A Court of Bones & Sorrow (Lunaria Realms #2)

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Samara

I’d barely made it to the hallway when Vail appeared at my side like a wraith. He didn’t touch me or speak a word, just walked by my side as I made my way to the library, where I had no doubt the others were gathered. Since we’d made it out of the temple, Vail had been careful to keep some distance between us. This was the closest we’d been in the last three days.

A phantom pain flared along my shoulders where he’d clawed through my skin while I’d been lost in my bloodlust. Without meaning to, my gaze drifted to his neck and the throbbing pulse it contained. He’d saved my life by allowing me to feed from him, and I still remembered how his blood tasted.

Wild. Dark. Intoxicating.

My fangs slid a little further out of my gums. Normally, I kept them tucked away, hidden from sight unless I was feeding. It was considered a sign of weakness if you allowed your fangs to be out at all times. The Moroi were monsters but tried very hard to pretend we weren’t.

I was getting tired of pretending.

A few people slowed and tried to catch my eye as I walked at a brisk pace down hallways and up multiple sets of winding stairwells, but whatever they saw in my face caused them to snap their mouths shut and quickly walk away. Vail’s menacing presence by my side likely had something to do with it as well. Whatever they wanted, I’d need to deal with later, since discussing the Prince Draven situation with the others was my top priority.

The dark wood doors of the library were closed as we approached, and no sound came from inside, which meant they had the silencing spell activated. I opened one of the doors and slipped in, Vail following and closing the door behind us before leaning against it with his arms crossed.

Roth and Alaric were seated at a table, books and scrolls stretched out in front of them. Roth’s hazel eyes lifted from the page for a moment as they looked me over, then they returned to reading. “Don’t come near my books until you’ve bathed.”

“I would never, Roth,” I said aghast while holding a hand to my chest.

Their gaze lifted once more, the burnt orange lines that wound their way through the hazel darkening into a smolder. “Good girl.” Once again, their eyes lowered to the page, but based on the way their lips curled slightly, I knew they’d heard my heart skip a beat.

My eyes slid to Alaric, who was staring at me with an indecipherable look and a clenched jaw that usually meant he was pissed. The list of things he could be upset about was long, and I had no doubt he held me responsible for most of them, but he’d just have to stew in his shitty mood for a little longer. I only had one priority right now.

Kieran was paused mid-step from where he had likely been pacing back and forth—and probably driving Roth insane—in front of the table. His blond hair was tousled as he stood there, like he’d been roughly running his hands through it. I hated the uncertainty in his eyes, waiting for me to say something .

So I closed the distance between us and cupped his face in my hands. “I don’t care. About any of it. You are mine, Kier.” Then I kissed him. He just stood there for a second, frozen in place before gripping me to him. His tongue slipped between my lips and grazed over a fang, causing sweet, coppery blood to light up my taste buds.

Just as he swallowed my groan, someone cleared their throat, and we reluctantly pulled apart but didn’t completely release each other. Instead, I let Kieran spin me around so my back rested against his chest as he wrapped his arms around me. Then I inhaled his scent and enjoyed the last lingering drops of his blood.

Vail’s eyes glittered at me from across the room, his gaze locked onto my mouth and the fangs hidden behind my lips. His throat bobbed once before he looked away.

“What did the prince say to you?” Alaric asked, drawing my attention away from Vail. “Do you think he knows it was us in the temple?”

“Unclear. I don’t think so, but I acknowledge the timing of his arrival is suspicious. He could be in the same boat as us. Maybe he only knows that something happened to the wraiths and a Moroi is responsible. Or maybe he knows it was us but doesn’t know that we know he is the traitor.” I blew out a heavy breath, a headache already forming at all the possibilities. “This whole marriage proposal could be a cover for him to spend time here, figuring out what we know and who we might have told.” Kieran’s arms tightened around my waist, and I pressed further against him.

“You already married one fool,” Roth drawled, not taking their eyes off the page, “I’d prefer you didn’t repeat that mistake.”

From Roth, that was practically a declaration of love with chocolates.

Alaric glanced at them for a long moment before shaking his head and returning his attention to me. “Did you tell him no?”

