Page 5 of A Sky of Emerald Stars

“And Sadie? Will she forever require a royal summons to stand by my side?” I asked, hopeful that my friend was beginning to come back into the fold. Grae let out a long-suffering sigh, which told me everything I needed to know. I wondered if Sadie just needed more time or if she didn’t want to be my royal guard at all anymore.

“She needs someone to scruff her and drag her back in,” Grae growled. “You’re being too lenient with her. It’s been long enough since Navin left. This is self-indulgent.”

I chuckled.

“What?”

“When have these feelings ever made sense?” I asked with an arch of my brow. “When have we ever followed a perfect timeline? Maez and Hector focus too hard on their work, Sadie too little. We’re all finding ways to cope.” I glanced down at the turquoise water just beyond my boots. “We’re all mourning the loss of what we thought our lives would be. Even I miss that certainty in my own strange way.”

The day before had been a sword and dagger day, one where I wanted to look and feel like the assassin I’d trained to be.Today I was a ruler, a fighter. Perhaps tomorrow I’d feel like a queen. And that was just about what Idid,not who Iwas.No, I was only beginning to unravel the freedom of my true gender: merem—with the river. Yet unlike the still, silent waters before me, I moved in and out of womanhood, dipping my toes in all forms of expression. I existed between and beyond, some days one, some days all, and some days none. I slowly absolved myself of the need to find my box and stay in it. I was merem. I flowed.

It just wasn’t in any wayeasy.

Perhaps it was naive to think peeling back the layers of who I was would only unearth positive things. Revealing my identity to others had been both freeing and frightening, and still I wondered every day that I claimed that name if the world would actually accept me. Every single interaction I had, I questioned it. Every time I spoke the word “merem” aloud, I wondered if the person listening would understand me: a Wolf with human words, a Wolf who wanted to bemore.

Grae dropped his chin onto my shoulder. My mate at least embraced every part of me, made me feel safe to not make sense, sometimes even to myself. He granted me the reprieve from absolutism, let me quietly figure out all I wanted to be. He moved with me in lockstep, subconsciously knowing my push and pull, following where I guided like a partner in a dance. He and I waltzed through this revelation with more ease than any Wolves would have, gliding from a rigid world of males and females into the bright spectrum of colors we never knew existed. Just like this burgeoning court, everything within us was being brought back to life, both of us healing from our lifelong wounds.

Grae dropped one last kiss to my temple and stood. “Alas, I didn’t just come down here to bring you back to bed.”

I glanced up at him and took his offered hand. “What now?” Was it another court meeting? Were there more people at my doorstep needing aid? Mapmakers? Builders? Farmers?

“The painter is to arrive this morning,” Grae said hesitantly, already bracing for my response.

“Oh no,” I groaned, hustling up the steps. “Do I really need to be added to another portraiture? Can’t we just point to one of the Gold Wolves already up there andsaythat it’s me?”

Grae laughed. “And your human portrait for the fresco?” My stomping footsteps echoed up the stairwell. “You’re willing to ride off into near certain death for your people, but sitting for a portrait is one step too far?”

“Of course! One is exciting, the other is mind-numbing tediousness.”

Grae’s hand slid from the small of my back to my ass and squeezed. “Do this and then afterward we’ll do something more fun.” He smiled. “If you feel numb after... I’ll remind every inch of your body what it is to feel.”

I blushed but couldn’t let him leave with the upper hand. “Only if ‘something more fun’ involves far less clothing and that little bottle of aromatic oils I gifted you for your birthday,” I said, reaching back and squeezing his thigh. He let out a little growl, and I smiled with all the smugness of a cat toying with a mouse. Grae didn’t get to torture me without me returning the favor.

His arms wrapped around me, holding me to him as we awkwardly moved up the steps in unison and I let out a chuckle. “This better be the fastest artist in Aotreas,” he grumbled, his hands roving my body as we hit the second spiraling stairwell. “Or your portrait will be in the nude.”

We heard the iron grate of the entry screech open, far on the other side of the palace. As we walked up the twisting stone steps, we heard an accompanying shout from one of the guards. Both Grae and I instantly reached for our weapons as the door above us was thrown open.

“Your Majesty!”

Sadie

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Each of his belabored breaths made me flinch as if it were my lungs being shredded. I squirmed on the plush velvet chair, raking my nails across the armrest with one hand and tossing my knife around with the other. Navin’s limp body was sprawled across the chaise longue beside my chair, the two of us tucked into the corner while my friends conferred around the grand council table.

A horde of healers had worked on him and left... that had been three hours ago.Three hourshe’d been unconscious, not a single groan or snore. I kept my eyes pinned to the rise and fall of his rib cage. I despised him, hated him even, but he couldn’t die. I wouldn’t let him.

Across from us, Calla, Hector, Grae, and Maez all stared down at maps scattered across the table, plotting ways to infiltrate Highwick and the dungeons below.

“We don’t even know if Ora was taken by Nero or just some rogue Silver Wolves,” Briar called from where she sat at a table next to Mina, who was anxiously rapping her fingers along her leg in a steady percussive rhythm. The table was laden with bowls of food and cups of tea that rattled at each drum of Mina’s fingers.

Briar stood and offered a bowl of candied almonds out to her twin, prompting them to eat.

“The Silver Wolves do nothing without Nero’s command,” Hector countered. He slid a golden paperweight carved like a howling wolf across the largest map, moving it from the peninsula of Olmdere, across the snowy mountains of Taigos, and settling it atop the rolling pine forests of Damrienn.

“All he said wasWolves,” I added, turning my gaze back on Navin. “He didn’t say which pack. It could’ve been a scuffle at the Valtan border for all we know.”

Briar’s hand landed on Calla’s shoulder. “Right. So let the poor chap wake before you go declaring war on an entire kingdom.”

“That kingdom hasalreadydeclared war on us,” Calla reminded, grumpily snatching the bowl from their twin. As Calla tossed a handful of almonds in their mouth, Briar pressed her lips together to hide her grin. Briar knew how to twist a person’s arm just as well as her sibling knew how to wield a sword. “We are just waiting for Nero to launch his first attack. This might have been it.”

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