“Why? Were you seduced?” he mocked.
Her nostrils flared. “You’re insufferable.”
He chuckled under his breath. “Do you think you can make it over to the table or shall I have to carry you over?”
“Can you not bring it to me?” she grunted.
“Food is not served in my bed,” he told her. “That is reserved for a different splay.” He paused a moment, slowly taking a step towards her as he said, “So my question, Sun Queen, is can you walk to the table.”
She looked down at the swell of her ankles and cursed herself for the words she knew were about to come from her mouth. “No,” she said in such a voice she barely heard herself.
“What was that?”
“I said no, okay?” she nearly yelled. “I can’t walk.”
She dared to look up at his face, but what she saw was not amusement or mockery in his gaze, but rather a softened expression she didn’t understand. He finished crossing the space between them and bent beside her. He tucked his arm around her waist and brought her arms around his neck. Her breath stilled as he lifted her off the floor, waist in his hand, her toes never even touching the ground as he walked across the room to the table as though she were simply a bag on his shoulder.
Her pride fell as he sat her in the chair and then poured her a cup of wine.
She hugged her arms across her chest and sank herself as far back as she could into the seat. “Why are you doing this?” she asked.
“What?”
“Being nice,” she replied. “Helping me.”
He paused a moment and then placed the cup in front of her. He didn’t speak, instead simply taking the seat across from her and taking a long sip of his wine.
“You hear them,” he said as more of a statement than a question.
“Who?”
He pushed the food tray in front of her and she reached for the baguette.
“Creatures.”
She met his narrowed gaze and she swallowed the bread in her mouth. “I do.”
“All creatures?” he asked.
She nodded just as the raven squawked outside, and she felt a smile rise on her lips.
“I take it she’s yours?” Draven asked.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because she showed up here this morning.”
He paused and swirled the wine in his cup a few times. “Can you communicate with them?” he asked after a few moments.
“Why are you so interested?”
“Because I have a lot of creatures in my realm who cannot converse with me. It might be nice on occasion to have someone who can.”
“I’m not your servant, Venari,” she argued. “You cannot summon me to do your bidding.”
“Perhaps we can come up with some sort of trade. Your help for mine.”
“I have no need for your help.”
His brows raised. “Really? So you and your horse are both better now? A miraculous recovery after only one night. I did not know it possible.”
She glared at him. “Fine,” she mumbled before taking a long swig of her wine. “What do you need?”
An elongated sigh emitted from his lips, and he allowed his cup to tap on the table a few times, avoiding her gaze. She watched him as he stood, and he hovered over her a brief moment. “Get some rest,” he said. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE ONLY THING Aydra remembered about her second day in the Forest of Darkness was Draven bringing her breakfast.
He’d brought up a tray at sunrise of roasted potatoes, and he’d urged her to eat it all before drinking the thick liquid he’d brought up as well.
“Trying to poison me, Venari?” she asked him.
“Poison is not how I would kill you,” he promised. “I would have thought you’d know that by now.”
She eyed him, but trusted his words nonetheless. “So what is it?”
“Potion the Nitesh taught us to make,” he said as he rummaged through some of the papers on his desk.
She brought the cup to her lips and sniffed it, immediately regretting the decision. “This is disgusting.”
“You’ll drink it unless you’d like to stay here longer than the dead moons cycle,” he told her.
A great annoyed huff emerged from her nostrils, and she started to pick at the potatoes. He left her without another word after finding whatever map or letter it was he’d been looking for.
Her raven flew inside and perched itself on the chair across from her. She did a double-take as it stared at her and the food she wasn’t sure she wanted.
Is it poison? she asked it.
Drink the potion, it told her.
She was standing in the streets.
Children came running up behind her, nearly knocking her off her feet.
But the sight of the bright red ringlets on the girl’s head made her do a double-take at the children.
“Drae!”
The noise of a little boy’s voice filled her ears, and she watched as a black-haired boy ran beside her and then engulfed the small red-headed girl in his arms. Their giggles echoed in her head as he lifted her off the ground in a sideways hug.
“You left me!” the young Rhaif declared.
“Bina told me to run,” she had said, referring to their mother, Arbina. “She said you wouldn’t catch me.”
“I will skin the both of you!” came the sound of Willow’s voice. Aydra turned, remembering the way Willow had run after she and her brother when they were children.
Rhaif leaned over and whispered something in young Aydra’s ear that Aydra didn’t remember him saying. But her younger self grabbed Rhaif’s hand, and they fled off down the street giggling, ignoring Willow’s shouts after them.
She was sitting on the edge of a cliff past the castle.
She looked down at her hands, noticing the blisters on her knees and on her palms. Rhaif was sitting beside her, his fourteen-year-old self staring at her with water in his eyes. He reached for her
