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How could it? I’d been stacking walls against any glimmer of fate, any hint of my Whisper that had guided my words for so long, since I’d watched Davorin slither away into the sea.
Now it felt as though I stood on a damn precipice, peering over two different ledges. One would lead me forward, a bold move that might keep my bleeding royals safe if I but dug into the call to something frightening, something dark inside me. The other was muddled in fear and inaction. A choice where I remained stagnate and let my existence continue to fade.
A feeling, sharp and harsh, took hold deep in my gut. I crunched the parchment in my hand, eyes closed. “I want to find what was lost. This bond of fate that is missing, show it to me if it will protect them. If it saves them.”
I didn’t know if the words meant anything, or if I simply looked a little mad standing by the gates of a burial ground, speaking to the darkness. In another heartbeat, hot blood rushed through my veins; it raced my pulse.
The wind carried a whisper, low and deep, and wrapped around me in a cold gust.Finally, the wait is at an end.
I shuddered. The air was musky and damp, almost heavy, but nothing had visibly changed. I hugged my middle as foreboding settled over my shoulders, bending my spine with the fear I might’ve caused something dreadful with my damn plea.
“Cal, you all right?” Cuyler crossed into the burial ground and came to my side.
I forced a smile. “Fine. Stefan was closed-lipped as usual.”
Cuyler smiled, but it was tight. He knew I mourned my brother, but like the others, he honored Annon as a fallen hero.
While they honored him each turn with ale and war tales, I cried myself to sleep.
“We ought to head back.” His pale eyes locked on the sky once more.
Emotions were thick in my throat, but I took time to study Cuyler. Almost commit him to memory.
As the heir of the blood court in the South, he had characteristics of the blood fae folk. Some were frightening with fangs or yellow eyes. Cuyler had neither. He was uniquely handsome. Dusky, golden hair braided off his face, and wavy down to his shoulders. Skin that looked like twilight. Gray hued, with a touch of bronze to color his cheeks. His eyes were pale as frosts with small pupils that never dilated, only constricted when his moods changed.
“What’s on my face?” Cuyler watched me with a furrowed stare.
Gods, I’d been gawking like a brainless sod. “Nothing.” I chuckled, praying to the skies that my face didn’t give up the heat in my cheeks. “I’m out of sorts tonight.”
He dipped his chin and rested a palm on the small of my back. “Let us get the lady home.”
“I’m not out of sorts enough not to stab you for addressing me so abhorrently.”
His laugh was deep and rolling, a sound I’d come to cherish. It meant life was easy; worries could rest for a moment.
A grin cut over my face; the levity distracted me enough my toe caught on a jutting root. I let out a shriek, spilling forward, but Cuyler caught me around the waist. This close, our noses nearly touched. I could see the small bristles of whiskers on his chin, the splatter of faint bronze freckles over his straight nose.
His small pupils tightened. “Um, all right, Cal?”
No, I bleeding wasn’t. His touch spurred something inside me. Phantoms danced in my skull, shadows of moments of some unknown memory. Moments of holding a rough hand with childish fingers. Of trying to keep up with lanky legs. Of laughing when a boyish voice cracked in pitchy squeaks from a changing tone.
Moments where I was safe, and my heart burned with . . . something.
Not moments of Cuyler, but his touch left me alight with the yearning to experience it again.
I swallowed. “I’m . . . fine. I’m just clumsy, Cuy. You ought to know by now.”
“True.”
Gods, his voice was a smooth rasp, dripping in a dark kind of desire.
Or was it someone else’s voice spinning in my mind? Bleeding hells, madness was taking hold. That was the only explanation. Ghosts and memories were transforming my guard, my friend, into something else. Like my heart was wildly seeking that touch, that presence I’d once had.
I was a bleeding fool, and my Raven Queen would mock me for days if she knew I was thinking these thoughts, if she knew heat was blooming in the lowest parts of my belly.
I’d warned her that whenever fated royals rolled into bed, wars began.
Here I was with a sky that looked like blood, some ghostly memories of a love I didn’t know, and all I could think of was some faceless man’s hands on my body. Cuyler would be utterly horrified if he knew the torment his innocent touch had unleashed.
