Page 35 of A Reign of Roses
Inside I found Ryder, leaning against one of the stalls, smoking a cigar, thick smoke curling into the flared nostrils of the horse above him.
“Inflicting your filthy habit on the steeds?”
Ryder spun, shock winning out over fear in his eyes—but only by a hair. “You’re back.”
Before I could respond with a dig at his observation skills, the high-pitched squeals of girlish laughter pierced the air. My chestached with Leigh’s voice, filtering out into the night like seeds of a windblown dandelion. “Ryder!” she sang.“Ryyyyder!”
“Maybe he’s in the library.”Beth’s voice, too.
Guilt and quiet wrath rippled through me. Mostly at myself, but also at this weasel, who was flattening himself against the raw wood and holding in a gasp of tobacco smoke.
“Are youhidingfrom little girls?”
“I just need a minute, all right?” Ryder said as a cloud of swirling gray escaped from his mouth alongside his confession.
Ire spasmed in my neck. “You are their only remaining protector.”
“Well, that can be a lot of pressure, Kane.” Another thick run of smoke billowed out.
I sneered.“King Ravenwood.”
“King Ravenwood,” he agreed, alarm flickering in his eyes. “Of course.” Ryder backed up a step onto a pitchfork, his elbow clanging against the wood as it flew up, sending the horses around us into fits and grunts.
“So Arwen dies because ofyourstupidity, leaving you sole guardian to Leigh and her seer friend after two decades of barely lifting a finger for anyone but yourself…and you cannot handle one iota of that responsibility?”
“Hey,” he said, eyes clearing. “That’s not fair—”
“Whatever will you do without your abused older sister to pile all your obligations on?” If I had my power, obsidian shadows would have spun off my body in rivulets. It would have been a terrible effort to keep myself from pummeling his lazy mug.
Ryder swallowed a gulp. “I love Leigh. You know I do. But Beth is an odd one. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t make people feel…comfortable.”
“She’sa child.”
“Yeah,” Ryder said, hands raised in defense. “I know. But they’re inseparable. They require constant entertainment. And I’ve got to hone my skills before the war, and—”
I could have laughed myself hoarse. “As if you would lift a single finger in battle.” Arwen had sacrificed everything for her family. For this entire continent. I was mere hours from giving my life, too. And thisinsectcouldn’t take care of the one person I’d leave behind who needed him most. “I always knew you were as selfish as they came. But now I see your condition is far graver: you’re acoward.”
He staggered back a bit with my vitriol but I was too incensed to stop. Anger I thought I’d long since moved past barked through my bones. “Those two little girls have seen more brutality in their combined eighteen years than you have in all your living days. You’d be lucky to protect them with your life. At least then it would be fucking worth something.”
Fuming, I pushed past him, my back itching where my wings once spread.
By the time I reachedBriar’s the sky was awash in muted shades of blue, the night too new for stars.
Her sprawling lawn was bare of lavender—the precipice of winter meant all those rows had been harvested, dried, and pressed, now likely filling antique crystal jars and thin satin sachets.
My footfalls were heavy on the veranda and I swung the iron knocker with more force than necessary, still acclimating to my mortality.
Cori, Briar’s handmaiden, didn’t seem surprised by my arrival as she welcomed me inside. I wondered if Griffin had sent a raven, or if she’d simply spied my horse tethered to the wrought-iron gates.
“Briar’s upstairs in the library,” she said with a well-mannered smile. “May I get you anything?”
My eyes lingered on the polished maple staircase. The paintings in their ivory frames. The last time I’d been here…Slick, soft skin and discarded white silk flashed across my mind. My heart gave an agonizing tug.
“No.” When I realized how ragged I’d sounded, I added a gruff, “Thank you.”
Cori just nodded primly and I prowled up that beckoning staircase. The hallway was shadowed in fuzzy-edged slants of periwinkle as twilight filtered through the banister.
It was no shock that after all these months, I’d find Mari with her freckled nose embedded in a book. Her copper hair was pulled up with a single quill as she lay prone on the patchwork quilt of Briar’s least accommodating bedroom: the one so swollen with books that the sorceress affectionately referred to it as her library.
