A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Twenty

Twenty

The stranger did not pick her up as one might a damsel in a fairytale but threw her over his shoulder as if she were a root vegetable sack at the whims of a working hand. Ophir shrieked with every drop of obstinance she possessed. She kicked with her good leg, but he tightened his grip, immobilizing her efforts for defiance. She attempted to beat at his back, but he only chuckled at her while walking up the beach and toward the narrow, hidden walkway that might return them to the tunnels.

She called a ball of flame and thrust it into his back. He growled, lowering her to the ground rather indelicately so that she bounced on her bottom. He grabbed her roughly by the arms. His dark eyes, the swimming, interwoven colors of coffee and earth and coal, burned into hers as he growled, “Fine. Die out here.”

She stared back at him with wide surprise, her eyes grazing over her unnamed savior. There was something familiar about him. He was on one knee, wiping salt water from his face while she examined him. His eyes, his dark hair, his tattoo…

“You’re him.”

He stood, seemingly understanding what she’d meant. “Yes. I’m the one who saved your ungrateful ass from the tide. I’m sorry to be the one to let you bleed to death on the beach.”

“You were the one at the party. You were there. You tried to get me out of Berinth’s house.”

His voice stayed level. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ophir attempted to get to her feet, wincing as every part of her ached. Terrible pain lanced through her. She was pretty sure she’d broken her kneecaps, though they were probably just bruised to oblivion. Her head throbbed from where it had been bashed against the cliff. Her vision dimmed from the blood loss. “You might want to do a better job hiding your tattoo if you’re going to lie about your identity.”

She tried to take a step but swayed, tumbling downward.

A strong hand shot out and caught her before she bit the sand with her full body weight. Her cheek pressed into the fine grit of the beach. From where she tasted shells and rocks, she heard the male voice above her ask, “Are you ready to stop being difficult?”

She didn’t have the energy to fight him. “Take the entrance by the rowboats. There’s a tunnel system—”

“I know.”

She shook her head. “No, the wine cellar—”

“Has a passage to your room. I know.”

“How do you know?” Ophir squirmed as fear wriggled its way into her senses. He shouldn’t know about her passage. He shouldn’t know about her bedroom. No one knew.

“Fight me later, princess. I’ll sit still for you to throw a punch if you can do me the favor of staying conscious for the next ten minutes. Can you do that?”

She attempted to glare but wasn’t sure that her eyelids were responding to her summons. The night’s stars were blinking out slowly as if the black sky was gobbling them whole. This time when he carried her, it was with a gentleness that allowed her eyes to remained fixed on the stars.

They made it to the edge of the castle when he eyed her. “Ah, shit. We can’t have a trail of blood from the beach to your room. Hang on.”

He set her down once more and let her back rest against the custard stones of the castle’s outermost wall just before the entrance to the tunnels. He reached directly over his head and grabbed his shirt from the center of his back, pulling it off in one swift motion. His black tunic was grimy with salt and sand, but they were more worried about concealing the evidence of their entrance than risking infection. He revealed his broad chest and the demarcations of his stomach with the swift tug of cloth. If they could get safely inside, they could access whatever medicines and tonics they needed. While her makeshift tourniquet had helped to slow the blood flow, his dark shirt absorbed the pooling, telltale signs of her injury on the stone floors that might give them away.

With his shirt off, she could see how his tattoo spread from the base of his neck down one pectoral and wound its way elaborately down his arm. She opened her mouth to comment on it, but her vision swam, which weakened her resolve. Her loose grip on consciousness must have been painted clearly on in her eyes.

“Hey, none of that.” He gave her three quick taps on the face with his hand. “We had a deal, remember? You have to stay conscious.”

“I’m conscious,” she said with unconvincing slowness. She dared a glance at her hand to see its grayish pallor. It had been a particularly chilly night, and she had not been dressed for the weather even before she’d been half-drowned in the ocean. The slightest breeze set her to shivering once again.

When he picked her up this time, it was with increasing delicacy and gentleness. “Keep talking, Princess. Tell me what you were doing in the cave.”

“It’s…not…your business.”

A low growl rumbled through his throat as he navigated his way through the underground tunnels. “Tell me about your favorite food.”

