Page 159 of Lady of Ashes

Tava slid into Drake’s vacated seat when the chamber door clicked shut behind him. She held Callan’s gaze, her head tilted slightly to the side as if she were searching him for something.

“So, little fox, what did we need to discuss?” Callan asked, taking another sip from his nearly empty glass.

A half-smile tugged at her lips, her head coming to rest on her hand where she had her elbow propped on the arm of the sofa. “Youknow that even once we accomplish this task, you will not be rid of them, do you not?”

“What would we need them for?”

Her lips tipped up again in a knowing smile. “Scarlett is not one you simply forget.”

“And if I want to forget her?”

“There’s that bitterness again, Prince.”

He scowled at her. “Stop calling me that.”

She just shrugged at him, and Callan had to ?ght back the smile that tried to form on his lips at how casual the Lady had become with him.

“I am simply saying that once Scarlett claims you as one of her own, there is no going back. She will forever see you as hers. Not as a lover,” she added quickly when he opened his mouth to argue. “But as someone she would give her life to protect. She will always worry about your wellbeing, Callan.”

“I am not her subject. I am not her responsibility.”

“No. You are so much more. She would consider you family,” Tava replied.

Callan could only scoff at that.

Her pale brow arched. “You think I do not know what I am speaking of ? You shared a bed with her for more than a year, Callan. And while she may have kept secrets, you cannot tell me she did not make it clear that she would risk her life for those she loves.”

“I am not one of them any more,” he answered.

Tava tsked under her breath. “Then you have clearly gone blind and deaf, because if you knew where to look and truly listened when she spoke, you would know that is not true.”

He gritted his teeth at the response.

“I think what irritates you most is the fact that she does still care so deeply for you, even if it’s not how you envisioned,” Tava said, her eyes seeming to watch him carefully. “But to be quite frank, and all of your history aside, you would be stupid to alienate yourself from someone so powerful.”

“And why is that?”

“Obviously because should you ever need her assistance to protectyour people,it would be best to be on good terms with those who can literally set the world on ?re,” she answered. “It is about more than you and her and what you may or may not have been. It is about your kingdom, and if you cannot set your bitternessaside for your people, then you are not the king I thought you were becoming.”

“If Drake could hear you speaking to me now,” Callan muttered.

“I am to be your wife after all,” she replied with a wry smile.

He mulled over some of what she said for a few moments before he asked, “You lived with her for over a year. Did you ever question who or what she was?”

“I knew who she was. I knew the night Cassius brought her to us.”

“And you were ?ne with that? With bringing Death’s Maiden into your home?”

“I trust Drake, and he trusts Cassius. And if you had seen her that night … In the days and months that followed that night …” She swallowed, again absent-mindedly reaching for the spirit amulet that was no longer there. “She may as well have been a spirit of the After.”

Callan took another sip of his drink, trying not to think about what had happened that night. What had changed everything.

His own would-be Hand-to-the-King.

Memories of Scarlett asking about Mikale that night surged to the forefront of his mind. How they’d argued on the paths in the gardens. How he’d already known then, before everything happened with Mikale, that she’d already started pulling away from him. How he’d desperately clung to some idealistic vision he’d formed of the two of them ruling over Windonelle together.

“Were you two close while she lived with you?”

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