Trial of Three

by Alex Lidell

  In my side vision, a Night Guard quint closes ranks around the king, moving Griorgi to safety up the shattered stairs just as the world trembles again.

  I scream, the cords of power inside me wanting to shatter those stairs to dust. The stairs, the king, the whole world if need be.

  “No, look at me,” River shouts, shaking me roughly. “Look only at me.”

  I try. I truly do. My body arches, fear seizing my core. I can’t stop the magic. Can’t control it. Can’t—

  “Coal, Tye, connect,” River bellows, his hands tightening on my face.

  “The king—” I gasp.

  “It doesn’t matter, Leralynn. Breathe with me. Nothing else matters now.” The male’s voice turns impossibly calm. “Match my breaths exactly. Do nothing—nothing—else. Think of nothing else.”

  Breathe. I can do that. Focusing on River’s chest, I draw a breath. In. Out. In. Out. The flailing cords of power inside me slow, their grip on me loosening. Capitalizing on my small advantage, I snatch at the cords.

  They shift.

  The ground shakes. Rocks fall, tumbling off River’s shield. My lungs seize, every muscle in my body painfully tight.

  “Eyes on me, Leralynn,” River repeats. “Breathe. I will help you in a moment.”

  I tremble as Coal and Tye swarm to River, Shade, and me, their hands connecting us together. I feel River’s presence at once, a stone pillar in the midst of madness. Like an experienced rider taking a stallion under rein, River gathers the errant power into himself, channeling it safely into the earth below. His body jerks but steadies a heartbeat later as, little by little, he grounds the wild magic.

  When my heart slows and my lungs fill with clear, easy breaths, River slides his hands beneath me and lifts me against his chest. “There we go,” he says gently. “No more fighting. I don’t think Lunos can survive much more of you.”

  I blink, beholding the crumbled ruins around us. “Did I—”

  “I do believe you’ve got the powerful part of being a weaver down pat, lass,” Tye says, tugging my hair. “No need to keep proving it, all right?”

  “Let’s move while there is still a Blaze Court standing,” Coal adds darkly and leads the way into the Light.

  .

  27

  Lera

  “So, let me get this straight,” Autumn says, scribbling furiously on papers spread around our suite’s dining table. “At the end, it was one mortal girl who made the emperor of Mors and king of Slait scamper like cockroaches, leaving their entire conquered town behind?”

  “There wasn’t much of a town left at that point.” Tye spreads himself out on the sunniest part of the couch, his right arm draping over the headrest behind me. “So it wasn’t that much of a prized possession.”

  Shade gives me a satisfied grin, the tip of his tongue absently grazing one of his canines. “I feel we should name you something, cub,” he says. “Something—”

  “That includes the words ‘apocalypse’ and ‘harbinger,’” Coal says darkly. Arms crossed over his chest, the black-clad warrior leans against the wall, taking in everything with his gaze—especially the door.

  Having risen first, River went to brief the elders on the situation in Karnish, leaving the rest of us trapped in the suite with Autumn. Denied access to Kora in the infirmary, the petite female has efficiently turned our common room into a cross between a library and interrogation chamber.

  Tye’s arm drops from the headrest to my waist, and I squeak as he pulls me absently onto his lap. The arm around my waist tightens, keeping me still as tiny prickles of fire magic suddenly dance along my skin—right below the delicate cropped top that Autumn tussled me into.

  “If you set Lera’s hand-embroidered shirt on fire, I will disembowel you,” Autumn says, not looking up from her notes.

  Tye’s fingers flick.

  “Bastard!” Autumn jumps up, rubbing a spot behind her ear as she glares at Tye. “You’ve made me leave a stain.”

  I bite my lip. Now that I know the amount of skill, training, and control it takes to flick a spark like that, Tye’s juvenile pranks have taken on a whole new light. A great many things about Tye have taken on a new light lately. I fidget, yelping as I feel a tiny nip on the top of my ear.

