Chapter
Thirty-Three
Galantia Present Day, the western coast
alt seasoned the wet air, bringing with it the scents of algae and stone chilled by winter, although the flurries had stopped and melted away a good while ago. Several feet ahead of where I sat onS a quilt of shadows, the jagged cliff lined the entire length of the horizon. The water sat so far below, there was no ocean to be seen—only heard. The rhythmic rumble of waves pounded the base of the cliff formed a roaring backdrop for the high-pitched caws of children.
They soared through the sky, chasing each other. Some of the smaller ravens dashed through the branches of nearby pines, shaking off whoever pursued them. Older boys, some of them men nearly grown, wrestled each other off the cliff, eyes darting to a group of girls who cheered and flushed nearby.
“Is it always like this?” I asked. “For you to easily mingle with commoners? Sit among them unbothered?”
Malyr folded an arm beneath his head where he lay beside me, his eyes fixed on a sky that had opened some, letting rays of sun cast a shine across his black, fanned-out strands. “A Raven king’s
mate could be the daughter of his bannerman or the whore working the streets in the shadow of his castle. How could he ever find her if he never crossed her path?”
That made sense.
And all peasants seemed to regard Malyr with great respect, offering him crooked bows and wobbly curtsies, only to leave him be and go about their enjoyment. It had been wonderful to watch ever since we’d arrived when the sun had stood in its zenith. Once, Malyr had done me the favor and thrown himself off the cliff, too. For my sick amusement, he’d said, actually making me laugh.
Not far from us, a man dangled a giggling girl upside down by her ankle. He tossed her little body over the edge of the cliff, only for her to shift into her unkindness and fly straight back to him.
She reshaped to hang from his arm, her cheeks fire-red from cold and exhaustion alike. “Again, Papa! Again!”
“Enough now!” a woman, presumably her mother, scolded her mate while she tried to herd a flock of four fledglings with her arms where they hopped about the basket of foods they’d brought. “If she gets her plumes too sweaty, she’ll catch a fever in this cold.”
When the man planted his daughter firmly on the ground, she shifted once more, only for two of her birds to dash at the basket. Whatever food they stole before they flew off had her mother muttering curses.
I grinned at her rebellion. “How early can you shift?”
“My first shift happened when I was… five, I believe,” Malyr answered diligently, as he had done with all my other questions today—and there had been dozens of them. “I’d climbed the shelves in the larder to get to something. A jar of honey? I cannot recall. The boards came loose and I fell, but never hit the ground. What a mess that was.” He let out a little chuckle. “Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to shift again when our cook came after me with the wooden rolling pin, chasing me out of the kitchens.”
I laughed at that, picturing a little boy scrambling for footing on the flour-covered ground. “You were a troublemaker.”
He shook his head. “Between the three of us, I was the easy one. Up to a certain age and power.”
“Then who was?”
“My sister, Naya.” There was an ardent reverence in his voice I’d never heard on him before, followed by a smile so sincere and heart-melting, it eclipsed the one from earlier in the saddle. “At two days old, she shifted in her cradle. By the time her flight feathers came in around three or so, servants were instructed to keep the windows, doors, and flight holes shut at all times. Yet she still managed to get out somehow. I found her toddling through the weapons room, dragging an aerymel sword behind her shortly before the siege. No doubt she would have swung it one day.” His smile wavered, trembled, then died. “If only she’d gotten the chance to grow taller than its sheath.”
His words squeezed around my heart, the insight into his past, his grief, utterly unexpected. A glimpse into Malyr’s darkness, as if he was opening his shadows, allowing me to look deeper. To search for that glimmer I’d seen during our dance. Would it be wise to dare?
It was tempting.
And treacherous.
“You loved her very much.” I’d heard it in his reverent tone and saw it in the way his gaze had softened, sending a ripple of old guilt across my core. Whatever pain and grief he harbored in his chest, I’d contributed to a great deal. The least I could do was own up to it. “I should have said this much sooner, but… I regret the hand I played in Harlen’s death, Malyr. Deeply.”
A muscle twitched in his jaws the way it often did when he was reining in his temper—one of the
few emotional indicators he ever offered—but he smoothed it away with a heavy swallow and set his eyes on me. “It was not you who killed him. It was me, with my fear of the uncontrolled chaos my shadows bring, the disobedient destruction.”
My ears pricked at the solemn austerity in his tone. “Disobedient?”
He pinched his lips together as if he regretted mentioning it. “We could have escaped the dungeons… if only I had unleashed them.”
How had he escaped?
The question stirred in my belly, but I didn’t dare ask, else it might destroy this precious moment of tranquil peace between us, fickle and strange as it may be. He’d been so different on our way here, charming and playful, distressingly kind in the way he’d urged me to break free of invisible bonds that had tied me down all my life. Why? Why was he being like this?
When it came to Malyr, I couldn’t help myself but expect his ulterior motive of breaking me behind every touch, every whisper, every hint of charm. But then again, Sebian’s charm had apparently harbored an ulterior motive just as wicked. But he’d hid it, whereas Malyr had only ever been open about his intent. Did that not make him safe in his honesty? His kindness trustworthy?
