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Not only that, she’d hidden this from me.
From all of us. I didn’t even know what to do with that. Not a betrayal, not exactly. But something close. At least, my aching heart thought so.
“I never want anything to happen to you. You are my whole life, Anaria.” I blew out a shaky breath of my own. “Just, next time…next time tell me, all right? If something feels off to you, if you find something like this, no matter the circumstances.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me. I heard a voice. In my head.” She shrugged helplessly. “I had afeelingsomething was in that room. You would have thought I was imagining things.Ithought I was imagining things.”
I got down on my knees in front of her, this beautiful, perfect woman who owned my fucking heart. “Your word is gold to me. You say something’s wrong, it’s wrong. I’ll always believe you.Always. Every single time, Anaria. No questions, every fucking time, I’ll believeyou.” She nodded, her eyes shining with tears.
I tipped her trembling chin up and kissed her wet cheeks. Kissed her until we were both breathless, until her eyes were filled with something other than sadness.
I held her against me, breathing in her delicious scent. “When this is over, Anaria, we are going far away from this fucking place. Across the ocean. Somewhere we can start a new life.”
She shuddered, but her arms wrapped around me. “That sounds like a nice dream, Raz. Where were you thinking?”
I buried my face in her hair, drank her floral scent down like a dying male. “I’ve heard there are islands where the water is so clear you can see all the way to the bottom. Sand so white the glare will blind you.”
“Let’s go there, then.” Her voice was so quiet, so filled with exhaustion it broke my damn heart. “Far away from here. Far away from this war. From all this ugliness.”
Tavion was right, though I hated to admit it.
She needed sleep and food and a good month without touching her magic. She was fierce and brave and clever, yet wholly unused to knowing how much power to expend and how much to keep in reserve.
I’d seen enough Fae burn out to know how close she’d come.
“So this was in the Wynters’ headboard.” She nodded slowly, her eyes drifting over to the stone, her pale green pupils dilating every time she locked onto it. Another wave of fear shuddered through me. She was already bound to the stone’s magic.
I didn’t know much about keystones, but their nasty magic was notorious for ensnaring people. And once it did, sometimes the only thing that would free you was death.
“Behind the dragon’s eye,” I urged gently. If we ever went back, the first thing I was going to do was search that fucking room from top to bottom for traps and clues and figure out who lured her in there.
And why.
We were in uncharted territory, surrounded by ancient magic I didn’t understand and plots I couldn’t see.
Gods, Anaria was already marked by the Fae King’s magic—she didn’t need some magical relic to lay claim to her soul.
That black crackle of freshly struck lightning down her side was bigger than anything I could have ever imagined. Touching the raised, black flesh had sent a reciprocal shiver of power straight to my heart, and I didn’t know what to make of that, either.
Except we were all in deep, deep shite.
She seemed to come back into herself, her eyes turning back to pale green. “I smelled Torin’s scent in the Wynter Palace.” She shook her head, like she was in a daze, and a little of the fog lifted from her eyes.
“No, something happened, even before that.” Silence ticked by as she sorted through her thoughts. I didn’t interrupt, giving her time to replay what must have been a scary experience.
“When I stepped inside, I wondered if I’d been there before. The palace felt familiar in my heart, in my soul, even though that sounds…dramatic. The foyer…smelled like home, but I couldn’t figure out why since I’d never been there before.”
Behind us, Adele shifted on her cot, letting out a small moan when she rolled onto her side.
Anaria dropped her voice. “I smelled the Wynters. Blood and fear, plus some older scents from a decade ago. Tavion’s was one of them.”
“The old spider alluded to that with her taunt about tricking Tavion into killing the Wynters. Who else did you scent?” I prodded, watching her hand convulsively reach for the stone.
“Torin. She smelled like lilies.” Her breathing picked up. “Her scent grew stronger upstairs. I followed the smell into the room across the hall from ours, like I was being drawn there by some unseen force. All I know is, I couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d tried.”
She let out a brittle laugh. “But that’s nothing new. The magic has always been like that for me. Something I was inexplicably drawn to, even though such power could kill me.” She jerked her head towards my hand. “The stone is like that, isn’t it?”
“They can be,” I hedged. “But keep going. You followed the scent into the room. How did you know this was hidden in the bed? There was a secret compartment, I am assuming?”
