Page 111 of A City of Flames

He focuses everywhere except me, and at this point, I’m not sure whether I want to scream, cry, or have the pleasure of making the queen feel the same way I have since that day after Noctura.

“Does the queen...” I trail off, and Lorcan’s nod proves me correct.

“And the general,” he says.

How could I have been this stupid? When Lorcan told them I knew Darius’s name at the dining table, Sarilyn and the General didn’t seem phased. My head spins. “All this time, we’ve spoken of him, and you never once told me—”

“Because he killed my father when we were still children, Nara, he bit him, and I had to watch my father die a painful death,” he says that last line like I’m supposed to be horrified by the ordeal.

“But you’ve also killed hundreds of his kind,” I argue, my face burning enough for the volcanoes up north to erupt. “Some were still hatchlings. Those are newborns, Lorcan!”

“I don’t expect you to understand—”

“Because you don’t tell me anything!”

“Neither do you!” It’s the first I’ve heard him raise his voice in this manner. An unleash that sounds almost beastly. “Did you think I wouldn’t question why you’re trying to defend him? The fact I was standing there watching how he just kissed you? Or... your moment with him at the Noctura ball?”

I almost stumble backward. Of course, he had seen, he had seen all of it, but him having witnessed it isn’t what has me so shocked and confused. When I kissed Darius, it was different, it felt different. A forbidden danger and hatred beneath the thick desire of each kiss.

My voice is a shameful whisper. “Did the queen tell you of the ball?”

A tight-lipped smile as he says with lethality, “You just did.”

My lower body becomes so numb that I fear I won’t have anything to grip on if I fall.

“I suspected it from the moment he came in as Archer,” he goes on, leaning his head forward with a level of disdain in his words. I don’t move as he lowers his voice. “Your nerves at the idea of dancing with him.”

Now I realize why he’d pulled me aside in the Draggards and told me how if anything was ever wrong, I could tell him. He’d looked at me like he knew I was hiding something. He wanted to see if I would mention Darius, but I didn’t.

“It may have taken a while to finally see him be sent to the dungeons, but I know Darius, I know what he’s like, and he himself knew he’d eventually get caught.”

“Hate can drive you to extremes, Miss Ambrose,” he’d uttered that to me the first day of training. Had he meant Darius? The reason he now is a venator.

He touches my arm, soft and attentive, my gaze shifts to it as he says, “Look, Nara, I need you to tell me if he took you to any hideout, any place where other shifters may be.”

The den, Gus, all the dragons Darius had taken into his care. I’ve lied to Lorcan too often, too much, but I can’t in good conscious tell him I know where other shifters reside.

“Just an abandoned cottage,” I partially lie, and his silence either means he doesn’t believe me or he’s choosing otherwise.

“Did he try and harm you in any way?”

My eyes jump to his, at the worry in his tone. No, he took care of me.

Without being able to voice it, the words lodge in my throat, and I shake my head. As much as I have more questions, I can’t seem to ask them. My chest cracks each minute I spend out here, knowing Darius is on his way to a cell and Tibith to the Draggards.

Lorcan releases a breath, one of stress, tiredness, and everything I imagine myself feeling. “Let’s go.” He gets back on the horse, and that same palm is out, waiting for me to accept it.

I can’t.

I still can’t.

“It’s late, Nara,” he says, a hollowness to his tone. “Please don’t make this any harder.”

Any harder?

My molars grind, and my vision is a teary blur as temper nestles in me. I decide not to retake his hand. Instead, I climb onto the saddle myself. His hand is left untouched as I wrap my arms around his middle.

“The first person I met at the jewelers wouldn’t give up so easily.”

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