  “Stay put, Lilac Girl,” Tye says, pressing me firmly back against his soft white tunic. Propping his legs up on the low coffee table, the male rubs his free hand over my neck and arms. “I think you’ve done quite enough for several lifetimes by now. Plus, you feel good just here and I’d like to enjoy having you in my lap in peace.”

  “You’re insufferable,” Autumn mutters.

  “Speaking of titles, what do you think we’re called now that we’ve passed the second and third trials but not the first?” Tye says cheerily. “Sparkle, you must have an answer for this, come on.”

  “Hmm. Maybe ‘a pain in my ass’?” Autumn squints at the ceiling. “No, that’s your usual state of existence.”

  I tune them out and glance out the window, the daylight still disorienting after last night’s nightmare. My body aches, though Shade healed my collection of bruises while I was drifting off to sleep last night. I barely recall making our way back through the Gloom, stumbling along until the males insisted on carrying me. “Where do you think Griorgi and Jawrar are now?” I ask, trying not to shiver at the memories.

  Autumn bends her head over her notes again and I realize that research is the battlefield she feels most comfortable in. “Slait.” She makes a mark, dips her pen into the inkwell, and continues writing. “He is not going to admit that anything is out of the ordinary until he decides to.”

  I jerk forward. “But he’s working with Jawrar—”

  “Says who?” The lack of emotion in Autumn’s voice makes my chest tighten. The female chews on the tip of her pen, the temperature in the room dropping with each moment of silence. “You? Me? River? You don’t go through Slait Court spreading rumors about King Griorgi. And you don’t attack him unless you are prepared to win.”

  “So we’ll have to prepare for it, won’t we?” River says from the doorway.

  My whole body tenses, my gaze first surveying the quint commander for marks of last night’s injuries—River moves stiffly, but his color seems decent enough—then cutting away from him. Hard. Just looking at the male makes my chest sting with the knowledge of all that he kept from me about his father, his past. Betrayal eats at my lungs like acid.

  Autumn’s pen drops, her gray eyes tired. “So you are going to do it? Dethrone the bastard?”

  River closes a hand around the back of a chair, his face dark. “I don’t see that we have much choice. Not now that . . .” He shakes his head. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, when we can all think straight again. Speaking of thinking straight, the infirmary is allowing us to visit Kora’s quint after dinner.”

  My eyes narrow. Dinner first. Then friends. Then, maybe sometime tomorrow, we can get around to discussing how to kill his father. Over lunch. Maybe supper. Horseshit.

  “It’s considered bad form to disembowel a male who’s just been whipped,” Tye whispers into my ear. “Don’t get me wrong, lass, better River than me, but—”

  I get to my feet, and this time Tye lets me go without resistance. Coal steps back as I advance on River, Shade flashing prudently into his wolf form and trotting over to curl up on the couch.

  River’s chin rises. “Leralynn, is something—”

  “Your room. Now.” I stride past him, catching Tye’s murmur of “good luck there, mate” to River before I push open the bedchamber door.

  28

  Lera

  River winces as he shuts the door behind him, his hands going behind his back. A mask that I want to slap free of his face settles across his features. Calm. Nonchalant. In control.

  I take a deep breath. River’s room is much like the others’, with a large four-poster bed dominating the middle, a wide-open window, and a chest of drawers. He also has a desk and chair, clean sheets of
parchment and an inkwell standing at the ready. Familiar, and yet the male’s large body, his earthy scent, somehow make the large space suddenly seem small. Intense.

  “Leralynn.” River’s deep voice rolls over me. “What did you wish to discuss?”

  “Really, River?” I cross my arms. “You don’t know?”

  His jaw tightens. He takes a step toward me.

  I step back.

  He stops. Clears his throat. “I never thanked you, did I? You are the one who saved all our lives last night. If you hadn’t interfered when you did, things might have ended differently. Would have ended differently. The courage it must have taken to grab hold of that much power—”

  “Wrong answer,” I snap. “Try again.”

  River draws a breath and rolls back his shoulders, the motion making him stiffen in pain. “I’m sorry you were dragged into a problem that my family appears to have started. Thank you for—”

  “Try again, River.” I raise my chin. “And if you decide to thank me one more time for doing what any member of a quint would do for any other, I will walk out this door right now and not speak to you again until you pull your head from your ass.”

