by Skye Horn
“Maybe Adrian told her to be mean to you.” Thea shrugged, despite knowing that wouldn’t be true. She let her fingers trace along the scales of Sorlas’ side, feeling the heavy beat of a heart beneath the armored exterior. The dragon’s eyes closed as she rested her head beside Thea’s legs. “I wish we could let her free.”
“If she were free, my father would hunt her down,” Caden said, lips pulling down into a frown. “But when I am king, I promise she will be free to soar through our skies.”
Thea nodded, knowing that her cousin told the truth. Caden would be a marvelous king, but what worried her was the time period leading up to then. She wanted to voice her concerns but could not find a good way to say what she thought, and instead remained silent.
“Did you hear that, Sorlas? Caden is going to let you fly. That means you can be nice to him.”
The dragon gave a low purr of a growl and both Thea and Caden laughed.
“I see I’m missing all the fun today,” Adrian said, entering the cave with an armful of wood. They’d been trying to keep a fire going, not only for warmth, but for light to read by, and he was just in time to restock the flames. Caden immediately jumped up to help him by taking the wood from his arms.
“We were just talking about how much Sorlas likes me,” Thea said, smiling. Caden watched her from behind Adrian and started wiggling his eyebrows again infuriatingly, but Thea tried not to notice. Instead, she watched Adrian as he began to add wood to their dwindling fire. “Where is Haven?”
“Working with my trainees. You know, she’s wickedly skilled with a sword.”
This made Thea laugh. “Yes, I did know that. Did you think I just picked her to be the lead of my guard because she’s pretty?”
Adrian lifted an eyebrow at her. “You think the lead of your guard is pretty?”
“Is there something wrong with thinking someone is attractive?” Thea mimicked his eyebrow, trying not to laugh, and Caden cleared his throat from behind.
“Still here, you know!”
Thea glanced around, hoping to find something to throw at him, but Adrian beat her to it. He tossed a piece of wood in Caden’s direction, but he easily ducked out of the way with a dramatic bow. “Hold the applau—”
Another log hit him square in the stomach and he groaned, pretending to fall dead on the floor.
“So dramatic!” Thea giggled. Adrian smirked at his own excellent aim and then turned his attention back to Thea.
“Now that he is dealt with, tell me, did you find anything?”
Caden pulled himself back into a sitting position, still grumbling about being an outcast to the group dramatically as Thea said, “Nothing that will be useful as a weapon.”
Adrian sighed and sat on the opposite side of the fire. It was risky for three high-profile people to be away at once, but Thea was happy that Adrian was here nonetheless.
“I’ve been thinking…” Thea said, looking between Adrian and then Caden as he moved back to the fire. “What if we are going about our research all wrong?”
“What do you mean?” Caden asked, switching back to his serious mode as Adrian poked the fire with another stick, causing the flames to flicker to life.
“I mean we are searching for a weapon that hurts a Goddess, right? Well, these Goddesses have been around for centuries, maybe even longer. If there was a weapon, it would be in their history, not necessarily in ours.”
Caden and Adrian looked thoughtful for a moment, but then Adrian frowned as he said, “Not happening, Thea.”
She glared at him. “Why not? It could mean we get an answer much more quickly!”
“What is she talking about?” Caden asked, missing the piece of information Adrian had figured out.
“It’s idiotic!” Adrian argued, sending a look of frustration over Caden’s face.
“It’s better than sitting here and reading books,” Thea groaned, leaning back against Sorlas again. The dragon took a deep shuddering breath in her sleep that made Thea’s whole body shake.
“Will one of you please explain?” Caden said, voice raising an octave.
“If we need to understand the Goddesses’ history, who better to ask than a Goddess herself?” Thea said, directing the words to Caden. “I just need to get Morrigan to tell me if there is a weapon that can be used.”
“She doesn’t even want you to stop training to save a child’s life. What makes you think she will want to tell you about a weapon that could be used against her?”
“I don’t know! But I don’t exactly have many options, Adrian.” Thea crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at them both since Caden hadn’t jumped in to defend her. “Kieran isn’t any closer to telling us what Ainé is planning, and I’m not any closer to mastering the magic that Morrigan is trying to teach me. If anything, I can feel the darkness outweighing the light. I’m losing control, and I can’t afford to lose control. We can’t afford for me to lose control.”
Adrian and Caden stared at her in silence, but she did not back down. This was the only option they had, aside from reading the entire royal library, half of whose books they couldn’t understand anyway. Besides, there was no guarantee it even contained an answer to their problem. War was coming. Thea felt it on the air around her. She saw it in the tension in Morrigan’s eyes. And she felt it in her bones that they needed answers soon. Plus, no one knew if or when Ainé would send an army after Kieran for Thea. They were running out of time.
“I’m not asking either of your permission,” Thea finally said, pushing herself to her feet. “Now I had better get back before Morrigan notices we are all missing. I think I’ll go train with Haven for a while.”
“Wait. You can’t just be seen wandering around without a guard. I still have a duty to uphold.” Adrian rose to his feet.