“Not exactly,” I hedged. “We need to figure out what he knows and why he’s really here. If I flat-out reject the proposal, he’s not going to just go away. We’d be forcing his hand to take more drastic measures, assuming he knows it was us at the temple. I’ll play along for now to buy us time to figure out our next move.”

The muscle below Alaric’s left eye ticked as he looked over my shoulder to Kieran. “And you’re fine with that? Letting her play with the prince?”

Kieran stiffened, and the chains I’d been keeping around my temper broke. “First, nobody lets me do anything.” I pointed a finger at him in warning. “Stay the fuck out of my relationship with Kieran. Second, you’re more than welcome to walk your pretty ass down the hallway and bat your eyelashes at the prince. You’d make a beautiful consort,” I crooned mockingly.

The turquoise coloring of Alaric’s eyes bled into a seafoam green until they were practically glowing like blue fire. It made his already gorgeous eyes absolutely breathtaking. I smirked at him, and his fingers clenched around the book he’d been reading.

“You break my books, I break you,” Roth snapped. Alaric dropped the book and leaned back in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Have your lover’s spat later,” Vail growled.

I gave him a cool look before slipping out of Kieran’s embrace and slumping into a chair at the head of the table next to Alaric, Kieran sitting on my other side.

“Draven was a little cagey about it, but he implied it was his mother’s idea for him to marry me.”

Kieran nodded. “Carmilla was the one who told me about the proposed union between you and Draven. She said it was the queen’s suggestion but that she thought it was a good idea and that you might be open to it.”

I mulled that over. My aunt and I had discussed my future quite a bit since I’d returned to House Harker. In all our conversations, I’d made it clear I wanted to stay here and fully step into my role as Heir. I hadn’t exactly said I didn’t want to marry again, but I’d thought she’d understood I wasn’t looking for that. Especially since the ink had barely dried on my divorce papers to Demetri. “And Draven?”

It was odd she would have agreed to such a thing without checking with me first. I needed to find a way to talk to her without the queen knowing.

Kieran’s eyes darkened. “He does whatever his mother tells him to.” The muscles along my jaw ached as I clenched my teeth. Whatever had happened between him and Draven had hurt him deeply. I didn’t feel any jealousy towards what they’d had, only rage at someone hurting Kier. He deserved better, and I’d make Draven pay for putting that wounded look on his face.

“That was the impression I got in my conversation with him.” I pursed my lips. “What if Queen Velika not only knows what her son is up to, but she’s ordering him to do it?”

Vail scoffed. “You believe the Sovereign House has betrayed all of the Moroi and allied with the wraiths? After everything they’ve done to protect our people?”

I narrowed my eyes at Vail. His blind loyalty was almost as annoying as his dismissive attitude towards me. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Vail started, “There has to be some other explanation—” but Kieran cut him off.

“I promise you there is nothing Draven does without the queen’s knowledge.” He swallowed and stared at the table. “Trust me. I know him better than any of you. If she told him to walk in here and slit all of our throats, he’d do it without hesitation.”

“Why though?” Alaric frowned. “Velika is ruthless—she has to be to keep all of the Moroi Houses in line, but why would she agree to help the wraiths? What could they have offered her?”

“We need to find out,” I said darkly. “Carmilla is at the Sovereign House, and Draven said she’d be there for a while.”

Aggression poured off Vail, I could feel it even from where he stood across the room. “You think they’re holding her against her will?”

Of course the idea that the Sovereign House was harming Carmilla would get him to immediately cast aside his devotion to them. There was no one Vail was more loyal to than my aunt.

“I don’t know.” My frustration with Vail left me, and dread replaced it. “Carmilla and Velika have always been close.”

“Carmilla is not involved in this,” Vail growled.

“Calm yourself. I trust my aunt more than I trust you,” I snapped, and Vail’s lip curled. “Carmilla would never sacrifice our people for a promise of power, certainly not from the monsters who have been hunting us for centuries, but Velika is her closest friend and she trusts her. If the queen asked her to stay in the Sovereign House as a personal favor, my aunt wouldn’t closely examine the reason.”

“Which means we have to be very careful,” Alaric said. “Carmilla could pay the price if we make the wrong move.”

Vail glanced at Kieran. “When did you and the prince leave the Sovereign House?”

