Page 43 of A World of Ruins

‘We can visit him tomorrow.’ Softness eases my tone, and I smile at him to seal the promise. It was selfish of me to keep him away in the first place, despite knowing Illias would argue that it was me protecting Tibith from uncertainty.

Tibith gives me that look again. The one it is hard to say no to. ‘Really?’

I nod and stand up. When I look back at Darius, his attention is solely focused on me. Tibith and I turn around and head out of the cell. Tension trembles between us like an unbreakable rope as Tibith waves goodbye, and Darius shakes his hand once back at him.

As we leave the dungeons, I squint my eyes at the sun carving its pathway across the brick archways of the palace grounds. Tibith and I look at each other, and I keep that promise that he will see Darius again – the very next day, we bring him breakfast, and it starts to feel like before. When it was us three against the centipede, us three against poisonous vines, and us three against Renward.

When the second day came, Tibith left Darius and me to be by ourselves. He brought a loaf of bread he took from the palace kitchen and he wanted us to share it. ‘Bread is the most romanticfood of them all, Miss Nara,’ he’d said, and I suppose I couldn’t let him down by declining.

During the evenings, Gus would come by, though it never became easier watching him and Darius converse when I knew the truth, and he did not.

On the third day, Darius wanted to play a game. A game of guessing things about me. And when he showered me with teasing insults rather than compliments, I found myself smiling more than usual. Until, of course, he brought up Gus.

‘Are you close with Gus?’ he had asked out of curiosity.

Shame turned sour in my mouth as I looked down at my hands instead of at Darius. ‘He has been as kind to me as he has been to you.’

He had mulled my words over, and there was a moment there where he saw right through me. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but I hadn’t done a perfect job at hiding my guilt, and despite his memory loss, he recognised my mannerisms of unease. Perhaps he could even feel the slight quickening of my heartbeat.

Thankfully, on the fourth day, it was all forgotten as he used a fork from his supper and bent it into the shape of a poorly made flower. He handed it to me with a smile that dented his cheeks, and I laughed before sniffing it and telling him it smelled nothing like a flower.

That was the first time in days that I had witnessed a genuine laugh from him that I hadn’t seen in a while.

Then, once the fifth day came, I asked him to tell me a story. He didn’t understand why and even insisted he was not a storyteller. My rebuttal was that it was one of the many things he enjoyed. He studied me thoughtfully, and it wasn’t long until he began a tale about a thief and his search for the golden princess.

I do not think he ever realised it washislife that he was retelling, and as the sixth day dawned, I brought Freya alongwith me. Together, we thought she could try to use her magic to sever the link between Darius and Aurum.

In the dim light of the cell, Freya extended her palm towards Darius’s rune; the only thing separating them was the cell doors. I waited and waited and waited as I fixated on Darius, our eyes locked. Then a vibrant purple glow emanated from Freya’s hand until . . . she stopped and turned to me, disappointment etched across her face as she shook her head.

It hadn’t worked.

On the seventh day, Darius’s mood was no longer like the days before. He was . . . much more contemplative, let’s say.

Tibith and I visited him as soon as we awoke, not even attempting to try to eat breakfast with everyone else. I took plates of fresh fruit and pastries and rushed down to the cell so that I could see him. Except, it has now been over an hour, and he hasn’t touched his food. Not once, and neither has he spoken.

With Tibith playfully rolling around in the far-left corner of the dungeons, I inhale a deep breath as I go to speak, but he cuts me off before I can even begin.

‘Do you know how the Rivernorths first came to be?’

The slow scanning of his eyes on me has my skin tingling.

I nod. ‘I have heard things, yes.’ Hira has even mentioned the tragedy of the Rivernorth line before, but I know . . . Iknowthat bloodline can be salvaged with Darius.

‘My uncle says they were the first of the dragon kind. Born out of the Northern Rivers, immune to steel, and hard to kill with just any weapon.’ He cocks his head. ‘Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it?’

I look towards Tibith, who is now watching us with glowing eyes. ‘With a world like this, hardly.’

Darius’s hum has a lilt to it. ‘True.’

My chest is heaving with a sigh that I can’t seem to evade as I face him again. ‘What else has your uncle said?’

He smiles. ‘Trying to get information out of me, Goldie?’

I shrug. ‘Perhaps. Unless you wish for me to bribe you, I have a few gold antique pieces I could steal for you.’

He raises an eyebrow in interest at my offer. ‘Where?’

I laugh and straighten up, brushing the dirt from the side of my leather trousers. ‘Oh, I can’t tell you that.’ As Darius lifts himself off the floor, he grabs on to one of the bars while leaning his shoulder against it. ‘It’s too risky, especially for someone who recalls never being a thief himself.’

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