“Well, I don’t want to be here alone,” Caden grumbled, and they all looked at each other. Thea wanted nothing more than to walk with Adrian. She’d found herself more comfortable in his presence than anyone else over the past weeks. But she also needed to be alone. Her emotions were spiraling. They had been since Kieran’s arrival, and Adrian didn’t deserve to be pulled down with her, no matter what he’d done.
“We can’t all leave,” Thea said, trying to sound reasonable. “I promise I won’t be seen, and if I am, I’ll claim I snuck away from a guard you assigned to watch me. Then you won’t even be the one in trouble.”
She headed for the cave entrance without waiting for a response, but didn’t hear any footsteps following after her and let out a sigh of relief.
Thea was thankful to see the trainees were too busy to notice her sneak out from the path to the beach. Each of them was sparring with wooden daggers, learning how to fight melee-style with little weaponry. There was a lot of cursing going on, but Haven immediately noticed Thea’s approach, dragging her eyes away from the boys to her.
Without a word, Thea shook her head to indicate they’d found nothing and decided she’d tell Haven about her plan later.
“Want to spar?” Thea asked as she approached, feeling the tension building between her wings. This happened regularly, leaving her needing to release stress as often as possible.
“That depends,” Haven said, eyes flickering toward Thea’s stomach. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” Thea snapped. She hadn’t meant to be angry, but it was getting worse by the day. The darkness was creeping out of her in every conversation.
Except with Adrian, she thought miserably. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t care when she was angry. With Haven, she regretted her words immediately and mumbled, “Sorry.”
“Are you sure you should be getting this much physical training? The magic is already hard enough on your body, and it’s not like you don’t know how to fight…”
Thea could hear the reason behind Haven’s voice, but she still wanted to spar. However, rather than arguing, she turned and headed for the castle, knowing Haven wouldn’t follow.
It had been a long few
weeks, but she was getting tired of people treating her like she was fragile. Just because she was pregnant, it didn’t mean she could afford to put off her training. She just had to be careful with it. However, she and Morrigan seemed to be the only ones who thought that. Everyone else was too scared to make her do anything.
Without realizing where she was going, Thea found herself at the doors to the dungeons.
“What do you want?” one of the guards asked, looking annoyed.
Thea hesitated, wondering if she should return to her room. She hadn’t been alone with Kieran since his arrival. There was always someone by her side, just in case. But she’d come here without anyone and now she couldn’t make herself leave.
“I said, what do you want?” the guard repeated as if she were deaf.
“Adrian said I could visit the prisoner,” Thea lied too easily. The guard lifted an eyebrow at her, clearly not believing her, so she squared her shoulders. “Shall I go tell the future leader of the guard that you refused to let me in?”
The guard groaned, looking at his companion, who just shrugged and said, “It’s her funeral.”
“I won’t do anything stupid,” Thea snapped, putting her hands on her hips. “Let me in or I’m going to find my cousin—the prince.”
This made a wary look cross both guards’ faces and they stepped aside slowly. Thea entered before they could change their minds, snatching one of the candles off a wall sconce on her way down the dim corridor. She was pleasantly surprised that her bluff had worked.
Thea’s heart raced the deeper she got into the dungeons. She’d been here multiple times over the past few weeks and knew exactly how to reach Kieran. She also knew which cells contained prisoners and which ones were empty.
Without someone else with her, many of the prisoners watched with hungry eyes as she walked past. Thea placed a hand on her sword, pushing her cloak aside to show the glistening steel at her belt, and bared her teeth at extra-creepy prisoners.
“Thea?”
She stopped, inhaling sharply at the sound of her name on his lips, and wondered how he knew it was her. There would never be a day when hearing Kieran speak her name did not affect her. She would just have to learn to live with that.
As if sensing her hesitation, Kieran came to the bars, peering in her direction. His green eyes seemed hallow in the darkness.
“You’re alone,” he said, matter-of-fact rather than a question.
“I’m alone,” Thea agreed, finding her voice and her strength to move forward. She still kept her distance from the bars, not trusting herself not to reach out to touch him. It was sometimes hard to separate the Kieran she loved from the thinned-out Fae in the cell. His eyes still looked like Kieran’s. She still recognized the sharp cut of his jaw, and often her eyes drifted to the tattoo on his chest that matched her own with an aching longing to trace the dragon there, but she never let her eyes linger for long.
Kieran settled back against the wall, seeming to realize Thea would not come any closer, and she sat on the damp stone floor across from his cell, leaning against the cool wall. She examined him, seeing the sharp edges of his bones against his thin skin. He hardly held his wings up now, and Thea saw the raw skin of his wrists and ankles where the cuffs had worn away at him over the extended period of time. Her stomach twisted at the sight of him and she had to fight her basic instinct to help.
Not your Kieran, she reminded herself.
As the silence lengthened, Kieran studied her back. She felt the way his eyes traced over each of her features in the same way he’d done before. In the past, that had been a sign that he was making sure she was okay, that she was surviving the pain she felt inside. Now it was only him assessing the situation, calculating what was happening and how it would affect him. Thea knew that, and yet, she still felt her heartbeat quicken under his watchful eyes.
