Shadow Cursed by May Sage Page 0,10

beginning, nothing has mattered more than strengthening our ranks so that one day we can take back Tenebris. The moment we cease to need this sanctuary, Vlari could wake up. Stand before me, flesh and bones—not just some mental illusion conjured by her mind.

Then, I’d kiss her. Or throttle her. Probably both.

“Promise me you won’t do it again. Promise me you won’t waste any energy.”

She laughs. “That’s not how it works, Drusk. If you want my oath, you have to pay for it.”

Bargains again. She’s as fond of them as ever.

There’s no price I wouldn’t pay to ensure she remains safe, so I reply, “Name your terms.”

She makes a show of thinking it through, lifting her eyes to the ceiling and humming as she pretends to ponder. I can tell she already knows what she wants. “All right. I want your time.”

I blink in confusion.

“If I can’t hop outside of these walls, I’ll be bored to tears. I’ll give you my word I won’t, so long as you promise to come here and entertain me. You could read me books, or inform me of what’s going on. Do we have a bargain?”

I could laugh. Nothing would have stopped me from coming back here every day, perhaps several times, now that I know I can get to see her. Talk to her. Touch her. Instead, I pretend I’m put out, letting my shoulders sag and sighing. “If I must. I’ll entertain you as well as I’m able, and your mind will remain right here, in this room.”

“I vow it,” she says. She changes the subject, then. “You know, I hear my mother has a mind to make a lord out of you, for your services to the realm. She would have, already, if you weren’t avoiding her.” There’s no accusation in her tone, but however she phrases it, it’s still a question.

A question I can’t answer.

How do I tell her I hate Ciera, and Nero, and everyone else who allowed her to save their lives? That I would have rather died on a battlefield ten years ago than let her fade into nothingness and condemn the rest of us to a gilded cage? I’m not one to spell out my feelings, and it won’t start today.

“I’m not adept at playing with queens and princesses,” I hedge.

That much is true enough.

Vlari replies, “Well, let us cut this visit short, then. My mother is on her way.”

I don’t have another moment to say anything at all.

The next instant, I’m back in the cold, empty room, where Vlari is still a pale, breathing corpse.

Worth the Risk

Drusk

"What we were after wasn't in that book," Lord Liken tells me.

I wish I could summon an appropriate level of disappointment, but I'm too used to hearing these words. The gentry send us to risk our skin out of the walls, and it always ends up being for nothing.

Nothing other than fooling the folk into believing that our lords have a plan. That they're doing something.

This status quo is no longer acceptable. I can't stomach their incompetence anymore. We need to act, now. We needed to act years ago.

"I see. And do you care to share what it is you're looking for, exactly?” My words are sharp as a blade.

The gentry looks at me with what I read as a certain level of curiosity. It may be the first time I’ve questioned what he tells me.

Lord Liken, king of the Court of Stone, won his crown by blood. He and his warrior wife Ina killed the despot ruling over the land southeast of Whitecroft, and none of his predecessor's descendants dared dispute his right to sit on its throne.

He isn't what I would have expected, when I heard of him. Instead of a dark general like Frost, or a cunning fox like the lord of Ichor, Velas Liken is a soft-spoken, lean fae almost as young as I, though he has seen his hundredth year. His long red hair denotes salamander blood, I think, though he has the appearance and aura of a gentry. I read intelligence in the depths of his coal-black eyes. Intelligence, and perhaps more than his fair share of cruelty, barely hidden under his languorous ways. There is no doubt that he belongs here on unseelie soil.

"A way to close our borders to Alfheimr, so that the humans cannot call for reinforcements. In the old days, we were able to produce shields as strong as the one our crown princess currently powers, albeit with the