“I…”

“Hey.” He jolted her against him so that her eyes blinked open rapidly. “Food. Tell me.”

She attempted to shrug, but her limbs were too heavy to move. “I like all foods.”

“Goddess damn you are unhelpful. Tell me about your first kiss.”

She smiled, though her lips were cold against her teeth. “Now that’s a good story.”

He continued moving swiftly as he maneuvered the tunnels beneath the castle. He seemed to be covering ground quickly. They were nearly to the wine cellar. “I want to hear it. What was his name?”

With the slowness of the absent, she said, “What makes you assume it was a male?”

“Well, aren’t we full of surprises. We’re almost there, Princess. Keep talking.”

The bounce and jostle told her they’d begun mounting the stairs. They should be no more than three flights away from her chambers. Somewhere in the distant reaches of her mind, she knew she had a healing tonic in her bathing room, just above her washing basin. She’d need to demand answers about how he knew about the secret entrance to her room. No one was supposed to know about that entrance. Maybe after she slept for a bit, her headache would go away and she could think more clearly. She was terribly chilly. Sleep would answer all of her questions; she was certain of it. She just needed to let her eyes close.

“Princess? How about that kiss?”

“I’m not…” Her eyes stayed closed.

“What was her name?”

“It was a boy,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“My first kiss was with a boy,” she responded, her words slurred with chill and sleep. “I just thought it was presumptuous for you to have assumed.”

He chuckled darkly at that as he reached her mirror, finding the pressure release so that it slowly opened into the room. Her chambers were just as she’d left them. He set her wet, brine-covered body on her bed. She hated how filthy she felt and wished she hadn’t been forced to dirty her duvet, but she didn’t have the energy to argue.

“Where do you keep your tonics?”

She didn’t answer. He’d figure it out. She just needed to sleep for a little while.

“Hey.” This slap was rough, reminding her of how Dwyn had hit her on the cliffs. “I need you to be an active participant in your survival. Where are your tonics?”

She lifted a hand to gesture to the bathing room, and before she’d had a chance to fall asleep on the bed, he was hauling her into the empty bathtub with all of her clothes on. He tugged the dark, filthy shirt off the wound with less gentleness than she might have liked. The gash was so much more horrible-looking in the clean light of the castle. It was no surface scratch. It appeared she had slashed cleanly into muscle.

The stranger spoke with the emotionless assuredness of a physician. “I just need to wash it and then I’ll put half of the tonic on the wound itself and have you drink the rest. Are you with me? Princess?”

Ophir didn’t bother nodding. She figured he would probably do whatever he wanted regarding her injury no matter what she said. He hadn’t been particularly accommodating to her delicate sensibilities so far, and Ophir didn’t imagine he was about to start. He dumped her into the bathtub fully clothed and began to run the water. She let out a painful gasp as the water washed over her gash. He began rummaging through the things above her washing basin and grabbed a clear bottle of medicinal astringent.

“This is going to hurt. I’m just going to kill the worst of it before we knit the wound together. Are you ready?”

“No.” She gritted her teeth, wincing preemptively. He began to pour the clear, burning liquid over her cut and she grunted with the low, sustained moan of excruciating misery. Her ears popped from the searing agony. Once it was done, he poured the healing tonic on the gash. He tried to hand the rest to Ophir to drink, but she seemed to be losing consciousness once more, as much from the pain as from the blood loss.

“Open your mouth, Princess.” The man grabbed her chin and tilted her head back. The pressure of his fingers against her jaw forced her mouth open as he began to bottle-feed her the remaining tonic. She choked at first, coughing and rejecting the liquid until she managed to swallow. Once the brown glass bottle was empty, the stranger seemed satisfied. He’d done what he needed to do.

She blinked rapidly at him after the tonic began to work its way through her belly. “Are you going to tell me who the fuck you are?”

He offered something of a crooked smile. “You’re not very ladylike. Did you know that?”

“It’s been implied.”

He was in heavy, sand-covered boots and sea-dampened black pants, but he remained shirtless. She didn’t want her eyes to linger too long on the divots of his muscles or the way his body rippled. He spoke with low, calm seriousness. “I’m Tyr, so that’s the name you can use when you overcome your attitude and are ready to thank me.”

