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“I can do even better if you deign to open your pretty eyes, Ayna.” His voice pours over my face like sugared mint as I lean toward him on instinct, even when my chest tightens at the thought of what allowing him closer to my heart means. He’s become a need rather than a nuisance. A wildfire in my veins whenever I watch him enter a room, wings casually at his sides and the lines of that chiseled chest hardened by the shadows the fairy lights cast in the dim rooms of the palace.
It’s no different this time. My breath catches in my throat when I open my eyes to find his face inches from mine. Guardians, I want him. I want to pick up right where we left off almost a week ago, want to devour him like hedevouredme, until we’re both sweat-slick and ready to forget there is a past or a future. Until there is only us. I try not to dwell on how much my chest is aching to dive back into that night and damn the consequences.
“Clio sent a message that she’ll be early for training today,” he says instead of one of the hundreds of things he could say to ignite me like a torch.
When he draws back so I can see all of his face, he delivers a half-wicked, half-apologetic smile that tells me he has plenty of ways in mind to make up for what he can’t do right here, right now. As do I.
Naturally, I keep my mouth shut. If I speak even one word of what I feel for him, how far I’ve fallen into the bottomless depth that is Myron, the Valiant, I’ll never come up above the surface again. And I can’t go there. Not after the attack.
I shove down the need to wind my arm around his neck and pull him in for a kiss. “Good. I was practicing anyway.”
Both our gazes follow the wet trail on the floor to where it disappears behind the bathroom door, and I can’t help but flinch as he smiles, all amusement and nothing of the brooding Crow I first met. “Apparently, I’m exceptional at distracting you,” he growls, black fire flaring in his eyes, even when he averts his gaze so fast I almost miss it. “Perhaps I should let you train alone with the fairy princess today.”
I must have misheard. “You’d trust her not to try to kill me?”
A crooked brow is all the reaction I get from Myron as he takes my hand between his—the one which now wields water when it’s too weak to properly wield any other weapon.
“You do?”
“When it comes to your safety, I trust no one, Wolayna,” he tells me as if it’s a confession. Only when he continues do I understand, “Not even myself.”
“You trust Royad,” I name the one male whose loyalty he’s never questioned.
Myron dips his chin. “I do. But I’d rather be the one to measure my pace to match yours when you walk the hallways. I’d rather be the one wrapped in your scent from staying a step closer at your side than I’m needed, as I’d rather be the one the other Crows envy for the beautiful bride the gods gifted me this year.”
The way his voice turns into a near growl, his gaze predatory… It makes a shiver run down my spine. This is no longer the king escorting his bride in a ruse to make his court believe it’s an actual marriage. It’s a male who expresses a certain claim that I’m not sure I understand.
As if reading the questions from my eyes, he shakes his head. “You alone, Ayna,” he whispers, and the shiver turns into a full-on shudder that has nothing to do with the slight draft from the open window. “You alone hold the power to save us or destroy us. And I won’t miss a heartbeat of my own demise.”
His words follow us into the hallway as he escorts me down the flights of stairs to the level below the throne room, but I don’t have a breath in me to ask what he means because I already know. He gave up any new chances of someone breaking the curse. It’s me or no one who’ll save them. There are no other meanings to it than that, and I don’t dare ask how I can actually break that Guardiansforsaken curse because I don’t want him on the brink of death all over again. So, our boots and the swish of his wings are the only sounds as we cross into the dim corridor whose carved walls I know by heart by now.
When we arrive at the training room, Clio is already there, skating over a frozen puddle of ice on her boots like it’s an art form.
“Hello, Crow Queen,” she chirps as she spins at the edge where ice meets stone, and if I could tear my eyes off the surreal picture, I’m sure I’d find Myron rolling his eyes beside me.
“Hello, Fairy Princess.” I slide out of Myron’s arm, already missing his warmth as I enter the windowless room, calling for my magic to draw upon the frozen water.
Unlike all the other times, Myron doesn’t follow me deep into the room but remains by the door he closes with a flick of his fingers. There, he folds his wings over his chest, the feathers streaming down his front and sides in a silken layer of black while his features turn into those of a bird.
I don’t know why the image startles me. Perhaps, it’s because I haven’t seen the monster in him since the day of the attack, or the night that followed. Perhaps, between focusing on my magic and denying that I’m slowly falling for him, my mind has shut out the fact that he is still stuck in his Crow form. I wouldn’t be surprised if he took the opportunity to both scare the shit out of the fairy and to remind me that he isn’t the good male I’d like to see in him.
But I’m not stupid or naive. I remember the words he spoke to me after our wedding.
I’m not a good king, and I never will be. Just as I’m not a good male.
I remember that he has tortured the Crows who chased me through the Seeing Forest just as I know he’s interrogating the suspected traitors in the dungeons every day. He hasn’t shared what news he’s found, only that Royad is helping to track down what few Crows got away. Apparently, some did, and those weren’t exactly on the Crow King’s side. Wherever they fled to, it must be a good hideout, or Myron and Royad would have tracked them down.
Perhaps it’s even out of the Seeing Forest. It wouldn’t be the first time a Crow got out, or the half-Crows wouldn’t exist.
I don’t get to ponder the whereabouts of traitorous Crows before Clio stops in front of me, her copper braid flying over her shoulder as she whips her head to the side to release the water on the floor from her ice magic. “Show me what you’ve learned since the last time I saw you,” she challenges with a familiar grin.
And I draw upon my magic and let it rise in a wall fueled by the thought of how easily all this could slip away—this palace, the friendships I’ve forged between shadows, wings, and claws, the sort-of truce I have even with the fairy female before me. But most of all, Myron, whose presence behind me prickles my skin like a physical touch even when he’s standing several feet away. Myron, who has come to mean all too much to me, and for whom I’d bleed if I can’t get the water to fight for me.
It strikes me like lightning then, what I’ve read about the magic of humans protecting their realms from fairies of all sorts by bleeding onto Askarean soil to bind them. Blood holds a magic of its own, and if it could trap an entire people once, perhaps it could set another one free.
Clio smirks at me through the thin layer of wet—and, with a wave of her hand, turns it back into ice and shatters it with a flick of her fingers.
Thirty-Seven
