Page 4 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

She gasps. “Iyre has a memory affinity.”

“Exactly,” Rian hisses. He gentlytouches his jaw where one of her blows landed as he mutters, “DidIreally merit that punch?”

She doesn’t think twice. “Yes.”

Once their tempers cool, and their breathing returns to normal, they slowly turn to me with eyes full of pity.

Pity? Pity forwhat?

All of this makes as much sense as laying a trap for a shadow. If this mystery woman was Rian’s fiancée, there is no world in which I would ever take her for my own. If I’m sure of anything, it’s that I would never betray the man who’s like a brother to me.

Maximan comes striding back into the clearing with his usual dour look. Quietly, he murmurs, “We tracked Lady Sabine and Immortal Iyre’s footsteps about three hundred paces to the south. The tracks vanish into nothing.”

As he always does when he’s thinking, Rian takes out his Golath dime, running it over his knuckles.

Suri huffs resolutely as she motions to a servant to bring her dappled mare around. “If Sabine’s tracks are gone, then she’s gone. You two are welcome to stay here and chase a ghost. I’m going back to Sorsha Hall. To the library, to see what the scholars have to say about fae portals.”

She gracefully swings up on her mare and takes off in a cloud of dried leaves.

Rian offers a hand to help me up. I’m unsteady on my feet, reeling like a stallion kicked me in the ribs. The funeral encampment is a ghost town now. Everyone has fled back to Duren except for a few servants and Golden Sentinels still searching the woods.

“You look like death incarnate,” Rian says low to me.

I feel like we’re boys again, when he dragged me out of the gutter countless times and nursed me back to health. Inall my life, he’s the only one who’s ever given a damn about me. Even now, knowing that I’m the true heir to the Astagnonian throne and his greatest threat, he steadies me with a concerned hand.

I drag a hand through my hair. “Rian, I get that there are gaps in my memory, but I wouldn’t have betrayed you.”

His lips firm into a flat line as if remembering a distasteful meal. “Ah, but you did.”

I stare at him like he’s grown a second nose.

“This isn’t a game of Basel, Wolf.” He grabs me hard by the shoulder. “It’s love and war. You fucked my bride on a holy altar in front of me. You gave up a throne that should have been yours by blood for her. And now you’ve lost her—you really don’t remember?”

His look is keen, curious, even a touch fearful, as though my feelings on the matter truly carry weight.

Quietly, I say, “I can’t miss a woman I don’t remember.”

“You truly remember nothing? You feel nothing?” He leans closer, and I feel like I’m on damn trial here.

I shake my head and try to resist the overpowering urge to glance over my shoulder at the shadowed woods. Something calls to me from those shadows. The adrenaline coursing through my veins urges me tohunt. To find the object that I’ve lost.

To findher.

But who am I kidding? I don’t even know what this mystery woman looks like. If she is tall or small. The color of her hair. The contours of her face. Already, I can’t recall the name they said only moments ago.

Rian’s shoulders ease as he releases a held breath.

“You need rest,” he says. “Come back to Sorsha Hall with me, and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“Right.” I smooth a shaking hand over my face, raking back my sweat-soaked hair again. And though my heart urges me not to, I signal the servant to bring my horse. “I’ll follow you anywhere, Rian.” I pause before adding, “As always.”

Chapter 2

Sabine

“Basten!”

It’s the last thing I yell before Iyre pulls me through the portal cut in the forest air, her strength as much as three grown men’s. My heart thrashes like a cornered beast, ready to strike with its last ounce of life. As I struggle against her, the invisible portal door fades away.

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