Bright Burns the Night Page 5

  Evelayn rose to a crouch, preparing to do something, anything, to at least try to defend herself, and then froze. Her heart lurched, as though an invisible hand reached beneath her rib cage and was squeezing it, stealing her strength and her ability to breathe at the same time.

  “Oh, thank the Light, it’s you. Ev—the blood! You need to keep pressure on the wound …”

  But Ceren’s words were a dull echo beneath the roar of Evelayn’s blood in her ears. Her hand slipped off of Lothar’s body as she unsteadily rose to her feet, her legs feeling as though they would collapse beneath her at any moment.

  Because the male she faced—the one who stared back at her with wide amber eyes, his usually golden skin unnaturally pale—was Tanvir.

  LORCAN PUSHED THE SHADOW-SHIELD FORWARD AND stalked down the rest of the stairs, forcing the intruder farther back into the main hall, away from the rest of the nobility upstairs—and the queen in his quarters.

  One female had done all this? One measly female. Anger burned icy hot in his veins, along with the flow of his power. But there was something … off about her, beyond her unnatural amount of power. The smell of decay, for one, and a sense that all was not as it should be. She appeared to be a normal Draíolon, but there was something about her pitch-black eyes, her inky lips, and the occasional jerking movement that didn’t seem quite right.

  There was no way a Draíolon this powerful wouldn’t have been known to him before this moment. If he weren’t in the middle of trying to keep her from killing any more of his subjects, Lorcan would have had the ability to concentrate on deciphering what exactly it was that struck him as wrong. But instead, he was busy maintaining the shadow-shield that kept her at bay while still wielding his shadow-swords.

  She summoned another blast of flame—a strange bluish purple, of neither Light nor Dark power—and blasted it at his shield. The dark shadows shuddered, but held.

  “I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish tonight, but unfortunately what you will find is your death.” He addressed her for the first time.

  “I’ve come to deliver a message, King of Darkness.” The words were a raspy threat.

  A sudden terrible theory began to form, one that explained the attack and the unnatural power … but was far worse than a rogue Draíolon.

  Lorcan drew some of his power back to sharpen his sight—to focus all his senses on the female on the other side of the shadow wall between them. Sure enough, the Draíolon form she’d taken wavered and faded slightly, turning him cold with fury.

  “I know what you are, messenger. You can tell your master I already received her note.” He sneered on the last word.

  “That was only the first half of her message, King of Draíolon. I am the second.”

  With a sudden shriek, she shed her glamour to launch herself into the air, using her sticky legs to cling to the ceiling and scuttle toward him, over the defensive wall he’d created. Lorcan jumped back, swinging his shadow-sword at her. The daughter of Máthair Damhán dodged, moving at blinding speed. Where had she come upon such power? To glamour herself, to wield magic she wasn’t supposed to have access to? It shouldn’t have been possible.

  She took advantage of his slight lapse in concentration and lashed out. Lorcan whirled out of reach in the blink of an eye, but she somehow still caught his left bicep with a sharpened pincer, slicing through his flesh and muscle. Large, lethal weapons that easily could have caused those gaping wounds in Lothar’s abdomen were attached to her arachnid body. Wrath like he’d never known summoned an even stronger flow of power into his body, nearly consuming him. She’d injured and killed so many of his Draíolon, filling the air with the fetid scent of death and blood.

  “Your master should have realized who she is dealing with. You will both regret this night’s work,” Lorcan snarled. And then he let his power loose and flew at her, swords flashing with black lightning—a raging fury of shadow and ice that left no mercy in its wake.

  Tanvir was … alive. Evelayn stared at him, incapable of believing the evidence of her eyes—reality unable to penetrate her numb grief. She’d watched him die. Seen him swallowed up by Lorcan’s power and then fallen to the ground, still—silent—gone.

  But … she hadn’t checked to make absolutely certain. She’d rushed to his side but just as quickly leapt forward to attack Lorcan, leaving Tanvir lying there without having felt his skin for warmth, or checking for a heartbeat. Was it even possible? Was he truly standing mere feet away from her after all this time? His bark-brown hair was longer than she remembered, hastily pulled back as if he’d been woken up, his sunshine-gold skin more pallid than it had been, but it was him.