She scowled at him from where she sat like a grimy, wet doll gripping the edges of the bathtub. She was sitting in roughly three inches of standing water and appeared to have brought half of the beach back home with her. She wanted to take a real bath. She was sure that once she rinsed her hair and scrubbed herself clean, she’d have more sand in the bathtub than she knew what to do with.

“What are you, my guardian angel? Aren’t angels supposed to be friendly?” She attempted to push herself up from where she sat in the bath.

“I wouldn’t move yet if I were you.”

“Turn around.” She ignored him and began to peel her shirt off. Saltwater itched as it began to dry, and she didn’t need another little misery added to her ever-growing list of pain and discomfort.

“Just so you know, I can see you in the mirror.”

She looked up and narrowed her eyes as she caught his reflection looking back at her. He arched a brow that was far too playful for the severity of the situation, and she made a shooing motion with her hand. Still grinning, he rotated his body so he was facing neither her nor the mirror. Ophir continued the process, attempting to slide her pants down but wincing and gasping as they stuck to her legs. He rolled his eyes at her impropriety but kept his bare back to her.

She ran the water but didn’t plug the tub, allowing the sand to run down and empty with the water that filled it. Ophir began to gingerly rinse various parts of her body. She grabbed a honey-and-almond-scented bar of soap and scrubbed it against her arms and legs, dipping one appendage beneath the water at a time.

“Get talking, Tyr.”

His posture shifted as he found a more comfortable position. “What would you like to know?”

She grumbled. “My throat hurts. I’m tired. I’ve had a rough night. Don’t be coy. Who are you, why are you here, why were you on the cliffs, what were you doing at Berinth’s party, and how the fuck do you know how to get into my bedroom? Honestly, what don’t you have to answer for?”

She watched his muscled back shrug as she ran her hair under the water, allowing as much sand as possible to escape where it had clung to her damp, toffee tendrils. Now that she’d stopped the water’s drainage, she allowed the tub to fill around her.

“I’d love to be cagey, but seeing as how you seem to have successfully unlocked manifesting, I think maybe it’s time you and I get on the same page. Though you could try to curse a little less. Obscenities won’t help you.”

She raised her head from beneath the water, stilling as she watched his neck and back while he spoke.

“What do you know about blood magic?” he asked, still facing the wallpaper.

She winced at an emotional pain more poignant than the gash in her leg. “Is that why you were at Berinth’s the night of Caris’s murder?”

He made a face as if contemplating whether to deny it. “You and your sister have attracted a few unsavory characters to Aubade—Berinth being one of them. Royal blood is a rather valuable commodity.”

Harland had danced around this thought precisely. The blood magic of a royal. Her throat knotted as she drowned in the flood of ten thousand thoughts as violent and relentless as those crashing against the cliffs of Castle Aubade.

“The things that could be achieved with Caris’s heart, particularly if she was a virgin…”

“Don’t talk about her like that.” Ophir choked out the command.

She could feel his apologetic frown even from the back of his head. He lowered his voice when he answered. “I’m truly sorry, Ophir. I’m not much of a guardian angel. I’m less interested in protecting you than I am in keeping their hands from what you can offer them.”

“He didn’t get her heart.”

Tyr turned to her with fully widened eyes. Ophir’s hands flew to cover herself as he gaped at her. His lips parted. “What? What do you know?”

“Excuse me.” She clutched herself for comfort.

“Why would you say that?” Tyr demanded, moving toward the bath’s edge. His coffee-colored eyes fixed on hers.

“The coroner.” Ophir blinked back, horrified. “Her liver was missing—oh my goddess. Fuck off. I did not invite you in here. You are owed nothing . Get out.”

His shoulders heaved, nostrils flaring as he pulled in air, but he forced himself to relax. The thoughts behind his eyes seemed to be clicking like the mechanics of a pocket watch. He closed his eyes slowly as he turned, obeying her wishes for privacy. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could have left you alone.”

“Then why didn’t you let me die? Wouldn’t that have solved your problems?”

Tyr gestured uncomfortably. “Can you get dressed so we can speak properly?”

“You’re in my room. In my chambers.”

“Fine,” he squared, staring at her fully. “Then we’ll talk with you naked. Trust me, I am more than fine with the arrangement.”

