Page 9 of The Blood Crown

A small flicker of light caught her eye as she began to turn away, and she glanced toward the movement, thinking it had been a trick of the fading sunlight until Ven gripped her arm forcefully enough to make her hold her breath.

The forest had darkened now, pale lavender and watery gray turning into indigo and violet. Painting the pines emerald and midnight blue. But just then—

Another flare of light. Pale and warm. Seeming to radiate from . . . nowhere. Like a small beacon in the middle of the forest, disappearing so quickly that she wondered again if she’d imagined it.

Once more the light flared to life, a few dozen feet away, seeming to float in midair as it bobbed gracefully between the lowest branches of the trees.

She glanced to where Ven stood beside her, his hand still gripped around her arm as if she might try to wander off into the darkened forest.

“Was that . . .” Karro’s voice trailed off into barely a whisper.

Ven gave a nearly imperceptible dip of his chin in response.

Aurelia took a small step back against the hard chest behind her, and Ven loosened his grip slightly. “What is it?” she asked, unable to take her eyes from the fading light that bobbed silently through the air, pulsing like a steady heartbeat as it faded into the pitch-colored pines ahead.

“Something old.”

Both sets of red eyes scanned the forest before Ven gently tugged on her arm and led her into the cave.

Her eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness that enveloped them. Piles of dry leaves and pine needles were scattered acrossthe floor, the bones of small animals littering the space, but it was clean enough. Dry. Safe. Hidden.

“What was that?” she finally asked again, once they were safely in the darkened space, far enough away from the entrance that it didn’t seem a risk to speak.

Ven swept away the debris from the cavern floor. “A wisp,” he answered without looking up.

She glanced out to the forest beyond. “A woodsman’s folly?” She’d heard tales of them, old lore that phantom lights would appear to woodsmen who strayed too far into the Shades past dark.

“Harmless on their own, but they like mischief.”

She knelt on the floor beside him, helping clear the space. “If they’re harmless, why do you seem so unsettled.”

“They have a habit of leading people into danger. Usually those who are already lost. Desperate.” He stretched out on the stone, seeming quite at home sleeping on the hard floor of a cave. “People follow the wisps thinking the lights will guide them to safety, but they rarely do.”

She laid down beside him. The cavern was large enough to comfortably fit them both, but any space that she shared with him always felt too small. And even though she would have had to reach out her arm to touch him, she could feel the warmth of his body through the dark, sinking into her skin. A delicious heat that took away the chill, begging her to inch closer.

She was tired in a way she’d never been, exhausted from the full day of carefully picking their way through the Shades. But she knew sleep wouldn’t find her tonight, so instead she plucked a thought from the dregs of her mind as she stared up into the pitch black of the cave.

“Who was your grandsire?”

Ven lifted his arms, clasping his hands behind his head as he settled against the floor.

“He was the last to wear the Solari crown,” he finally answered. "The last Blood King."

She sucked in a breath. “So your mother . . .” The small bits and pieces that he’d told her fell into place at once. He wasn’t just the leader of the Wraiths, he was royalty. The last of his bloodline. “When we went to the Allokin Kingdom—” she said, “the king called youprince.”

“A title I gave up long ago.” Ven answered softly.

The silence stretched tight between them in the dark, the only sound the slow, steady beat of his heart.

“My grandsire saw his people’s magick dwindling, a kingdom fractured—he had a vision of a different future. A new king had just taken the Nostari throne and my grandsire thought him more reasonable than his predecessors. He sent a raven with a treaty, proposing that males and females from opposite courts sire a new generation that would bring back the magick the Blood Folk had lost and help unite the kingdom.

"Each noble house sent a son or daughter to the moot, and though her older sister warned against it—my mother went as well, some voice inside of her nudging her actions that day."

She couldn't have said if it was admiration or the regret of hindsight that tinged his voice.

"She saw my father for the first time at that meeting." He gave a humorless laugh. "Struckwas the word she used." Sound rasped against the cave floor as he shifted. "She could have denied it, ignored the pull she felt toward him, but she claimed him."

She hummed her confusion at the word.

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