  Tanvir. Evelayn tried to speak his name, but her throat was suddenly so dry, no sound would come out.

  He stared openly at her, visibly stunned. His scent filled her nostrils, but there was a strange hint of something rancid—something off—beneath the citrus and spice that had once been so familiar to her.

  “Tanvir.” This time a whisper came out, a hoarse cry that was half sob. Evelayn lurched forward, toward him, but he flinched and she froze again, stunned to realize the look in his eyes wasn’t truly shock—it was dismay.

  “Tanvir?”

  “Why are you here?” When he finally spoke, it sounded like an accusation, and he still didn’t make any move to come to her.

  Not You’re alive or Is it really you? but Why are you here? Evelayn reeled back as though he’d slapped her.

  “You shouldn’t be here. You have to go. Now.”

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  She was shaking, her whole body humming with the need to rush into his arms, but he didn’t want her. He didn’t want her.

  Evelayn somehow made herself face Ceren, who was very busy inspecting Lothar’s torso, pushing down hard on both wounds since Evelayn had abandoned her post. But Evelayn knew her well enough, even after all the years apart, to recognize her unease.

  “What are you even doing here—in Lorcan’s quarters of all places?” The words were flung like daggers, accusation in his every inflection.

  Evelayn clenched her jaw against the rise of emotions that threatened to pull her under. Tanvir was alive—and standing in this very room. But in the last decade, he had apparently come to loathe her.

  Don’t let him see how much he’s hurting you, she coached herself. You are a queen. His queen. Act like it.

  Evelayn took a deep breath, donned her most imperious mask, and turned to face him with her chin lifted. Her voice was flinty when she said, “How is it that you are here in the king’s quarters? How is it that you are even alive?”

  Before he could answer, an unearthly scream echoed through the castle—a shriek of agony that sent a ripple of dread down Evelayn’s spine. No Draíolon could have made that noise.

  “Someone should go help him.”

  Tanvir’s lip curled. “Don’t tell me you care about the king’s welfare? After what he did to you? What he continues to do?”

  “And what do you know of that?” Evelayn shot back. “You, who apparently have lived here all this time, and never come to find me—to help me.”

  For some reason, everything was upside down, wrong. This wasn’t their reunion, was it? It couldn’t be. After all these years she was back in her Draíolon body, visible to all, and he was alive and in the same room—they should have been deliriously happy and relieved. He was supposed to help her figure out how to stop Lorcan and get out of the mess they were in. He was supposed to rush to her side and take her in his arms.

  He was supposed to still love her.

  Tanvir finally moved, but it was to turn away and shove the door shut, cutting off the sounds of whatever was happening outside Lorcan’s rooms.

  “I never said I cared about his welfare,” Evelayn finally said evenly to his back, drawing upon decades-old lessons from Aunt Rylese on concealing her true emotions. “But if he dies out there, and Lothar dies in here, then Lachalonia itself may die. All the power wou
ld be gone. Better to have it out of balance than destroyed entirely.”

  Ceren flashed her a look of concern and confusion. She seemed to be just as unnerved by Tanvir’s response at seeing her alive as Evelayn was.

  “You forget that you could go reclaim your power with the Dark Draíolon out of the picture.” He spoke to the wall, apparently refusing to face her.

  Evelayn tried not to let the sting spread any further than her bruised heart. “I don’t have my stone. There is no way for me to claim the power.”

  “Perhaps you could find it?” Ceren suggested hesitantly, glancing quickly at Tanvir, then back again, as if she were nervous to speak and remind him of her presence. “It’s probably hidden in here somewhere.”

  “He doesn’t have it,” Tanvir said.

  Evelayn saw her own surprise mirrored in Ceren’s wide eyes.

  “How would you know that?”

  “I just do” was his cold response. Then he finally whirled to face them, his expression a nearly unrecognizable mask of stone. “If you’re determined to save one of them, I’d rather it be this one. But we’ll need a needle and thread. Sometimes Draíolon on the battlefield survive if we give their body a little bit of help.”

