Page 42 of Shadows of Ruin

Kade leaned closer, wrapping his hands around the reins. “Hold on. Onyx is a feisty ride.” His whisper in my ear elicited a full-body shudder before he spurred the horse into action.

Damn him.

The relentless pace of the group, combined with my stiff posture to keep from colliding with Kade, made the ride brutal. We moved swiftly throughout the dead lands. I took in our surroundings again, unable to comprehend how someplace so lifeless could be so beautiful.

Kade’s silence allowed me to replay the events of the past few days over and over in my mind. From the moment I told him my secrets and shared my bed with him, to my father’s death, and then discovering Mysthaven. All of it. After hearing him out about my father, regardless of whether hewould earn my forgiveness or not, there was still one thing I couldn’t come to terms with.

The action I couldn’t get over.

The fact that Kade had killed those Fae in the streets and looked as though he enjoyed doing it.

It ate away at the dark recesses of my brain. Something inside of me screamed that I didn’t know the full story. That there could be some “perfectly reasonable” explanation for their deaths too, like my father’s. Were they actually traitors to the crown or was something else happening? From each person’s comments, I couldn’t be sure what was the truth.

My father’s saying—Never trust something is as it appears at first glance—scratched at the back of my brain.

But Kade’s eyes had been so black. Dark, almost in the way the dark ones back home looked.

The horses slowed from our cantor, Storm calling for a small reprieve for the animals.

I shifted, but Kade enveloped me, tensing as though he thought I planned to jump off the horse. “Don’t even think about it,” he whispered in my ear.

I leaned forward, pulling away from him, trying to escape how completely he overtook every one of my senses. “You should have used some of your precious time last night to bathe. You smell as if you rolled in garbage.”

He didn’t though. At least not enough to mask the scent I was beginning to crave whenever he wasn’t near me. He smelled like my favorite mornings in Brookmere, when rain faded and left behind the promise of a new day. Crisp morning air and nature, completely satisfied and filled with hope.

I hated him for it.

Kade’s dark laugh stirred that thing deep inside of me I had yet to figure out. “You interrupted those plans with your lackluster escape, Little Rebel. Now you can suffer the consequences.”

The spark between us trailed up my spine, as if it enjoyed his teasing. My body was a traitor.

“You know,” I said, my voice cracking from pushing my desire away to focus on more important things, “out of all the fucked-up things that have happened to me recently, I cannot get over you killing those Fae yesterday. Were their crimes so heinous it warranted their deaths? Publicly like that? Especially when your friends questioned their guilt?”

Kade stiffened behind me.

Jax scoffed as he trotted closer to Onyx. “For someone he loves, you sure do act like you don’t know him at all.”

I gaped, my mouth wide at the insinuation.Ididn’t know him?Jax didn’t know his friend at all if he thought Kade Blackthorn loved me.

“You have no idea what you are talking about,” I said, sitting straighter. I needed distance from the warmth caressing the skin at my back.

Jax stared me down, narrowing his eyes before shaking his head. “He didn’t murder those Fae.”

“Jax.” Kade’s voice held a warning.

Jax held up a hand toward his friend. “No, I know you think this is safer, but she’s going to need to trust us where we’re going.”

“I saw it with my own eyes. Those Fae died. Snuffed out by his shadows. Over what?”

Jax growled, “You saw what you were meant to see.”

Kade tensed behind me.

Raya snorted. “Don’t worry, Princess, they don’t tell me anything either. I’m too much of aliability.”

That gave me pause. Raya seemed an integral part of their group. Why wouldn’t they tell her? “I don’t understand.”

“The king has too much access to me,” Raya explained, surprising me that she responded herself. Or at all. She clucked and encouraged her horse forward, the rest of usfollowing suit. “He molded my mind magic to what he wanted me to be as a child.”

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