  River’s nostrils flare and he crosses his arms in a mirror of mine. Then uncrosses them with a sigh. His neck bobs as he swallows, his cheeks and ears taking on a darker hue. Something in his back shifts, and in that moment, River suddenly looks . . . exposed. Vulnerable enough to make me want to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him against me.

  I wait.

  “I should have told you about my father,” he says quietly. “The whole of it, not just the insinuations. Should have told you that Klarissa was pushing me to take the Slait throne. And why I can’t—couldn’t. And may have to anyway. I . . . am sorry, Leralynn.”

  “Better.” I walk forward, taking the chair for myself as all the fight goes out of me at once, fatigue taking its place. Plus, with River practically four times my size, there is little point in standing anyway. “Do you want to start with the explanation of what the hell happened with your father, or why you hid it from me?”

  “I’d prefer to go into neither,” River mutters, the vulnerable truth of it flashing again in his gray eyes. He walks over to sit on the bed a few paces away from my chair, and this time, when he sits, he lets me see his cringe of pain. “But I imagine I’ve lost the privilege of keeping secrets, haven’t I?”

  My neck tightens. “You don’t trust me with the truth?”

  “What?” He shakes his head, running his hand through his hair. “No, Leralynn. I trust you. I . . . I am not proud of my heritage. And yes, I do worry that you might force me into something behind my back—”

  “What—”

  “Like, say, a second trial that I haven’t approved—but that’s not the same.”

  The last is said with neither condemnation nor apology, and it’s my turn to flinch. “All right. I’m too honest to promise that would never happen,” I admit.

  A small corner of River’s mouth twitches. “All right then.” He pauses, the humor draining to leave discomfort. “Can I make one request while we talk?” he says hesitantly. “Would you permit me to hold you?”

  “Hold me?” I echo.

  “It would be easier to speak if I didn’t have to toss the words across the room.” River shakes his head. “It would be easier to speak if I could feel you against my skin,” he says, correcting himself with visible effort. “Please.”

  I frown, confusion mixing with my fatigue. I little see how the touch of skin would help anything just now. River isn’t in love with me, not the way he was with Daz, and it would be better if no illusion of intimacy clouded my senses just now.

  His shoulders curl in on themselves.

  Sliding off my chair, I decide on a middle ground and pull myself up on the bed beside him. Close, but not touching.

  Before I can settle, the large male plucks me up in mid-motion, redirecting me to his lap. His chin rests atop my hair and he sighs, some tension going out of his injured muscles.

  “River.” I twist to put a hand on his face. What are you doing? Why? “You shouldn’t be doing this. Not when you are hurt.” Not when you don’t mean what you hint at.

  “You weigh nothing, Leralynn,” the warrior answers. Then he pauses again, catching his words. “Yes, the lashes hurt. But not very much, and the results were well worth the pain.”

  I shake myself. Find his eyes. “I don’t understand you. In the hours before the trial, you made it rather plain that—”

  “I know what I did.” River flinches. “You shouldn’t have had to lie with a stranger, but I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth about my family, but I still wanted to give you all the protection I could and . . . Practicality seemed the best option at the time.”

  I brush my hand along his strong cheek, the slight prickle of his stubble rasping under my fingers. He is trying. Hard. And my heart breaks for the effort it takes him to voice even these small confessions, though I’m still confused about his feelings. More confused. All right. One step at a time. “Tell me about your father,” I order softly. “What happened?”

  The words come slowly, River pausing to collect himself as he speaks of his colthood, meeting Klarissa, following her encouragement toward rebellion. The disastrous results that left River and Autumn without a mother and that forever ingrained the nature of the man sitting on Slait’s throne in River’s mind. River’s desire to never, ever, go near the throne again.