It took Ophir a moment to relax after he’d spun on her. She swallowed at his request and focused on cleaning herself of the sand and evidence of the sea. She ran her hair under the water as she scrubbed a mint bar along her scalp, freeing the bits of broken shell and pieces of sand that had clung to her hair. She paused as she turned the bar of soap over in her hand, sniffing it again, wondering where it had come from. The scent was so overpowering, so familiar. It didn’t smell like anything she remembered purchasing or being gifted. She frowned at the curious soap before running it over her body once more. Now was not the time to worry about peculiar soaps. She gave one final pass of her back and chest under the running water before deciding she was finished. It would have to suffice for as long as she remained unwilling to submerge the gaping wound on her leg once more.

“Close your eyes.”

He exhaled, nostrils flaring. “They’re closed.”

She eyed him suspiciously for a second before lifting herself above the lip of the bath. Ophir reached for a robe that had been hung on a hook beside the bath and tied it tightly around herself. Its cloth absorbed the water droplets that clung to her body and collected the clean pools that continued to drip from her hair.

“Okay,” she said carefully.

He swept his arm toward her room as if it were his to offer. “After you.”

Ophir abandoned her tub, escaping from the lip of the basin. She crossed the room and sat on her bed but indicated that Tyr should sit on the chair as far from her as possible. He obliged but didn’t hurry to talk. The strange man seemed to be enjoying the sight of the princess in her robe a bit too much, even if she was looking rather battered. Finally, he said, “You staying alive might be my best chance at drawing Berinth out to finish what he’s started.”

Ophir may as well have turned to stone. She soaked in the features she knew were not from the southern kingdoms, breath and heart hushed by her horror. He didn’t look like anyone she’d met before. Her previous encounters with this stranger had been shrouded in the secrecy of his mask. “Splendid. I’m bait for a sadistic, blood-magic princess murderer. And that explains why you know how to get into my bedroom because…?”

“I’m pretty good at sneaking around. It’s my gift. I’ve needed to keep an eye on the place. If I know all the entrances and exits, I can intercept more effectively. Which brings me to my next point. How well do you truly know Dwyn?”

She stiffened, though something about the gild of his skin and distinct angle of his face suggested that he hailed from the same remote mountain kingdom as the siren. Tyr was not the first man to question the siren’s presence in her life. “What? How do you know Dwyn?”

His face tightened in a controlled expression as he leveled his gaze. “I followed her here from Sulgrave,” he said.

She didn’t mean to sneer with quite so much vitriol as she asked, “Unrequited love?”

His chuckle was black and humorless. “That bitch is the reason I know the things I do about blood magic, Princess. You should be a little more careful about who you let into your bed.”

His words alone would have sent her into a state of disagreeable shock. The handle to her bedroom door began to turn and her eyes widened, realizing her chair was still against it to prevent unwanted entry. She turned to Tyr to command him to hide, but he was gone.

The door sounded in quick succession.

She shot a look to where Tyr had been only a second before, then back to the door.

“Tyr?”

“Answer the door.”

Ophir swallowed audibly. She gathered her senses with several swift blinks, wondering how much saltwater she’d swallowed, and limped over to the door. She moved the chair just as Harland was winding up to break down the entrance.

“Why did you block the door?” The whites of his eyes were as prominent as the rims of teacups. It was clear he’d been on the verge of panic. Ophir gave her guard no shortage of reasons to worry. She was the reason he didn’t sleep at night, and she knew it.

She made a face. “Because you like to let yourself in whenever you like. Did you even knock? No? Then you have your answer.” It was cruel of her to brush him off like this. He was a good guard with excellent intuition. He had been right to follow whatever sense had led him to her room, but she wasn’t ready for that conversation.

He seemed moderately if unsatisfactorily pacified, until he soaked in her appearance. “You look like hell, Firi. What happened?”

Healing tonics worked well, but they weren’t an instantaneous magical solution. She was glad the long robe covered the wound on her thigh. He was probably only seeing the bruising where she’d smacked her face against the cliff.

“I was getting out of the bath and tripped.”

He looked entirely unconvinced. His hazel eyes were shades of deeper green as they softened, mingled with the browns and golds of his skepticism. “Are you okay?”

