Page 101 of Threaded

Even though he was a Marked man, he was also still a Royal’s son, and he’d danced with plenty of women in his life. Had asked plenty of women to dance with him.

But nothing had shocked him more than when she’d said yes. Those cracks in his ice shattered even further.

He’d been close to her before: with her, on her, under her,insideher. But there in the throne room, dancing, their conflicting magic crackling in the air around them, the declaration he’d laid at her feet mere moments before swirling through the room in front of lords and ladies and ambassadors and emissaries … something had felt completely raw and new andterrifying.

And now, as Andrian watched her dark head flit through the crowd, he could almost feel the warmth of her light seeping through the frozen cracks in his soul.

But she was always slipping away from him.

It was maddening.

And he was so, eternally,fucked.

He wanted to go after her the second she disappeared from view. His feet, previously rooted to the marble floor beneath him, suddenly loosened, and he took a lurching step forward. He was once again frozen in place, though, his gaze snagging on a pair of golden-hazel eyes set into a bearded face filled with cold, frigid rage.

Lord Julian Laurent met and held his son’s eyes. Andrian, despite the three decades he’d had to accustom himself to his father, felt his heartbeat sputter in his chest. The Lord of Antoris lifted a hand, gesturing to Andrian to follow him, his expression leaving no room for argument.

Choosing to ignore him and walking away at that moment would not be an option. It was time to face the consequences of his actions that night.

Filled with shameful weakness and rising dread, Andrian shoved his shadow magic down—his father never took kindly to the reminder of the Leuxrithian influence in Andrian’s blood—and followed Lord Laurent out of the throne room and into the darkness of the hallways beyond.

Leaving the object of hishatredbehind him.

* * *

The door to the private meeting room slammed shut behind Andrian, the boom reverberated through the room and rattled theallumesconces on the walls. His gaze lingered on the soft gold light filtering from them before turning to face his father. He refused to think about why he found that light familiar and oddly comforting.

Lord Laurent stood at the head of the dark, heavy table, his hands resting on the back of one of the white wood chairs, everything about him burning with the rage of a furious inferno.

In his entire thirty-one years of life, throughout both childhood and his years in Verith after being marked, Andrian had always known his father to be a raging maelstrom of fire, mirroring the elemental gift he rarely used that filled his veins nonetheless. Julian Laurent was lord of the most northern Onitan stronghold, his city once a major center for Onitan-Leuxrithian trade before the borders were closed. It was a place where frost and cold reigned most of the year except for those few sweet months in the summer when the longer days chased away the worst of the freeze. However, Lord Laurent let himself burn with just enough fire to melt some of that ice, keeping the farms standing and his people prosperous. All a ploy, Andrian knew, to keep the common folk beholden to him, meek and unquestioning.

The origins of House Laurent hearkened back to the earliest of Onita itself, when its people were still reeling from the First War and the new divisions between the kingdoms. Qhohena’s blessings had still freshly inundated the land, and the physical appearances of those earliest Onitan peoples had taken on her gilded glow, their hair, skin, and eyes all varying shades of gold. Julian Laurent, and much of the Laurent line, still carried those strong golden traits indicative of pure Onitan breeding.

His oldest son, however, wasn’t as lucky.

Andrian had always been colder, darker, and filled with far too much ice and shadow to make his father happy. He’d taken after his Leuxrithian mother, physically resembling the northern people who dwelt in the eternal cold beyond the Everheim Mountains. And because of that, he was always so easily burned by the inferno dwelling within his father.

“I am disappointed in you, Andrian.” Julian’s golden gaze was scorching.

If Andrian were still a boy, those words would’ve had him shrinking under the table.

He was not a boy anymore, though.

Andrian crossed his arms, straightening his spine. “For what? Not saying ‘hello’ earlier in the evening? I didn’t strike you as one to be personally offended by a simple slip in manners, especially from your own blood.”

“Save your snark with me, Andrian. You knowexactlyof what I speak.”

“No, actually, I don’t.” Andrian scratched his chin, the slight stubble growing there irritated his fingertips as he narrowed his gaze at his father. He was filled with a foreign confidence, one that most certainly flowed from a certain dark-haired siren who’d surprised him more than anything ever had with her acceptance of him that evening. “Care to enlighten me?”

The inferno in his father’s gaze strengthened into a hurricane of flame. “I haven’t spoken to you in many years, wanting to keep my distance, but Iknowyou remember what I told you that day you were Marked. However, it seems you might need some sort ofreminder.” Julian paused. “You disgraced your family tonight, Andrian, by dancing with thatwhorebearing a name worth nothing that we are soon expected to callqueen.”

“Is it true what they say about you? That you handle a sword as well as you do a cock?”

Andrian felt the dark magic in his blood stretch its tendrils out from him, seeping into the air, a shadow come to life. His control faltered at his father’s ugly words, at the reminder of Donnet’s very public proclamation, and his voice came out of his throat in a low growl. It filled the air with all the ice and smoke in his frozen heart.

“Howdareyou call her that foul word.”

Julian Laurent was unfazed. “Ah, yes, of course. How could I forget? That is, as it seems, an easy way to wind up with a dagger to my throat and—how did you put it—with my blood pooling at the feet of your so-called queen.” His father’s words were sneered, not a single hint of fear shown in his expression at his son’s display. “You threatened a Lord of Onita tonight, Andrian. He spoke the truth, too. About her. All his words were true, and we’d all been thinking them.”

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