  “Klarissa wanted to dethrone Griorgi before she ever sent us to Karnish,” River says, his body tight around mine, his arms squeezing so hard that it hurts. “She asked me to consider it after the initial word of the attacks on Blaze, knowing my involvement there, as a representative of the Slait throne, would be a direct challenge to my father’s power. I said no. You know what happened next. And now I don’t think there is a choice in the matter. Not now that Griorgi has allied with Jawrar and found a way to bring qoru into the mainland. We can’t let Griorgi break Lunos.”

  I squirm to get out of River’s grip and turn until I’m straddling his lap, my face in line with his. He tries to avert his eyes but I catch his face, turning it toward me. “Is it standing against your father that scares you, River? Or taking the Slait throne?”

  “Both,” he whispers, his beautiful eyes tight with pain.

  “Then we’ll do it.” I bring my face so close to his that our breath mingles. “Together. All of us.”

  “Stars.” River closes his eyes, a small chuckle escaping his chest. “You’ve enough fire in your blood to set all of Lunos ablaze.”

  “Literally,” I mutter.

  River throws back his head and laughs—a rare sight that’s so distractingly stunning, I’m almost relieved it doesn’t happen more often. “True. In fact, I just might be holding the most dangerous being in Lunos very close to my rather sensitive areas.”

  Color rises to my cheeks. I try to turn my face, but River grasps my chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Your power is a good thing, Leralynn. More than a good thing—a great thing.” His voice lowers, all traces of humor gone. “And I am eternally grateful to whatever ancient beings gifted you with it, and gifted our quint with you.”

  Warmth spreads through me, starting from the spot where River holds my face and slowly filling my chest. “Even if I occasionally try to destroy the world?”

  River smiles, the handsome crags of his face making my lungs tighten. “We’ll work on that part.”

  “I can agree to that.” The corners of my mouth tug up.

  Before I can get too comfortable where I am, River slides his hands to my arms and pins me in place against him, restraining me for the second time. A habit that should be annoying but is somehow turning my bones to liquid instead. I shift beneath River’s attention, drawing a breath when my backside brushes against a sudden hardness.

  “While I am offering confessions,” River says, his
gray eyes flashing, focusing on mine with thunderous intensity. “There is one other lie that I feel the need to correct.” Without waiting for a response, River lowers his mouth to mine, his fresh scent drifting around my body in a caress. As one warm palm moves to cup the back of my head, his tongue opens my lips.

  I gasp as River claims my mouth, pressing into me so thoroughly that I feel the pounding of his heart echo through my flesh. His tongue dances and twists against mine, marking its territory with a visceral need that leaves no room for doubt of what he wants. Of how much he wants it.

  My heart jumps. I press back against River’s kiss, the pressure of his lips waking my body, pulling a moan from me before I can stop it. River growls against my mouth, the hand on the back of my head tangling in my hair until I could no more escape his kiss than I could give up breathing.

  And stars, I do not want to escape it. Not with my thighs tingling, an ache starting low in my belly. When River pulls away, leaving my lips swollen and empty, my breath hitches from the loss. “What was”—I struggle to remember the start of this conversation—“what was the other lie?”

  “When I asked to couple with you,” River says quietly. “I said I wanted you for prudence’s sake. That wasn’t true.” He leans down, biting my lip and groaning softly at my gasp of arousal. His hardness presses into me. “I want you because I want you. And I want to prove it.”

  29

  Lera

  My breath stops. My underthings are already damp from River’s sheer presence. Prove. Prove it. Now. Stars. But . . . “But what about Daz?” I blurt, unable to stop either the question or the flash of pain that her name sends through me. I take a breath, struggling to banish the damn stinging in my eyes. “You love her. Not . . . I thought . . .”

  River’s eyes widen for a moment before something fierce, almost desperate, settles over his features. “You are wrong.” The certainty in his voice is hard as steel. Taking my face in his hands, he forces me to look at him even as a single tear I can’t stop spills down my cheek. “Leralynn. Listen to me.” He takes a deep breath, his broad chest rising and settling again. “I loved Daz. And a part of me will always continue to cherish the time we had together. But she and I, we were never right for each other. Not now and not back all those centuries ago. Until I met you, I didn’t know what right even felt like. And now I do. I love you, Leralynn.”