Page 69 of A Touch of Poison
She hadn’t spilled my secrets to the changeling, even when she’d had all the reason in the world to. After I pushed her away, she could’ve gone to him with the note, told him about my double, told him about my nightmares.
“Those memories are myathair’s. He did some things in the war that… he wasn’t proud of.” That shame was mine, curdling in my gut. “And it scarred him. He had nightmares and flashbacks, even centuries later, after I was born.”
“That’s why you knew what to do… when I was lost and afraid.” Her voice came out very small.
I leant closer and placed my cheek alongside hers. “I learned from growing up with his trauma.”
She pressed into my touch. “Then I’m grateful to him and to you.”
“There was an unfortunate side effect, though.” I straightened. “His magic is of the mind, and although he tried to protect us with wards around the bed, his worst nightmares spilled over to those nearby.”
“You mean… to you.”
“I lived those moments like they were my own. He’s the one who helped take Innesol, butIcan smell the blood of the battle, hear the ring of steel, see the civilians they captured. His memories—his worst memories—are mine.”
We rode on in silence for a long while, then Kat gathered the reins in one hand and reached back. Her gloved fingers slid into the hair at the nape of my neck, and she pulled me close. “I’m sorry, Bastian. That sounds…” She shook her head. “That’s why you didn’t want to sleep—you didn’t want more nightmares.”
I let my chest press against her back and my arm snake around her waist. I inhaled all the fresh promise of her scent and took every scrap of comfort I could.
Too exhausted to resist. Too tired of fighting. Too broken by all I’d remembered in Innesol.
I didn’t deserve her softness, not after what I’d…
I screwed my eyes shut.Ididn’t do that. I didn’t take those people to the Horrors.
I had plenty of reasons to feel guilty, but that one wasn’t mine.
So I let myself sink against her, and I let her comfort me as we rode away from the sunset.
27
Bastian
Kat urged our stags through the city gates as they turned from the clear crystalline of Luminis to the smoky quartz of Tenebris. The lack of moon had us both tense, but I kept my voice steady as I told her the most direct route to the palace.
The streets were empty—any sensible person stayed inside with doors and windows shut to keep out the Wild Hunt. Evergreen boughs decorated archways and the bridges between towers, ready for the coming Winter Solstice.
I found my thumbs circling Kat’s hips again, though I’d have been lying if I’d said it was only forhercomfort.
When we reached the palace, the sunset blazed behind us, and twilight’s indigo sky rose behind the turrets and spires. From inside the guard house, a woman peered out and waved us through. On the new moon, even the guards stayed safely indoors.
We trotted across the bridge, Kat’s body thrumming with tension. River Velos’s magic hissed over me.Stay out. If I were fully unseelie, I wouldn’t be able to cross at all.
The stable yard was empty and silent as darkness closed overhead. We hurried into the covered aisle, led the stags into the nearest stalls, and shut them in safely.
Kat was opening the double doors into the yard when I heard it.
The huff of a stag ridden hard. The clink of armour.
Heart lurching, I grabbed her. One hand over her mouth, I pulled her back. Her body tightened but she didn’t fight.
“They’re here,” I whispered against her ear. I didn’t know how. They shouldn’t be able to cross the river. Unless they weren’t unseelie as we’d always believed, butsomething else.
The pulse leapt in her throat, close enough I could feel it on my chin, but she dipped her head in acknowledgement.
Slowly, slowly, I backed from the door.
Outside, hounds sniffed at the paving and whined, frustrated they couldn’t find what they’d scented.
