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“Don’t fuck this up, Carrion!” “I won’t!” He took up position next to me, adopting a readying stance, and I was struck with a flicker of surprise. The footwork was there. Almost. And when the ravening feeders fell upon us, he didn’t immediately die. Shocking.
“And the day you save me on a battlefield, I’ll put on a dress and dance a fucking jig.”
The universe could end and Carrion Swift wouldn’t have run out of questions.
Gods, I wanted to sweep her into my arms and hold her. I knew the slope of her shoulders so well. The way the fine wisps of her hair curled at her temples. I knew the hard defiance she wore on her like a shield, but I hadn’t met her grief yet. It was an unwelcome stranger I wanted to banish as soon as possible; its presence in the room made my chest ache.
“Healing is a small magic for me,” I whispered to him. “I guess it’s lucky for both of us that you’re small, too.”
“I didn’t know you could heal!” I shrugged. “I can’t now. Not anymore, anyway. It wasn’t much, but I gave him what I had.” Her joy faded a little. “But… if you have healing magic, shouldn’t it just replenish? Like it does for Te Léna?” Ruefully, I shook my head. “Some magics don’t work that way, Osha.”
There isn’t much I wouldn’t sacrifice to make you happy, Osha.
“Well, I suppose if no one else is going to say it, then I will. You look downright fuckable, Saeris Fane.”
By the large window, the last rays of sunlight burnished Taladaius’s silver hair and limned his features in gold. I could sense his emotions now. I was connected to him in a way that I didn’t enjoy. Sometimes, as dusk was falling, I would feel him wake on the other side of the palace, and his sadness would steal my breath away.
Taladaius stepped in, blocking my mate’s path before he reached the smuggler. They were of a height, the two males. Just as broad. Just as fearsome. They were similar in many ways. But where my mate was all darkness and quiet brooding, Taladaius was light, his mood often easier than it had any reason to be. There were counterweights, perhaps. Different sides to the same coin? But also different currencies. Vampire. Fae. Maker. Mate.
“She doesn’t need a garrote,” Taladaius objected. “It isn’t a garrote. It’s a belt,” Fisher replied amicably. In my head, he said, It’s a garrote. I tried not to laugh.
My name is Saeris Fane, and I am your queen.”
“The Hazrax’s magic is shrouded in mystery. No one here knows what it’s capable of… but whatever magic or power it showed to Malcolm scared him enough to allow it to stay.”
In those long, heady moments, I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t taking anything from him. That I was giving something to him instead.
I should have been more careful when I’d told her to drink. She couldn’t have known what would happen if she stilled with her canines inside me and didn’t drink,
She had to feed from him before they’d crown her,” Renfis said. “And she accidentally dosed him.”
Hearing that he’d spoken to Saeris about the blood trade at all made me want to turn feral and burn down the fucking war tent.
His grandfather was one of the last Alchemists. Foley knows more than anyone else about Alchemical magics and practices. Belikon burned all the Alchemists’ texts when he seized the crown. The few books that my father collected back at the library in Cahlish don’t explain much of anything at all. So that leaves the knowledge that exists in Foley’s head. If he won’t share that with her…” “Then Saeris will never be able to realize her full potential. We’ll never be able to destroy Ammontraíeth for good. And we’ll never be able to put an end to Belikon once and for all and stick Carrion Swift on
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“There’s only one person capable of something like this.” I shook my head. “Tal hasn’t sired any feeders.” “And you believe that simply because he told you so?” A sharpness rose in Ren’s voice.
the only time I had ever seen Renfis angry was because of Taladaius.
power was an addictive drug. It never surprised me, the terrible things a corrupt soul would do to garner more of it.
“You’re the one who brought him here. Now you have to tolerate his presence.”
Okay. I’ll take your word for it. And yes, I’ll come back there with you tonight. But on one condition. Kingfisher arched an eyebrow at me. Oh? Making demands, are we, Your Highness?
“From what I can recall, they normally come from Yvelia, right?” “Yes, of course,” Lorreth answered. “Well, these ones are from Zilvaren.”
Carrion rolled his eyes. He huffed as he made his way across the council chamber and reached out for my wrist— Kingfisher was suddenly there, angled in front of me. Surprisingly, his expression was blank. “Do you like having fingernails, Carrion?” he asked politely.
“She isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my mate,” Fisher said quite amicably. “And if any part of your body, literally any part of it, comes into contact with hers, then I will remove it.”
The mark, an X behind the female’s earlobe,
“The second clue that these feeders aren’t Yvelian is staring you right in the face,” Carrion said. My stomach rolled at the weightless, sick feeling that formed there. “Their ears.”
“This is intentional. This is Madra’s doing. This… is how the rot got here in the first place.”
The sleeves had been embroidered with green stitching, subtle, barely visible, depicting a pattern that, upon close inspection, turned out to be tiny leaping foxes.
“Far be it from me to come between a female and her fox.”
“Where’s the redhead?” “Who?” “The annoying male with witty comebacks.” “You think Carrion is funny?” Danya rolled her eyes. “Never mind.”
Carrion and Danya together would be the kind of living hell that I had no desire to experience firsthand—but
Since I’d splintered her sword into hundreds of shards, reforged it, and inadvertently gifted it to Lorreth, she’d been far from civil toward the other member of the Lupo Proelia.
Because I could smell him, too. Bruised herbs. Citrus. Smoke. Leather. Pine, and cold mountain air. And underneath it all, the maddening scent of him—the
“From now on, you are Lady of Cahlish.”
she wasn’t breathing through her mouth. Strangely enough, she seemed to be the only one who was inhaling deeply through her nose. Gross. She leaned across the table, angling her torso in Carrion’s direction. “From the smell of you, you must be ravenous.” Oh no. No, no, no. This wasn’t happening. Was she flirting with him?
“If they procreate, I’m banishing them from Cahlish. A combination of the two of them would probably tear open some sort of hell gate and suck the entire estate through it.”
“There isn’t going to be a wedding,” he said.
“We’re God-Bound. I’d say that trumps getting married, don’t you?”
“No. No, I don’t.” I answered quickly. Definitively. And it was the answer Fisher was looking for, which was why the look of relief on his face made sense… but not the flicker of disappointment that came after it.
“You know I would marry you,” he rushed out. “You must know that I want to.”
“I said there wouldn’t be a wedding. Because there can’t be, Saeris.”
“A Fae wedding ceremony is extremely sacred. It is the greatest commitment two lovers can undertake in Yvelia. Not because they swear to love and honor each other for all their days. Not because they give each other their hearts, either. It’s sacred because they give each other their names. Their true names. And I can give you everything else, Osha. But I can’t give you that.”
A person’s true name held power. With it, a person could control the other. They could command them to do whatever they pleased.
“I don’t know it,” he whispered. “I’ve never known it. We usually receive our true names on our fourteenth birthdays, and my mother—” He blinked. “Well, she died before I turned fourteen. And my father was already gone. So…”
“I love you, Fisher.” It was the first time I’d said it. “I love you, and nothing else matters beyond that. Wherever you are, I’ll beg the gods and all the fates to let me be there, too,” I whispered.