“We both left five days ago but split up. He said he had something to take care of . . .” Kieran looked away, his jaw hardening. “He met me last night at the Faybell outpost, and we left first thing this morning. Only arrived here a few hours before all of you. ”

“So he went to the temple after splitting up with Kieran. We saw him there and left while he was busy serving up our people on a silver platter to that wraith prick.” I frowned as I did the math in my head and then looked at Vail. “How did he make it there so fast? Granted, we stopped to rest a couple of times, but we still made good time, and we didn’t pass Faybell until this morning.”

We’d taken the quickest route to get home, but that still meant we’d had to travel north from the temple, then ride east all the way to the coast before traveling south down to House Harker. There were no roads that ran through the forests in the center of the Moroi realm. It was too dangerous.

Vail grimaced. “He must have cut through the forest. The roads are safer, but they take you out of the way. Through the wilds from the temple to Faybell is almost a direct shot, but he couldn’t have ridden a horse through that. It would have been too loud and likely would have broken a leg at anything faster than a trot.”

I thought back to Draven perching on the ledge, soaking in the sunshine. It was hard to picture him racing through the woods at night on foot. Then again, I never would have imagined him cutting deals with the wraiths either. Apparently, the prince was just full of surprises.

“All of you will keep working on what the wraiths—the Unseelie Fae,” I corrected myself, “are up to. It seems like they want to return to their original forms and need those black stones to do it.” I thought about the shiny, obsidian stone stashed safely in Roth’s quarters. Our human ancestors had used the stones in the ritual to turn themselves into monsters. Into us. What made the stones so special, we had no idea—but the wraiths had been ransacking our outposts looking for them, so clearly, they were important. “We need to know more about whatever ritual they’re doing and what they might have offered the Sovereign House to make them betray us all. ”

“And what will you be doing?” Alaric asked, even though the prick already knew what my answer would be. He just wanted me to say it out loud.

“I will be flirting with and distracting Draven.” I waved a hand dismissively. “Keeping his attention off all of you and also trying to figure out more of his role in all of this.”

Alaric looked at Kieran, and some unspoken conversation passed between them. Then Kieran’s mouth flattened into a hard line as he glared at his best friend, who only returned the expression with a hard stare.

Yeah, I wasn’t touching whatever was going on there. I had enough of my own drama to deal with.

“If our suspicions are right and the Sovereign House is really working with the wraiths, then we can’t trust any of the other Houses.” I rubbed my face tiredly. “Some of them will almost certainly be in on it too.”

“I think we can pretty much count on it with House Corvinus,” Kieran said bitterly. “They’d do anything to stay on Velika’s good side.”

“Tepes and Salvatore are wild cards,” Alaric noted. “They could go either way, which means, for now, we definitely can’t trust them.”

“True. Although I doubt Salvatore would agree to ally with wraiths,” I said. “Last I spoke with Dominique, she was still feeling overwhelmed at the loss of her parents and sister and also the pressures of stepping in to rule the House.” The stoically beautiful, young Moroi was only twenty-five years old, one year older than me. Her elder sister had been the Heir, so Dominique had never planned on leading. Based on all the interactions I’d had with her, she hadn’t been upset by that. She had loved her sister and had been happy to play a supporting role, even planned her life around it.

Then her parents and sister had been killed on a trip to visit House Tepes along with ten rangers and almost twenty other members of House Salvatore. Outside of the recent outpost attacks, it had been the deadliest wraith ambush in almost a century.

“For all we know”—a dark look passed over Kieran’s face as he spoke—“Dominique arranged that attack to seize power. Maybe she’s been playing everyone all this time.”

I wanted to disagree, but if someone had told me two weeks ago that the Moroi Queen was plotting with our enemies, I would have laughed in their face. Nothing and no one could be trusted anymore.

“As much as it pains me to say,” I said with great annoyance. “I don’t think House Laurent would ally with the Sovereign House. Marvina has always hated Velika and would try to undermine the Sovereign House at any opportunity. She always did it on the sly so it wasn’t super obvious, but I don’t think she was faking the hostility.”

To say my ex-mother-in-law and I didn’t get along was an understatement. During my three-year marriage to her son, she’d bounced back and forth between indifference and hostility towards me. My leaving House Laurent and dissolving my marriage with Demetri had almost as much to do with that as it did finding Demetri in bed with someone else.

