“Do you truly think the people would believe me over he or our mother?” she breathed, feeling the heat creep on her cheeks at the thought of what the people would say if she even tried to accuse their wonderful king of such horror. Their perfect king. Honorable and generous. To accuse all the kings before him, those whom her people had practically worshiped in those walls, forcing their queen to stand alone in his shadows without realizing what they were doing to them.
“Do you think they’d believe the word of the promiscuous queen over their beloved Chronicles and honorable King?” she continued.
Draven’s fist tightened at his side, and he stared into the darkness, a firmness rising in his jaw. “He will pay for this,” he promised. “I will break every bone in his body before slitting his throat if ever I get him alone.”
“No, you won’t,” she affirmed.
He paused, brows raising just slightly on his forehead as he met her eyes. “You expect me to sit back and not rip him to shreds the next I see him?”
She stared pointedly at him, their eyes not moving, until finally he sighed heavily and shook his head.
“Yeah, fine,” he surrendered.
“If you were to kill him, it would take away from what we should be truly focused on,” she insisted. “These ships. The strangers. ‘Man’ if you will. If you kill him, it will start a war between us, between all our friends we just brought together, and we cannot lose any men before the true battle comes. You know this, Draven.”
A growl emitted from under his breath. “I never liked being the hero,” he told her. “It’s much more fun being the villain.”
The upwards quirk of her lips was brief, and an exhausted jagged breath left her lungs. He exhaled deliberately as she sank against him, her body washed with relief of telling him the truth, getting it out so there were no secrets between them. Her skin tingled with the waking of her numb core, as though her flesh was being pricked with needles as it awoke of a new day and life just a little more free than it had been before.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
THE MURMURS OF the forest welcomed her two mornings later.
She could not keep the small smile from herself upon smelling the forest air around her. It was just darkening when they’d arrived the night before, and Draven had brought her in under the light of the moons overhead. She hardly remembered it, being so exhausted from the mental anguish of her leaving and then the restless nights she’d received on her journey. She wasn’t sure how she made it up the stairs.
But when the rays of sun came through the ragged curtains over the windows, she felt herself stir, and she turned over and opened her eyes, only to find Draven standing in the wide doorway across the room from her, his figure leaning on the doorframe facing out towards the forest.
She watched him a moment, allowing the day to sink in, allowing her mind to grasp on to why she was there and not in her own black sheets beneath the golden canopy of her four-poster bed. The smell of the forest entered her nostrils, but she could not make herself get up.
Her heart ached for the sound of her raven’s morning cackle.
A tear fell down her cheek, and she pulled the blanket up around her once more.
It was a few minutes later when she felt the bed shift, and she knew Draven had sat down beside her. She didn’t move, pretending to be asleep, not wanting to see any pity he might have for her on his features.
He didn’t shake her. He didn’t push her. He simply leaned down and kissed her shoulder, giving her hip a squeeze through the blanket before rising once more.
She stayed in the bed the rest of the day, and the next, not even rising when he would bring food up. Her core felt drained, void of the presence that had so long been with her.
It was weird. She was so accustomed to hearing her raven’s voice, feeling its comforting presence at her side at all times of the day and night. She felt as though a small piece of her had vanished. The comfort blanket she shielded herself with now gone.
She felt terrible for not getting up and at least speaking to Draven, but she didn’t know what to do, what to say, even how to act. She was grateful for him, not only because he’d aided her, but because he wasn’t being pushy about anything. He wasn’t crowding her, forcing her to be whatever normal was.
At night, he simply laid beside her and kissed her shoulder, not wrapping her up in his arms until she was the one to snuggle against him. And when she would snuggle into him or take his arm and wrap it around her, he would sigh heavily and kiss her neck, just softly enough that she knew he was there. She appreciated him more than she could put into the words she wanted to tell him. Telling him she loved him did not seem enough to express what she’d come to feel.
He saw her.
The real her.
He heard her.
It was on the third morning that she finally rose from the sheets. Her frazzled hair was matted on the right side of her head, the rest of it poking out in a wild mane of curls. She could feel knots in the ends and on the back of her head. The shirt Draven had given her hung loose on her deteriorating body.
But the smell of the forest intoxicated her. It was a cool morning, the kind of cool morning where you want to sit on your balcony snuggled in a blanket, warm cup of tea in your hands. She rubbed her face in her palms a moment as she sat up, allowing the
