I stood and started pacing. How long was I going to wait before giving in and using that magical piece of mirror?
A male voice, tentative and worried, pierced my thoughts. “Hello?”
My head snapped up, and I looked at the door.
Someone, Shalini’s neighbor, I presumed, stood in the doorway, a man dressed in a light blue button-down l shirt with closely cropped brown hair. “Is everything okay here? It looks like there was a breakin. I’m sorry—who are you?”
I rubbed the knot in my forehead. I needed people to leave me alone. And it seemed like I’d forgotten how to behave normally in the Court of Sorrows, because I muttered those words out loud.
“Are you supposed to be in here?” he asked .
“I’m Shalini’s roommate,” I said. “Her new roommate.”
“She hasn’t been here in a while,” he shot back, staring nervously at my horns.
I really wished there was a way to shut the door, but I’d broken it too much.
I prowled closer to him across the room. “Your help isn’t needed here.” I bared my teeth with a snarl. “And I’d advise you to leave well enough alone. You don’t know what might happen to you if you cross a Dark Cromm.”
I heard the echoes of my brother in my threat.
The stranger turned white as milk, and he pivoted to hurry down the stairs.
36
TORIN
The portal ejected me onto a cold stone floor. Icy light filtered through a mullioned window, and a marrow-deep chill was in the air. I was back in my castle, for some reason, in Orla’s room. The mirror had sent me here.
Orla herself was not here.
As my eyes scanned my sister’s room, a shiver of dread snaked up my spine. It was even colder than it had been when I’d left, and the air carried a faint scent of smoke and sulfur. Was the desolation of this place because of my forced separation from Ava?
No, that wasn’t it. Screams pierced the stone walls from outside. The normally serene stillness of the castle was replaced with a sharp tension coiling through the atmosphere, dragging cold claws over my skin.
I went still. A voice wended through the air, one I recognized.
Orla’s voice.
From somewhere, she was calling my name. Had she felt my return? If she’d left the kingdom, nearly died, and come back again, I thought I would feel it in my blood.
But her screams…
Up here, the castle felt empty, haunted. My breath misted around my head in a frozen fog. I crossed into the corridor. Darkness crept over the walls, even though it was day. Deep gray shadows writhed over the stones.
I gripped the hilt of my sword. Today, the castle felt like a tomb of rock.
The Sword of Whispers sang to me. You are death. You are the frigid isolation that comes with the last breath.
The walls exuded a malign presence, and I didn’t feel welcome here anymore. My magic hadn’t returned to my body, which meant my throne was still shattered. Here in Faerie, I felt like a hollow king walking through these corridors, divested of the power that had once coursed through my veins.
When I heard the distant pounding of soldiers’ heels on the stones, I slipped back into the shadows of an empty bed chamber. I needed to see who the soldiers served before I engaged them, to find out if I was an enemy in my own kingdom. With the Sword of Whispers, I could cut them down in a fight, one by one. The blade sang in my skull with every breath I took, hungry for blood.
But this wasn’t the Unseelie fortress. These were my soldiers, part of an army I’d commanded. I probably knew half of them by name, even if I was now an interloper here. I couldn’t just murder everyone.
As I stood behind the door, I thought of how I’d felt with Ava pressed into me as we’d hidden in that alcove, her hips moving back…the only spark of warmth in this nightmarish atmosphere was the idea of Ava at home, safe from the ruthless world of the fae into which I’d dragged her. Right now, she was probably curling up in a comfortable bed, her belly full of warm food.
From behind the crack of the door, I watched the soldiers troop past. My heart skipped a beat as my gaze landed on the sigil of the Dearg Due royalty: white, spiky whorls over venous red.
Moria? Had she wrested control from Orla? But if she had control, it didn’t explain the icy chill of winter that spilled through the kingdom. A queen could bring spring just by sitting on the throne.
So what the fuck had been happening here while I’d been gone?
When the soldiers marched around a corner, out of view, I stalked out once more.
I heard it again—Orla calling for me, her voice traveling through the glass windows from the east. I broke into a run until I reached the east wing, and the sounds of screams from outside pierced the narrow windows. Worry clawed at my thoughts.