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I squinted up at the sky. “So, I go back to the slave barracks and wait?”
Zor’s mouth tightened. “No, you go back to the barracks and hide.”
I laughed. “Bullshite to that. Solok’s gone, we’re about to be used by the Oracle as her scapegoats, and you expect me to hide?”
“Anaria used her magic on you, Raz.” Zor’s face turned harder. “All of us were touched by her power when she fought Solok, but you…she saved your life, by putting her magic directly into you.”
That little warning bell began ringing louder.
“She marked you, mate.” Zor kept his voice down, both of us focused on Anaria, panting heavily as the healer’s magic surrounded her in a wash of white light.
“What?’ I swung my full attention to Zor. “Marked me how?”
“Nothing anyone else will notice, except your nearest, dearest friends.” Tristan walked away, kicked a pile of ashes in the middle of the clearing, then stooped over and picked up an iron arrow point, blowing off the dust.
I reached up and touched my face just below my right eye, found a raised spot. “Here?”
“Black as Solok’s soul, may he rot in the Great Beyond.”
“What about you?” I looked over at my old friend, who turned his arm, palm up. There, on his wrist, was a tiny speck of black, the size of a pea.
“My guess is, Tavion’s got something similar.”
I narrowed my eyes on where the fucker’s hand rested on the small of Anaria’s back and climbed to my feet, not giving two shite’s how fast the world spun.
I was on my feet and that was my fucking female and if Tavion Montgomery wanted to keep his fucking hands attached to his body, he’d better keep them off Anaria.
61
TAVION
The royal guards eyed me cautiously as I stood my ground, taking stock of the extra security measures, how everyone kept their heads down, the heavy pall of dread that hung over the Keep like a death shroud.
The dull shriek from inside the throne room meant another victim had lost their head, either Lyrae or Crux performing the execution. It mattered not which, they were both monsters, serving an even bigger monster.
I was only here to keep up the ruse we’d begun last night, waiting to escort my wife to the Shadow King’s depraved audience as expected, because I was, technically, the king’s son in law.
The idea made me violent. But I had bigger problems to solve, starting with Anaria.
I took too long to forgive her for Julian, when I should have been on my knees begging her forgiveness the entire time. Solok had used her. Solok hadhurther and I’d played a part in that. I rubbed my chest, trying to erase the ache that was always there, whenever I thought of her.
Which was all the damned time.
She’d been innocent all along.
And because of my blind rage, because of my arrogance and stupidity, the thought had never occurred to me.
After losing Julian, I had hated Anaria with a focused, savage intensity that I had never fully understood. I had clung to that hatred, thinking rage somehow kept my brother’s memory alive, that somehow, I could avenge his death by punishing the girl who took his life so callously.
That once I punished her, this sense of constant failure—of never being good enough—would finally ease off.
Because I was the one who’d failed Julian.
Failed him at every turn, resisted his efforts to involve me in his quest to build a new world, even mocked his efforts, when that prophecy—even though it was a lie—had meant everything to him. Then I’d turned my back on him when he’d needed me most.
I’d never lived up to my brother’s ideals.
Everyone knew it. The king. Solok. Raziel. I was always the lesser Montgomery, the gambler,the failure. And somewhere along the line, I’d stopped trying.