“The injury to my ego is worse than the bump to my head. I’ve already taken a tonic. I should probably have a few more sent up the next time you see the healer. Now, what do you want? Why are you here?”

He looked a little wounded that she was being so dismissive. “Can I come in?”

The corners of her mouth turned downward. “I’m tired.”

“It’s about Dwyn.”

Her mouth was still tightly closed, but her nostrils flared as she exhaled. She pushed the door open widely enough for Harland to enter.

He made a horrified sound, and she knew her mistake immediately. “Goddess, Firi, what did you do in here?”

She didn’t have to fully turn to know what he’d found. Harland was holding up strip of fabric soaked with blood and crusted with salt and sand.

“You first. Tell me about Dwyn and I’ll explain”—she waved her hand elaborately—“all of that.”

“You didn’t slip in the tub.” It wasn’t a question.

“What can I say—I’m crafty. What’s wrong with Dwyn?”

He wasn’t ready to deflect. He was still holding the bloodied strip a of cloth as he addressed her. “I can’t protect you if you’re still pulling this shit, Firi. How could you sneak out of the castle after all that’s happened? How could you—”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. For once, her tone wasn’t jaded or defensive. She truly was sorry. She knew that Harland didn’t just speak for her station, or for the kingdom. He cared deeply for her. He’d sworn fealty to her, he’d been her only friend, he’d been her lover, he’d been the closest thing she’d had to family in months. She knew precisely what it would do to her parents if they lost their only remaining child. Caris’s death had torn the kingdom to ribbons. If she passed, there would be nothing left to comfort them. The guard’s expression said all this and more as he searched her apology for sincerity.

Harland sank onto the bed and raked his hands through his hair. “Why must you insist on posing the greatest threat to your own safety?”

It was as if he’d hit her. She spoke with the quiet injury of the reproach when she whispered, “You loved that about me once.”

He looked up to her with emotion lining his hazel eyes. “No, I’m really asking, Firi. What happened to make you so careless? Is being a princess so terrible? Is being here with your friends and people who care about you so boring that you always need to sneak out and deceive us? Why are you always trying to get yourself killed? Why…” He looked away, running his fingers through his chestnut hair again. He was rife with complex emotions neither of them could unpack right now. He repeated his question more carefully. “Why do you need to cut me out?”

Her eyes tightened as he spoke. His final question betrayed him.

“This is about you, then. You liked that I was an individual. You loved my recklessness. You’re angry because I don’t include you in what I choose to do with my life and my time.” A hand went to her heart as if to soothe the physical wound of his words, gripping it against herself as she spoke her own.

He saw how bruised and scraped her hands were and got up from the bed to fetch the tonic from the bathing room. He was met with more sandy, bloodied clothes and an open bottle of astringent. He returned with a black male tunic. “Was someone in here?”

She bristled against her lie. “No. I used that to wrap my wound.”

Disbelief weighed heavily on his shoulders. He was as tired of her lies as she was of telling them. Their dance was exhausting, yet neither of them would relinquish.

“Seriously.” She parted her robe slightly to reveal her upper leg and watched as his mouth dropped in horror. “I used it to help stop the bleeding. I’ve cleaned it and used the healing tonic.”

“The goddess has a sick sense of humor.”

“Harland—”

Harland disappeared without another word, closing the door behind him.

From the bathing room, Tyr called, “He’s not wrong. You are obscenely reckless.”

“Shut the fuck up, phantom.”

“You’re also exceedingly foul-mouthed.”

“And you’re a stalker who specializes in voyeurism. You can’t be seen? That’s your power?”

He stepped out from thin air and shrugged, still shirtless. “Sorry about the shirt. You’re in enough trouble as it is without him worrying about you having men in your room. I thought I was doing you a favor by staying hidden. Well,” he amended, “I was doing us both a favor.”

She looked to her feet. “Harland is not going to get me in trouble.”

Tyr shrugged. “Maybe that used to be true, but he might be inclined to start reporting your misgivings if he thinks it’ll help keep you safe. Maybe you could use a little bit of a spanking.”

“You’re crude.”

“I am. I think our demons would dance well together.”

