Page 66 of Deadwood
He left me in the sand with his threat ringing loud and clear in the raging storm.
There was no choice to be made. And if I thought there was, after the way he’d threatened my life just to present the ability to get out of my engagement, I was a fool.
I might have been locked in a castle for the entirety of my life, but I knew what potential death looked like when it bared its teeth at me.
Paxon Bular would make sure I chose him whether I wanted to or not, and I had a mere week to make my decision.
Die or follow him.
Only one seemed enticing.
CHAPTER 22
BOWEN
Iwas losing my godsdamned mind over this woman when I should be focusing on the fucking task at hand.
The storm was only getting worse, and with the amount of sand and dirt being kicked up, it was only a matter of time before magic joined the mix. Though a lot of magic had to be mined from deep inside the mountains, there were enough minuscule fragments on the surface that it could affect those who breathed it in when the weather got this out of control. Which meant the citizens of Deadwood needed to either get inside until it passed or cover up, and as of right now, Auria and her little group were part of Deadwood, whether I liked it or not.
“Are you going to give them bandanas?” Flynt asked where he stood with his back leaned up against the wall in my living room. As my advisor, he kept his hard exterior up when he wanted to, but like everything, there were cracks. His just opened a little too wide sometimes.
“He has to,” Siara voiced. “I highly doubt Auria knows anything about the weather outside of Amosite to cover her mouth and nose in the storm.”
Flynt crossed his arms, scoffing. “Her dumbass fiancé might know.”
“If you’re using dumbass in the same sentence you’re claiming he might be smart, you’re kind of contradicting yourself,” Siara pointed out. She had no true ties to me like Raiden or Flynt did, other than sticking around to constantly point out everything I was doing wrong. There weren’t many ways to do things right when I was constantly babysitting a town full of careless criminals and stir-crazy fae. But she’d been there for me when I lost someone close to me, never leaving my side even when I tried to push everyone away, so I owed her. Fuck, I owed all of them in some shape or form.
If Auria and Lander both had half a brain, they’d leave before the storm got worse. There was no telling how long it would stick around, and with their limited knowledge of the real fucking world, I didn’t need to be responsible for any of them.
Especially not when their fathers wouldn’t hesitate to pin anything on me. I couldn’t let them ruin what I’d worked so hard for.
“They need to leave,” I muttered from where I sat in the chair with my elbows braced on my knees, my back hunched.
Siara gaped at me. “I’m sorry, but if you haven’t noticed”—she threw a hand out, gesturing to the window—“there’s a dust storm currently rolling through the town.”
“Not to mention, their guards are injured,” Flynt added.
Sometimes I wished these two would leave me the fuck alone, but unfortunately, I cared about them too much to outwardly tell them to fuck off.
The door to my house opened, a gust of air whipping in as Raiden appeared. With little effort against the wind, he shut the door tight behind him, the veins in his massive arms bulging under his light brown skin.
“She left with the guy’s brother,” Raiden announced, not bothering to brush off the dust caked onto his black jacket as he crossed the room.
Siara and Flynt kept their eyes locked on me, where I sat now pinching the bridge of my nose. A headache was sure to come when the three of them were around on anything other than business. They helped me run Deadwood, kept the chaos from becoming too much, but when they expected me to handle things that weren’t mine to handle, I silently wished they’d chosen a different leader.
As if that was a choice.
Dropping my hand to dangle between my knees, I asked, “And what does that have to do with me?”
The two knew each other, and though everything about Paxon Bular rubbed me wrong, he had every right to be in communication with King Tenere’s daughter. She was to marry his brother, after all.
“He returned without her,” Raiden stated, as if that wasn’t a vital piece of information. He did that on purpose, if the look on his face was any indication.
He stood a few feet from me now, and I could smell the storm like a perfume coating his leathers. Raiden wasn’t a man of many words, so the fact he had come in here to tell me this at all meant he expected me to do something about it. The man had a steel heart that only proved to still be beating in times like this.
I straightened in the chair as Siara bounded for the window, presumably searching outside.
“How long ago did he leave with her?” I asked.
