Lady of Shadows (Lady of Darkness #2)

Chapter 33 Callan

CHAPTER 33

CALLAN

C allan looked up from the book he was reading and stole a glance at Scarlett seated across from him in the library. They had continued to meet in the library nearly every afternoon. When she had returned from the mortal lands, she had started researching something in the Old Language books and had become even more interested in what King Deimas and Queen Esmeray had sought in Avonleya.

A weekly dinner had also become a thing ever since that first one a few weeks ago. He looked forward to the relaxed and casual dinners when it was just them and Finn and Sloan. She seemed to enjoy them, too, although that might be because she tended to hand Sloan his ass in billiards nearly every week.

She was leaning back in her chair, biting her lower lip in that way she always did when she was reading something particularly interesting. It was her hand, though, that caught his attention. As she read, crystals of ice crackled and danced at her fingertips. Fire. Water. Ice. Whatever magic training she was doing with Sorin seemed to be paying off. Maybe that meant they’d be able to return home soon.

He’d seen her displaying those powers more and more since she had returned from the mortal lands on the day Eliza had literally dragged him to the Fire Prince’s private chambers, demanding to know where she had gone. The two Fae princes had left through a water portal to go speak with this Sorceress person. He, Finn, and Sloan had taken seats while they’d watched Sorin’s Inner Court pace and bicker and snap at one another.

She had never spoken of that day or told him what had happened between her and the Prince of this Court, and no one else had bothered to either, but he could not get her from his mind. How she had leaned into him in that stairwell. How she had let him hold her for those minutes while she had collected herself.

“You are staring, Callan,” she said, drawing him from his thoughts. Her eyes were still on the book before her.

“How would you know?” he teased, reaching over and flipping her pages.

“You idiot!” she exclaimed, her eyes snapping to his in dismay.

He gave her a teasing grin. “Let’s get out of this library today,” he said.

“And go where? It is freezing outside.”

“A walk in the gardens?” Callan suggested.

“Again, it is freezing outside,” Scarlett argued, flipping the pages back to where she was in the book.

“You have fire magic. You can keep yourself warm,” he pointed out, glancing at her fingers.

“I have fire magic that I am still learning to control and would never use around you right now,” she said flatly.

“I am getting restless here day after day,” he grumbled, leaning back in his own chair and stretching his legs.

She studied him for a moment before sighing and saying, “All right. Let me get my cloak, and I’ll meet you at the bridges in a few minutes.” She grabbed two of the books off the table for ‘light reading’ as she called it and disappeared out the library doors.

Ten minutes later, they were out in the gardens of the palace. She was bundled in a fur-lined cloak, the hood pulled up over her silver head and her hands shoved into the folds. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” she muttered. “I hate the cold.”

Callan chuckled as they meandered down a worn path between hedges and flower bushes. “Or you have been spoiled by a fire palace. It gets just as cold in Baylorin.”

“I hated the cold there, too,” she grumbled, pulling her cloak tighter around herself.

“You are in a mood today,” he observed. He might be missing Baylorin, but he was savoring every moment with her, out in the open, no secrecy involved. And with each day in the library, with each informal dinner, she let a little more of herself out of whatever cage she maintained. She lowered the mask a little more.

She scowled at him from under the hood and continued walking in silence. Snow was falling gently around them. Big, fluffy flakes that were getting caught in her hair that flowed down over her shoulders and out from under her hood. She suddenly said softly, “You are ready to return to Baylorin.” A statement, not a question.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, reaching over and plucking a snowflake from her hair. It melted instantly against his fingertips.

“I can tell,” she said with a shrug. “Extended vacations sound nice in theory, but in reality…” She shrugged again and gave him a knowing smile.

She wasn’t wrong. While a month or two of not being noticed had been refreshing, playing house guest was growing tiresome. He was ready to go home. He sent correspondence to his father weekly, trying to justify his prolonged absence, but his father’s patience was growing thin as well.

“And you? Are you not ready to return home?”

She stiffened slightly at his question, her shadows seeming to shudder. “While I will return to Baylorin, I do not know that I will stay there,” she finally replied.

