Page 100 of A City of Flames

I step into the living area, rolling the cuffs of the ample shirt and clear my throat. Darius looks up from the kitchen, stirring a pan before he stops, and his eyes rake over my attire.

“What?” I ask calmly, waltzing towards the table as Tibith blinks at me from the side. “Upset I’m wearing your clothes instead?”

“Oh, I’m not upset.” Darius folds his arms over his broad chest. His bottom lip puckers as his gaze lingers on the clothes and then gives me a roguish smile. “I never got around to washing those.”

I pull a face, disgusted, as I sit. “Of course, I should have known. It’s you, after all,” I grumble, grabbing my sheath and checking to see if my carving is still inside one of the pockets. Thankfully it is.

He ladles soup into a bowl and sets it before me as well as a chunk of bread for Tibith. He takes a seat opposite me and narrows his eyes with mirth while Tibith’s child-like gasp becomes muffled as he gobbles up all the bread. Darius then smirks at me before I’m glancing at the bowl of soup with a scowl on my face.

“Relax, it’s not poisoned or anything,” he says, but that wasn’t my initial thought. I was more startled.

I lift a brow at him. “And I’m supposed to believe that?”

He shoots me a withering look. “Why would I save you and go through the effort of tending your wounds, just to then finish you off with some poisoned broth?”

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at how offended he sounds.

“Look, if you don’t want it, what else would you like—” He leans forward, clasping his hands together on the table. A sardonic smile graces his lips. “—Your majesty?”

My frown at that title dissolves into something superior. “My favorite... strawberry pie.”

He tilts his head slightly, so that the sun bounces off his hair and raven strands shine. What I had said seems to delight him. “Sadly, we don’t have that here, Goldie.”

I shrug my shoulders, taking the spoon and dipping it into the soup. “I thought not.”

He chuckles, leaning back just as I freeze, swallowing the rich taste of herbs and spices. A shiver skitters across my arms and neck but not the kind I’ve felt before when I’d faced the queen down in the dungeons or the creature last night; no, it’s a great one—a shiver of jovial memories.

I stare at the broth and sigh because it tastes exactly how my mother used to make it.

“Thinking of ways to say how disgusting it is?” He teases, and I glare at him, taking another spoonful this time and trying not to show how badly I want to down it all.

“I suppose it’s not the worst I’ve tasted.”

He hums like he knows I’m lying, and I continue eating, savoring each mouthful before dropping the spoon and looking at him.

“The queen knows I helped you,” I say, but he doesn’t look surprised; he just keeps his eyes on me.

“Figured.” He takes out another coin and spins it at the tip of his finger. “Stealing has never been easier than it was then. At least she didn’t hang you after all.”

No, she did worse.

The reminder of what happened the next day after Noctura must be obvious because Darius’s brow arches in suspicion.

I turn my head, prying my eyes away from his. I fear if I stared too long, he’d get it out of me: cheater and whatnot. “You should be careful,” I say. “She seems to know what she’s doing—”

“So, you did end up deciding the queen wasn’t one to trust.”

My gaze cuts to him, and I nod. “I know more of her story. There are just missing pieces I need to uncover.”

He releases a sigh, borderline tired as he focuses on the table. “If you think I have all the answers, I don’t. Sarilyn is known for her conniving ways among us shifters. We’ve heard from what others have said... witnessed during that time. But no one will know the true extent of it other than the queen and the Rivernorths if they had lived.”

“Or the Elven king,” I add with no hesitation, his head lifts, and he frowns. He must not have known that part. Glancing around the cottage, my eyes connect with the fire hearth, and beside it is a wooden chest displaying the crystal I’d once used to lure him. And next to that is the Rivernorth pendant.

“I’m assuming she took it from a Rivernorth when she killed them rather than had it gifted to her,” I say more to myself as I stare at the gold luster of it, remembering what she’d said after the meal.

Darius’s silence urges me to look at him, but his gaze is on the pendant, an expression so bleak that I wonder what thoughts must be crossing his mind.

“Darry.” Tibith tugs at his shirt, gaining his full attention and shaking off whatever look he’d had. “The den.”

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