Her face had reacted in notable surprise before she’d had time to conceal her expression.

They heard footsteps in the hall, and Tyr took a backward step into the unknowable space between things, vanishing once more. She kept her eyes narrowed at the empty place where he doubtlessly stood as Harland returned with clean bandages and several more glass bottles. She continued to stare at the blank corner, wondering if there would be any sign, any ripple, any disturbance in the air to give him away. There was nothing.

Harland ordered her to sit on the bed, and she obliged.

“I should be calling a healer for this. I should call your lady in waiting.”

“But you won’t.”

Harland stilled his hands against where they wrapped her wound. His gaze met hers, but his hazel eyes were tight and colored with pain. He sighed as she winced against the bandage. “I know. That’s why I’m here doing this myself, isn’t it? As if a guard is qualified…” His words trailed off as he forced her leg up to get the bandage around her thigh more fully. Their relationship had abandoned the appropriate boundaries of guard and royal charge long ago. “As soon as I tell someone, they’ll report it. And maybe they should, for goddess’s sake. When will you stop? When will it be enough for you?”

Ophir’s frown came from somewhere deep within herself. She propped herself up on her elbow to look at him. Her soul itself turned the corners of her mouth downward. She didn’t know why she was so broken. She didn’t know why she couldn’t be more like Caris.

With a quiet voice, she opted for honesty. “I went to see if I could do it again.”

His fingers stilled against her, hands resting on either side of her leg. Harland’s eyes were as tense as the flexed muscles in his jaw. “You didn’t.”

She quietly said, “I succeeded.”

He swallowed, frozen to his place on the bed. Harland closed his eyes slowly and brought a hand to his temple, rubbing it against the early signs of what might have been a headache. He leaned away from the princess. “That’s what I wanted to talk about. The serpent. This gift…” He was clearly struggling for his words as he leaned his weight away from the bed, standing fully on his feet. “Dwyn shouldn’t have known you might have the potential to manifest. There’s no reason she should have believed any such thing about you. She came out of nowhere on the night of your sister’s death and suddenly she’s eliciting one of the most dangerous magics of the old gods from you? Firi, I…” His voice disconnected as his eyes unfocused.

“Is she…”

“She’s still in the castle. Your parents have never questioned her presence. I didn’t either, and it was foolish of us. After she arrived, you seemed to calm down. Her friendship appeared to be helping, and we were too happy to question it. Ever since you stopped burning down chambers and began sleeping through the night… You’re eating again, Firi. You looked relatively healthy before you got your ass kicked tonight by whoever or whatever did this to you—”

“This would be the handiwork of the high tide.”

He dismissed her statement. “Dwyn seems like a nice enough girl. She’s strange, she’s foreign, she’s violent and odd, but nice enough. I don’t know shit about Sulgrave, but I also don’t care who she is or where she’s from. Whether Dwyn was born in Aubade or Yelagin or Raascot or Tarkhany, I think she’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. My gut is telling me you shouldn’t trust her.”

Ophir met his eyes with gravity. She leaned forward and touched his hands. “The damage is already done. What more could she possibly do?”

“Look at yourself.”

Ophir studied his hazel eyes for sincerity. She got up from where she’d been sitting and stood in front of the full-length mirror on the wall. The ornate, floral gilding that framed the mirror created a portrait-like effect, but the sight within it was anything but lovely. Purple bruises and rust-colored scrapes covered the half-drowned girl who stared back at her.

“Give the tonics a chance to work,” she muttered.

Harland sighed at the young woman in the mirror. Posture heavy with disappointment, he moved to depart. With his back to her, he offered low parting words. “You’ve never shown particularly good judgment, Firi. It would be great for everyone if you would start.”

At least when Dwyn had slapped her, the evidence had been physical. This was much, much worse.

He closed the door behind him, leaving his words to course through her like a poison.

Tyr reappeared with an arrogant smile. “I like him.”

She glowered at Tyr, then returned her attention to a pink, puckering welt across her cheek in the mirror as the tonic knit it together. “Why are you still here?”

“Are you asking me, or her?”

“Jackass.”

He approached slowly from behind, standing a little too close over her shoulder as he looked at her reflection. “I think I’ll do him a favor and help keep you in line. It would kill two birds with one stone if we can keep you put, Ophir. Who knows—maybe Harland and I will become best friends.”