  “I highly doubt Lorcan has a sewing kit lying around in his personal quarters.”

  “I suppose you would know better than I.”

  Evelayn barely managed to swallow her angry retort. What had happened to the Draíolon she had fallen in love with? What had the last decade brought him that made him so hardened? She was still reeling from the shock of finding out he’d somehow survived Lorcan’s initial attack. But perhaps a part of him had died that night, after all.

  Ignoring Tanvir, she knelt beside Lothar once more to help Ceren, whose arms were visibly trembling from the effort of keeping pressure on both wounds.

  She heard the footfalls heading their way and caught the now familiar scent a moment before the door flung open and Lorcan himself stalked in, disheveled and bloody but alive.

  And angry.

  “Well, well.” He took in the scene in one sweeping glance. “It appears that while I was occupied with saving all of your lives, I missed the grand reunion. Was it everything you dreamed of, my queen?”

  “Do you have a sewing kit?”

  Lorcan blinked, obviously thrown by her unexpected response. “I can’t say that I do.”

  “Well, if you wish for your brother to have a chance of living, it would seem that we are in dire need of one. Immediately.”

  Lorcan’s gaze dropped to where his brother still lay, his lips nearly white and his entire torso drenched with blood despite their best efforts. Evelayn felt a flash of heat in the palm of her right hand, along the scar from the oath Lorcan had made to her, accompanied by a sudden dismay that was so strong it nearly overwhelmed her. But as quickly as it came, it dissipated once more.

  It took a conscious effort to not jerk her hand away from Lothar’s body, to not let her eyes fly to Lorcan’s to see if he’d experienced what she just had. What was that?

  “Well, why are you just standing there? Go and find one at once!” Lorcan thundered. Tanvir shrugged and sauntered toward the door. “I suggest you hurry or else I’ll finish what I started ten years ago.”

  “Be my guest,” Tanvir said, and then walked out into the hallway.

  Evelayn stared after him, unable to reconcile this saturnine being with the male she had been ready to Bind herself to for eternity.

  “I regret that you probably find him changed … or revealed, as the case may be.” Lorcan strode forward and dropped to his knees beside her. “Little good that it may do, you have my condolences.”

  “You regret that I find him changed? How about you explain how I find him alive?” Evelayn twisted to him, but her gaze was drawn to his arm. She’d assumed the blood had been from whoever—or whatever—he’d fought and apparently defeated. But his bicep had a deep slice in it and was still bleeding rather profusely.

  “You’re injured.”

  “It’s nothing. What can I do for him while we wait?” Lorcan shrugged off her concern and bent toward his brother, hesitantly reaching out as if he would cover her hand with his and add more pressure, and then withdrawing once again.

  Evelayn refused to acknowledge the lurch deep in her body, the tug of empathy that threatened to undermine her fury at the male beside her. So he actually seemed to care for his brother—he wasn’t entirely made of ice. Just mostly.

  “There’s nothing to be done, unless Tanvir returns and shows us what he learned on the battlefield,” Ceren responded when Evelayn remained silent.

  “He’ll return. If anyone knows what it is to wish to save a sibling, it’s Tanvir.”

  If Ceren was as surprised as Evelayn to hear how well Lorcan seemed to know some of the more intimate details of Tanvir’s life, she hid it well. But why did he know about Tanvir’s sister?

  “You never had a brother or sister. But imagine if you had … What would you be willing to do for her? How far would you go to keep her safe?”

  Evelayn glanced at him, but he still stared down at Lothar’s unmoving form.

  “I imagine I would do nearly anything for a sister. Or a brother. Or anyone that I truly loved.”

  Lorcan looked up at her, his eyes two unfathomable pools of silver. When he didn’t turn away, but held her gaze, her mouth went dry. Evelayn finally broke away to look to the door, hoping Tanvir returned quickly—and that Lorcan didn’t notice the heat rising up her neck.

