“I mean, Princess, pardon my intrusion, I just— Have you— I thought you’d want to hear the news.”
“What news?” Cassi asked, a wary edge still on her voice.
Xander spun in her direction, surprised by her presence. Then he shrugged, switching his attention between them. “It’s all everyone has been talking about all morning. Four of the injured children we visited yesterday, a boy and three girls, they’re all— Well, somehow, they’re healed!”
Lyana didn’t need to meet Cassi’s glare to feel every suspicious, accusing prick in it. The left side of her body tingled with heat. She kept her eyes locked on Xander, feeding off his energy instead of her friend’s because at the moment, his emotions matched hers. “Really? Xander, how? It’s a miracle.”
“No one knows,” he explained with a shake of his head as words eluded him. “The people are saying it was a gift from the gods to thank us for our devotion. Someone claimed to have seen a cloaked figure pass beneath one of the spirit gates last night—they’re saying it was Taetanos himself.”
Lyana bit her lips to keep from squealing.
“Thank the gods,” Cassi drawled.
Lyana ached to throw a pillow at her face, but she restrained herself…barely.
“Thank the gods, indeed,” Xander said, not noticing the sarcastic undertone of Cassi’s statement. He was pure of heart, and Cassi, well, wasn’t. But that was one of the reasons Lyana loved her. “I’d like to think that maybe…” Xander mumbled with glowing eyes, reaching out to hold her fingers. “Thank you for coming with me to say the blessings yesterday. I think, maybe, it did something. Maybe, somehow, we helped.”
“We did,” Lyana said, squeezing back.
The words were true. If Xander hadn’t taken her out into the city yesterday, she would have never even conceived the idea in the first place. Would have never known where to go or which steps to make. This was all because of him, because he’d taken the time to include her, and she was grateful. But not so grateful that she was ready to tell him the truth.
She released his hand.
He took a hasty step back and cleared his throat.
“Well, anyway, you missed breakfast, so I wanted to come and tell you the news myself.” He paused to eye the leg which clearly caused her no pain or hardship, then looked up with a charming wink. “I’ll tell my mother you require a day of rest to recover from your wounds. Shall I come back to escort you to dinner?”
“Please do,” she murmured.
He left with another bow. Lyana winced when the door clicked closed.
Three, two, one—
“What were you thinking?” Cassi hissed, charging toward her the way Lyana imagined bears in the great plains of the House of Prey might charge toward a rabbit. But she was no rabbit.
“I wasn’t thinking,” Lyana countered, turning to meet her friend head-on. “I was acting, I was doing, and it was amazing, Cassi. If only you’d been there to see, you’d understand. But I didn’t want to risk getting you into trouble.”
“Since when?”
Lyana sighed. “Since we’re in a foreign house and trouble here might have real consequences, unlike back home when I knew I could talk our way out of any punishment my father might have threatened.”
Tension left Cassi’s muscles. Her shoulders fell and her wings folded as all her edges softened. “You should have told me.”
“I know,” Lyana admitted. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” Cassi said, stepping close enough to put her hand on Lyana’s arm. “I don’t blame you for wanting to help. You’re a healer—it’s what you were born to do, to be. It’s just—” She broke off.
“Just what?”
Cassi looked away, studying the rich fibers of the carpet instead of meeting Lyana’s probing eyes. “You need to be careful.”
“I was.”
“So many people are counting on you, Ana…”
Lyana nodded along with her friend’s words, because Cassi was right. The ravens. Xander. The queen. This entire house and all the houses, they were all counting on her to do her part, to be the princess she was supposed to be, the queen she was supposed to become. Not this. Not the person she was, magic and all.
“Just promise me,” Cassi said. “Promise me you won’t do anything else that might get you into trouble, at least for the next ten days.”
Lyana frowned. “Ten days?”
Cassi didn’t move for a moment, and then she gave a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah, ten days. Because after that, you’ll officially be mated, and you won’t be my problem anymore.”
Lyana shoved her gently. “I’ll always be your problem.”
Cassi snorted. “Ain’t that the truth. Now come on, I’m starving. Let’s see if we can find some food, and you can tell me all about your little midnight expedition, all right?”
Lyana agreed, following Cassi out the door, but her mind was still stuck on those words.
Ten days.
You’ll officially be mated.
You won’t be my problem.
She’d tried not to think about the ceremony too much. About the fast-encroaching future. The vows she had to make—vows before the gods, vows she would never break, not once they were spoken.
Ten days was all she had left to be herself.
To be Ana.
A girl of magic and wonder—the girl she was with Rafe.
Not Lyana Taetanus, Crown Princess of the House of Whispers.
A woman bound by duty.
Ten days. It hardly seemed enough, so she planned to make each moment count, no matter what she’d promised Cassi. There was no time to be afraid. No time to be nervous. No time for anything at all.
51
Rafe
He spent the next few days in an upside-down sort of life, sleeping all day, awake all night, telling himself the sneaking around wasn’t for him or for her. It was for Xander. For the ravens. To lift their spirits. To give them hope. To make them believe Taetanos was strong and mighty, not frail and failing. To restore their faith—a feat he’d certainly never been accused of before.
