Chapter 241

Drake’s pov

She glowed again and curtsied and moved off toward the wine. Calix turned his head and looked at me, and his hazel eyes searched my face.

“Are you well?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re gripping the windowsill.”

I looked down. My knuckles had gone white against the stone. I let go and flexed my fingers.

“Long night,” I said.

“Shall I fetch you something? You haven’t touched the blood.”

“I’m fine, Calix.”

He held my gaze a moment longer, then nodded and turned back to the room. A pair of elders from the northern pass approached, and he greeted them warmly and drew them into conversation about the snow, and I stood beside him and felt my mate’s terror sitting in my chest like a stone.

I made myself think. The house had six of Valen’s best men on it, and the gates were barred. Julian was one man, starved and burned and alone, and he’d never get past the first guard. The rest of the house was asleep. Lysander was probably in the parlor with a book he wasn’t reading. He could’ve had a nightmare. He could’ve heard a noise in the hall and frightened himself.

But the fear kept climbing. It didn’t spike and fade the way it did when he woke from a bad dream. It held, and it sharpened, and underneath it, something else began to happen that I’d never felt before.

The bond started to thin.

I’d only been apart from Lysander a handful of times since we’d sealed it. Every time, the bond had stretched between us like a rope paid out across a valley, long and taut but steady, anchored at both ends. I knew how it felt when he was at the house and I was in the city. I knew its weight. I’d measured every mile of it.

Now the rope was moving. Every minute, it pulled a little longer and a little thinner, as if the far end had come loose from the mountain and someone was dragging it away from me.

He wasn’t at the house.

“…wouldn’t you say, my lord?”

One of the northern elders was looking at me. I had no idea what he’d said or how long ago he’d said it. I could feel the blood draining from my face.

“Lord Drake has spent the evening fending off names for his heir,” Calix said lightly. “He’s lost the will to form opinions. Forgive him.”

The elders laughed. I didn’t.

The heir. My son.

The thought landed hard. Lysander was carrying my child, and wherever Lysander was going, the baby was going with him. I’d felt that small life roll against my palm only a few hours ago, steady and warm and alive, kicking at my hand as if it already knew whose it was. Lysander had laughed and said the boy liked me better.

He was out there in the dark somewhere, frightened out of his mind, getting farther away from me with every breath, and I was standing in a hall full of candles talking about snow.

“Calix,” I said.

He turned immediately. “Yes?”

“Keep them occupied.”

His brows drew together. “Where are you going?”

“I need Valen.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Keep them occupied,” I said again, and I left him there.

I didn’t run. A leader who runs through his own council’s banquet tells every enemy in the room that his house is burning, and half the people in that hall would’ve loved to know it. I walked. I nodded to the elders who bowed as I passed. I let Lady Wren’s husband clasp my forearm and thank me for the compliment to his son, and I said he was welcome, and I kept walking.

The bond thinned another notch. My chest ached with it, a deep, dragging pain behind my sternum, as if someone had hooked a finger under my ribs and was pulling.

Then it yanked.

It tore through me so hard and sudden that I stopped in the middle of the floor. My head snapped around on its own, toward the west windows, toward the black line of the mountain beyond the city roofs, and I felt Lysander at the other end of that bond, folded over and gasping, his heart pounding in my own ears.

He was in pain, and he was moving away from me fast.

A servant with a tray of glasses stopped short to keep from walking into me. I stepped around her without seeing her face.

The colonnade ran along the east side of the hall, open to the night air and lit by braziers. Valen stood at the far end beside a pillar, exactly where I’d posted him, with his arms folded and his gray cloak thrown back over one shoulder. His men were scattered along the arches in pairs. He straightened the moment he saw me coming, and whatever he read on my face made him drop his hand to his sword hilt.

“My lord.”

“What’s happening at the house?”

He didn’t waste time asking what I meant. “Nothing’s been reported. The relief rider came through at the ninth bell. Everything was quiet.”

“It’s not quiet now.”

“My lord?”

“Lysander isn’t there.” I stepped close enough to keep my voice under the music. “He’s moving, Valen. Fast away from the mountain and he’s terrified.”

Valen’s face went still. He’d served me for a hundred and forty years, and in all that time I’d never once seen him show fear. I didn’t see it then either. I saw him start calculating.

“The six on the house are oath-sworn to me,” he said. “I can reach them.”

“Then reach them.”

He pressed two fingers against the old scar on the inside of his wrist, the mark that bound every sworn guard of my house to his commander. He closed his eyes. I’d watched him do this a hundred times, in battles and in border raids, and I’d never seen it take longer than a breath. The guards at the other end always answered. That was what the oath was for.

I waited. The bond dragged at my chest. Somewhere in the hall behind me, the musicians finished a song, and the elders applauded.

Valen’s brow furrowed. He pressed harder on the scar.

“Corran,” he said under his breath. “Answer me.”

Nothing.

He moved his fingers a fraction and tried again. “Isak. Bren.”

His jaw shifted. He opened his eyes and looked at me, and for the first time in a hundred and forty years, I watched the color leave my commander’s face.

“My lord,” Valen said. “Nobody’s answering.”