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I looked down at the floor beside my bed. There, in a makeshift camp of down and cotton, surrounded by a collection of small pillows seemingly gathered from all around the castle, lay Sebian. He’d spread about his limbs in a manner that appeared anything but comfortable, strewn haphazardly over the wrinkled blankets—a testament to a night of restless sleep, as was the ashen tone of his usually tan skin.
“He, too, insisted on staying with you, not once leaving your side.” Marla slowly walked around my bed, only to squat beside him. “Time will tell why fate wove him into your life as strongly as she did.” She gently shook him by the shoulder. “Sebian. She is awake.”
Sebian stirred, his sleep-heavy limbs pushing him up to sit. His emerald eyes locked with mine, and he smiled a genuine, heartwarming smile that sent a flutter through my insides. Gods, I’d missed seeing it.
Marla rose and turned toward the door. “I will find Prince Malyr and let him know you woke.”
“He eyed the door to the dungeons earlier,” Sebian said. “If he’s not up here, maybe you’ll find him down there.”
Marla shook her head. “I hope not, for I would worry about the state I might find him in.”
Sebian waited until she left my room before he rose and sat on the edge of my bed, his narrowed gaze undoubtedly assessing the wound on my head. “How you feeling, sweetheart? Got a headache? Nausea?”
I reached for his stubble, loving the way it gently scratched over my palm. “Just sore. Thank you for getting me out.”
“I wish I could take all the credit, but, um… we wouldn’t have found you without Malyr.” His smile faded, quickly replaced with a heavy seriousness. “You scared the shit out of me, sweet thing. Both of us.”
“Lord Brisden found out I’m a Raven and sent the house guards after me,” I explained. “I tried to get out of Tidestone before they’d catch me, but then the entire tower just… crumbled on top of me.”
“Yeah, one of the ballistas went off prematurely when a rope somehow caught fire without anybody noticing quickly enough and burned through.” He brushed a stray lock of hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear, his touch lingering, as if he was gathering the strength to speak. “Look, I had a lot of time to think after you fled Deepmarsh. I should have told you that I bonded myself six years ago.” His throat bobbed. “I should have told you about my fated mate instead of leaving you unkissed, unknowing about what held me back. For that, I’m sorry.”
Despite the weight of his words and the sorrow in his tone, something light came over my chest at his earnest apology. “Will you tell me about her now?”
He stared at me for long moments, his face an ever-changing canvas of emotions, before he nodded and waved me to him. “Come here.”
He eased himself down onto the bed, the straw crunching beneath his weight. Extending his arm, he invited me into the familiar hollow of his side, his features softening as I gingerly shifted against him.
My head easily found its way to that spot on his chest where I’d fallen asleep and awoken countless times, all tension falling away from my muscles. The solid plane of his body, the warmth radiating from it, the faint scent of leather clinging to his shirt… everything felt so wonderfully familiar, so soothingly safe.
I let out a soft sigh, easing into the solace that only Sebian offered. “What was her name?”
“Ravenna.”
I’d heard that name before. “Asker’s and Marla’s daughter?”
“Uh-huh.”
That explained the tension between him and Asker, the coldness that cast over them whenever they were in each other’s presence. “What did she look like?”
“Mmm, let’s see.” His arm settled on the small of my back, thumb drawing circles up along my spine. “Well, she um… she had black hair.” When I gave a playful nudge at his chest, he chuckled, making my head bounce as the deep sound rumbled beneath me. I’d missed that, too, terribly. “She was a tiny thing. Barely reached my chest, but goddess forbid something piss her off, because I could hear her bickering over miles.”
“Was she a fate?”
“No, a weaver. Every night, she um… she created a fine web of shadows around me, muffling out the sounds and smells. To this day, I still have some of her salted spells.”
“They help you rest your senses.”
“Mm-hmm.” He nuzzled the top of my head, inhaled, then gently moaned, as if he enjoyed my scent as much as I loved his. “She was a little older than me. It was she who found me when I tried to nurse Malyr and Lorn back to health in my family’s hut. She’d grown up in the palace, so she recognized him.”
“That’s how Asker reunited with Malyr.”
“Exactly. Hmm… what else?” He thought for a second. “Ravenna laughed a lot, and I enjoyed making it that way. There was still so much more to discover about her, but I never got around to it. We… we’d been bonded for less than a year when she died.”
Forcing a swallow down my dry throat, I reached up, my fingers light brushing against the area over his heart. “Malyr told me your unkindness was attacked on your way to the camp, making you miss your watch.”
“It had to be a great owl with how it knocked my primal unconscious, making me shift and just… drop out of the sky.” The brush of his fingertips slowed, his chest lifting high before it stuttered through the exhale. “When I woke, I was dizzy, disoriented, with a terrible pain in my chest. I soared through the night and straight to the camp, but when I got there… when I spotted Prince Domren where he stood behind my bent-over sister—”
When another stuttering exhale whispered noisily past his lips, I curled my fingers into his chest, holding on to him tighter. “If you’d rather not—”