He was lying.
Sure, they’d healed the rest of the injured. Sure, the House of Whispers was celebrating. Sure, Pylaeon, the city of spirits, was more alive than he ever remembered. Sure, Xander was overjoyed by the display of Taetanos’s strength.
But that wasn’t why Rafe kept taking Lyana down the secret path and into the city each night. Those few minutes when she held his hand in the dark, those moments when her eyes were closed and he could finally watch her without worry, those seconds before they said goodbye, when they just stood and stared and enjoyed the magic simmering between them, that was why.
And it was why he jolted out of bed as soon as he heard the scuffing of boots on stone, heart hammering in his chest—a wild, caged thing—and rushed to yank open the curtains to his balcony. Before he even grasped the heavy fabric, the door behind him burst open.
“Going somewhere?” Xander asked, tone balanced between accusatory and amused.
Rafe jerked his hand away from the curtain and spun, hearing a gasp on the other side. His pulse pounded, quickened by a different emotion than a moment before—by terror and bitter, bitter guilt at his own treachery. “No.”
“Calm down,” Xander said, striding across the room to plop on his usual stool. “You’re allowed to go outside. Just no flying, and no letting anyone see you, at least not for another week or two. But it’s late enough now. I’d imagine the city has mostly fallen asleep, a feat that completely escaped me tonight. And you too, I see.”
“Yeah,” Rafe muttered and cleared his throat, trying to bring a smile to his lips. “I, uh, couldn’t sleep. I’m going a little stir-crazy in here, I guess.”
Xander nodded absently. His eyes moved around the room as he swiveled slightly on the stool, pushing with his legs as his wings flexed and relaxed.
Rafe's voice was soft. “Xander?”
The
prince half turned toward him, but seemed to be in another place entirely.
“Is there something you wanted to talk about?” Rafe coaxed. He couldn’t hear Lyana on the other side of the curtain anymore, but he supposed she was there, too curious by half to ever turn and fly away, and not nearly nervous enough to worry about being caught.
Xander sighed. “I just…”
He paused and turned to look out the window. If the princess was out there somewhere, she was in the shadows where neither of them could see.
“I was thinking tonight, while I couldn’t sleep,” Xander said. “I was wondering… What do you… Well, what do you suppose love feels like?”
Rafe froze.
But Xander kept rambling, unaware of how still his brother had become. “I mean, I know you’ve never felt that way yourself—me neither, of course—but I thought, maybe you might remember what it was between your parents? What it felt like to be around them?”
“I don’t—” Rafe fell quiet when a knot in his throat cut off the words. “I don’t know, Xander. I don’t remember.”
“You do,” Xander countered, not accusingly. His tone was honest, maybe edged with the slightest bit of sadness. “It’s fine, I understand. We don’t talk about them, not really. I just thought this one time we could. Because I know what love looks like. I’ve seen it in the streets as I walk through them, between mated pairs, but never from so close a distance that I could recognize that light in someone’s eye, that sparkle. My mother’s faded long before I was old enough to notice it, and her parents were lost before I was born. But yours…”
He trailed off with a shrug.
Rafe found himself avoiding Xander's probing eyes. “Why? Why do you want to know?”
Xander scoffed, catching Rafe’s attention as he gave half a smile. “I would think that’s obvious, Rafe. I am to be mated in a week.”
“That was true two weeks ago, too, and you didn’t ask me then,” Rafe argued, stubborn as always. But this was something more, a knife slowly digging into his gut, burning and painful. All he could think to do was grab the hilt and plunge it in more deeply, so at least the agonizing anticipation would end. Because he had to hear it—whatever it was, he had to.
“Something’s changed,” Xander said, almost mystified. He shook his head as the tips of his wings lifted. “I can’t explain it, really, but Lyana’s changed. The past few days she’s seemed, I don’t know, at peace in a way she hasn’t been before, at least with me. There’s something, a glow of some sort in her eyes, a smile always on her lips as though she just can’t keep the corners down. And I’m, well, I’m trying to understand why.”
The invisible blade twisted.
Rafe swayed on his feet before holding on to the wall to steady himself. He wondered if, outside, Lyana had done the same.
Xander didn’t notice. He just kept talking as one of his legs bounced against the stool in a frantic sort of way. “And I’m different too, Rafe, when I’m around her, I think. Lighter somehow. She’s, well, she’s nothing like anyone I ever imagined being mated to—as you well know. We’re different in so many ways, but I’m starting to think that doesn’t matter. And I’d like to tell her all of this, instead of you—no offense, brother—but I spent the last hour trying to think about what to say, and for the life of me, I can’t put this feeling into words. It’s not love—it couldn’t be, not in such a short amount of time. But if it’s not that, I don’t know what it is, or how to say it. I’m trying to understand, so that when I do talk to her, it goes better than this, because I can see I’m boring you, and never mind, I’ll just go back to my room and you can forget I ever came.”
The end of his ramblings only registered when Xander stood and began to shuffle toward the door.
