Page 51 of A Reign of Roses
“Back inside to find the blade and hope none of those weasels realize who I am before I do so.”
“The blade is gone, Kane.” I’d gone through this in my own mind a thousand times. “He destroyed it.”
“It can’t be destroyed. It always finds its way back to a master, and he wouldn’t gift it to another. Not when it can be used to kill him. The blade is in the castle, trust me.”
All this time my blade had been here? Waiting for me?
“How do you know all this? Why did you come here if you thought I was dead?”
“It’s a long, deeply unpleasant story,” he said. “If we make it out of here alive, I will regale you with the entire thing and you can tell me all the ways in which I’m an absolute moron.”
“Kane—”
He drew his attention back toward the city beyond the bushes. “You’ll look like any other partygoer to the soldiers out there. You’re fast, you’ll outrun anyone who catches on. Worst-case, you may have to—” He cut himself off to study me. “But we both know you can take care of yourself.”
“What is your master plan here? Sneak back into the palace, steal the blade, and meet me in some other city?”
His silver eyes crinkled with warmth, but there was something else there. Sorrow? “Doesn’t sound so hard, does it?”
“Kane.” His jaw was tense when I reached to cradle his face in my hands. His beard rough and unkempt. I was going to cry again. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t worry about me.” One dimple revealed itself with his crooked grin, and my stomach flipped anxiously. “The armor will do half the work.”
“Do you even know where the blade is?”
“At first, I thought it would be in the monster lairs.”
“Monster? What kind of monster?” I was braver now…brave enough to launch myself out a window with nothing but gold heels and a dream, but still—the word “monster” didn’t donothingto me.
“Monsters,” he corrected. “Plural. Their lairs are peppered all throughout the palace catacombs.”
“Wonderful.”
His large hand encircled mine and squeezed. I could feel his muscles, taut and ready for the bloody fight to come. “I figured he’d have the blade guarded by the fiercest creature in Lumera.” He gestured down to the impossibly tight heels laced around my legs. “You can’t run in those.”
“Right,” I muttered.
“Then I realized,” Kane continued, kneeling to the ground, “I was right.” He gently slipped my foot out of the heel and all the blood rushed back into my toes and arches. I flexed my foot gratefully. “Lazarus believeshimselfto be the fiercest creature in Lumera.”
“You think he keeps the sword in his own wing?”
When Kane stood back up, his frown was almost a sneer. “I thinkhe’s the kind of person who gives an order and then does the job himself before anyone can fuck it up. I bet it’s in his very bed.”
I shuddered at the thought.
Kane’s eyes shot down to me and I clocked the grimace he fought to hide. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine. I’m—”
“Ready?” he asked, eyes grim.
I wasn’t. It was all happening too fast. Too soon. Kane was mortal. We’d just been reunited, and now to be split apart so soon once more…What if we never found each other again?
But I knew this man better than I knew the rhythm of my own heart. He wouldn’t budge.
“Fine,” I breathed. “Go. And I’ll meet you at that compound.”
With a nod he slid the helmet down over his head. In the suffocating dark night, he really did look like one of them. I tried to focus on the familiar shape of his nose and dip below his lips. I lifted to my toes and pressed a single kiss to the slice of his neck that wasn’t covered in weighty Fae silver.