She continued to make her displeasure clear from where she stood, her golden eyes slits as she glared at him through the glass. “You’re not invited. And unless you start explaining yourself, you can show yourself out.”

“What do you want to know?”

His smoldering gaze held hers for a little too long. She was the first to break, looking away as she said, “You came to Farehold because you were following Dwyn because…what were you saying about blood magic?”

He leaned against the wall. Looking up and to the side as if searching his memory like a teacher preparing a lesson, he asked, “There are no Reds in the south. What do the fine people of Farehold know of blood magic?”

Her nose twitched as she fought a sneer. The truth was that she knew very little, save for that blood magic was forbidden, as it led to death. Whispers claimed that moments before perishing, a fae could wield one final power that they’d never accessed before. Little else was said on the subject, as no one was stupid enough to try it and find out.

When she didn’t answer, he said, “Sulgrave has a militant branch of the church who have learned how to call upon stolen powers. If they’re strong enough, it brings them to the brink of death without pushing them over.”

Ophir’s lips parted in silent surprise.

“There are fae who have learned how to take it a step further. Not only do they borrow from the groundwater—is that what you call the world’s power in the south?—but they can do it while forcing someone else to die in their stead.”

“And…” Ophir searched his face for a tell. He nodded encouragingly until she said what they were both thinking. “That’s why you’ve followed Dwyn?”

“Your guard was wrong about you,” he said. “Look how clever you are.”

His mocking tone was one step too far. She was tired of being condescended to. She was tired of being underestimated, of being cornered, of being forced to play nice, or be proper, or chastised until she filled the royal hole left by Caris’s shoes.

She hated the smug stranger who stared at her from across the room. “Bastard.”

“Oh, I hear you, Princess.” She stiffened as he lifted a hand, bringing his large palm closer to her face. She continued facing the mirror as she watched the man behind her run a finger along the bruise on her high cheekbone. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”

Her lips parted at the sudden shift in tone. She didn’t know what to do aside from stare at the man in the mirror. His hand dragged from her cheek down along her jaw. She felt her chin lift, inhaling, lungs filling with air as her body nearly betrayed her. It had involuntarily given him a signal to continue. A treacherous craving had wanted his hand to dip. It had been curious to see if it would graze her neck, her collarbone, settle on her throat.

She caught herself in the moment before she could find out. Ophir grabbed his forearm. Her mouth parted in horror. “Surely, you jest. Do you not realize who you’re talking to? I’m the lone heir to Farehold. I’m the only surviving princess of Aubade. I don’t care what you look at when you see me. Get out, you goddess-damned phantom.”

She turned around to show him the conviction of her glare, but he used the motion to roll her hand so that she no longer gripped him. Her entire forearm was easily encircled in his hand. Under different circumstances she would have found the motion sexy. Instead, all she wanted was to punch him in the face. Perhaps she would have tried it if she hadn’t been certain that he would have snatched her fist out of the air.

The corner of his mouth tugged in a crooked smile. “Are you kicking me out? Is that really the best way to express gratitude?”

Heat tingled in her palm as she prepared to call on her power. The only thing stopping her was the knowledge that this bastard had pulled her from the sea on the edges of unconsciousness and tended to her wounds.

“You’re right,” she said.

He raised a single, speculative eyebrow. “I like those words.”

“I mean to say you’re right: I’m not kicking you out.”

His expression flickered. Taunting became caution as he studied her face. His hold slackened as he took a half step closer. “Good, because I’m not going anywhere. Your guard is right. Dwyn is remarkably unsavory. With her down the hall and Berinth on the loose, you’ll be much better off—”

She broke free of his hand and cut him off by marching to the door.

“Ophir—”

She ignored her name on his lips as she limped for the hall. Her intentions were clear. He disappeared into the place between things—his final expression a look of duress—as she stormed down the hall.

Her guard jogged after her, releasing a gruff string of protests as she went directly to Dwyn’s room, but she waved him away as if he were little more than a troublesome insect.

Ophir didn’t bother knocking before twisting the knob and letting herself into Dwyn’s room.

She would not be alone tonight.