Page 77 of Threaded

“Reisligr, nio.”

She didn’t know what his words meant, but they felt like praise, his tone filled with something close to reverence. With a shaky inhale, she willed those threads back into her, the light winking out as her power returned to her veins. Its presence was now calming, soothing, no longer on edge and snapping at her mind with talons and fangs.

And there, wrapped in Andrian’s warmth and covered in the evidence of his claiming, she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. Long before the Uroboros, before the Choosing, before all of it.

She felt …quiet.

CHAPTER36

The trees outside bore leaves of burnished gold, red, and orange, the sign that fall was in full swing. The air pressing in through the window was cold, demanding.

Then again, there wasn’t much about Antoris that wasn’t cold and demanding.

Andrian was ten years old and couldn’t remember a single day living in that northern castle when he hadn’t been chilled to the bone.

He sat in the cold leather chair in his father’s study, the marble of the floors and walls doing nothing to keep out the bite of autumn hanging in the air outside. Even the fire raging in the hearth behind his father’s desk couldn’t combat the stinging freeze.

Nestled in the foothills of the great Everheim Mountains, Antoris was the most northern Royal seat in Onita, and was by far the coldest.

As was its lord.

Andrian sunk deeper into his chair, seeking warmth, or even to just escape from whatever punishment he knew was coming. His father, Lord Julian Laurent, and his icy temper had always utterly terrified him.

He was even more terrified right now, given the reason his father had summoned him.

The night before, Andrian had been woken by a burning pain on his chest, as if he were being branded, his skin lit on fire and scorched from the outside in.

For someone who’d spent all his childhood cold, the burning heat had at first been welcomed.

But then … it hadn’t stopped. It only grew worse, kept burning and burning andburning, until Andrian had cracked under the pain, screaming into the night as he felt his skin melting off his flesh.

His guards and maid had rushed immediately into his chamber, frantic by his panicked cries, desperate to find the source of their young heir’s pain. Andrian could only clutch at his cotton tunic, at his chest, screaming, “It hurts”and “Please, stop the hurt, please.”

Finally, one of his guards had managed to rip open his shirt while the others held him still, pinned beneath their arms.

Andrian remembered how the room had gone still, silent, as if amudaehad walked out of his history books and into his bedchamber.

Still pinned beneath his guards, his maid had run from the room to wake his mother and father. By then, the pain had slowly begun to subside; being exposed to the cold air had helped whatever was happening to him. When he’d stopped writhing, his guards had carefully released him, granting him back control of his limbs.

That was when he’d looked down at his chest, where the pain had come from.

Right over his heart, there was now a Mark. It looked like a tattoo—those inky inscriptions some of the older boys in training to join his father’s guard had needled into their skin. It was shaped in a circle, curved into what looked to be a dragon, arched and roaring.

It was then his mother and father had come bursting into the room, both still dressed in their nightclothes. Andrian’s mother, a frail, dark-haired woman with pale, amethyst eyes, had immediately begun to weep, falling to her knees as a sob had wracked her.

Andrian hadn’t been sure why she was crying. The pain was going away. It wasn’t so bad anymore. He was about to speak, to reassure her that he didn’t hurt, until he glanced at his father.

Lord Laurent’s face had been cold, colder than usual, icy fury blazing in his expression. He’d stared hard at his son for several chilling seconds before turning sharply on his heel, leaving his young son and weeping wife in the room behind him with a slam of the door.

Around noon the next day, Andrian had finally received a summons from his father to meet him in his private study. And now, here he sat.

Andrian’s eyes snapped to the left as the door to the study opened, and Julian Laurent strode in.

The Lord of Antoris was a tall, muscular man, still young enough to be in his prime. His coloring was very much Onitan: golden skin, golden hair, golden-hazel eyes. Andrian supposed he looked more like his Leuxrithian mother, with her black hair and crystal eyes, and his lack of physical similarities to his father had only served to make him more terrified of the man before him.

No matter how many times Andrian called him Father, Julian Laurent still felt like a stranger.

Lord Laurent walked to his chair behind the massive marble desk, the expanse of stone between him and his son pushing Andrian to cower deeper into the leather of his own.

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