Ice coiled in my stomach, its freezing tendrils spreading into my chest. I bit my tongue to prevent the painful truth or vitriolic anger from spewing out. I didn’t want either to escape. Instead of replying to Dyter, I stared out over the treetops, watching as the overcast sky leaked and drizzled its moisture. Fat drops began to form and drip from the rocky overhang we camped beneath.

“I want you to be happy,” Dyter said. “When I’m gone, I want you to be protected.”

“I just squished the Phaetyn queen and tore her guards to bits.” I sniffed in disdain, but my stomach churned with the acknowledgement of what I’d done. I’d feel terrible later. Their deaths might even give me nightmares. But in this moment, I wasn’t the least bit sorry. “Pretty sure I can protect myself.”

He chuckled, and my shoulders relaxed as the tension between us dissipated.

“I can’t believe you left me dragging Lord Tyrrik away on a blanket while you fought off the Phaetyn army,” Dyter said, his laughter swelling. “There you were, stomping around, and I’m hobbling off afraid you were going to breathe fire on the lot of us. Drak, I almost wet myself.”

I snickered as I turned to Dyter. Seeing his red face and hearing his guffaws made me laugh, and as he chortled on, I laughed harder. Soon, tears were streaming down our faces.

He clutched his stomach, hooting. “Do you know how hard it is to drag a blanket with one arm? A blanket with a Drae on it?”

I doubled up, imagining Dyter dragging Tyrrik through the forest, but after a few seconds, something happened to my laughter, and soon the choking sound coming out of my mouth didn’t resemble laughter at all.

Dyter got to his feet and crossed to me. He’d stopped chuckling, like me, but he wasn’t crying or gasping for breath. I sniffed as he pulled me into his embrace, inhaling his familiar smell.

“You’ll be okay, Rynnie,” he said, rocking me.

I wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t sure I ever would be. I certainly hadn’t been okay so far. I’d been hurt. So badly. I choked on my words, trying to tell him of my uncertainty.

Dyter didn’t acknowledge my incoherent answer, still rocking me as he repeated, “You’ll do okay.”

An overwhelming pressure rose through my throat, a darkness I’d suppressed for weeks. I struggled to reign it in, but I was too exhausted, too hungry, too emotionally drained to battle it back. The low wail escaped, and the dam burst.

A terrible mourning keen drove up from my injured soul, tearing through my chest, searing my throat as it ravaged me. My abrupt introduction to evil escalated to horror I’d never imagined possible. For three months, I’d been tortured, controlled, intimidated, abused, and manipulated. I’d lost my innocence, almost like the girl who’d been protected so well by her mother never existed.

I’d lost my naivety and ignorance, and I wanted that back.

I didn’t want to know nightmares existed. I didn’t want to know I could die. Before, I’d known both of these things, but before, I hadn’t understood them. In the dungeons, I’d become not only acquainted with nightmares but intimately familiar with their terror. Death was rapidly becoming my devoted companion, and I seemed impotent to put either of them aside. Why couldn’t I put my fear for these things aside?

I grieved, shedding tears for the death of the girl I’d been before entering that foul castle.

I wept, soaking Dyter’s aketon, draining myself of the pitiful reserve I had left. I cried, and the darkness released and poured out of me.

I shed every single tear in me as I mourned for what I would never have.

I lamented the losses I knew and the ones I had yet to discover. I cried, letting my heartbreak rule me.

I cried, finally feeling safe to mourn. For tonight, I was in the arms of my father, the only security I knew I could count on.

* * *

I hadn’t woken up chilled in days, and confusion clouded my mind as awareness greeted me. Where was I? Why was I so cold? The smell of campfire hung in the air, but there was no fire nearby.

Tyrrik. He wasn’t close, or I would be warm. Had I rolled away? Seemed unlikely given my subconscious tendencies. I reached out, but my hand froze mid-air as I fully awoke.

I should feel lighter after shedding so much of my emotional pain last night, but my head felt filled with bricks from the toll. My eyes were gritty, and I rubbed the salty crust off and blinked them open.

