Page 23 of A Sky of Emerald Stars

Navin sat in a far corner booth, wide-eyed, with a knife pressed to his throat.

And the person holding that knife?

My father.

Calla

The sleepy town of Durid sat silent as I propped my elbows on the windowsill. My eyes lingered on one spot—that interruption in the houses, that ashen scar on the earth. Illuminated by the swollen moon, I could see the blackened mark where the mill once stood, the final burial ground for the two Wolves who chased Grae and me inside. If running away from Highwick was the spark, killing members of the Silver Wolf pack was the blaze.

In some twisted ways I understood Nero’s anger, but his retaliation against the humans was unfathomable. Grae and I alone should bear his wrath. It didn’t matter those Silver Wolves were trying tocaptureus, didn’t matter that returning with them would’ve been tantamount to a death sentence. In the mind of a Wolf, we betrayed our pack and we deserved everything that came next. But the humans hadn’t betrayed Nero, and he should thus be treating them as an alpha would: as members of the pack that needed his protection.

Not his teeth.

I smelled Grae’s scent a split second before his arms wrapped around me and his chin dropped onto my shoulder. He let out a long, slow sigh and pulled me from over the window ledge and tighter against his chest, anchoring me from my storming emotions.

“You need to stop leaning out open windows, love,” he murmured, “before you make my heart explode.”

“It’s a two-story drop,” I said with a whisper of a laugh. I waggled my hand at him, displaying the heavy amber ring on my finger. “Besides, I am protected.”

He toyed with the ring, centering the protection stone that consumed my left hand. It had once been a necklace that Grae had gifted me when we were young. Now, it was my wedding band, a reminder of his love and protection.

Grae let out a frustrated sigh, but it had no bite to it. “A few blows might miss, a few arrows stray, a few assailants more easily felled,” he said. “But it’s not a miracle. And toppling out a window is a cruel thing to do to your mate, protection stone or no.”

I felt his smile against my shoulder and my cheeks mindlessly lifted in mirror to his own. “How careless of me to not be thinking of your delicate heart.” I stretched my hands across the window again, and Grae’s grip on me tightened, keeping me from breeching the sill into open air.

The entire top floor of the inn was dedicated to me, my court, and my guards. I was probably the first queen who’d ever stayed there, but without our transportation, we decided to rest in the border town before riding out to the Taigosi capital in the morning once the carriages returned. It would be a long day, normally broken up even further, but after what I had seen, I knew I needed to speak to Queen Ingrid straightaway. The sight of that human’s burned face flashed through my mind again, spiking my panic anew.

“Your pulse is racing.” Grae dropped a kiss to my neck. “I only have one guess why.”

I swallowed, sticky guilt clinging to my skin, unable to be scrubbed away no matter how I tried. “If I hadn’t—”

Grae’s arms tightened. “No,” he murmured, his bottom lip skimming my pulse. “This was not your fault, little fox.”

“I brought this upon them,” I said, my voice shaking with horror. “People died because of me. If I hadn’t fled—”

“If you hadn’t fled, Maez would still be trapped in that tower, Briar would still be under a sleeping curse, and your court, yourpeople, would still be ruled by an evil sorceress.” Grae brushed a featherlight kiss to my temple, his hands splaying across my rib cage and down to my belly. “This is what my father does. He punishes you by hurting others.” His voice trailed off and I knew he was thinking of his mother. “He is using you as a reason to solidify the control and power he’s always craved. He’d take the entire continent if he thought he could get away with it.”

“Surely Ingrid will join us in rising up to fight him, right? She knows how it feels to defy controlling men,” I whispered. “Gods, I pray that Valta will rally to our cause, too.”

“Sadie and Maez will convince King Luo of it,” Grae said, but his reassurance lacked the conviction I needed.

“I don’t know,” I hedged. “Luo seems nearly as backward as your father. He will take whichever side stands to benefit him the most.”

“We have mines filled with gold.”

“That will never be mined again,” I reminded him. I was never sending another soul below the Sevelde Forest.

“Luo doesn’t need to know that,” Grae countered. “You forget I was schooled in Rikesh. I know Luo well, and he is more strategic than purely malevolent.”

“Not exactly a rousing vote of confidence.”

Grae chuckled. “We offer him power, gold, and prestige, and he will align with us,” Grae said. “Besides, he always liked me better than my father.”

“Maybe we should’ve sent you.”

Grae shook his head and skimmed his lips back down my neck. “You are needed here,” he murmured, his hot breath making my skin prickle with gooseflesh. His hand drifted lower from my hip to my thigh. “And I am needed wherever you are.”

I let out a little delicious hum as his hands fisted in my nightdress and he began slowly, tortuously lifting up the hem. When his hand delved under the fabric, his calloused fingers trailed up my inner thigh again, moving higher and higher in taunting circles.

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