  She hated that he had any effect on her, but especially right now. He’d done some terrible, despicable things, and for that she should loathe him—and she did. She hated him. Just … not as completely as she had before this night. Draíolon were complicated, and it was unfair and unrealistic to label anyone as all bad or all good—she knew that. To be a just ruler, she’d spent hours upon hours studying all about the complexities of their natures. But to find those complexities in the male she’d considered her greatest enemy for a decade was unnerving at best, and terrifying if she was truly honest with herself.

  “He has to make it.”

  The words were so quiet, she almost wondered if Lorcan realized he’d spoken out loud at all.

  Regardless, she responded, “He will. We won’t let him die.”

  Their gazes met again, and this time there was a brief moment when his pain was unmasked, when she caught a glimpse of truth behind the facade he presented. The unexpectedness of it stole her breath. That and the realization that she did want Lothar to live—and not just because she wished for him to take Lorcan’s place. It was because she didn’t want to see that kind of pain in anyone’s eyes ever again.

  Not even Lorcan’s.

  DAWN WAS STILL A WAYS OFF WHEN CEREN STEPPED out into the courtyard where she’d once taken nightly walks with Quinlen. She glanced back at the castle, half expecting Lorcan’s Dark Guard to burst out after her, claim she’d tried to escape justice, and haul her off to prison after all.

  But no one came.

  She wrapped her arms around herself, chilled by the cold night air, and hurried away from the castle back toward Solas, where Quinlen was no doubt half frantic with worry. As soon as the forest enveloped the castle, taking it from view, Ceren stumbled and fell to her knees, no longer able to hold inside everything she’d spent hours hiding. Hot, fat tears splashed down her frozen cheeks, quickly turning into sobs that racked her body. Evelayn was alive—and at the castle. But it was not the triumphant return of a queen. Instead, she had slipped back with the silent stealth of a fugitive.

  Ceren had been reluctant to leave Evelayn, but after Tanvir returned and they’d sewn up Lothar, Lorcan had told her to get out of his sight, to go home. Don’t you dare tell a soul what—or whom—you have seen tonight. I know where you live if I need to arrest you, he’d said. Still, she’d hesitated, until Evelayn’s eyes widened and she’d gestured for her to leave as if she couldn’t believe Ceren hadn’t immediately taken the opportunit
y to go free and run from that place—that room full of blood and tension.

  She huddled on the half-frozen ground, unable to regain control of herself now that the immediate danger had passed. Evelayn was alive. Quinlen and so many others had dedicated the past ten years of their lives to finding her, and now she was here. But what good did it do any of them with her trapped in the castle with the king?

  The king, who had acted in ways she’d never seen before. The king, with whom, even though she would probably never admit it, possibly even to herself, Evelayn had … something. Ceren still didn’t know what to make of their interactions, of the way he looked at her, or the way Evelayn responded to him. She’d promised to Bind herself to him to ensure Ceren’s safety—but she obviously hadn’t known Tanvir was alive when she’d agreed to his demand. Now that Lorcan had let Ceren go and Evelayn knew the truth about Tanvir, would she still go through with it?

  Tanvir … Ceren had heard rumors of what he’d become ever since that fateful night, but she’d barely seen him. It was said he was practically a recluse, holed up in his quarters in the castle, neglecting his lands and people, choosing to sequester himself. Ceren thought seeing Evelayn again would have given him cause to celebrate, that it would have rejuvenated him.

  Nothing was as it should have been.

  “Ceren?”

  She jerked up to see Quinlen rushing toward her.

  “Are you hurt? What happened? I’ve been searching for you—”

  “It’s Evelayn.” She cut him off, climbing unsteadily to her feet. He stopped short, grabbing her arms in both of his hands to steady her.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Ceren looked into Quinlen’s familiar face, into the eyes that had anchored her for so long, and said, “She’s alive. I saw her. Queen Evelayn is alive.”

  Lorcan stalked back and forth across the room, the strain making him restless. “How long before we know if he’ll survive?”

  “Only time will tell. In the next few hours he’ll either begin to improve … or he won’t.” Tanvir leaned back in the armchair close to the hearth where he’d taken a seat after helping them transfer Lothar to the massive four-poster bed in Lorcan’s inner chamber.