I was alone in the cave. The filtered light was plenty to illuminate the shallow cavern. Dyter’s pack was propped against a rock, but Dyter was absent. I took a deep breath and heard Tyrrik’s breath hitch.

He was awake. My heartbeat picked up, and I felt him several meters in front of me.

His heartbeat picked up, too.

Tyrrik was watching me.

“Khosana,” he said. “I know you’re awake.”

I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. To see him now after things had changed. Nervous energy skittered over my skin and deep in my belly. I wanted to go back to sleep, maybe even forever if it meant I didn’t have to deal with the jumble of feelings I had for the Drae.

When we first plummeted from the sky and he’d been awake, caring for him was easy. His near-death experience forced me to realize I didn’t want him dead, and in the heat of the moment, that acknowledgement had been easy and simple. But I would’ve done the same for Arnik, Dyter, and possibly even a stranger.

Over the last few days, I’d been Tyrrik’s lifeline. Sure, turns out I did a sucky job of protecting him, but I’d done my best to provide for his every need. I hadn’t hesitated for one moment to do everything I could for him: making nectar, washing his immobile body, pouring nectar down his throat. There was something about his unconsciousness that made the effort uncomplicated, and if I was being honest with myself, being close to him felt right at the time. But that level of intimacy, in retrospect, felt different than healing a wound that would’ve otherwise killed him.

Tyrrik had been asleep and unaware then, but now he was awake. He would not continue to be unaware of anything I did. If I didn’t block him, he would even know why.

Denial doesn’t get you anywhere, Dyter had said.

But denial had been my lifeline since the castle dungeons. To throw that lifeline away felt akin to pulling off my skin to don another person’s: impossible.

“Open your eyes,” Tyrrik said in a low voice as he drew closer. “Please show them to me. I’ve dreamed of them lately, but I know my dreams don’t do them justice.”

My heart skipped a stupid beat, and I could tell by the stupid hitch in his breath that he’d heard. Stupid Drae-mate hormones.

I opened my eyes.

Tyrrik stood just outside the rocky overhang. He’d lost weight. The nectar had been enough to keep him alive but not enough to satisfy the demands of a man’s body. Stubble covered the bottom half of his face. His silky hair was disheveled as though he’d run his hands through the tangle many times. He was wearing one of Dyter’s aketons but no trousers or shoes. The Drae’s broad shoulders and direct look made his bearing just as threatening as ever.

I doubted he was even aware of that.

Tyrrik’s face though—the slight rounding of his eyes, the fleeting way he searched my expression, and the heavy silence with which he watched me . . . Could he be as out of his depth as I felt?

I swallowed and got to my feet. “How do you feel?”

His gaze didn’t shift from my face as he stepped into the cave. “As though I’ve been an inch from death for several days.” He gestured to the forest outside. “Dyter has gone to hunt and collect more water.”

Dyter’s timing was as convenient as the dead queen’s illness. Curse him for leaving me alone with Tyrrik. The old bugger probably felt he was doing me a favor.

“How long will it take for you to heal?” I asked, walking around the rocky space. I was at a loss for how to busy myself so looking at him wasn’t mandatory.

“A few days,” he said. “I should’ve been well healed by now.”

“They were draining you. Dyter and I didn’t know,” I said, hating that I’d failed him. I stopped my pacing and met his eyes. “I’m sorry, Tyrrik. I let you down.”

He shrugged. “You’re not to blame for the Phaetyn’s actions. I could hear what was going on; I just couldn’t respond.”

My heart flipped, and I frantically tried to remember what I’d said to Dyter while we were in Zivost. “What did you hear?”

He got to his feet, and I resumed my slow pacing to ensure there was a good distance between us.

“I heard you threaten the guards and their families.”

I nodded. I did that. That wasn’t so bad.

“I heard you and Dyter discussing whether you should wear a dress for the gathering,” he said, his eyes turning ink black as his gaze roved my frame.

My heart flipped again. The corset and wispy skirt had seen better days by this stage. My silver hair was a tangled mess. My feet were dirty, I had grime smeared on my face, and I was splattered with Phaetyn blood.

