Page 37 of King of Flames and Shadows

Especially after my experiences in this castle, I no longer appreciate being lied to.

“You,” I persist. “What doyouwant. I won’t tolerate being manipulated.”

Linus’s eyes flash with something too brief and intense to describe or name. He hesitates for a long time. Here, hidden among the towering piles of tombs, I feel simultaneously trapped by him and trapped alongside him. This cage is his as much as it is mine.

“I believe this land will never be free,” he says eventually, “So long as the dragons continue to rule it. I believe all six of the Draconic Houses must fall.”

I scoff, sitting back, folding my arms across my delicately laced nightgown. “A pipe dream. You’re a madman.”

“Perhaps. But I will pursue my ends in this land if it means my people have a sliver of a chance at freedom.” Linusquirks a tiny, sly smile, a fiercely discomfiting thing. “You’d be a traitor to shy from the fight for the freedom of the humans of this place. Deep inside, you already know it. Look what he has done to you.”

He gestures to the whole of me, as if I’ve been consumed entirely. I burn with hatred at his suggestion, but looking down at myself, I understand what he means. In my thin, rich nightclothes, the only garments I am permitted to wear outside of formal settings, with my ankles perpetually chained and my feet bare, and my hair soft with extensive washing but unkempt nonetheless, I look like some strange, pale spirit, a shade of this place’s violent past. I haunt its hallways like a ghost. I feel like I’m losing my mind most days, less a tower-bound princess and more an attic-bound madwoman.

Even a month ago, I was not recognisably the same person I am now. The thought terrifies and repulses me.

Still, I cannot stand the insult, regardless of its truth.

“Don’t act like you aren’t walking a thin line as much as I am,” I grind out through gritted teeth. “We’re both playing a dangerous game. Are you even permitted to be in this castle right now? Unlike you, I know where my limits lie. I’m keeping myself alive. The people of my village weren’t so lucky as to be able to even try.”

Linus doesn’t recoil at my tone. If anything, his small, knowing smile grows.

When he leans nearer to me, I see in his teeth a sharpness even Arvoren doesn’t possess, a carnivorous thirst I cannot understand nor describe.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, “you could be limitless, if you only believed it so.”

The words send a chill through me. Unsettled, I scoot back until I’m pressed to a stack of children’s novels with red spines, hardly visible in the faint light glowing up from the lower levels below us.

Something clarifying settles within me then. As if instantaneously, I know precisely what to say next.

“I know you want help from me,” I say. “I’m willing to keep meeting with you … if you help me, too.”

Linus's smile breaks into a grin. As if we’re friends. As if we trust each other. We never will—I know this innately. I will never trust this hungry thing, this battered dog, the most dangerous type of beast. And he will never trust me.

“Certainly,” he says. “Anything.”

I reel off my list of demands like a hostage-taker. “I know Lyra is with your people. Protect her, or I’ll rat you out to him in a heartbeat. Keep her alive above all else. Are we clear?”

Linus nods, looking unbothered. “She’s not stupid. She won’t be difficult to keep out of danger.”

Clearing my throat of its thick, anxious lump, I continue: “And if I’m going to feed you information, you need to find a way to break me out before he can—before he—” I can’t even say it.Before he marries me. Before he sires children with me. Before I, like his sad-eyed mother, become resigned to life in this place.“You need to get me out. I don’t care how.” It is my principle and most important demand.

I hope my third and final point is made silently clear by the look in my eyes.Betray me, and I’ll find some way to kill you. I swear it.

Linus sticks out his hand between us. “You have a deal, Calliope Windward.”

My full name. The wistful sound of it—I had almost forgotten the way it rang in the air. It hasn’t been so long since I got here, and already, I am forgetting myself. Forgetting my grandmother, my home, my very spirit.

If I don’t get out of here, I’ll lose it all.

I take his hand and shake it. His skin is cold as the dead, icy all the way through.

Chapter 15 - Arvoren

The castle pulses with a new, eerie energy in the weeks that follow. I can feel it in the very stones, a strange resonance that sets my teeth on edge, like a low hum just beyond hearing. It’s in the flicker of torches that gutter when there’s no draft, in the sudden chills that slip through the halls even when the hearths are blazing.

I’ve heard the servants whispering. They say the castle’s magic is waking. But it’s not the ancient enchantments that protect Millrath’s walls or the warding spells woven into the very foundation of this place. No, this is something different—something restless. A disturbance that warps the air and sends cracks spidering through the fragile balance of this place.

And at the center of it all is her.

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