Page 32 of Court of Bone and Amethyst

It’s his lips wrapping around my name that sends me over the edge. I remember that first night he’d said it, when he visited me in my dreams. It had made me shiver then, and now I convulse as ecstasy spikes though my core. A cry pours out of me that sounds more animal than woman, and a pulse of magic moves across the hut. Zyren grinds himself into me as I lose myself, and several moments later he cries out, too, pulling me against him.

We lay there, breathless, as the pleasure subsides. Zyren kisses my neck and then buries his face in my hair. My head slowly clears, and I realize that I’d crossed that dangerous line once again. But this didn’t mean anything, right? As long as Zyren doesn’t have real feelings for me, he’ll be perfectly safe. He seems to be very vexed with me most of the time, other than these moments when we fulfill each other’s physical needs.

“I suppose,” he whispers in my ear, “that we might survive the frozen north after all.”

My heart skips several beats. “I told you back at the castle that we weren’t going to continue this. Remember?”

“This doesn’t count,” he says. “We both had our clothes on.”

I need to be strong. I need to play this safe…

His hand slides back down to my core, which is still throbbing. “Of course, I am a gentleman. If you tell me no, I will stop in an instant.”

He pauses, then runs his fingers down over my opening, arching one finger inward and into me. Even through my clothes, it makes me gasp.

“Do you want me to stop, Sarielle?”

Zyren moves his finger in and out, pulsing it until I can see stars within the tent. I want to tell him to stop, but my lips won’t form the words. Instead, they betray me, releasing another moan. He kisses my neck as he moves his finger faster andfaster, and then I am lost to him a second time, crying his name as I shudder against him.

He chuckles as I go limp.

“Sweet dreams, Sarielle,” he whispers in my ear.

Chapter Seventeen

Zyren

When I wakethe next morning, I feel a wash of different emotions, the predominant one being regret. Sarielle is curled in the curve of my body, and it’s impossible not to feel a strange elation that we are meeting the rising of the sun together. And a big part of me wants that to be the case every day for the rest of my life.

But being with her is still so wrapped up in tragedy… I betrayed my brother, and I continue to betray him each time I lose myself to her. My dishonor resurfaces again and again, yet I can’t seem to avoid making the same mistake. Because that’s what Sarielle is—a mistake I make over and over. She’s my ward and my queen. I continue to fail her. I know why, of course, which is even more shameful.

Because I’m hopelessly in love with her.

And love makes youweak.

She stirs against me and goddess help me, but I want to repeat that mistake yet again. Pulling back the furs, I force myself up and out into the frigid air. The icy bite across the length of my body clears my head enough to gain control of myself. It’s alsoa good thing we have to sleep with our boots on, so I have no excuse to linger. I pull my outer fur cloak around me and duck out of the hut to greet the morning.

I make myself useful and prepare all the horses for the day’s ride, giving them grain and water, removing their fur blankets, and saddling them all up. After I’ve taken care of that, I trust myself enough to go back to the hut, where I find Sarielle waking. I hand her some bread and cheese.

“We should mount up soon,” I say. “I’ll go wake Owyn and Merla.”

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

“I’ll eat later.”

She shoots me a puzzled look, but I just duck back out of the hut and head over to the other.

Within a quarter hour, we’re mounted up and heading north. We ride for several hours, and the Elarian Ice Forest draws closer as we travel toward it, a necessary jog west to avoid an area with even more lakes, and treacherous footing. When the sun is directly overhead, we stop for a few minutes to eat and let the horses rest. Sarielle has just placed a piece of bread into her mouth when she lets out a strangled cry and goes rigid.

I leap up from where I’m sitting on a rock, eyes scanning our surroundings for signs of a threat. “What is it?” I growl. Owyn and Merla both have balls of magic in their palms and at the ready in an instant.

She looks up at me, eyes wide with horror. “Nightmares,” she whispers. “Lots of them.”

I shake my head. “They can’t get across the border. Avonia let the one through, but it’s an ancient and powerful one, it helped her, no doubt…”

“I don’t know how she did it, but they’re coming,” Sarielle says, her tone laced with urgency. She stands and points south. “I feel them. They’re not far.”

I look where she points and on the far, far stretches of my line of vision, across the flat barrens dotted with lakes, I see something dark on the horizon. Like a flock of birds, or the blackest of storm clouds. I spin to glare at Owyn. “I thought you said you cloaked her magically?”

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