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“Everything okay?”
Adrien jumped at Sebastian’s voice, and his shoulders relaxed, only slightly. He let out a hard breath, turning back and shaking his head as he rubbed that cool patch on his neck. “Yeah. I just, uh, thought I heard something.”
CHAPTER14
RAANA
Raana felt Adrien before she saw him.
The sensation came in a whoosh, a hit of something like the wind that spawned gooseflesh on her skin and wrenched the breath from her lungs. She’d spun from where she’d been working on a mask at a vendor’s stall, eyes furiously scanning the crowd for the source of what may as well have been a siren’s song for the pull she felt towards it. It would’ve been wiser to stay put, not to leave Nerissa’s soldier—the same one that had carried her through the Wilds that day—that she’d come on this mission with alone, but she couldn’t stop herself from following the call, her newly confined shadows whispering wildly in her ear as she sifted through the masses, her face hidden beneath her hood.
The crowd had crested and crashed like waves along a rocky coast, and when the sea parted…there he was.
She didn’t know what to do with her hands, with her entire being, as she took him in, observing him as if he somehow would’ve changed this past week. Raven-black hair, golden-green eyes, and a powerfully built body that moved through the crowd with effortless regality.
He was okay. Still alive. Still breathing.
The wash of relief, sorrow, and rage threatened to drown her where she stood. He wasn’t supposed to be here for the coronation because of some bogus politics. At least, that’s what he’d told her back in Callisto, but something must’ve changed. Maybe he’d finally stood up to his father…or maybe he’d been banished by him.
No. That would be too improbable—and too easy. The wretched asshole he was, she imagined if it came down to it, if Cassius found Adrien more trouble than he was worth, he might see him as moreexpendable.
With that thought, blinding hot ire poured into her veins like molten oar, and she watched as, on his next pace, Adrien paused. She stiffened, heeding a step as the prince turned his head…in the wrong direction.
Thank the Mother.
She realized now that he wasn’t alone. A blond man, whom she recognized as Sebastian, Isla’s brother and Adrien’s friend, came up behind the prince, scanning the crowd, too. Raana took Adrien’s distraction to fall back, ducking her head deeper into her hood, not noticing the tears that had been welling in her eyes until she felt the wetness drip down the slope of her nose, the million apologies she owed him dead on her tongue.
For once, she craved the comfort of her shadows, wishing they would wrap her up and sweep her away from here.
She never thought she’d see him again, and more painful than anything was that for one fluttering heartbeat, seeing him, forgetting everything that had happened, left room for hope to bloom. It gave her a second to remember, to feel what being with him was like. Every touch, every laugh, every quiet moment of understanding.
The only person who had never abandoned her…
When Raana reached the vendor, Nerissa’s soldier had barely moved an inch, earning a hairy stare from the man working the booth, so she did her best to keep her voice cheerful. “We need to go.”
“Too much to drink?” the vendor asked her, his salt-and-pepper mustache twitching as he grinned and subtly gestured towards her companion.
Raana forced a smile and an endearing look towards her counterpart. “Maybe a little.”
She looped an arm through the soldier’s, the muscles of his arm tensing beneath her touch.
Alwaystense. Always alert. Always…under this spell.
Shame chomped at her insides as she waited for a knife to the ribs for handling him like this that blessedly never came. The two of them would need to play this part when necessary. At least, somehow, he seemed to understand it. Had understood everything, really, as they moved through shadows and forests until they finally arrived at the royal city when the festivities were in full swing, small chants and songs of Isla’s name flitting through the crowd before something about fires and blessings and a great reign.
“Lighten up, friend. It’s the Equinox! The winds are changing, our alpha won his challenge, and we have a new queen, his fated, Goddess-chosen.” He lifted a hand towards Raana. “And you have a beautiful woman on your arm.”
The soldier’s face didn’t waver, and Raana again plastered on that smile, flashing a demure look at the flattery, willing away the heat to her cheeks at it. “Don’t mind him.” She reached for the masks she’d been decorating, frowning at the jewels that had gone off-kilter on the brow bone because she’d used too little glue.
“You should let them dry,” the vendor said, a roll of thunder punctuating the words.
Raana ignored him, lifting her head with raised brows as she took in the sky. The light of the stars wheeled and shifted. Constellations illuminating, dimming…forming?
She squinted, pain lashing across her forehead as her hidden shadows’ whispers caressed her ears, and she could’ve sworn the velvet blanket above pulsed.
“Another night of rain.” The vendor’s lament wasn’t enough to get her to tear her gaze from the sky. “I can’t remember the last time we seen so many storms. Can you?”
Pressure, undeniable, skin-bursting pressure built from her toes, up her legs, back, neck, and head, with the tips of her fingers tingling.
