious stirred at the way my heart twinged in response to those words.

Because Coen wouldn’t ever see me in this dress with his own two eyes as long as the queen of Sorronia had him by the reins.

“He still won’t see you in person, then?” Emelle whispered ten minutes later, after we’d bade goodbye to Cilia, Felicity, and Willa, claiming that we were going to grab some breakfast. In reality, we were sneaking through the Wild Whisperer sector, heading for a very particular abandoned building in the back.

“No.” I side-stepped a cloud of butterflies hovering over a puddle of rainwater. “He’s still worried the oath will force him to kill me on the spot.”

Even saying that out loud made my fists curl against my will. Before Coen had told me about Queen Mydusia’s demands, I’d assumed I’d already hated her to my full potential. Now, my feelings toward the queen—my aunt by blood—bubbled in my very bone marrow. As if I could reach across the sea and smash a fist into her veiled face for implanting so much fear in Coen’s heart.

Emelle peered sideways at me, her face tight with concern.

“Are you worried he would… you know…” She glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Kill you on the spot?”

“No.” I shook my head firmly. Maybe the command would force him to eventually, if we couldn’t find a way to break his oath in time, but until that deadline… “Coen would never hurt me.”

I’d been telling Emelle about my secret relationship in bits and pieces whenever we had time alone, but no language in the world could properly convey Coen Steeler’s devotion to me.

Or my renewed devotion to him.

I loosed a deep breath as we crept up a narrow set of stone steps cracked with algae. I couldn’t be angry at him for drawing a boundary. If he didn’t feel comfortable seeing me in person, then I wouldn’t push him, even if I trusted him in a way he couldn’t seem to trust himself.

It just absolutely sucked that respecting his comfort levels meant no physical contact. I missed the skim of his callouses against my neck when he kissed me, the texture of him that our mind-to-mind interactions always seemed to smooth over: the slight stubble along his jaw, the creases that bunched up around his eyes of smoky quartz when he smiled at me.

But there was a much more pressing reason to help Coen break his oath.

Emelle and I stopped after we rounded a corner and came face-to-face with the old storage building door chipping with red paint, where Mr. Conine kept an array of animal enclosures he hadn’t touched in years.

Last year, it had served as a perfect place to trap Coen with sundew back when I’d thought he was my enemy. Now, it was a perfect place to hide something that nobody would accidentally stumble across.

“All clear?” Emelle whispered.