Page 85 of The Oracle of Dusk

Yet his heart paid no heed to his head as the thunder boomed as loud as his heart. Dread and rage ripped his last bit of sense to shreds between their teeth. How dare she talk of throwing away her life?! How dare she, when there were so many he’d lost? He rounded on her then, crowding her against the wall, pinning her. His magic swirled around them in his senseless wrath. How could he hate her so much in that moment, and yet be grateful that his magic assured him of her heartbeat?

“Don’t you say that! Don’t youeverfucking say that!”

She pushed him away with all her might.

“Get out! I never want to see your thrice-damned face again!”

“Likewise!” he retorted, storming off and slamming the door shut on his way out.

Her sobbing chased him all the way back to his quarters, where he sank to his knees, his heart and mind in tatters.

Chapter 16

Forthenextfewdays, Theron was no better than an injured dog, liable to lash out and bite anyone who got too close. His heart was a raw, gaping wound that refused to heal. Aurora had slipped through his walls, and with unexpected violence, she’d thrown every nightmare, every crippling memory, into stark relief. Her words had cut him to the bone and then served him his bleeding heart on a silver platter.

He hated her for it.

With only a few words, she’d stripped him of his strength, his control, his sense of equilibrium. No one had ever done that to him and lived to tell the tale.

Except her.

As much as he’d wanted to stomp down that hallway and beat down her door so that he could rail against her, give some outlet to the ugly, fetid swamp of emotions riding him, a small rational part of him knew she was not to blame for it. Not really. Those wounds had been inflicted by his parents in their darkest hour and then left to fester for a lifetime thereafter.

As Theron lounged in the courtyard, soaking in the sun, he had a sinking feeling in his gut. His anger had abated, leaving remorse in its wake. It was uncomfortable, and every time he thought he’d managed to cleanse himself of it, her angry tears invaded his mind.

The benefits of being a king meant never having to apologise to anyone beneath you. And as a king, everyone was beneath him. But if he wanted to salvage some connection with Aurora, he was going to have to. Her value had not diminished just because he’d lost his temper. She knew things no one else did. Theron was still convinced he was going to need her before his trials in Boreas were through, and his intuitions were rarely wrong.

The problem was that by the time he’d calmed down enough to know what he needed to do, he couldn’t find her anywhere. She no longer slept in the room she’d been in. Like a ghost, she seemed to pass through the walls of the guest palace unseen. Only his spies had been able to detect her. According to them, Aurora moved rooms daily, snuck into the kitchens at odd hours, and slipped between guard rotations to bathe at night. He tried to catch her one evening, but she’d never showed.

His only consolation was that she hadn’t managed to relieve him of her pack of ill-gotten goods. Theron was confident she wouldn’t leave the capital without them, and so he’d taken to keeping them on his person at all times. Naturally, he’d sorted through them many times during the interminably dull days in the vivarium. Stolen treasures from the other prisoners, a coveted bar of soap, a few gowns, her foreign clothes, her ancient artefacts, and her scroll. He turned to it again, unrolling it to see her drawings.

He recognised the woman, the same face that the spirit had taken. Phaedra. Rendered in loving detail, this one had an air of mischief about her. The next was a man with long, pointed ears, much like her own, and a kind look in his eyes. Lover? Family? He didn’t know. The next was a sword, the hilt drawn in intricate and precise detail. Something about it bothered him, scratching at the back of his mind, like a forgotten word trapped on the tip of his tongue. The last was of a fearsome beast—a great serpent, a multitude of horns curling from its head, eyes wide with madness, gaping jaw full of endless teeth. It looked exactly like something Batea would create, if she hadn’t already. With a striking resemblance to her most recent giant serpents, he couldn’t help his unease. Perhaps the ambition to soar through the skies on the backs of dragons was one better left to the imagination than brought to reality.

He tucked the scroll back into her sack and pulled out her small circular artefact, marvelling at his handiwork. With nothing better to fill his time, aside from thinking up all the retorts he wished to lob at both the princess and her wretch of a mother, he’d turned to repairing it. But the metal bands around it had resisted his every effort and refused to bend even when heated. It was only when, in a fit of pique, his magic had swirled around him and latched onto the artefact that he’d uncovered something truly unique.

That was when he knew Aurora would forgive him. The inquisitive little fairy would no doubt be fascinated to learn her artefact was in some strange way a living organism. He planned on trading that information, along with her fully restored artefact, for her forgiveness and continued aid.

It would be enough, surely.

As a servant came up the covered walkway, Theron slipped the artefact into the crudely stitched satchel at his side. This servant wore a red bracelet. She made to clean up his morning dishes.

“Word is the queen has something humiliating planned for a party to celebrate the end of the plague and the reopening of the city.”

Perhaps this time she would force him to appear in nothing but a soiled loincloth. Though it was bold of her to risk humiliating him in front of an audience. Even one as hostile as the nobles of Boreas could be made to turn on her with the right invective. No monarch ever rested on their laurels with such bloodhounds as usually stalked the courts.

“Typical. Anything else?”

“No word of weddings, if that’s what concerns you.”

That was the first bit of good news he’d heard in a while. If Flora hadn’t convinced herself she’d just come up with a brilliant solution for a fourth time in a row after allowing Epicasta to escort him, he should thank the Triad. He would pray that it remained so. Much as he blustered the other day, he had no desire to test his mettle against a magic foul enough to deprive three men of their will. Nor did he have any illusions that his refusal to hand over the Dragon’s Flank wouldn’t result in a more dire situation.

“And the magic?”

“No word on what it might be.”

Theron cursed.

How was he to protect himself against a magic he knew nothing about? How was he to circumvent it so that he could assure himself that he could kill his potential black widow of a bride? It was clearly not Epicasta’s magic. The bitch princess could suffocate him all she liked, he would abdicate long before he allowed such torture to sway him into ceding the territory. But her mother? From what he understood, she had the ability to paralyse her victim for a short time. While possible that she’d used it to allow Epicasta to consummate her marriages with unwilling husbands, the very thought was so repellent to him that he couldn’t imagine Flora would still be queen if she’d used her magic in such a way. Surely her own nobles would have deposed her long ago.

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