“Why are you here?” Kieran finally asked, seeming satisfied with whatever he saw in her. She felt herself slouch and focused on regaining her strength. She hated how she’d let him get to her. Normally she had someone else there to balance the effects, but being alone with him was much harder.
Thea rested her hands over her stomach, reminding herself why she was doing this, why she was suffering, because if she was honest with herself, she didn’t know if she could survive being near him if it weren’t for the baby.
“Thea?” Kieran prodded, eyes growing with concern. “Is the baby okay?”
The tone of his voice snapped Thea out of her silence, making her eyes narrow. Of course he would be worried about the child, not her, and yet, it still hurt. She immediately wiped the anger away, burying it for later.
“The baby is fine as far as I know,” Thea said. Her voice was hardly a whisper, but Kieran visibly relaxed.
“Then why are you here?” he asked again.
“I don’t know…” Thea’s eyes watered and she moved the candle away, thankful for the darkness.
Kieran’s face was lined with confusion, but he said nothing.
“Do you remember?” Thea asked, not knowing where her bravery was coming from.
“That’s a vague question,” he said slowly, but seemed to shrink back from her examination. She would have to be careful about how she asked so that he wouldn’t shut down.
“We were going to change the world together,” Thea said quietly, clenching her hands into fists and pulling her knees up to her chest to hide their trembling. “We were going to make it better.”
“Ainé will make it better,” Kieran said. “You just have to let her.”
Thea bit back her argument to that, knowing that arguing with Kieran about Ainé would only lead to a shutdown.
“But do you remember what it was like to be on the same team?” Thea prodded. “We made a pretty damn good team.”
“Did we?” Kieran asked, tilting his head. “I recall you making some immensely reckless decisions when we were together.”
Thea let the fact that he remembered anything at all sink in. The flicker of feeling was enough to spark her daring to ask more questions.
“You loved me all the same,” she said bravely.
Kieran nodded but lowered his eyes. The shadows of his long lashes fluttered against the tops of his cheeks. “I did love you for it, but that was part of the problem, wasn’t it? We loved recklessly.”
This was so similar to the conversation they’d had in Gimmerwich that Thea almost cried. However, no matter how much she wished this Kieran was the same as the one who had so passionately argued that they couldn’t love each other, it wasn’t. This was just a shadow of the memories they’d shared. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to know what else he remembered, for longing to share some sort of connection with this part of him.
“I remember everything, Thea. I just don’t feel that way anymore.”
“I know,” she admitted, trying not to let how much his words hurt show on her face.
“Then why do you ask?” He watched her so carefully that she wanted to run and hide from his gaze. This side of him was worse than the side that wanted to kill her, because it was so easy to pretend he might actually care—that he might actually come back.
“Because I remember everything,” she said looking down. “I remember the way it felt to love you and to be loved by you. I remember the loss when you left me and the joy when I got you back. And I remember the pain of thinking you were dead. I envy that you can’t.”
Kieran was silent and Thea started to get up. She didn’t know what she’d hoped to accomplish coming here, but this hadn’t been it. All she’d done was cause herself more pain.
“Wait!” Kieran said. He crawled toward the bars as if he didn’t have the energy to stand and Thea met his gaze with hesitation. “I’m sorry for the pain I cause you.”
Thea stared at him in surprise, unsure of what to say. Ainé had broken their soul bond, but perhaps that didn’t mean he was soulless. She saw the pain in his eyes and heard the grief in his voice. She�
��d also seen the grief he felt over Ethel in the past few weeks, little by little, as he let it in.
How could someone without a soul feel that type of grief?
Thea moved toward the bars, making sure to keep out of hands’ reach, and crouched low so she could look in his eyes. She searched for a sign that he was lying, but found none. She didn’t know what to make of his words, but watched as he pressed his hand to the bar.
For a moment, she didn’t move, but then she lifted her hand to press against his on the outside of the cell. The warmth of his hand flooded into hers and his eyes softened, just slightly.
“I know I’m a monster,” he said quietly. “But I need you to know that even though my feelings are… gone… I see that yours are real and I want you to move on.”
The lump in Thea’s throat was nearly unbearable. Without a word, she stood and fled from the dungeons before she did something that could ruin everything. The look in Kieran’s eyes haunted her the entire way, as did his words.
I’m sorry for the pain I cause you.
I want you to move on.
That wasn’t possible. A person without a soul couldn’t be sorry. They couldn’t feel grief. They couldn’t—
She burst into her room, slamming the door shut behind her, and crumpled to the ground because she knew nothing of what he was or what he’d become. How could she know what he felt? If he felt grief. If he felt sorry. Then could he be saved? And would saving him bring him back to her?
No… it wouldn’t. She couldn’t let herself believe it would or she would lose every bit of sanity she had.
Chapter 22
Adrian returned to the castle with Caden a few hours later after finding nothing of worth in the rest of the books that they had snuck out of the library. It was becoming apparent to him that Thea might be right, which was not something he looked forward to admitting out loud.