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“Stop grinding your teeth, the sound’s driving me up the walls,” Sebian hissed, his hair tied into a crooked topknot, his white shirt wrinkled, his face carrying black stubbles a few days old—probably as many as she’d been gone now.
Our heads turned toward the door, where Asker shoved himself through the narrow gap, his face a strange mix between pale exhaustion and attentive exhilaration. “Forgive the del—”
“Close the door,” Sebian and I said in unison, making my gaze catch with his before he added, “She starts shivering at the slightest draft.”
Precisely.
My gaze dropped lower, to Galantia’sanoa, casting a shadow over my chest. She’d fallen to sleep in his arms. Again. Well, wasn’t she comfortable with him? Sebian… so tender, so caring, so gentle, so everything I was not, because all I had was darkness, always darkness, so much fucking darkness I wanted to suffocate him—
Control them!
I breathed in. I breathed out.
That Galantia had developed affection for Sebian, I’d been aware of. In fact, I’d made good use of it, hadn’t I? Another chuckle that had Sebian and Asker looking at me with raised brows, as if my last thread of sanity was about to snap.
Maybe it was.
And what about Sebian’s heart, hmm?
Had I expected him to be pissed with how I’d blindsided him? Yes. But not to a degree that would lay absolute ruin to our friendship with bruises, cuts, and blood. What if she was more to him than a fleeting obsession, like I’d first assumed? More than a temporary distraction to soothe the torment of his past mistakes? What if he was… in love?
With. My. Mate.
I clenched my fist around the armrest of my chair, feeling the sting of splinters against my skin. In my own way, I loved Sebian like a brother, so naturally, I wanted him to make peace with the past and find happiness. That he might just do so with the woman destined for me, well… I didn’t know what to do with that at all.
Supporting it felt wrong.
Fighting it felt… wrong, because was this not the kindest outcome for the woman I was honor-bound to care for, to protect—even if it meant protecting her from me.
“The healer gave Marla a concoction, so she is finally asleep,” Asker said and closed the door. “In a few days’ time, she ought to be over her cough.”
I gave a curt nod. “Tidestone?”
“The returning pathfinders all report the same: they are aware of our upcoming attack and preparing for a siege.”
“Galantia must have informed them.” Why, I couldn’t say—not that I’d given her much reasonnotto betray my plans, but it was a minor inconvenience. “It matters not. Our attack is too far advanced for Brisden to withstand it. With Marla by your side once more, Tidestone will be ours.”
Sebian scoffed before his green gaze turned to Asker. “Not before I get Galantia out of there. Now that we know she truly is at Tidestone, I’ll fly tonight.”
Myanoaruffled his feathers at my core over how he wedged himself into my plans. “Your unkindness cannot brace the winds there. If anything, your ravens might endanger her at the first breeze, sending your unkindness into the line of sight of Tidestone archers.”
“Endanger?” A pound of his fist against his sternum. “It wasIwho kept her safe.” A stab of his finger in my direction. “Youdrove her to Tidestone in the first place. And if you show up there? She’ll refuse to leave all the harder, just to make a fucking point. And then what happens during the siege, hmm?”
“Should it come to that, then she will sit the siege out somewhere safe. If she managed to endure…”me,“her time here, then she can most definitely endure the commotion of it in the dungeons or even down at the bay.”
“Or in short, you know as well as I do that she won’t come with you,” Sebian said with an exaggerated laugh that made me want to choke it with my shadows.
I begrudgingly turned my attention to Asker. “Was Marla able to give you the information I asked for?”
Sebian gave me a stabbing side glance that not even my periphery could rob of its sharpness. “What information?”
“Accurately enough,” Asker said and strode closer. “I managed to narrow it down to two chambers, both windows facing the way as some of the visions had showed her.”
“What information?” Sebian asked again, this time with more bite in his voice, making it clear he now trusted me as much as a crow in a jewelers’ market.
“The location of Galantia’s chamber. I was already planning to leave for Tidestone.” Not to bond, no. Merely to ensure she wouldn’t end up dead beneath a broken catapult tower. She was my mate, after all. “One unkindness should go unnoticed if I approach from the ocean during the night. Their attention is entirely on Taradur for now, anyway, who is quickly approaching from the opposite side.”
“Oh, really?” Sebian asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Who’s going to stand-in for you at your wedding with Cici, hmm? Isn’t that coming up?”
