Page 54 of Winds of Ruin
When I was a girl, Papa had let me turn the shack into my fortress. I’d drug down old furniture and rugs from the house when Mama had tired of a piece, and I’d painted the door red.
I’d hidden an Egress behind a large tapestry of a unicorn. It gave Dritan a way in and out of the grounds, so he didn’t have to continue hopping hedges and fences to reach me. Aunt Asteriehadn’t balked when I’d asked her to teach me how to ward an Egress. But I’d had to research on my own how to craft one.
The door creaked open before I could turn the knob, and hands grabbed my wrists, pulling me inside.
“Happy birthday,” Dritan said, spinning me so that my back was against the wall. I gasped before stifling a laugh.
Charmed candles floated in the corners and illuminated the space. I looked up at him in the dancing light—he was tall and lean and grew more handsome by the day. I couldn’t fathom how that was possible.
“I didn’t think you’d come.” He leaned in, and when our breaths mingled, I wanted to consume him. So I did.
Wrapping one hand around his neck, I pulled his mouth to mine. For a blissful moment, our bodies melded together. He groaned between our lips before retreating.
Always the gentleman.Even when I preferred him not to be.
I panted out, “I tried sneaking out sooner.”
Dritan retreated to a weathered armchair as I worked to loosen the front laces of my dress. I caught his throat bobbing while he watched me.
He refused to do anything further than kiss me in this dusty old boathouse. Damn his self-control andhonor.
We were so infrequently left alone. Once my Aunt El learned of our friendship, she only allowed us to spend supervised time together, despite my lies that Dritan and I were merely good friends. Until tonight.
I assumed her lenience was due to the spiked punch and my birthday.
She had mortifying descriptions of what transpired between young lovebirds when left alone. Her explanations often came with crass hand gestures I wanted to burn from my memory.
A match between Dritan and me? My parents would never support it—at least not for a long time. They may believe in love, but they also believed in tradition, legend, prophecy.
They would tell me I was too young, that I needed to focus on the realm’s well-being. Upon my birth, my mother’s first order of business had been rewriting the laws that required me to marry to keep my crown.
Dritan’s eyes landed on my neckline, where the carcanet rested. My hand instinctually grasped a stone.
“That’s new,” he noted.
I nodded. “It’s one of Isolde’s relics.”
His brows rose. “How do you feel about wearing it?”
“Honestly?” I asked.
“Always.”
“It feels heavy. Not in weight, but in power. We don’t know how I will use it yet, but I canfeelit heighten my abilities.”
He put his hands behind his head and smirked, watching me struggle with the ties some more. Finally, I gave up and pulled the sword from the leather sheath at my waist, and cut the laces that had belted the dress with a deep sigh of relief.
“Thatis also new.” Dritan stood. He eyed the rubies that encrusted the pommel of the weapon with a crease in his brow.
“Also a relic—the sword that belonged to your father for a short time. I wanted to show it to you.” I offered him the blade.
When he took it, he winced.
I had sworn as a child to never betray his trust or slip into his head, yet sometimes it tempted me.
Dritan longed to know his father. Only a memorandum left to him as an abandoned babe held evidence of his paternity; it had opened only once for him on his twelfth birthday.
The story that memorandum had told seemed unlikely—a babe born in the Sources’ in-between plane, to a mother the realms depicted as a villain.