What if he was truly torn between his loyalty and whatever warm feelings he harbored for me, the daughter of his enemy, the killer of his brother? Such a thing couldn’t be painless to reconcile, nor easy. What if I’d judged him too harshly at the kjaer, fearing he was out to hurt me when, in reality, he himself was hurting—pulled into two directions until it threatened to rip him apart right down the middle?
Oh gods, my head ached with how my thoughts raced, colliding against one another as I struggled to suffocate the hope that could certainly only bring heartbreak. To keep my wits about me. Most of them seemed to have scattered in the wind when I’d cantered across that meadow… “Come here.” Malyr rolled onto his side, propping one hand under his head in support while he patted the quilt with the other. “I want my wife closer.”
I lowered myself down to face him, resting my head on my arm only a few inches away from him, taking in his scent of lemongrass, letting his body heat seep under my skin. “I am not your wife yet.”
“You accepted my gift, the food I fed you, our dance beneath the stars, did you not?” He lifted his hand to cup my cheek, letting the warmth of his palm caress my wind-whipped skin. “Among Ravens, you are my mate now. The wedding is merely a symbolic act to pacify humans and their customs.”
His words lingered between us, easing away some of the doubt I’d harbored, the worry that he might break the betrothal, but not all. “I am not a Raven; therefore, I’m not truly your mate, and not yet your wife. That makes me nothing.”
Up and down went his thumb along my cheekbone in rhythmic motions. “This morning, after I spoke to Lady Cecilia, I ordered cartloads of grains to be moved from our southern stores to Tidestone, along with dried meats, pulses, and several hundred pounds of seed for use in the spring.
Her father, Lord Taradur, and his forces will oversee their transport, ensuring their arrival at Tidestone after you free Marla with how wet the ground is, but certainly before our wedding. If you ask her, I am sure she will confirm.”
My lips parted on a little gasp as I stared at him wide-eyed. “You are sending… But… Why?”
“Reassurance.” His mouth shifted around as if he was chewing over whichever words would follow next. “Your fear I will break our betrothal once Marla has gone free is valid. Quite reasonable, even. Tidestone soldiers must have been at half-rations for how long now? Two months?”
More like five, but that would make me seem like a poor bargain struck all over again. “Three.”
“If I am to attack Ammarett come spring once the snow thawed, I will require your father’s army,
and it will do me no good if I starved it over the winter,” he said. “I need this marriage if I want to win this war quickly and with few losses among my kind, Galantia. We both need it. And it is my hope that this will ease your fear and convince you of my sincerity. My… commitment to this.”
The assurance of his words soothed over my doubts, bringing with them a sense of relief. It lasted but a breath, the now undisputed and proven prospect of this marriage suddenly not enough, even if it ensured me my goal of a secured life. What was the worth of a silk gown if it cocooned a withered heart? What was the worth of a life if there was no love in it?
Sure, Sebian held me at night, gave me care, offered me refuge. But had he ever confessed any such feelings to me? Had he ever courted me? Kissed me?
No.
Not even a peck goodbye… A cacophony of chuckles and laughs behind me had me glance over my shoulder at a group of young Ravens that sat around a pile of… things. Shreds of fabric. Polished seashells. Nails. A fork.
One of the girls closed her eyes and reached into the pile, rummaging through it, only to retrieve what appeared to be a small piece of rust-speckled chainmail.
She opened her eyes.
Her nose wrinkled.
“That’s mine.” The young man sitting across from her leaned toward her, his grin framed by patchy stubble. “As are you, and you know it.”
The girl looked at the young man, then at the chainmail, curling a disgusted lip before she dropped the thing with a clank and rubbed the rust from her fingers on the leg of her cotton trousers. “In your dreams.”
“In my dreams, you’re lying in a nest of pillows and quilts, begging me to bond with spread legs,” he rasped to the deep-throated chuckles of the other boys and young men. Then, in one quick movement, he thrust himself forward and kissed her. A long, passionate kiss that had me shift my lips, curl my tongue, swallow excessively. “And if you’d stop being so fucking stub—”
Whack.
His face shot sideways at her slap against his cheek, his eyes ripped wide open in shock, much to the amusement of the others. They snickered and guffawed as the girl shifted and flew off, pushing and shoving him, giving him scolding slaps on the back of his head.
Malyr’s palm stroked over my hip, rolling me onto my other side to face the group fully before he pressed his body tight against my backside. “Presume I should count myself lucky that you only walked out on me during our kjaer instead of slapping me before the entire assembled court.”
The idea of slapping him for such a transgression seemed quite absurd, given how I longed to be kissed. “Presume you are right, but then again, you didn’t kiss me.”
“Oh, but I did,” he rasped, gliding his palm up along my waist, over my chest, only for his finger to swipe along my bottom lip. “When I fed you from my lips, little dove. It is the kiss of the raven, but a kiss nonetheless, reserved for our mate and no one but her. It is why we guard them so.”
