Page 41 of Ruin of Revenants

At last, we entered his darkened quarters, all the hearths unlit—even mine after our absence. It left the rooms deliciously quiet and dim and lonely, if cooler than I liked. The door clicked behind us, and I turned on Archer, my entire body shaking.

“You monster. You murdered him. One of your own citizens.”

“Not here.” He seized my arm and tugged me deeper into his quarters until we’d reached the library. Nothing but the moonlight glistened through the space, tinging it an unearthly shade of silver.

Despite my weakness, my emotions felt haywire, demanding release. I couldn’t shift and fly through the night, so instead, I spun toward the hearth. With a cry, I wielded my fire, hurling it at the waiting logs and watching them burst into hot blue flames. I let another flame linger and dance around my fingers, the brightness and warmth a familiar comfort. With an exhausted sigh, I doused it.

Dizzily, I collapsed into the closest armchair, glancing down at the hem of my dress and noticing the bloodstains all over again.

Onyx uttered a soft mew and leapt down from one of the bookshelves, immediately trading that sleeping spot for a comfortable place on my lap. The softness of his fur beneath my fingertips grounded me. He blinked up with innocent eyes, as if sensing my turmoil.

When I turned back to the prince, Archer’s green eyes were eerily blank, his expression guarded. As his charming aura he’d commanded for the party collapsed, I noticed the shadows in his gaze. He tugged at the buttons of his jacket, fumbling in his hurry to wrench it off and toss it onto the chair before his writing desk. He plopped into it, gesturing with annoyance toward the stacks of books left there. “I do what I must to protect my people from the dangers yours pose,” he said at last, addressing my earlier accusation.

My words wobbled. “You forced him to kill himself for entertainment.” Tears swam in my eyes and spilled over onto my cheeks.

Archer’s tone turned dark. “I am no sadist, unlike your kind, playing with life and death.”

“Playing? We aren’t murdering people at parties. Life is actually sacred to us,” I stood, clinging to Onyx as if he were my lifeline.

“And yet many of your kind have made it no secret that you want to destroy Emberglade. Maris herself prophesied that a phoenix would be the one to ruin my family.” Archer’s eyes flashed, flicking between his cat and me. He turned away, as if I weren’t worth the time it would take to argue. “I’ve already told you what I’ve discovered in my research, even if you are ignorant about some of your own abilities. Already, his body will have to be monitored to ensure he doesn’t rise from the dead. Or that a necromancer doesn’t raise him as a revenant too.”

Gooseflesh prickled along my arms. Depositing Onyx gently on the floor, I drew a shaky breath and wiped the tears from my cheeks. I couldn’t stand being in this bloodstained dress one moment longer. “Get me out of this dress.”

Too late, I realized how the words sounded, despite our argument. Archer’s back stiffened, keeping him ramrod straight in his chair. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“I cannot undo the laces myself, and I’m wearing his blood.” My voice broke. I wanted to scream, to sob, to run and hide under the covers of my bed like I was a child. Everything in me was so angry yet so exhausted, so overwhelmed. So defeated.

Archer had left the dagger he’d worn to the party in the phoenix shifter’s body. He seized a new one out of the writing desk drawer. My stomach clenched as he stalked close, his eyes dark and indiscernible in the dimness.

He grasped me by the shoulders, spinning me so my back was to him. Then his hand was swiping the hair away from my neck and seizing the back collar of my dress. He sliced cleanly through the laces of my bodice, leaving the back open and my skin suddenly exposed.

I pressed my hands to the front to keep it from sliding off my shoulders, blinking at the fire and trying to compose myself. “Goodnight,” I muttered, and I fled.

Back in my own bedroom, I wondered why I’d wished him anything at all. Already, I could sense the building turmoil of his emotions mixing with my own, the accursed bond forcing me to feel his growing despair.

I can bear it; I’m already grieving, I thought. Let him suffer more.

After a quick bath, desperate to scrub myself clean, I bound my hair in a simple braid and tugged on a comfortable tunic and pair of leggings. I’d let Archer assume I’d be retiring, but I was going to investigate the castle’s main library.

I was going to find a way to save Mama and the rest of the phoenixes. And then, I was going to find a way to break the bond and escape.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Archer

“Your Highness. There’s a call for aid in the Upper District,” Grey explained, his expression perfectly neutral. He was already dressed to depart, always the loyal guard prepared to defend his city and hunt down the phoenix shifters.

A prick of pain reminded me I wasn’t totally lost to the hollow sensation consuming me. There was still room to experience sorrow and hopelessness and guilt. But I set aside my glass of wine—my hangover kept me from wanting to overindulge again so soon—and pretended I was eager for the hunt.

In my lap, Onyx protested my movement and leapt back onto my writing desk.

Grey shifted on his feet, studying the flickering candlelight casting shadows over my bookshelves. I hadn’t left the library since Isoria had stalked out, preferring the company of my books to the isolation of my bedroom. Somehow, their presence made me feel better, a reminder that I could lose myself in their pages if I needed to. “Have you found anything more about the necromancer? Or how a shifter is raising the dead?”

As a guard who’d also served as a soldier alongside Lily, Owen, and me in many battles against the revenants before Father had ordered us to stay behind the barrier, Grey was one of the few who knew of my efforts and actually cared about their results.

“Not yet.” I left for my weapons room and Grey followed me. As I chose a blade to strap to my side, he filled me in on the details of the message he’d received.

“A neighbor reported about a female, Scarlet Tideglow, who lives nearby with her son, just the two of them. She has never been forthright about what happened to the father, which was the first cause of suspicion for the neighbor—her secretive nature. Most recently, she noticed Scarlet cooking in her home and touching a flame without it burning or harming her.”