Page 96 of The Curse of a Kingdom
“I was running out of time, and I didn’t know how else to get here.”
Devon let out a heavy breath and walked to the sitting area, where he fell onto one of the chairs. “I have tried to leave multiple times, once during the solstice. The faes were too drunk and occupied to pay attention to me. I just had to slip past the gates, make it to the safe house, and wait for a member of the Society to come.” He shrugged one shoulder and met Orion’s gaze. “They have tools to get rid of jewelry like this bracelet—or the plan B was that I would bargain with the king after.”
“Why are you telling us this?”
“I couldn’t leave.” He swung his head back with a dramatic sigh. “Not because of the debt, which is still active, but because . . . I had been searching for you for a decade, Arkimedes. Sometimes we do unimaginable things to try to get our family back. What I did doesn’t make me different from the king, but I doubt anyone in this room has a clean conscience to condemn me for it.”
Nava’s mouth opened but shut soon after, and her guilt and shame flooded Orion’s stomach like a tsunami.
“The reason we need to take the bracelets off is not because they cancel magic, Nava. It also allows the king to track you two.”
“Oh.”
“The location of the safe house is a secret only members of the Society know. Having a beacon leading him straight to it would mean you two would have to stay inside the house and not help with the Zorren situation.”
“So we find the key and then head there?”
“This is the first time in the last four months the king has left the castle—it might be our chance to get the keys and avoid a confrontation.”
“I can’t believe I'm going to a Society’s safe house of my own free will. Let it be known that I'm not happy about this.”
Devon’s forced laughter bounced over the walls of the room. “Cat, you haven’t precisely made it a secret.”
Finding the lost memories of what Devon had done last year didn’t make Orion’s choice any easier. Now there was a decade of secrets, of experiences, that had split them apart.
“I would like to get changed out of the dress that almost got me killed before we leave,” Nava said, pulling at the fabric that wrapped around her narrow waist like a second skin. His eyes trailed up her body. He wished he could allow himself to help her out of the dress, if she would let him. But the reasons to keep his distance were present.
She had told him they’d met again a year ago, and that man she knew, it wasn’t him. Not fully. And Orion wasn’t ready to jump into those shoes. The thought of opening the weight of those memories, woven in a hazy web inside his brain, was haunting him, much like his mother.
Would he abandon it all again for her?
He swallowed and forced his eyes from her body to her face, and she raised a challenging brow at him, having caught him looking at her. His cheeks warmed. “Sorry.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-THREE
NAVA
When they left Devon’s room, the sky was turning black, away from the ominous gray and orange of the fires burning behind the walls of the castle.
The halls were deserted. The wind whistled through stone crevices, accompanied by the tapping of their quick steps over the marble floor. Her room wasn’t far from Devon’s, and as they paused outside, Nava noticed the door was ajar.
Had she and Fael left it open in their rush to make it to dinner on time? Maybe a maid had come to bring her dinner. She had not eaten anything since lunch, and her stomach growled at the reminder.
She walked forward, already anticipating the comfortable fit of her pants and well-worn boots over this tight gown. Nava hadn’t taken three steps when Arkimedes’s large hand grabbed her shoulder.
He stepped closer, and his lips touched the shell of her ear; the whisper of his breath sent goose bumps down the expanse of her skin. “Let’s go to my room instead.”
His aura was thick enough that it enveloped her body like a cool mist. She turned her head and met his intense gaze with a nod. Devon stood behind, observing everything around them. Both men moved like trained warriors, assessing for anything that could signal trouble, while she had just been coveting food and comfortable boots.
It hit her that the two of them had trained since boyhood to be like this. While she baked cherry pies with Laurie or gardened with her mother, Ark and Devon had been forged into weapons.
Arkimedes opened the door to his room and entered after, leaving her outside in the hall with Devon. From where she stood, the room was dark; the light coming from the glass doors of the balcony cast rays of silver on the floor. It was too quiet around them, making her extra aware of the loud sound of her breaths.
“Clear.”
At some point, she had stopped breathing. She turned to Devon to make sure he was following before entering the room.
It felt like ages since she had been here. Her eyes lingered over the bed as memories crashed through her of the night she and Arkimedes had shared here before he’d learned her secret and everything had gone wrong.
