Page 57 of Ashborne Phoenix

I clawed a hand into his hair and held him there while I drifted back to earth, my heart pounding.

‘I love you,’ I breathed through the link.

‘I love you more,’ he sent, his tone walking the edge between torment and delight. ‘I love you more, Grace.’

The Way Out

~ GRACE ~

Reluctantly, when the water cooled, we rinsed off, then dried and began to dress.

Voski was dreadfully quiet. I assumed because we were aware that we might have listeners. But the dark expression on his face, and the way his gaze darted around the room worried me that he was blaming himself for his mother’s intrusion.

‘At least they left us alone for now,’ I sent as casually as I could. ‘And we know she can find us, so we’ll move more carefully—’

He didn’t respond. He’d just pulled on his trousers from the day before, his head turned toward the fireplace, when he went still.

Had he sensed something?

“Is she coming back?” I whispered.

He shook his head, but continued staring at the end of the fireplace. Had he seen a clue to a secret passage, or peephole? His frown was deep.

Determined to be useful, I continued dressing in case we had to move. But I decided to speak as if we weren’t aware of being watched, just in case anyone was listening. “I am grateful Jade was thoughtful enough to bring skirt and blouse sets. They allow me to dress without help much more easily,” I said with a smile.

But Voski didn’t respond. The moment he had his trousers, shirt, and waistcoat on and buttoned, he slipped silently across the room toward the fireplace. But, to my surprise, when he dropped to squat, it was to pick up the torn dress I’d worn the night before, that he’d thrown down and kicked into the corner of the mantel.

I was still buttoning my blouse, praying I had the holes correctly aligned, when he began pawing through it, muttering to himself.

“It’s a beautiful dress,” I said nervously. “I hope the queen will forgive me for the—”

‘Grace, take the clothes off. Anything she brought for you, take it off. Now.’

I went still, staring at him. ‘Are we returning to bed?’

He shook his head and stormed toward me, that dress gripped in his white-knuckled fist.

When he reached me, he lifted the hem of the skirt and flipped it over, showing me the seam at the back… and a small but beautiful pendant stitched into the back hem.

I huffed, relaxing. ‘It’s a hem weight. Many of the seamstresses use them when the underskirts might make the fabric crawl up—’

‘That isn’t a weight, Grace. It’s a charm.’

I frowned. ‘A charm for what?’

‘My guess is that she’s cast a specific spell on it—some of the Cruors’ spells leave a… residue.’

‘What?’ I recoiled at the thought, but he only frowned and examined the little pendant more closely.

‘A skilled Cruor can follow the… the scent of strong magik. My guess is that she bespelled this for some purpose in a way that required a great deal of power. And now she’s able to follow the residual power it retains. That’s how she found us.’

I froze as he tossed the dress aside and dropped to squat again, grabbing the hem of the skirt I’d just donned, and flipping it up, running his fingers along it—until he cursed.

‘Fuck, she’s good. There’s no pendant here, but I can feel beads or something sewn into the hem itself. Grace, anything she’s given you could be marked in this way. She’d find you no matter where you went—and take great delight in appearing at inopportune moments, just as she did today,’ he muttered. ‘Get them off. All of them.’

‘But—’

He straightened, his face a dark cloud. ‘Don’t let anything she’s—’ He cut off again. Then he blinked.