“They didn’t like you?”
His jaw tightened. “As the youngest of seven sons, I wasn’t particularly needed or wanted. Perhaps it was a good thing. I was able to study for longer than my father allowed my brothers before shoving them out the door to rule over some territory within our lands, and I could train for as long as I liked, since no one believed I’d be dumb enough to kill my way up the long list of heirs. And when I grew bored with studying and fighting … I learned what I could of the land from its people. Learned about the people, too.”
He eased to his feet with a groan, his unbound hair glimmering as the midday sun overhead set the blood and wine hues aglow.
“I’d say that sounds more High-Lord-like than the life of an idle, unwanted son.”
A long, steely look. “Did you think it was mere hatred that prompted my brothers to do their best to break and kill me?”
Despite myself, a shudder rippled down my spine. I finished off the apple and uncoiled to my feet, plucking another off a low-hanging branch. “Would you want it—your father’s crown?”
“No one’s ever asked me that,” Lucien mused as we moved on, dodging fallen, rotting apples. The air was sticky-sweet. “The bloodshed that would be required to earn that crown wouldn’t be worth it. Neither would its festering court. I’d gain a crown—only to rule over a crafty, two-faced people.”
“Lord of Foxes,” I said, snorting as I remembered that mask he’d once worn. “But you never answered my question—about why the people here would sell you out.”
The air ahead lightened, and a golden field of barley undulated toward a distant tree line.
“After Jesminda, they would.”
Jesminda. He’d never spoken her name.
Lucien slid between the swaying, bobbing stalks. “She was one of them.” The words were barely audible over the sighing barley. “And when I didn’t protect her … It was a betrayal of their trust, too. I ran to some of their houses while fleeing my brothers. They turned me out for what I let happen to her.”
Waves of gold and ivory rolled around us, the sky a crisp, unmarred blue.
“I can’t blame them for it,” he said.
We cleared the fertile valley by the late afternoon. When Lucien offered to stop for the night, I insisted we keep going—right into the steep foothills that leaped into gray, snowcapped mountains that marked the start of the shared range with the Winter Court. If we could get over the border in a day or two, perhaps my powers would have returned enough to contact Rhys—or winnow the rest of the way home.
The hike wasn’t an easy one.
Great, craggy boulders made up the ascent, flecked with moss and long, white grasses that hissed like adders. The wind ripped at our hair, the temperature dropping the higher we climbed.
Tonight … We might have to risk a fire tonight. Just to stay alive.
Lucien was panting as we scaled a hulking boulder, the valley sprawling away behind, the wood a tangled river of color beyond it. There had to be a pass into the range at some point—out of sight.
“How are you not winded,” he panted, hauling himself onto the flat top.
I shoved back the hair that had torn free of my braid to whip my face. “I trained.”
“I gathered that much after you took on Dagdan and walked away from it.”
“I had the element of surprise on my side.”
“No,” Lucien said quietly as I reached for a foothold in the next boulder. “That was all you.” My nails barked as I dug my fingers into the rock and heaved myself up. Lucien added, “You had my back—with them, with Ianthe. Thank you.”
The words hit something low in my gut, and I was glad for the wind that kept roaring around us, if only to hide the burning in my eyes.
I slept—finally.
With the crackling fire in our latest cave, the heat and the relative remoteness were enough to finally drag me under.
And in my dreams, I think I swam through Lucien’s mind, as if some small ember of my power was at last returning.
I dreamed of our cozy fire, and the craggy walls, the entire space barely big enough to fit us and the fire. I dreamed of the howling, dark night beyond, of all the sounds that Lucien so carefully sorted through while he kept watch.
His attention slid to me at one point and lingered.
I had never known how young, how human I looked when I slept. My braid was a rope over my shoulder, my mouth slightly parted, my face haggard with days of little rest and food.
I dreamed that he removed his cloak and added it over my blanket.
Then I ebbed away, flowing out of his head as my dreams shifted and sailed elsewhere. I let a sea of stars rock me into sleep.
A hand gripped my face so hard the groaning of my bones jolted me awake.
“Look who we found,” a cold male voice drawled.
I knew that face—the red hair, the pale skin, the smirk. Knew the faces of the other two males in the cave, a snarling Lucien pinned beneath them.
His brothers.
CHAPTER
12
“Father,” the one now holding a knife to my throat said to Lucien, “is rather put out that you didn’t stop by to say hello.”
“We’re on an errand and can’t be delayed,” Lucien answered smoothly, mastering himself.
That knife pressed a fraction harder into my skin as he let out a humorless laugh. “Right. Rumor has it you two have run off together, cuckolding Tamlin.” His grin widened. “I didn’t think you had it in you, little brother.”
“He had it in her, it seems,” one of the others sniggered.
I slid my gaze to the male above me. “You will release us.”
“Our esteemed father wishes to see you,” he said with a snake’s smile. The knife didn’t waver. “So you will come with us to his home.”
“Eris,” Lucien warned.
The name clanged through me. Above me, mere inches away … Mor’s former betrothed. The male who had abandoned her when he found her brutalized body on the border. The High Lord’s heir.
I could have sworn phantom talons bit into my palms.
A day or two more, and I might have been able to slash them across his throat.
But I didn’t hav
e that time. I only had now. I had to make it count.
Eris merely said to me, cold and bored, “Get up.”
I felt it then—stirring awake as if some stick had poked it. As if being here, in this territory, amongst its blooded royals, had somehow sparked it to life, boiling past that poison. Turning that poison to steam.
With his knife still angled against my neck, I let Eris haul me to my feet, the other two dragging Lucien before he could stand on his own.
Make it count. Use my surroundings.
I caught Lucien’s eye.
And he saw the sweat beading on my temple, my upper lip, as my blood heated.
A slight bob of his chin was his only sign of understanding.
Eris would bring us to Beron, and the High Lord would either kill us for sport, sell us to the highest bidder, or hold us indefinitely. And after what they had done to Lucien’s lover, what they’d done to Mor …
“After you,” Eris said smoothly, lowering that knife at last. He shoved me a step.
I’d been waiting. Balance, Cassian had taught me, was crucial to winning a fight.
And as Eris’s shove caused him to get on uneven footing, I turned my propelled step on him.
Twisting, so fast he didn’t see me get into his open guard, I drove my elbow into his nose.
Eris stumbled back.
Flame slammed into the other two, and Lucien hurtled out of the way as they shouted and fell deeper into the cave.
I unleashed every drop of the flame in me, a wall of it between us and them. Sealing his brothers inside the cave.
“Run,” I gasped out, but Lucien was already at my side, a steadying hand under my arm as I burned that flame hotter and hotter. It wouldn’t keep them contained for long, and I could indeed feel someone’s power rising to challenge mine.
But there was another force to wield.
Lucien understood the same moment I did.
Sweat simmered on Lucien’s brow as a pulse of flame-licked power slammed into the stones just above us. Dust and debris rained down.
I threw any trickle of magic into Lucien’s next blow.