It still felt odd that merely months ago, I’d been living at House Laurent in a loveless marriage and growing more and more frustrated with my daily life. Given our current problems, my life wasn’t exactly perfect now, but I was happy.

And I’d kill anyone who tried to take that away from me, even the Moroi Queen.

“What about House Devereux?” Alaric asked.

Roth let out a humorless laugh. “Trust me, they’re not allied with the Sovereign House, but they won’t help us either.”

As a member of the Devereux line and someone who grew up in the House, Roth likely knew better than all of us. But of course Alaric wasn’t willing to let it go .

“But you must know somethi—” he started.

Roth slammed their book shut and rose from the table. “I think I’m onto something with the black stones, but I need quiet to focus on it. I’ll be in my quarters.”

They gathered a stack of books before stalking towards the door, and I practically jumped up from my chair to dart across the room, cutting them off. Roth paused when I rested my fingers on their forearm.

“Please be careful. We all need to watch ourselves while Draven is here. Your room is far from all of ours, and there are no other living quarters around it.” Roth had taken over a small room just down the hall from the library. Most of the rooms in this wing were used for storage or as guest quarters for lower-ranking members of other Houses while they were visiting. Roth liked it because it was close to the library and quiet, but it also meant they were isolated from the rest of us.

A dark red ribbon unwound from their forearm and gently brushed some of my hair back over my shoulder. “I’ll be fine, Samara,” Roth said in a low, even tone. “He probably has no idea who I am or what I’m doing here. I’ll keep to my room and the library as much as possible and hopefully just avoid the prince altogether.”

Then the ribbon wrapped around a thick section of my hair before giving it a sharp tug. “You can come check on me later though, if you’re worried.”

“I’ll think about it,” I murmured as Roth stepped around me and headed for the door. The ribbon trailed down my backside before wrapping back around their forearm as they stepped out of the library. Once the door closed, I glanced at Vail, who had stepped aside to let Roth leave. “Could you possibly get one of your rangers to keep an eye on Roth in an unobtrusive manner? They’ll get cranky if they know the guard is there.”

Vail’s lips quirked up into the faintest hint of a smile .

“They’ll get crankier if they know the guard is there,” I amended.

“I’ll take care of it.”

“What now?” Kieran asked.

I plucked at the dark green fabric of my tunic and scrunched my nose. “Now we get cleaned up and pretend to go about our day as we normally would, which to be fair, with Carmilla gone, there are some House responsibilities Alaric and I need to deal with. Then we’ll attend dinner tonight with the prince, where we’ll find out just how good of a liar he is.”

“Want me to grab you some food and meet you in your study?” Kieran offered as he rose before walking over to join me.

“Yes, please.” I smiled at him, and Alaric grumbled something under his breath that I chose to ignore. Kieran shot his best friend a sharp look before planting a quick kiss on my lips and slipping out the door.

“I told him starting things with you was a bad idea.” Alaric reached for a book across the table and began flipping through its pages. “Neither of you are lovestruck teenagers anymore. You’re the Harker Heir, and he’s just a courtier.”

“Kier isn’t just anything,” I hissed.

Alaric continued like I hadn’t spoken. “Sooner or later, you’ll have to marry again.” He raised his eyes from the book and speared me with a cruel glare. “Although I suppose for your next marriage, you’ll clarify beforehand if your spouse is expected to be loyal to you or if fucking courtiers is on the table. Wouldn’t want a repeat of Demetri, now would we?”

Something in me snapped. Between the tension of conversing with Draven earlier, the stress of the last few days, and the revelation that the queen we’d all sworn loyalty to had betrayed us, I was fucking done. The slim throwing dagger I kept strapped to my thigh was in my fingers within a second, and the next, I was hurtling it through the air at Alaric’s face .

He slid out of the way, but not quite fast enough as a thin line of blood opened up on his cheek. Slowly, he raised his hand and touched his face, his fingers bloody as he pulled it away.

Then I spun on my heel and stalked towards the door, glancing up at Vail as I jerked it open. “Do you have something to add?”

A feral light glinted in his eyes. “Nice throw.”