Page 159 of Kissed By the Gods
LEINA
The full moonshines through the open window, casting its light onto the simple sandstone floor. I roll up to sit in my plush hammock, my legs swung over the side, trying to get my balance before I step from the swaying bed. My head is heavy with grief.
Levvi. Alden.
They didn’t just die. They were murdered.
I drag in a breath, but it’s ragged and doesn’t fill my lungs. This grief isn’t new—they’ve been dead for a long time—but it is sharper. I don’t even remember getting back to this room. I don’t remember anything except Aruveth’s bemused voice explaining the Collection. I rub the edges of the simple, soft robe someone draped over me and then shrug into it for warmth.
I lower my toes to the floor, and only when I’m sure I won’t collapse do I push off the hammock, my muscles straining with the effort. Everything in me feels spent—my limbs too heavy, my thoughts moving through molasses.
Barefoot, I make my way to the window. The sandstone is gritty and rough, so different from the smooth granite of the Synod or the soft wood floor of my family’s cottage. The waterfall outside makes a constant, deafening sound. So unlikethe crashing of the ocean waves against the cliffs of the Synod or the quiet gurgling of the River Elris in the Weeping Forest. There’s something sweet on the air, a complex combination of scents from the flowering vines that cover every tree and every building. A world away from the earthier smells of salt or wheat.
Still, it’s these things, these solid, real things, even if they are unfamiliar, that help clear my mind. That calm my frayed nerves. I look down from the moon-lit window. I’m five stories up, but the garden below is too inviting to ignore. I’ll go for a walk.
But when I swing open my door, I trip on a hulking form sleeping against the frame, and then there’s the sound of a sword swishing out from its sheath as the blockade made of black leather jumps to his feet and swivels.
“Sweet Serephelle,” Ryot mutters, rubbing a hand over gritty eyes. That’s his signature “I’m stressed as hells and don’t know what to do” move.
I cross my arms over my chest. That’s my signature move, too—but this time, it’s not about stress. It’s about fury. The kind I’ve been pushing down since I was a little girl.
I’mangry. And not the clean, righteous kind. The ugly kind.
The kind that wants to burn it all to the fucking ground—Faraengard, the Synod, the mother fucking gods. The kind that wants power, and not only to fix things. Not just to make the world a better place, not to find peace or to rebuild.
The power to make them pay.
I’m angry that Ryot gets to walk around in that black chainmail—that might’ve been mined by my own dead brother—and command respect and wield power in it. A kind of power he was born knowing and that I can’t fathom. Even now.
I’m angry that he can stand beside Rissa, wrap his arms around her, comfort her, like she’s not responsible. Like she’s not part of the royalty that’s made a ruin of my life.
And I’m angry because I want to reach for him anyway, to let him hold me and whisper to me that it will be alright. I hate that part of me a little, because I shouldn’t want comfort from someone who’s born of the same system that broke me. But I do. Gods, I do.
So, I cross my arms and I stand my ground and I try to keep it together.
The truth is, though, I’m not sure I can.
He slept outside my door.
“You scared me,” he says quietly.
“I scared you?” I whisper back. “You’re the one that pulled a sword on me.”
He shoves the weapon into the sheath at his back and takes a step away from me, into the hallway. He doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Apologies,” he says. Very formal. Very distant.
And that just makes me even madder. He can’t be the one to walk away from me—not after all of this. Not after I’ve been gutted by the truth, left to drown in grief. I take a step forward, crowding him.
“Did you know?”
His eyes snap to mine. “How could you even ask that?”
I shake my head immediately, but the words still burn on my tongue. “I don’t know. I don’t. I just—” I drag in a breath. “Iknowyou didn’t, you couldn’t. I?—”
A clatter of noise interrupts, and Ryot and I both turn to see one of the Aishan men stumble from his quarters in a sleepy daze. He heads straight for the washroom toward the end of the hall.
I step back into my room, and gesture Ryot inside. I don’t want to kill him in the hallway. “Come inside,” I tell him.
