Like a creep. A slight laugh shook me. I was actually doing the least creepy thing I’d done in a long time; however, I had no good reason to watch her now. The Maiden was fine.
The Maiden.
She has a name, an unwanted voice in the back of my head reminded me. Penellaphe.
The Duke and Duchess called her that, but according to Tawny, her friends called her Poppy. But she was just the Maiden to me.
She won’t scream if she’s under duress.
Still having no clue what Vikter had meant by that, I approached her bed. The blanket had gathered at her waist, exposing the long-sleeved robe she must have fallen asleep in or normally wore to bed. I wouldn’t be surprised. I glanced around the bedchamber—the sparse, chilly bedchamber. There was hardly anything in here. A table. A chest. A wardrobe. I frowned. No personal items to speak of. I’d seen the poorest of the kingdom have more things in their homes.
Was that another prohibited thing? Personal items? My attention shifted back to her. She was breathing deeply, if a bit unevenly, as if she were wary of those unpleasant dreams returning, even in sleep. Did she remember them when she woke? I didn’t always.
Sometimes, there was just a general sense of apprehension upon waking, a feeling of dread that lingered all day.
I bent, catching the scent of pine and sage, reminding me of arnica—a plant used to treat all manner of things. I carefully lifted the blanket, placing it over her shoulders. I glanced at her face. Those eyes were closed, lips relaxed. I saw the scars and thought of the source of her nightmares.
Backing away, I left the bedchamber, finding a twisted sense of irony in the fact that the same people were responsible for what found us both in the darkest hours of the night.
PRESENT V
“I don’t think
I’ve ever told you about that. It wasn’t that I was hiding it from you. I just didn’t want you to feel embarrassed,” I told Poppy as she slept, curling my arm around her waist. “I also figured you’d probably stab me if you ever learned I had been in your bedchamber while you slept.” I paused. “More than once.”
My laugh stirred the wisps of hair at her temple, but my amusement faded. “I didn’t know about the Duke. I just knew something was up. The way you and Tawny responded. How Vikter was when he showed up. Now, I know why he dismissed me.
He knew you wouldn’t have wanted me—or anyone really—to see you after you finished with your lesson. He was protecting you the best he could.”
His best wasn’t good enough in my opinion. He’d known what was being done to her, yet he stood by. But I kept that opinion to myself. She didn’t need to hear it.
I stared at her. Dawn quickly approached. I should try to sleep while Delano was here, resting at the foot of the bed in his wolven form. I could try to find her in our dreams. But my mind wasn’t shutting down, and maybe I was too afraid that we wouldn’t find each other. Neither of us knew how to walk in each other’s dreams—if it was something that happened naturally when we both slept or if one of us initiated it. But this wasn’t normal sleep. She was in stasis.
Still, resting would be wise either way. I needed it. Except there was no way I could until she opened those beautiful eyes of hers and knew me. Knew herself.
And she would.
I believed that.
Because she was strong and stubborn as hell. She was brave.
I hadn’t always known just how strong she was.
A smile tugged at my lips as I thought of the first time I’d truly grasped how brave and skilled she was.
“When we were at the Red Pearl, and I found that dagger? You said you knew how to use it. I wasn’t sure I believed you. Why would I? You were the Maiden, but then you cut Jericho, and I should’ve realized then that you were nothing like I expected. Nothing at all.”
I dipped my head, kissing the bare skin of her shoulder beside the thin strap of the gown Vonetta had found for her. “But the night on the Rise, when the Craven attacked, I realized then that Kieran and I really had underestimated you.” In my mind, I could see her now, her cloak billowing around her in the wind right before she threw a dagger at me. “That was when it began to change—how I thought of you. Saw you. You were no longer the Maiden. You were becoming…
You were becoming Poppy.”
THE MONSTER IN ME
The atmosphere shifted.
I felt it in the air as I walked the Rise after Vikter relieved me. I was already on edge, brimming with unspent energy. Part of it was due to the frustration of it going on the second day of the Maiden being an absolute no-show. Whatever that shit was with the Duke. Her nightmares. Mine. That fucking dead Lord Devries.
But what caused the small hairs all over my body to rise was something else entirely.
The silence on the Rise was unsettling as I stalked toward the front, the cold breeze catching the godsdamn mantle. Up ahead, I saw a whole damn line of guards staring out over the barren lands. Spotting Pence’s fair head, I went up to where he stood at an archer’s nest, bow in hand. “What’s going…？” I trailed off as my gaze left his pale face and focused beyond the Rise and the steel row of lit torches.
Then, I didn’t need an answer.
I saw it.
The mist.
It was so thick that it nearly obscured the Blood Forest, and it moved under the moonlight, churning and slipping across the ground in a way that was not at all typical.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” Pence rasped. “The mist was normal, you know? Just a foot or so above the ground, but then it started thickening and moving. It’s already tripled in size in the last three minutes.”
That was undoubtedly not a good sign.
Everyone on the Rise knew that—knew what was in that mist.
The Craven.
I hadn’t seen it get like this here, but it reminded me of the Primal mist that blanketed the Skotos Mountains in the east—the magic of the gods that shielded the Kingdom of Atlantia. And it was all kinds of fucked-up how that magic had somehow become so distorted here. How it protected the monsters the Ascended created.
No one could really answer why the mist behaved this way in Solis. Not even the Elders in Atlantia. But the reason wasn’t the most pressing issue at the moment. The mist had already spread out on both sides as far as the eye could see, and while the distance between the Rise and the mist was about the width and length of the Lower Ward, it was not far enough as I watched tendrils seep out, stretching yards ahead. It was like a collective breath was held on the Rise as the mist reached the standing torches.
The breeze stilled.
But the flames began to flicker and then dance wildly, the fire casting frenzied shadows across the ground. What I wouldn’t give for one of our Atlantian crossbows. They were far superior and did a hell of a lot more damage than the recurve bows. I reached for the hilt of my broadsword.
The middle torch was the first to go out. The rest followed rapidly, plunging the land outside the Rise into utter darkness.
“Light it up!” Lieutenant Smyth’s command cracked the silence.
All down the Rise, guards hurried forward with arrow tips wrapped in tight cloth containing a gunpowder mixture behind the arrowheads. One after another, fire sparked. Then they were released, slicing through the night sky and sharply veering down, slamming into a tinder-filled trench. Flames erupted from the furrow, casting a wide, orangey-red glow across the land and the mist.