Page 103 of A Chill in the Flame
“Keep holding your breath, Zita. Maybe it will only take another six hundred years.”
Tyr saw from the posture, from the step, from the subtle shake of the head that Tempus was resigned to his inability to win her heart through any feat of logic or strategy when it came to regaining the lands they’d lost or the royals he deemed their enemies. Tyr couldn’t know that marrying Zita had been the best day of Tempus’s life and a relatively calm weekend for her. He didn’t know that the sun over Midnah had been bright as it shone over their union, but not too hot, or that the kingdom had been receptive, but there had been no gay joyousness in their celebrations. She was a good queen,of that Tyr was sure after only knowing her for a moment. She was one who had moved on, it seemed—at least, she had for public appearances. She’d found someone who loved her. He couldn’t know the man before him with lands and titles and a good heart who would bring his armies and passion to the palace and battlefield.
And then there was the list of things that only Zita knew.
She did not want to give her new husband children, for example.
It had been a scandal to the kingdom and a tragic, heartbreaking honor to their mother. She’d had children, after all. Three sons born to her late husband, the joy of Tarkhany, the lights of her life. Their father’s name would die with them, they’d declared. Their wives hadn’t understood, nor had the kingdom. Tempus hadn’t understood. The only thing he knew, a truth he gripped with miserable fingers, was that they were in an unhappy marriage. Not because they didn’t care for each other, not because they’d done anything wrong, not because they weren’t a good fit, but because they were two beings whose paths had intersected at the wrong time.
And what if they’d met before she’d ever fallen into the arms of her human? Perhaps Tempus would have been a marvelous king. Maybe he should have been her first and only love. They might still hold the coastal shores, own the fruitful lands, bear fae children who still lived, have a beautiful legacy of kindness and peaceable relations with their neighboring kingdoms. Perhaps if Tempus had been the king of Tarkhany when Farehold’s king had made a play for their lands, he would have intervened. Maybe their presence closer to the shore could have positioned them to help the fae who’d been forced north to Raascot. Perhaps Farehold could have been kept in check, balanced by forces from both the north and the south.
Farehold—the middle kingdom, as the continent called it—hadn’t won from superior strategy or better armies.
The victory had come from betrayal, subtlety, and time.
Brick by brick they’d built their empire of stolen supremacy. One stone went unnoticed. Two, then twenty, then ten thousand. Before the neighboring kingdoms had been willing to accept the atrocities implied by the fortress around them, Farehold had created an empire of violence. Move, or be moved.
Tyr thought of his miserable journey across the Tarkhany Desert, wondering if it would have been manageable at all without the intermittent clusters of trees, the pools of water with firm bedrock that refused to let it evaporate. The Frozen Straits had no such luxury. There was no fresh water, no reprieve, no shelter or break or moment of calm. Human and fae alike died on the ice, their bodies frozen into infinitely preserved icicles, their flesh and blood never decaying, never decomposing, trapped forever in an endless winter. Maybe geography was the only thing that had kept Sulgrave safe from Farehold’s interference. Thank the All Mother and the frigid torment of her blizzards from the south and their colonization.
He wanted to believe that Sulgrave would have fought back, that they would have bested Farehold in a battle and left their conquerors in rubble. From his time in Tarkhany and the palace, he’d developed a few opinions about reasons one might win or lose in a war. Defending your territory was much easier if you saw the enemy coming from a distance. Inviting the enemy into your home under the banner of goodness and hospitality and not realizing they were a cockroach until they’d infested your home posed an entirely new set of problems. Perhaps Sulgrave would have been no different. Hopefully they’d never need to find out.
“Go, Tempus.”
“Once upon a time, I shared your bed. You used to let me stay with you.”
She looked at him sadly, all of the fight in her evaporatedlike water on the sizzling marble. “I did try. I wanted to love you.”
When Tempus transitioned, it wasn’t into the tall, familiar bird Tyr had seen before. He became a vulture, enormous, threatening, and ready for flight. She opened the door for him, and Tyr slipped out the second before Tempus exited. It was disconcerting to see a man become a creature that looked so much like death. Perhaps if he hadn’t seen Ophir’s atrocities, he would have considered vultures to be among the ugliest things on the planet. Now he knew better.
Tempus spread his wings and took off into the star-studded black of the night sky above the gardens, leaving Zita in her room and Tyr in the open air between the pillars. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d learned. The more he knew, the more questions he had. He wasn’t sure Ophir would be entirely happy.
Tyr crossed the courtyard considering how he might tell her, what he might say, what he might do to explain what he’d heard. Perhaps it wouldn’t change anything for her execution. Maybe Ophir would be able to make more sense than he had. Maybe she’d learn something that he hadn’t been able to discern. Maybe—
The air left his lungs.
A strangulation hold gripped him around the throat from an invisible assailant.
He clawed at the unseen enemy and made contact with something that seemed to be made of stone. It didn’t feel like the flesh of human or fae. Unseen? And the power of a vice- like grip? And the…
Dwyn.
She snarled as her ability to stay in the space between things slipped out of her control. Her grip on his throat was weakening. Her borrowed powers wouldn’t be of use to her much longer. His face flashed from surprise to fury as he looked into the black eyes of his assailant. Raising his fist, he brought it down with all his might to hit her, but shelifted her other hand to block him. Strength. Shield. How many borrowed abilities was she using? How quickly was she burning through them? What could she withstand before it affected her? Whatever remaining siphoned power she used for strength remained. One hand on his throat and the other on his fist, she drove her forehead into his face and knocked Tyr to the ground. He saw her head swim with the impact, but she had the benefit of healing on her side. Had she leveled a village in preparation for this fight? His last moments of vision before the world slipped into dizzying darkness were Dwyn’s pretty face twisted in the satisfaction of victory and violence.
Forty-six
7:30 PM
11 hours and 15 minutes until execution
Dwyn was fucking furious. Venom dripped from her every movement as she aimed to maim, to wound, to come as close to killing as she could. She’d see his body in a withered husk before he could blink, were it not for this piece-of-shit dog and his piece-of-shit tattoo and her piece-of-shit terrible goddess-damned judgment that had led her to ever inking her skin in the first place.
Shame at having been not only discovered but tricked burned hotter than the princess’s flame ever had.
Dwyn had lowered her guard for the barest of moments thinking that the two of them could work together, could collaborate, might even be on the same side, and the moment she closed her eyes, he’d vanished. She’d yawned into consciousness that morning with a smile on her lips and the naive belief that, for the first time in decades, she had an ally.
Of course, he’d been playing her for a fool.
Of course, he’d only pretended to be kind, to be her friend, to be on her side because he’d already learned what she’d fought so hard to hide.
