Page 36 of Queen of Stars and Shadows

“To release her from her prison in the forest one night a year.”

“To prey on the people of Valaron?” I hiss.

Sarielle’s face crumples. “I know, Zyren. I thought… I thought if we survived, I could figure a way out of the deal later.”

I shake my head, my thoughts spinning. “But why would she bring us here?”

“She’s been haunting my dreams. She knew I left Valaron and thought I was trying to escape. So she told me I had five days to reclaim my throne in the Court of Nightmares, or she would consider the deal reneged and be free not just for one night, but… forever.”

“So the five days is up? She’s free now?”

“No! I still had almost two days left… I don’t understand…”

Anger spikes through my core. “A convenient story. The whole thing. You seduce me, like you seduced my brother, and now we’re trapped in this wasteland of monsters?”

Sarielle’s face goes from panicked to furious in an instant. “Howdareyou. I never seduced your brother. I was betrothed to him as an infant, completely without consent, I might add, but I have only ever lovedyou.” She steps up close to me, stabbing a finger into my chest. “And when exactly was I seducing you when you had a knife to my throat?”

She spins and stalks off. She still has no clothes, so she’s tromping through the dunes completely naked. I hate the visceral response it stirs in my body, the desire to run after her and tackle her in the sand.

“Where are you going?” I yell after her.

“To find a way out of this place!” she calls over her shoulder. “You’re clearly not going to be any help whatsoever.”

I stare after her for several moments, undecided, then I follow. Sarielle is already halfway down the giant dune we’re traversing. When she reaches the bottom, she stops and throws her arms into the air, screaming at the top of her lungs. “This is cheating, and you know it! I have two days left, you evil hag!”

She does seem truly incensed. If she’s manipulating me, she’s rather excellent at it.

But, of course, my brother had told me she would be.

I let out a groan. I don’t know who to trust anymore, or what to believe. How can I trust this woman over my own family? My brain tells me that’s absurd. But my heart keeps telling me the opposite. All I know in this moment is that I need to figure out how in the hell to get out of this place. And staying close to Sarielle seems more prudent than going our separate ways. If she’s telling the truth, we can help each other. If she’s not… well, better to keep my enemy within sight.

Sarielle turns left at the bottom of the dune, and when I look that way, I can see what she no doubt had spotted. There seems to be a large body of water far, far in the distance. An ocean, perhaps, judging by the fact that it spans the horizon. She’s still a dozen paces ahead of me, so I jog to catch up.

“Have you come to your senses?” she snarls. She turns and looks up at me, and the ferocious look in her golden eyes makes my heart do a strange flip.

“It makes sense to stick together.” I gesture toward her chest. “Here, take this.”

I pull my tunic off over my head and hand it to her. She gives me a funny look, half wary, half shy, as if just realizing she’s unclothed. But she takes the tunic from me and pulls it on over her head. It’s large on her, hanging halfway down her thighs. She’s swimming in it, but I can still see the curve of her breasts, and now that everything else is covered, I almost instantly want to take it off again. It’s tantalizing knowing what lies out of sight above the hem of my tunic.

This woman really does have me completely under her spell. I don’t know why I’m bothering to fight it.

Her eyes move up and down the expanse of my now-bare chest, drinking me in just the same as I did. “Thank you,” she says softly.

“Make for the water, then?” I ask, pointing into the distance. “See if there are boats or something?”

She nods. “It seems the best choice at the moment.”

So we walk. And walk and walk and walk, for miles and miles. The sky doesn’t change in this place, the sun seeming fixed in place, so it’s hard to tell the passing of time, but it must be hours that we traverse the sands. As we climb and descend the giant dunes, we sometimes lose sight of the water in the distance, which as we travel, I feel more and more confident is an ocean. It is too vast to be anything else, a great expanse of green-gray.

Even though the sky is gray, and the single sun hanging in it shines a dull pewter color, it somehow radiates an intense amount of heat that soon has us both sweaty, miserable, and thirsty. There appears to be no water except the ocean we’re traveling toward, which I doubt we’ll be able to drink. It would be ironic if dehydration killed me, given all the perils I’ve faced over the centuries.

I have lived for so long, and possess so many memories, but none of them are the ones that are important now.

None of them explain how I got transported to Eldare, when for two millennia Valaron was cut off from the rest of Aureon.

None of them explain how my brother got wrapped up with Avonia.

And none of them explain how the woman I’m stranded with came into my life, and why I can’t think of anything else but wanting to protect her and hold her in my arms. Run my fingers through that silvery hair. Pick her up and kiss her until neither of us can breathe.

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