Page 8 of The Princesses of Ruin
He clenches his teeth but nods. He pulls my arms around him, and I lean in, crawling into his lap. The warmth of his body is a soothing balm, and everything seems to melt away under its heat.
He nuzzles my hair, taking a deep inhale through his nose. “You’ve been giving so much of yourself. I need you to be whole when this is done.”
“I know,” I say, planting a gentle kiss on his jaw. His stubble is longer than normal, and it tickles my lips. He hasn’t been taking care of himself either.
His arms band around me tighter and he whispers, “I won’t survive your destruction.”
I hold him tighter, pressing his face to the crook of my neck as I close my eyes. “We can do this.”
We hold each other for what feels like too long. Every second counts in this war, and we’ve taken too many. But I steal them anyway.
And then sleep steals me.
Chapter four
Kazimir
The weight of her in my arms, against my chest, is enough to drive me mad. I’ve needed her for so many nights, and now that I have her in my grasp, I don’t know if I can let her go.
The purple-hued scrawl of my love sparkles at me from the desk. The runes pulse, demanding my attention. Looking at them causes a sense of unease, but I stare, holding Alyse tighter.
Ashai means to kill my dragon with these runes, and I need to know what they are so we can fight her.
I carry Alyse to bed and use a puff of magic to blow back the sheets. I kneel at the edge and lay her down on the mattress, tucking her legs under the thick down blanket that wards off the cold of encroaching winter.
Alyse moans, rolling to her side and tucking into a ball. I pull the covers up to her shoulder and kiss her cheek. “Be at peace, my love.”
The shimmering runes flare in the corner of my vision as I gaze down at the anchor of my universe. Her auburn hair curls around her ears and lays fluffy on the pillow behind her. I want to bury my face in it and hide away with her in dreams.
Tonight. She promised.
I turn, my eyes unable to leave her as I grab the pages off the desk. I move to the door and drink her in as I open it slowly.
“She’s safe under my gaze, Reaper.”The whisper of the Nest—Zephrom—makes me start. I feel the warmth of the goddess in the room, rolling over my skin like the prickle of hot needles.
I turn away, ignoring thoughts of distrust for the goddess. The voices and footsteps of Spiders in the stairwell echo through the well-lit hall. I turn back to our door and reinforce the sound-dampening ward. My purple magic seeps into the wood in the scrawls of Nol’Ther’s silence and Zephrom’s order.
I fold the papers in my hands once and march toward the stairs, pulling my urictsa mask from my breast pocket as I go. It’s fixed in place before I descend the stairs. My mind settles with the familiar, comforting weight of my shield, and Spiders part for me. I enter the war room beside the kitchen and find Zane.
When the Spider updating him departs, I step in. “New intel from inside the palace,” I say, passing him the pages. “I want to go to the Ink Blot. Get Mason on these.”
Zane looks at me with a blank expression, his mask even better than mine. He unfolds the paper and scans it. His brow furrows and my patience wanes.
“Jenson,” he calls out, and a younger Spider approaches him with a salute. “Make a copy, then take it to the Ink Blot—”
“I will take it,” I interject.
Zane raises an eyebrow at me. “Your time is far too valuable to be spent running down rune translations.”
I purse my lips because he’s not wrong, but I still need to know what these are. It needs to be done right, fast, and diligently. I need to do it myself.
“There is no task at present more demanding than understanding her weapons and weaknesses,” I say.
Jenson shrinks away as Zane stands up taller and faces me. “You are a lord of the Underbelly. We need you to be handling more high-level matters.”
I can’t stop the way my head jerks back, but I manage to tamp down on my scoff. “Such as?”
“While Jenson is making a copy so we can keep the original safe here, and collecting materials from Mason and the library in old Pryce territory foryour later research—if you would’ve let me finish my sentence—you could be crafting weapons for our nomaj Spiders, or training the younger ones with their magic, or hunting to improve our food stores for the coming winter.”
