Page 38 of Of Iron and Moonlight

The duke had not followed her when she fled, but the conflict was plain on his face: her going alone was unsafe, yet to leave the rite himself would be a public affront. With their captain absent, there was no clean solution.

“If Your Grace permits,” Gavriel added. “I daresay I am, by now, a most qualified guide.”

Lemierre nodded, though the motion seemed strained.

Gavriel found her by a ledge overlooking Selenar. Her green eyes wandered, uncertain where to rest, and her raven-dark hair spilled loose down her back, strands shifting as though they too could not decide where to settle. He realized, almost absently, that she was a beautiful woman. There was nothing predatory in it, as he had grown used to among the fae. It was a quiet beauty, rooted in a strangeness she carried well but seemed wholly unaware of.

At first, they stood in silence. Gavriel sensed she needed it. Time to gather herself after what she had witnessed. He took the moment to watch Selenar’s violet lights glittering below, easily visible from the garden’s dimness. The torches had not yet been relit after the rite; a great brazier towered beside them, cold but heavy with the promise of flame.

“She despises it,” the duchess said at last.

There was no need to ask whom she meant. Though the High Priestess wore serenity like a second skin, her eyes betrayed her. They gleamed not with reverence but with hatred. “She has no choice,” Gavriel replied, tone dark. He held no fondness for Astriyed, no trust for reasons of his own. But in this he felt something close to kinship. To be stripped of choice, to have one’s body claimed in another’s name, was a cruelty he knew too well. “It’s no consolation, but the fae do consider her position one of the highest honors.”

The words did not comfort the duchess, though she did not protest. She began to walk, her silence grave but not flustered. Gavriel matched her pace, saying no more, allowing her another moment to parse through her thoughts.

“How do you fare here?” she asked suddenly.

The concern in her eyes, the genuine care, struck him more deeply than he expected. “I fare as I must, Your Grace,” Gavriel said with a small smile. Thin, but all he had to offer. “I have little choice in the matter.”

“You seem to endure it so well,” she said, gaze drifting toward the shadowed ridges of the Niverna peaks across the lake. “Being surrounded by such coldness. Being different.” Somehow, he knew she was not speaking of frost.

“They are more like us than you would think,” Gavriel replied. “They quarrel over borders. They remember grudges the way old dogs remember a warm stone. They fall in love with the wrong people.” He exhaled. “They are harder to kill and easier to bore. That is all.”

He wanted to say more. To tell her how the years had hollowed him. How he longed for the relief of being known without that knowledge becoming a death sentence. How he carried, too, a lifetime of hurt that could not be untangled in a single walk through a garden.

“Perhaps that is a good way of seeing it,” she said softly. “Regardless, I admire your endurance. I know what it is to live too long without affection, with no clear route of escape.”

Gavriel lifted his brows slightly, caught off guard by her candor. “The duke—”

Her eyes widened, and she shook her head once. “Forgive me, I’ve said too much.”

Gavriel pressed his lips together. Lemierre seemed like a decent man, though Gavriel knew decency did not preclude loneliness. Yet something in her words suggested a sense of exile older than her marriage, a wound carried long before she set foot in Norrelia. It tugged at something in his chest.

“To hope merely to belong,” he began, then paused, reconsidering his words. “That’s not enough. I hope you find a place that does more than tolerate you. One that celebrates you, Your Grace.”

She smiled faintly.

His chest tightened more fiercely.

“Please, the title still feels strange.” She hesitated, then added, “Call me Kora.”

The request struck him as the most natural thing, as though he had always known her name.

“Kora,” Gavriel repeated with a warm smile. Unfortunately, that was all he could do. For what name could he offer in return that would not endanger them both?

They resumed walking, the silence companionable. Gavriel became aware, then, that he would need to be careful of that ease when the duke was present.

As they drew near one of the temples, the air began to hum along his skin—cold, salted, like it belonged to a sea long vanished. The distinct specter of wards he could now sense without trying. He was too absorbed in the feeling to notice that Kora had stepped across the threshold.

Gavriel reached out to stop her, then froze. The ward had not barred her as it should have. Instead, he saw her features blur, then sharpen. Her cheekbones lifted, her green eyes flared with an ethereal intensity, and her ears drew into a delicate point. Subtle, but unmistakable.

Kora caught the shock in his face and leapt back onto the path. The shift fell away instantly, replaced by fear flashing across her expression. Confusion hung between them, palpable, almost suffocating.

Gavriel’s voice broke, reaching for the words. “How did—”

“Your Grace.”

The brown-haired captain appeared as suddenly as a shadow cast by a flaring lamp. His hand came to rest lightly on Kora’s sleeve, his body angling between her and Gavriel. “I’ve been asked to escort you to the feast,” he said, giving Gavriel a wary look.