Tyrrik didn’t seem to mind. Where I’d been gratified for Kamoi’s attention, Tyrrik’s appraisal of the outfit—the way his eyes lingered on my breasts, the way he stared at the skirt as though hoping it would burn away—that made me feel something else entirely. A foreign heat coiled deep in my stomach. My breathing quickened as a strange heaviness settled in my chest like a magnet, pulling me toward the Drae. The rocky space felt far too small to contain what was possible between us.

“I heard you asking Dyter why sometimes my scales seemed blue,” he whispered, taking a step toward me.

Shivers broke over me, and I felt the eruption of scales on my forearms. I squeezed my eyes shut as the Drae continued to draw closer in the same way, I supposed, he’d always moved, a predatory stalk. “I . . .”

The heaviness of wanting eased as his warm breath brushed the top of my cheekbone. He stood in front of me and said, “I heard you tell Dyter I hurt you, that I broke your heart.”

Tyrrik brushed the area over my heart with the back of his hand, and my eyes flew open. I lifted my gaze from the base of his neck, over the sculpted plains of his face, to his midnight eyes.

“You al-already knew that,” I said, my voice trembling. My fear was not of him, or rather not that he would hurt me physically. But of the magnitude of what lay between us, past and present; fear of what could lay between us . . . if I let it.

He nodded and turned his hand so his palm rested on my skin. “I did,” he said. “But I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if it is possible for you to feel for me again. To feel for me what you felt so strongly for Tyr.”

Yet, wasn’t he Tyr? Wasn’t Tyr’s gentleness and protectiveness somewhere inside this Drae? And Ty, my friend who made me smile, my confidant, wasn’t he in there somewhere, too? Or were Tyr and Ty merely personas he’d assumed to manipulate me? My voice wasn’t the only thing shaking now, but I couldn’t control my trembling as I asked, gaze dropping to the base of his throat again. “Do you really want to fix my heart?”

The question was uttered in a voice so low I was surprised he made it out.

“Yes,” he said. He swept his hand to the top of my shoulder and then up the side of my neck.

I sighed, leaning into the warmth, and did not resist as the Drae tilted my chin so I was forced to meet his eyes once more. Fire spread through my body at his touch; the burning awareness I’d felt from the first time our skin had touched was rampant and unchecked. My lips parted as I stared up at him, and I sighed. “Why?” I whispered, my words breathy, “Why do you want to heal my heart?”

He searched my eyes for an eternity that was likely only a few seconds, but time lost meaning and measure with him so close.

“Because,” Tyrrik said, the pulse in his throat feathering as he stroked my skin. “You are my mate.”

Though he still had a finger under my chin, I closed my eyes. I couldn’t let him see my reaction, not when I didn’t, couldn’t, understand it. How long had he been waiting to tell me? Had he been afraid to say the words out loud? Was he afraid now? At his utterance of the word mate, I’d felt a warm sense of belonging I hadn’t felt since Mother’s death or since I’d had a home. The sensation was stronger than what I’d felt at the elm tree, more personal.

Yet our past stretched between us. Not just the manipulative way he’d broken the Blood Oath. His dark, terrible years of enslavement. The barely scarring wounds left inside me. People with battered souls shouldn’t make decisions like this. Surely that could only lead to disaster.

He wasn’t asking me to sit next to him at a gathering or to make him nectar a few times or dance with him. Tyrrik was asking me . . . I frowned, realizing he hadn’t asked me anything.

I freed myself of his grip and looked at him. In the brief moment I’d spent with my eyes shut, he’d smoothed the expression from his face, and he wore the impassive mask I was most familiar with. “What does it mean exactly? That I am your mate?”

“We are each other’s mates,” he corrected, a hint of a growl in his voice as emotion lit his eyes. “And it means we are made for each other. Drae only ever have one mate. They can only bear children together.”

“So, we can just have children together.” Why did this stuff always come back to dancing the maypole? My fault for asking about children, I suppose.

“Amongst other things,” he said. Tyrrik turned and took several paces toward the front of the cave before sitting on a shelf of rock.

I simultaneously felt relief and a bone-deep cold at the distance. But I wasn’t done. “Like?”