Page 13 of Devour the Dark

Asha slips her arm around my waist, linking her hand with mine at the small of my back. “You are not weak. You never were. Those were the lies they told you. Because a woman who sees her power is a woman who cannot be controlled.”

I lean into her. “Where do you summon that fortitude? You amaze me at every turn.”

She blows out a breath. “I know I’m always the smartest person in the room. That helps.”

I laugh. “By the gods, I love you, Asha. More than you’ll ever know.”

She squeezes my hand. “I love you too, Your Majesty.”

“No,” I say quickly. “Never again. We were always equals, you and I. Or maybe you were?—”

“Stop,” she says, knowing exactly where I’m going with that disparaging mark about myself.

“Okay. Yes.Equals.”

She nods.

“And as equals, there are no titles. I am just Wendy. Forevermore.”

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Wendy. I’m Asha.”

“Nice to meet you as well, Asha. I have a sense we’ll be fast friends.”

She laughs again. It’s been a while since we’ve had this lightness between us. In Everland, we were always on high alert, always preparing for a betrayal or a coup or the outbreak of war.

I glance back out to the city, to the street across from our port, and immediately, my heart freezes.

I know that tall, blond, broad-shouldered man.

He’s haunted my nightmares.

“Peter Pan,” I breathe out. “He’s here.”

CHAPTER SIX

ROC

He’sin the ballroom of Maddred Manor.

There is music in the distance. A violinist playing a new arrangement ofMadame la Mort. The notes are haunting. It reminds him of his mother.

There were two versions of Anjelaka Maddred: melancholy or manic.

If there was a third version of her, one that smiled or told secrets or danced or felt joy, he had never met her.

By the time he was born, she was a woman with glassy eyes and a heart of ash.

The tempo of the arrangement intensifies. It’s the inner battle ofMadame la Mort.

To live or to die? To love or be loved? To give a life for that love?

He follows the music.

Down the hall and past the gilded frames of past nobility. Past the library where his sister’s piano sits, past the smoking room, the parlor.

The double doors are open to the garden beyond.

A shadow is in the middle of the boxwoods where the low-cut hedges form a Bone knot.

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