Chapter 185: Conjure

EDELINA

The message to Amaranthine took four drafts, because the first three sounded like a woman who needed something.

Let us have tea tomorrow at three, in the east conservatory. Come alone. Your father’s comfort may depend on how punctual you are.

I read it once more, deleted the last sentence, reconsidered, then put it back. Subtlety was wasted on a girl who had thrown herself at Lysander in front of the entire court. I sent it before I could talk myself into softening it further, then set the phone facedown on the vanity.

The shower helped, though not as much as I had hoped. I stood beneath the water until it ran lukewarm, watching steam creep up the glass while I scrubbed at skin that no longer felt like mine. The dungeon stench had worked its way into my hair: damp stone, old iron, Yannis Chonto’s fear. I washed it twice and could still smell it when I lifted my wrist to my face.

By the time I slipped between the sheets, the room had gone dark except for the thin silver line of moonlight stretching across the floor. I lay on my back with my hands folded over my stomach, like a corpse someone had taken the trouble to arrange for viewing, and, because exhaustion had worn down my defenses, my thoughts turned to him.

Lycaon.

It was humiliating. I had spent years after him building a life in which I needed no one’s strength but my own, only to crawl back to the man who had already used me once. I had let him touch me while wearing a girl’s face, and worse, I had let myself feel something in return. For a few treacherous moments, I had even been grateful.

But pride had never kept anyone alive, and pretending the arithmetic had changed would have been a waste of time. A demigod on my side was a blade no werewolf court could hope to parry. If securing his help meant swallowing my pride, then so be it. I had swallowed worse. I had to find a way to reach out to him somehow.

My phone chimed against the wood.

I considered ignoring it, but curiosity won. When I turned it over, the screen cast a pale glow across my face.

It was from a hidden number. But I knew very well who it was going to be.

Has your plan collapsed yet? Perhaps it’s time to consider the alternative.

I read the message twice, my jaw tightening until my teeth ached.

They were losing patience. I couldn’t blame them, which only made the message more irritating. I had promised them a future in which they wouldn’t have to spend their lives tucked away in no-name towns, hiding their faces behind borrowed names and their pasts behind old scars. A future in which survival wouldn’t depend on keeping their heads down and praying that salvation and Lycaon would return.

Instead, I had given them another reason to be afraid.

They had waited long enough for promises to become something they could hold in their hands, and now even the most loyal among them were beginning to wonder whether I had anything left to offer. I could hardly fault them for it. My plans were unraveling, my enemies were closing in, and I was running out of time.

They knew it, too.

If Johann never took that throne, everything I had asked them to endure would amount to nothing. All those years of hiding, all the risks they had taken on my word, all the lives they had put on hold for the chance of something better, it would all die with me.

Fear made people disloyal, and loyalty made people stupid. I needed them somewhere in the narrow space between.

My thumbs moved fast.

Liaise with the rogues. Tell them that, to cement their growing reputation among the angry lowborn after the attack and successful murder of the King, they may have this. The new Regent will be at the Lily of the Valley pack tomorrow. He will have guards, but nothing like the security here, and they get to field test their newborn Lycans. Make it loud.

I sent it. A little gray clock appeared beneath the message with a countdown, five minutes before it deleted itself, and I watched the first few seconds drain away.

The reply came almost at once.

How does that help us?

My lip curled.

Stop being a pussy ass bitch afraid of death, I typed. I have carried us this far, and I will carry us to the end. I am your fucking queen, and I am not in the mood to be tested. Now fuck off.

I did not wait for an answer. I switched the phone off, set it in the drawer, and shoved the drawer shut hard enough to rattle the glass on the nightstand. Then I smoothed the covers, which didn’t need smoothing, and lay back, exhaling at the canopy until the shaking in my hands faded.

Sleep came sooner than I expected. It always did when I was angry enough.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring straight at Lycaon.

Not Willow’s face, not another stolen shape, but his own. Sharp-featured, handsome, and infuriatingly unchanged. Two decades of imprisonment within these walls had done little to diminish him, though the pure silver at his temples had spread a little farther. His eyes remained the same flat, burning amber I remembered, the sort that made it difficult to tell whether he was about to laugh or tear someone’s throat out.

He crouched in front of me in a meadow of knee-high grass, its blades swaying beneath a sky the color of old brass.

I had been thinking about him so intently that I could at least console myself with the fact that my memory had done him justice. Still, the realization that I had conjured him up so vividly left me a little uneasy. I wondered just how deeply I had let my thoughts wander before falling asleep.

Then he smiled.

"Well, well. It seems our essences have finally aligned." He sounded almost disbelieving. "I’ve tried this a thousand times, Edelina. A thousand. Every few hours, whenever I could spare a moment, though there isn’t much else to occupy me in here. I never imagined that..."

"Uh?"

"I’ve been beaconing," he continued, straightening and beginning to pace through the grass. "Reaching out, trying to establish a connection. Like a lighthouse with no ships in sight. And tonight, you answered. You actually walked into my dreamscape, which I didn’t think possible without a vessel, a ritual, or, at the very least, a dead moon. I assumed the wards were too strong. I thought you were too far gone in your own head to hear me. And yet here you are, standing in my meadow as though you’ve wandered into a drawing room, and I..."

"Lycaon."

"...honestly cannot believe it. Do you understand what this means? If you can reach me here, then the runes must be weaker than I thought. Perhaps we could find a way to..."

"Shut up."

He stopped mid-stride.

I crossed the short distance between us and pressed my palm against his chest.

He was indeed solid. Warm too.

His heart beat beneath my hand, slow and steady, the rhythm so familiar that something inside me seemed to falter. I had memorized that heartbeat many years ago. Time, distance, and everything that had happened between us had done nothing to erase it.

For a moment, I forgot why I had spent so long convincing myself that I no longer needed him. I forgot the humiliation, the resentment, and every sensible reason I had to keep my distance.

I could only feel the warmth beneath my palm and stare into the face I had spent years trying not to remember.

"It really is you," I whispered.