The Beauty of Darkness (The Remnant Chronicles 3)

If you choose?

I grabbed my dagger and prayed for Adeline’s forgiveness as I altered the dress she had lent me, and Vilah’s forgiveness too as I pried free a long piece of chain from her chain-mail belt. I would attend the party just as he had asked, but I would attend as the person I was—not the one he wanted me to be.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

RAFE

I slumped against the paddock rail, where the torchlights from the party didn’t reach, and stared at the ground.

Quiet footsteps stopped near me. I didn’t look up, didn’t speak. It seemed every time I opened my mouth, I said stupid things. How was I going to lead an entire kingdom if I couldn’t even sway Lia without losing my temper?

“She’s coming?”

I shook my head, closing my eyes. “I don’t know. Probably not after—”

I didn’t finish. Sven could put it together without my rehashing every detail. I didn’t want to remember everything I’d said. It was getting me nowhere. I didn’t know what to do.

“She’s still set on going back?”

I nodded. Every time I thought about it, fear gripped me.

More footsteps. Tavish and Jeb came up on my other side and leaned on the rail beside me. Jeb offered me a mug of ale. I took it and set it on the post, not feeling thirsty.

“I wouldn’t let her go back either,” Tavish finally said. “We understand your position, if it helps.”

Jeb mumbled agreement.

It didn’t help. It didn’t matter how many agreed with me if Lia didn’t. As sure as I was that I couldn’t let her go, she was certain she had to leave. I thought about when I’d found her on the riverbank, half dead, and all the hours I carried her through the snow, all the times I pressed my lips to hers to make sure she was still breathing, all the steps and miles where I thought, If only I had answered her note, if only I had honored her simple request. But this time it wasn’t a simple request. This time it was different. She wanted to head straight into danger—and she expected to do it with Kaden.

I grabbed the mug of ale and swallowed it dry, slamming it back down on the post.

“You two are at cross purposes,” Sven said. He leaned back against the paddock rail studying me. “What was it about her that caught your attention in the first place?”

I shook my head. What difference did it make? “I don’t know.” I wiped my mouth with my sleeve.

“There must have been something.”

Something. I thought about when I had walked into the tavern. “Maybe it was the first time I saw her, and I—”

A memory surfaced. No. It was long before that. Before I ever laid eyes on her. The note. The gall. A voice demanding to be heard. The same things that angered me now had intrigued me back then. But even that wasn’t what had captured my imagination. It was the day she had left me at the altar. The day a seventeen-year-old girl had been brave enough to thumb her nose at both my kingdom and her own. A refusal of epic proportions because she believed in and wanted something else. That was what had first captivated me.

It was her bravery.

I looked up at Sven. He stared at me as if he could see the unsaid words behind my eyes, as if I were a horse he had just forced to drink from a dirty trough of my own making.

“It doesn’t matter.” I snatched the empty mug from the post and walked back to the party, feeling his scrutiny on my back.

* * *

She was dancing with Captain Azia when I returned to the head table, smiling and enjoying his company. He clearly enjoyed hers too. Next she danced with a pledge who was no more than fifteen. He was unable to hide his infatuation and had a ridiculous smile pasted on his face. And then there was another soldier and another. I saw a few on the perimeter of the dance area staring at her bare shoulder, her kavah in plain view. She had cut away a sleeve and part of one shoulder on her dress to expose it, undoubtedly a message for me. The Morrighese vine tangled around the Dalbretch claw, holding it back. How differently I saw the kavah now.

And then I spotted the bones.

My fingers curled into my palms. I thought she had left the miserable

practice behind us in Venda.

Where she had gotten so many bones I didn’t know, but against her fine blue velvet gown, a long chain of them dangled, swinging through the air as she danced like a disjointed skeleton. She avoided my gaze, but I knew she was aware of my presence. Whenever she paused between dances, she fingered the monstrosity hanging at her side and smiled like it was as precious as a jeweled belt of gold mail.