I brushed away the emotion that welled within me at the thought. “I don’t think I could have survived what the chancellor put me through without you.”
“You don’t owe me any thanks,” Harlen said, tone entirely serious. “It was partially my fault you were there.”
In a sense yes, but he’d also been the one that knocked on my door each morning to ensure I got out of bed. He’d sat with me when it took me hours to eat a single meal. He’d helped me clean up after the sessions became so intense I vomited on myself, let alone the beatings he took when I couldn’t read anymore.
So, without a doubt, I was grateful Harlen had chosen my friendship over a chancellor’s lies.
“I think Titus would have gotten me there no matter what,” I confessed.
Briefly, Harlen pulled me back into a dancing position and dipped me once, saying with utter gravity, “Don’t worry about him. We’re free now.”
And Fates be damned, truer words hadn’t been spoken.
“To freedom,” I said, as I took Cypherion’s hand next, and Jezebel placed hers in Harlen’s.
As the night wore on, we all truly celebrated. Ophelia and Tolek, Santorina—though she seemed agitated and distracted every time Tolek or Cypherion dragged her onto the floor—Jezebel and Erista, Barrett and Dax, Harlen and Ezalia, and every warrior who had been a stranger not that long ago but was now a dear friend. The only ones missing were Malakai and Mila, but they’d appeared ready to tear each other’s clothes off at the ceremony. I imagined they were otherwise engaged.
As we reveled, I couldn’t help but consider that perhaps everything I’d suffered through my entire life was to bring me here. To the strangers that would become family, to the man that would become home.
And when Cypherion pulled me into one final dance, I closed my eyes, rested my cheek against his chest, and for the rest of the evening, I purposefully shut the window in my mind to the Fates’ messages of warfare and blood and death.
And I simply breathed in the freedom.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Santorina
My heels echoedagainst the tile floors in my room, that thrum in my chest intensifying with each step I paced before the glass doors overlooking the dunes, books forgotten on the small table before the fireplace.
I suppose I missed your company.
The scent is not meant to be appealing, but I’m finding I like it.
Anger roared through me as Lancaster’s words from both tonight and weeks ago replayed in my mind. They shadowed every interaction—from my Bounty instincts screaming to jam a cypher dagger between his ribs, to the gentle way he’d crafted new boots fit perfectly to me, down to the burning,claiminggrip of his hands on my skin while we’d danced.
Something within me pulled taut with each memory.
I would not mind if you wanted to sleep here.
His body heat warming a bed. My heart rate timing to his steady, slumbering breath. His arm slung possessively across my body.
I had no idea what to make of him, but if the books I’d scoured since returning to Xenovia were correct, I wasbeginning to suspect one very,verydangerous fact. One that warred with my Bounty instincts and threatened the Goddess blood churning through his veins. One that was in no way human.
Groaning, I stormed toward the door, following the hum in my chest as I wrenched it open.
Only to find those intense, dark eyes glowering down at me.
“You are agitated,” Lancaster stated.
“How did you know that?” I asked, fear spiking my voice.
No, no, no. This could not be true.
Lancaster’s jaw ticked as he considered me. Goddess, if he’d only answered a question for every feather of that damn muscle, maybe I wouldn’t be so lost now.
“I could hear your storming,” he said, gripping the doorway with one hand, his arm effectively caging me in.
I scoffed, certain that was not the truth. Unless he’d already been waiting in the hall.