“Wait,” Rafe said, jumping into motion. He grabbed Xander’s arm to detain him. “Wait. I—I remember.”
Xander turned slowly, eying him expectantly.
Rafe closed his lids as the memories washed over him, a dam set free, a rushing torrent he didn’t know how to control once it started. Oh, he thought of his mother often. The arms that used to wrap him up tightly. The voice that used to sing him to sleep. The laugh that was so infectious he would always laugh along with her, even in the middle of a tantrum. He thought of the two of them, alone in their room at the very bottom level of the castle, separate from the rest of the world, but it hadn’t mattered, because they had everything they needed. The stories they’d create. The games they’d play. The love that had filled that room, so incredibly powerful it had stayed with him long after she’d passed—but that wasn’t the love Xander was talking about.
No, the love she’d shared with his father had been different.
Rafe tried not to think about them—well, he tried not to think about his father—because whenever he did, he felt guilty. Guilty for those words that had been the king's last. I won’t leave you. I won’t leave our son. He’d died for loving Rafe more than Xander, for loving his mother more than the queen. And though he’d been little more than an innocent child, Rafe was exactly what the queen still called him—the bastard who had stolen so much from her son, who had stolen the meaning of love away and was now stealing something much greater.
“Love,” Rafe murmured, remembering the way his parents would look at each other in that small room, how they would tease and sometimes fight, how they would dance like fools with him between them and then slow down as though he weren’t there, how his mother would let her hair down and his father would remove his crown, and they’d be exactly who they were, for a little while at least. That feeling of freedom, of not having to hide, of being woven so closely nothing could ever undo them, that was love. And for a moment, Rafe pictured green eyes in the dark and two hands folded over one another, gold and silver sparking between them. But he blinked the picture away and turned to his brother, a hollow feeling growing cavernous in his gut. “Love is when you find a piece of yourself in someone else, a piece you never knew was missing, but without which you'd be broken. You feel whole, and complete, and accepted for exactly who you are. You can be your true self, because around this person, for the first time you have no desire to pretend to be anyone else.”
Xander stared for a moment too long, brows quivering in the slightest frown, before he carefully cleared his features. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience. Your own experience, I mean.”
Rafe tensed.
His gaze flicked to the curtains, then slid along the carpet until it reached his brother’s shoes. Drifting higher, he finally settled on the violet streaks of uncertainty in his brother’s eyes. The air was thick and full and heavy, pressing on him from all angles, prickling his skin.
Two people were listening.
Two people who deserved the truth.
But it seemed that, lately, all Rafe knew how to do was lie.
He laughed, a hearty, throaty sound that traveled up his chest and spewed out into the world dripping with deceit. Then he slapped Xander’s shoulder, giving him a light shove, as though he’d said the funniest, most ridiculous thing in the world. “In Taetanos’s name, Xander, sleep deprivation is getting to your head. If you’re going to talk nonsense, just leave me to my isolation. The only mate I spend my days longing for is the sky from which you’ve banished me.”
Xander didn’t move at first. He just maintained a contemplative stare. Finally, he released a breath and the barest hint of a smile rose to his lips.
“Then by all means, back to it,” he said, nodding toward the balcony.
The words were strained. Rafe knew it. Just like Xander had known his laughter was fake. There was something unspoken hanging between them, invisible yet all too real.
An awkward silence permeated the air, even after Xander left. It was interrupted by the same scuffing of boots on stone, a swish of fabric, and a soft sigh in place of words. Because there was nothing left to say but—
“Go,” Rafe ordered, his voice grave.
“Rafe—
”
“Go.” A little louder this time. A little more forceful. His body quivered with the desire to turn and face her, but he feared that if he did, all his resolve would wither away, burned to ash by the fire in her eyes.
“Please don’t—”
“You're my brother’s mate,” he said, not recognizing himself in the tone—a flat, cold, unfeeling thing. “And whatever work we had is done. Go. Now. And don’t ever, ever come back.”
She didn’t leave, not right away.
She stood there, staring at him.
And he stood, staring at the wall.
Just when he thought he might explode from the pressure, a rush of air pushed against his back, followed by a cold breeze blowing through the now-empty opening. He turned, rushed to the balcony, and crushed the curtains, closing them so tightly his fingers went numb.
52
Lyana
It took three days for Xander to finally approach her about the things she’d overheard. Three days of long meetings with the advisors, of appointments with the seamstress, of meals with the queen, of fleeting glances and nervous laughter and her heart leaping into her throat every time they had a second alone together.
In the end, they were in his study when he finally found the courage to look up from his books and say, “Lyana, could I talk to you about something? Just for a moment?”
She’d been standing by the window, looking down at the flurry of activity in the city below. The buildings that had crumbled were already being rebuilt. The street had been cleared. But what had caught her eye were the pockets of color at the base of each spirit gate. The flowers were made even brighter by the monotone backdrop of ebony arches and gray stone, and they were growing larger with each passing day. She’d spent the prior week healing everyone she could, and the people were rejoicing in what they believed was Taetanos’s strength. But now the celebrations focused on something else—the upcoming mating ceremony of their god-blessed prince and princess.
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