Page 48 of House of Gilded Nightmares

The response is deafening, each roar shaking my bones. The sound presses me back against the boulder, crushing me where I stand.

“Tonight, we not only break the spell of House Otreyas and Lyonian, but by claiming the blood of the last heir, we claim her magic, too. Her power!”

Avonia thrusts the dagger skyward, and the screams make my head throb. I force my eyes to remain open, even though all I want is to clench them shut, drown out the raging crowd before me.

“We will take her power, the spell the binds us will be forever broken, and we will roam free—not just in Valaron, but in all of Aureon!”

Turning in a circle, Avonia thrusts the blade into the sky repeatedly. In a matter of moments, my heart will take its place.

She finishes her circle and calls out once more: “With this blood, a new age begins!”

Avonia spins, the dagger arcing toward my heart. My magic swells within me, blasting outward toward her. And at the same moment, there comes a great rush of wind, and something lands on the boulder above me. All eyes whip to the sky directly above my head.

For several moments, the world is nothing but fire and chaos.

At first, I see only darkness beyond the golden glow of my magic, black streaks of movement in the crowd. Avonia’s dagger flies into a dozen pieces as my magic hits it, like a star exploding. Screams, the rush of wings, swirls of shadows. Terrible sounds of rending flesh and bones shattering.

Then, from where she stands at the outer edges of my bubble of magic, I see a blade of shadow separate Avonia’s arm from her shoulder, where she still holds the broken hilt of her dagger. She screams and vanishes in a pulse of light.

And in the spot she’d occupied stands a nightmare.

Black wings, clawed hands, eyes of pure obsidian. He’s covered in blood, both black and red, breathing heavily from rage and exertion. Shadows rotate around his body, an aurora of darkness. Beyond him, the plateau has gone eerily still. Dozens of bodies lie strewn across the rocks, a complete and utter carnage.

He looks nothing like my guardian, but I would recognize the feel of those shadows anywhere, the pull of them in my core.

Zyren says nothing. He reaches forward and breaks the shackles binding me in one flex of his massive hands. Then he pulls me against him, not gently in the least, and launches into the sky. The air is icy cold, clouds whipping past as we streak over the mountains. I can feel Zyren’s heart against mine, the heat of his magic, and also its silken darkness.

I turn my head from where it’s pressed into his chest to see our trajectory. The moon illuminates the mountains we travel over and the mountains beyond. A bright cluster of lights shines in the distance, high in the peaks ahead, and I know that it can only be Selaye. Zyren beats his wings of shadow hard against the night, aiming for that far-off glow.

But when we’re nearly there, a couple miles at most, he drops from the sky like an arrow. He settles us, carefully this time, into a small clearing in the midst of a grove of ancient oaks. The rush of the river is not far off, I smell the stone and water through the trees. The lights of Selaye twinkle in the peaks above us.

As soon as he sets me down in the soft grass, Zyren turns away from me, stalking off into the trees. My heart climbs into my throat, trying to escape the tightness clenching my chest. I can barely breathe from the surge of feelings moving through me. I stride after Zyren, but when I reach him, he’s still roiling shadows like a storm front coming in over the mountains. Slowly, I stretch my hand out and touch his back.

“I thought you were dead,” I say, the words coming out soft and strangled as tears fog my throat.

He doesn’t turn. “You shouldn’t be around me right now, Sarielle.” His voice is the dark, velvety corners of the night sky, the places without stars.

Everything makes sense now. The guilt over his brother’s death. His friendship with Riya. His shadow magic, his wings.

I walk around to the front of him, and I take his hand, claws and all. “You don’t need to hide from me. Did you really think I would feel any differently about you because you’re part nightmare?”

He doesn’t meet my eyes. “Most do. It’s a secret I have hidden my entire life.” He takes a deep breath and lets it back out. “I cannot go into Selaye like this.”

“You saved my life,” I whisper.

“And you saved mine,” he says, finally turning those black eyes to my gold ones.

Slowly, he leans down to rest his forehead against mine. His free hand reaches up to stroke a strand of my pale hair, and he curls it carefully around his finger. He takes in a long, deep breath as if drinking in the scent of me, then releases it. When the last whisper of it crosses my cheek, his claws have retreated, and his shadows calmed.

I think back to the monster that attacked us outside the tunnels and the magic I summoned. “I think…” I say softly, slowly, “I think I’m part nightmare, too.”

Zyren’s thumb strokes across my cheekbone, avoiding the cut from my fall against the rocks. “It would make sense. The connection between a guardian and their ward is always strong. But ours is…” He straightens, eyes pewter again, and searches my face, emotions running raw. “I thought you were dead, too. And even though you came into my world, flesh and blood, only a fortnight ago, I don’t know how I would exist if you left it again.”

I lift the hand that’s intertwined with his against my heart. And then I stand on the tips of my toes, and I press my lips to Zyren’s.

He moans against my mouth, pulling away and shaking his head slowly. “I’m your guardian. These feelings are...” He shakes his head, his eyes like twin moons, burning into mine. “You belong to the king.”

“I belong to no one. But I choose you, Zyren.” I rest my palms on each side of his face, running my fingers into his hair. “I am meant for no other.”

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