The Rising (The Rising #4) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,168
specter formed by the fountain.
Bloody hell.
What was the spirit of Queen Ophelia doing in his fucking courtyard?
“If you look, you can see,” she said.
“See what?” he asked.
She tipped her head well back and repeated, “If you look, you can see.”
He looked up into the starry skies.
“Toward Mar-el,” she directed.
He adjusted his gaze.
And fucking hell.
He saw it.
Gods, it blinked very bright.
And he saw it.
He counted.
Three stars in the stem.
Twelve in the cupule.
Eight in the nut.
An acorn.
“You know him,” Ophelia said, and his eyes cut to her. “He would never leave you and yours, Faunus. Not ever. He shines down on you always, warrior. Always.”
He said no words, not only because he didn’t have any, but because she faded from sight.
He tipped his head back and looked at the constellation.
Then he rounded the daybed, stretched out on it and pulled the blankets over him.
And that night, Faunus slept under the stars.
Nyx Chronis
Manor of the Captain of the Trusted, Fire City
FIRENZE
When she heard naught but men’s murmurs in her entryway, and her husband did not call to share who was at the door he had answered some minutes ago, Nyx rose from the divan in their salon and moved to the hall.
She smiled brightly when she saw Faunus standing with her husband.
“Ciao, Faunus,” she greeted.
His gaze came to her, and what she saw in it made her step falter.
He had found love, since they lost Teddy. He had found contentment, even happiness.
Thus, she did not understand why Faunus looked thrown back to before.
That before being when their loss was fresh.
“Nyx,” he murmured, dipped his chin to her, lifted it to Lorenz, and then murmured, “Until another time.”
And with a sweep of his mantle, he was out the door.
Lorenz closed it after him.
“What was that about?” she asked.
Lorenz turned to her.
She stood still, staring at his hands.
One held what appeared to be a broken off plank of old wood.
In the other, he held a book.
“Teddy left Faunus directions when Faunus was in search of him. Faunus liked the message, so he took it with him.” He lifted the plank of wood. “And then later, Teddy rose a god.” He lifted the book.
“I don’t—” she began.
He turned the plank of wood and she quickly read the scratchings.
But as she read, her eyes only started prickling when she saw,
…tell Lorenz and Nyx I died the man they made me, thus I did such with a clear head and a full heart.
“Come, amore, apparently there has been another message left for us,” Lorenz murmured gently.
She could barely tear her eyes from the wood, and only was able to do so when her husband caught her about the shoulders and drew her back to their salon.
He set the wood carefully, even reverently, aside on a table, and then he moved closer to her, holding the book up between them.
“Faunus says that we should read it all, but for the now, we must skip to the end,” Lorenz said.
“Is that…the journal you gave Teddy?” she asked.
“It is,” he answered.
“Faunus should keep it.”
Lorenz shook his head. “He says Teddy left him his love in a number of other ways, and so he wants us to have these things. He says he feels Teddy would want us to have these things as well,” Lorenz told her.
She shook her head. “I don’t—”
“If it would be too much for you to take—” he began on a rumble, her protective husband.
“Read it to me,” she whispered.
Her beloved held her eyes.
He then nodded, turned his handsome head down to the book, and opened it, flipping through to reach the end.
She watched Teddy’s handwriting glide by and closed her eyes.
“Kindness,” Lorenz started, his voice thick, and she opened her eyes and looked to his face, seeing it now was harsh with emotion. “There is no greater gift,” he went on. “I know this, for when you showed it to me, it changed the course of my life. It changed the course of a continent. It changed the world.”
Nyx swallowed.
Lorenz cleared his throat.
“I did not die loving you,” Lorenz carried on, his voice now gruff. “I lived loving you. Now you live, knowing how deeply you were loved.”
The noise she made she could not control.
Thus, she was in the tight embrace of her husband.
“Is that all?” she asked his chest.
“It is enough,” he answered.
Her Lorenz was right.
It was.
King Cassius
Red Room, Sky Citadel, Sky Bay
AIREN
Cassius stared at his friend.
“Things are getting boring, are they not?” Silvanus asked.
“I’m becoming enamored with boring,” Cassius told him.