“What do you mean you will not stay there?” Callan demanded, stopping dead in his tracks.

She paused and turned to face him. “I mean I do not know that I can entirely be myself there.”

“But you can here?”

“Callan, look around you. There is magic everywhere. No one bats an eye at my shadows or fire or water. I mean, for the love of Saylah, I’m Fae . My entire being is changed when I am there.”

“And what of Cassius? And Nuri? The orphans?”

“I said I will return, Callan,” she snapped. “But when things are taken care of, I do not think I will stay.”

“You mean you will come back here.”

“And if I choose to do so?” She crossed her arms, tapping her foot in frustration. The pose and movement were so familiar to him. An action he’d seen her make a hundred times when they’d been theorizing about what was happening in the Black Syndicate.

“And what of me?”

“You are the Crown Prince. You shall one day rule as king. Nothing has changed for you.”

“Everything has changed,” he countered. “Everything has changed if you are not going to be there.”

“What does my absence change? You are the Crown Prince, whether I am there or not. You will be king whether I am there or not,” Scarlett argued.

“But you will not be my queen!” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, closing his eyes in a grimace.

She stilled in that way only Fae could do. “Nothing has changed between us, Callan.”

“Of course not. Not with him here,” Callan returned bitterly.

“Callan. Nothing has changed. I still do not desire to be a queen, no matter how many different ways it is offered to me. I still do not desire to be chained to a throne.”

“How is my throne any different from his?”

Scarlett’s face hardened. “Do you see me parading around on his arm, Callan? Have you seen us steal kisses or sneak away to be alone together? Have any of our interactions appeared to be courting or betrothing?”

“You share chambers, Scarlett,” he said pointedly.

She huffed a laugh. “You and your noble propriety,” she scoffed with a roll of her eyes. “Do you know how many nights I slept beside Cassius in the Tyndell Manor? Did you know Drake is the one who carried me into the bath the night Mikale took what he desired? I share chambers with Sorin because I wake nearly every night screaming from nightmares, and he knows how to reach me when the shadows and the fire and the ice overcome me. I will not apologize for that. I will not apologize for ridiculous decorum having no place in my world, in the things I have experienced.”

She brushed past him, heading back to the palace. “Scarlett, wait! I am sorry,” Callan called, rushing to catch up with her.

She paused, letting him come to her side. “You need to stop waiting for me, Callan. We are too different. Our worlds are too different.”

“I tried, you know,” he snapped. “After six months of you not coming to my rooms. After six months of no explanation. After that dinner at the Tyndell Manor that evening when you hardly looked at me. I tried. I tried to find a Court Lady. I tried to find someone who wanted to be my queen. But none of them… None of them spoke to me like I was anyone other than a Prince. None of them called me Callan. None of them wanted to discuss books. None of them knew anything outside of the wealth they grew up in. None of them challenged me the way you do. None of them made me want to be a better person, a better ruler, the way you do.”

She stood, gaping at him slightly in surprise. “I was— I am Death’s Maiden, Callan. I am part of the Black Syndicate’s Wraiths of Death. It would never be possible. You have to know that.”

“No matter how many times you say it to me, Scarlett, I will not believe it. We would figure it out. We could figure it out.”

“No, Callan, we couldn’t. There are parts of my world you would not be able to get past,” she said, shaking her head as if trying to wake up from a dream.

“Like what? Your magic?”

“Like the fact that I’ve killed people, Callan. Like the fact that Nuri and Cassius are part of me, come with me.”

“They are not an issue. They live in Baylorin,” Callan countered.

“And Sorin?”

“What of him?”

“He is my… He is part of me, too. This Court is part of my family,” she exclaimed, gesturing widely with her arm.

“Sorin is your what?” Callan demanded.

“I don’t know what he is!” she cried. “All right? I do not know. He understands me on the deepest of levels. He is my mirror.”

“He is your soulmate?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can live with that, Scarlett,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I can live with him being your soulmate.”

She looked down at her hand clasped in his own and stared at it. Then she gently pulled her fingers from his and whispered, “I don’t know if I can live with that.”

She turned and walked back to the palace, silent as the wraith she was, leaving him out in the cold and snow.