Page 46 of A Shattered Kingdom of Steel

“Yes,” Kheldryn says, her voice softening. She looks up at me. “We all are.”

“I know but—” I pause, stopping myself from saying something that might come across as abrasive. “You two seem… closer than most.”

Kheldryn furrows her brows, and then her expression relaxes, awash with understanding. She sets the book down on her lap. “You think we’re together.”

Jitters replace the fiery pang in my chest, dancing across my skin. “You’re not?”

“No, most definitely not,” Kheldryn tells me, shaking her head. Her silvery-white hair swings with the movement, touching her cheeks. “I, uh—I’m not interested in males.”

My eyes widen, and my cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Oh, my apologies for assuming.”

“It’s all right,” she assures me, waving a hand. “You couldn’t have known.”

There’s a pause where neither of us says anything. Then Kheldryn closes her book and presses it to her chest. “My parents died when I was very young, my mother from disease, and my father from falling through ice. He harvested it for a living, you see, and there was plenty to be harvested up north where I lived by the Silent Chasm in a small village just outside of Morir.”

The Silent Chasm lies on the Silver Court’s northern border, large sharp cliffs broken up by fjords from what I’ve heard. I’ve never seen them myself. With the exception of Dalir, Morir is the northernmost city on mainland Inatia.

I orient myself toward Kheldryn, tilting my head forward slightly.

Taking a breath, she continues. “After that, I was on my own for a while. I learned to shoot so I could hunt game for food. It was difficult at first, but I eventually got good at it.”

“I imagine you would,” I say, my voice soft. “You were dependent on your skills for survival.”

She nods, eyes flicking to mine. “Right. Anyway, I was out hunting in the mountains one day when I was overrun by an avalanche.” Her expression constricts, mouth tight. “The mountains that far north are rocky and difficult to cross. I couldn’t get far enough in time.”

My mouth parts. “I take it Valhyr’s Teeth are aptly named?”

Stories of Valhyr, the God of Honor and Glory, describe his favor of struggle, of challenge, of pushing oneself to the point of breaking for the sake of glory. Whoever named the Silver Court’s broken, jagged, and unforgiving mountain range had no doubt been thinking of the god’s love of testing and exceeding the limits of a hero’s strength.

“Yes,” Kheldryn says. “To be quite honest, I have no idea why Asheros was out there that day. Perhaps Valhyr himself had taken pity on me. But he was there with a horse and pulled me from beneath the snow.” She wraps her arms around the book, still clutching it to her chest. “I don’t remember much, but the next thing I knew, I was in bed at an inn, with a warm meal, and an innkeeper’s wife that nursed me back to health.”

Asheros is a good male.

Something lightens in my chest, stirring feelings of pride within me.

My gaze falls to the floor. Perhaps the part of the sly, cunning, and indifferent fae lord that he plays is merely a façade, protecting his true self underneath.

But if it is just an act, why go through the effort? What happened to him? What taught him to hide?

“He didn’t ask,” Kheldryn says, “but I pledged my service to him, nonetheless. He’d saved my life, and I vowed that day, I would save his, too, if it ever came to that. Only then, would my debt be paid.”

Her undying loyalty to her lord is evident in her tone, in the conviction underlying her words. I don’t need to ask her to know that she would remain loyal to Asheros, even after her so-called debt is paid. It reminds me of the Guards I once commanded in Keuron. Their belief in the crown—and in me, when I served as their Captain—shone through in every obeyed command and every salute to my position.

Gods, what I would give to be among their ranks once more.

“He is lucky to have you,” I say, my voice soft.

“I am lucky to have him,” she corrects me. “And you would be, too.”

My eyes land on her immediately, my face snapping down to hers.

“I see the way you two speak to each other,” she says, an amused smile tugging at her lips. “The way you look at him.”

Snorting, I say, “I only look at him when I must.”

Kheldryn raises a brow. “Oh, sure you do.” She glances at something in the hall and then back at me. “Have you ever wondered that, maybe in marking you two as fated, the gods weren’t telling you that he’s your enemy, but rather, that you and he would become something so much more?”

My stomach leaps into my throat, my body brimming with the possibility of what could be—if I’d only let it.

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