But so he would have also been, if all he’d ever known of Lizzan was a girl hacking at a tree, and if she’d only ever said his name the once. In that moment, he would have done anything for her. And so he still would.
Anything but let her go.
CHAPTER 25
LIZZAN
Three days after she and Aerax were married, Lizzan awoke to a commotion from outside the inn. Feeling deliciously sore and well-fucked, she slipped out of bed and went to the shutters. Below, a parade of people and carts were coming from the direction of the monastery, their feet stirring up the ash blanketing the ground.
“Preter must have found them,” she said as Aerax came up behind her.
And they were settling back in to the homes they’d left behind, as if the city were a winter boot that had gone unused for a few seasons. Lizzan and Aerax finally came down from their bedchamber, and she stopped on a sudden laugh when in the public room she saw Degg cutting a red elk’s haunch into small pieces for Caeb, while the cat lounged lazily beside him.
Aerax snorted. “Did he make you hunt that, too?”
The councilor seemed too pleased by Caeb’s acceptance to be affected by any teasing.
Around midday, the innkeeper returned to the inn, a jovial man glad of the coins their stay had earned in his absence and who promised them all a celebratory feast to welcome himself home.
Indeed, all around them seemed in a celebratory mood—but not so the alliance. It seemed to Lizzan that the low spirits at the table could not wholly be ascribed to the slaughter within the monastery. During their wedding feast, the mood had seemed lighter than now, though on this day thousands of people had been restored to their homes.
But listening to the conversation, she realized that everything the alliance hoped to accomplish here was no longer possible.
“Are there no monks left at all?” Lizzan asked Preter.
“Perhaps a few who have not yet made their way out of the maze,” he said. “But there is no council with whom to make the alliance, and now no monastery in the north that can teach magic to those with an affinity for it.”
With a heavy sigh, she looked to Kelir. “Was your friend among the people in the city—the one whose necklace was in the offering bowl?”
Face grim, the warrior shook his head. “There are some who recall seeing a Parsathean ride toward the monastery a full turn before the wraith came. But no one recalls seeing him leave.”
Which meant little. He might have left. Or he might not have. “Do they know how a stone wraith came to be in the monastery? Did the monks create it and it escaped their control?”
“They only know that the monks warned them that a wraith threatened the city and brought them all into the monastery for their protection,” said Preter. “All thought the wraith was locked outside. But it was already in with them.”
“It was Goranik who created the wraith, after the monks taught to him the spell,” said Saxen in his rusty voice, drawing all eyes to him though he hardly looked up from his roast. “It is no surprise to me that after he got what he needed from them, my father then used it to destroy them. That is what he always does.”
All around the table fell quiet. Then Tyzen asked, “You are Saxen of Lith?”
A nod confirmed it, and Saxen watched them now—not warily, Lizzan thought, but with a sort of resigned expectation that she’d likely worn on her own face every time she’d been driven from a village.
Unease deepened the silence from the others.
Except for Seri, who frowned and looked to each of their expressions. “Why does everyone look at him in that way?”
“Because I am a monster, dragon-rider,” said Saxen. “And also a monster’s son.”
She eyed him, gaze lingering on his scars. “You seem more like a monster’s meal that has been chewed up and spit out.”
He gave a short, rough laugh. “I am that, too.”
Tyzen asked, “But what truly happened to you?”
His gaze returned to the moonstone-eyed prince. “Fifteen years past, my father traded me to the viswan monks in exchange for yet another spell—one that allowed a demon to possess his flesh.”
Dismay and confusion passed over Preter’s expression. “Did he intend to die? Or did the viswan betray him?”
“It was not a reanimation. He invited the demon to walk within him so