Page 29

Fuck, I thought to myself. I had left the tiny king to bleed out, and I doubted he was still alive.

He would prove the same in death as he had in life.

Useless.

The prince could be right, though he would never be my equal.

“You always look like you’re in pain. Lyra spoke of saving you at your wedding, which seemed to anger you.” He paused, and I considered him in a new light. “When we left the Obsidian Castle, I noticed a small black vein on your chest that you tried to cover with your scabbard. But it pokes out now, like it’s festering.”

The pompous prick was more observant than I had cared to give him credit for.

I glanced down at my chest, a feeling a cold dread spreading through me at the black pulsating veins decaying under my skin.

He was right, they had spread.

“You’re dying. I just haven’t figured out why,” he finished with certainty.

The growl that left me was low and deliberate, the kind meant to warn before something worse followed.

Shadows curled at my feet, rising like smoke and withering with the need to attack.

Aldric lifted his hands, but he did not step back.

I could not decide if he was brave, or stupid.

“You can’t save her if you are dead,” he said slowly, as if I had not considered this.

My jaw tightened as my fingers flexed.

I could snap his neck before he finished his next breath. Feel the bone give beneath my hands.

Silence him. But I closed my eyes instead, drawing in a slow, deliberate breath.

I had spent years learning how to cage the monster I had been turned into.

A creature of rage and ruin. But I was more than that. And I would not kill Lyra’s brother because of some primal instinct clawing through my veins.

“I will get to her before it is too late,” I muttered, walking past him back into the tavern to wake Solas and Caelum.

I made it one step before I stopped. Pain seared through my chest. Through the bond. I caught myself against the doorframe, vision darkening.

I could feel her. Alive. But… different. Something else was coiled around her.

The darkness inside me recoiled, then surged, crushing the air from my lungs.

I could not place what it was.

I needed to get to the Fire Fates.

I needed fucking answers.

I turned to Aldric, who watched me wearily.

“Do not tell the others about this,” I growled, letting my voice distorted with pure darkness.

Something dark and broken settled into place inside me as I struggled to breathe.

Someone had their hands on my woman, and I would take them apart piece by piece for it.