His words caused my heart to catch before I looked over my shoulder back at him, finding his face inches from me, his eyes slipping to those lips he claimed he’d kissed before they locked with mine. Even firmly planted on the ground, a little sway went through my upper body. A reminder that, if I looked too deeply into his shadows, I might as well lose my balance and fall straight into their darkness to swallow me whole.
A gulp went down my throat. “Yet you kissed Lorn.”
“Fate is rarely obvious, and never easy. Few are those who recognize their mate upon first sight,
like my father did. There are a great many feathers we might preen that turn out to be not ours to care for. Sometimes, beaks collide.” His arm came around my head, supporting the weight of it, keeping me embraced and urging my mouth closer to his. “Little dove, the wrong ones we kiss are considered, but the ones we never bother to kiss…? They are forever rejected.”
Rejected.
Forever.
A chill hit my core just as a wintery breeze rocked me closer into Malyr’s embrace. Was that why Sebian never kissed me? Because, deep down, he knew that I could be many things—bedmate, distraction, revenge. Heavens, perhaps even a sense of redemption whenever he took care of me,
saved me, protected me.
But never his mate.
Never worthy of his death-defying love.
Anguish flooded my chest, making me close my eyes against the threat of tears over how nobody ever truly wanted me. Not my father. Not my mother. Not Sebian. Why was I never worthy of love?
Never worthy of a kiss? Never worthy of— Malyr’s exhale ghosted over my lips. His mouth drifted closer to mine as his fingers curled into
my hair.
Then it happened.
Deep and devouring, his mouth slanted over mine in the darkness of my sealed eyes, sending a flare of heat through my core. His warm, wet tongue stroked apart my lips before it dipped inside, bringing with it the taste of berries that mixed with his scent of lemongrass and rose petals.
A kiss.
A real kiss.
Malyr tasted sweet and dark, like the last blackberry on a snow-covered branch, promising pure delight one moment, but threatening downfall, decay, and death the next. It overwhelmed my entire being. Shoved me off that cliff and into the throes of his shadows, drowning me in a flood of fulfillment. In that moment, I would have gladly suffocated on his lips.
By the time his mouth melted away from mine and I opened my eyes, black and white floaters speckled my entire vision, the world spinning. Dangerous longing slinked through the wall of my ribcage, spreading through my core until a hint of wit returned to my brain.
This was bad… Really bad.
Malyr stroked from my cheek to my chin, clasping it tightly, staring down at me from an arched brow. “So pale all of a sudden, little white dove?”
My pulse fluttered so wildly at the base of my throat, nausea once more rose, faster when I scrambled out of Malyr’s embrace and sat up. “Just a dizzy spell. I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine.
I was falling.
I rose too quickly, swaying on legs that seemed to have turned to water as I struggled to remain standing. “We should head back.”
“Hmm, why does your sudden urge to depart not surprise me?” Malyr’s arm suddenly rounded the small of my back, steadying me against him. “De’inde, Liual! De’inde!”
No sooner had he spoken the words, did Liual trot up to us from where he’d peacefully grazed.
Malyr once more framed my waist with his hands and lifted me into the saddle.
“Now you might want to hold onto that pommel, at least until I’ve got him ready,” he said just as he slipped the headstall back over the horse’s head from where it had hung from the saddle. He
mounted behind me once more, one hand holding onto my hip, the other onto the reins. “Are you running from me again?”
How could I not? I’d been prepared for many things, but not this. Not this… “Why go through such exertion?” I looked down at that arm that held me, my head a spinning mess, my heart a thudding wreck. “Even at a walk, I seemed to have landed myself in your arms, just like you said.”
With a click of his tongue, Malyr commanded Liual into a walk, steering us away from the cliffs.
“And is it such a terrible place to be?”
“No.” All day, there had been a sense of safety in his arms that shouldn’t have been there. Should not be there. “Not until they will hurt me again.”
“As they will,” he said. “How else could I reconcile how I kissed you, hmm? How my body longs for yours? How I brought you pleasure with my mouth on your cunt? How I spend… way too many hours watching you, annoyingly fixated beyond sense or reason?”
A desperate flutter in my chest tingled along my ribs like wingbeats, causing such a stir of reluctant faith that I twisted in the saddle to look back at him. “Will you have me believe that every cut, every bruise, every scar is a token of your affection?”
With his gray-brown eyes locked on mine, he lifted his hand from my belly to my cheek. Slowly, so slowly, he raked back a handful of strands that the wind had blown over my mouth. He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip while he wetted his own, causing that flutter to intensify until I swayed in the saddle.
His fingers climbed to my head, clasped my skull, and turned my gaze back to Liual’s twitching ears. “Look forward.”
I let out a huff of annoyance. “My balance is just fine.”
“It is not your balance that concerns me.” Arm once more slung around my belly, he pulled me tighter against him before he whispered by my ear, “The longer you make me look at you, little dove, the harder it is for me to remember what you are. And I fear that, if I look too long… I just might forget who you are."
An overpowering sense of hope expanded at my core. Hope that he would forget. Hope that he could then love me. I struggled to breathe it away as I stared straight. Stared straight for the entire fucking ride home.
