A Dawn of Onyx (The Sacred Stones, #1)(73)

“Sounds like a very lonely way to live.”

“Yes.” He said it like he deserved such an existence.

The guilt and anger that throbbed in his voice nearly choked me. “Is that why…” It was a delicate question to phrase, but it had been burning in my mind for too long. “You’ve never taken a queen?”

“I’m not sure that’s a fitting punishment for anyone,” he said, a bitter laugh falling from his lips. “Even by my standards, and ‘love of torture,’ as you like to say. Nobody deserves to suffer the eternal fate of being my wife.”

Self-deprecating Kane—that was new.

Or maybe not. I hadn’t known him all too well until tonight, I realized.

He sat up a little bit. “For what it’s worth, Griffin is a much bigger fan of those tactics you claim I love than I’ve ever been. Very tough military parents. He even once suggested we get you to talk in such a way.” Kane’s eyes went viciously black at some memory and my heart raced.

“Get me to talk? To say what?”

“There was a blade taken from my vault years ago. Griffin thought maybe you might know something, since our last lead at the time was in Amber. It’s what your pigeon-brained lover was looking for.” He said the word with a grimace.

I was sick of Kane assuming Halden and I had been together in that way, when we hadn’t. Especially now that I knew what he was capable of.

“He was never my lover. We didn’t…” I drew in an awkward breath.

“Ah.”

“I haven’t. With anyone.” He had been right, that day in the throne room. And something about the strange hour of the night, like a private pocket of our own, coupled with our closeness on a bed, was pulling intimate admissions from me. Maybe I was still drunk.

His expression was unreadable, but he had the decency to move past my unnecessary confession.

“But you felt something for him.”

“I’m not sure. I think he was what was expected of me, and I wanted very badly to be what my family wanted. I didn’t feel anything when we kissed in the dungeons, though.” Shit. Definitely still drunk.

Kane’s eyes were like razors skating over me. His jaw had gone rigid.

I cringed. “What?”

“Fuck,” he sighed, running a hand down his tense face. “I want to eradicate him for getting to touch you, let alone kiss you. It’s making me physically sick,” he rested his face in his hand. “Since when am I such a jealous schoolboy?”

My heart walloped and I fought a smile. I was becoming addicted to his confessions.

“But if I recall, I’m ‘not exactly your type’?”

His face twisted, dark brows pulling in. “I’m not sure what ever compelled me to say that.”

“I think I had insulted you.”

“Ah, one of the many very sexy things you do so well.”

The word sexy falling from his mouth imprinted on my brain like a wax seal, and I blushed, suddenly wishing my room was even darker. There was nowhere to hide my face this close to his. His golden skin glowed in the soft candlelight. His beauty was almost alarming this close up.

He looked at me in earnest. “It was a very rude thing of me to say, and likely said in… self-preservation. Forgive me, Arwen. Nothing has ever been further from the truth.”

Maybe I should have told him how I felt. But it was too much for me to even begin to share. Bigger than me. Bigger than him.

Truthfully, it frightened me.

All I knew for certain was that I trusted him more now than I had ever expected to, and that I should tell him about my plans to get the burrowroot tomorrow night, during the eclipse. Maybe he could help me make it safely in and out of the woods unscathed.

But I didn’t have the energy left to argue with him if he deemed it unsafe. After everything he had told me about the Fae King and the woods beyond the castle, I doubt he’d want to risk any of his guards’ lives, or even less his own to get a single root for my mother—who I might never see again—for a potion that might not even work.

My eyelids had started to feel like lead pulling my lashes down. My entire head was heavy from the wine, and the onslaught of information I had learned tonight.

Kane ran a few lazy fingers through my hair, lulling my eyes shut and slowing my spinning mind.

I’d ask him about the burrowroot first thing tomorrow.





TWENTY


The pounding in my skull was an outrageous cacophony of pain. It was as if my head was a cellar below a ballroom of giants. Clumsy, drunken giants.

I groaned as I stumbled from bed and splashed my face with lukewarm water in the washroom. Summer was here in earnest, and I was dripping with sweat despite the hour. I had slept until late afternoon and then laid in bed until sundown, unable to move, contemplating everything Kane had said last night, both in the wine cellar and afterward.

Halden’s questions in the dungeon felt so obvious now. I wondered how much Gareth had told him about his plans to sell all of Evendell out to Lazarus. A small corner of my mind told me Halden likely knew it all, and still fought for him.

The guilt of helping him escape was crushing, and yet Kane had not mocked me for my choices, nor had he threatened me with any punishment. I had quite literally committed treason, and all he felt was rage on my behalf. Fury that someone had left me behind.