He’d always known his brother having a mate would change things.
But he had never realized how much until now. This insignificant moment had somehow flipped his world. It was the beginning of the end.
For the first time, he began to realize that Xander didn’t need him anymore. Not really. He had someone else by his side, someone better. A princess instead of a bastard—a trade up in anyone’s eyes. And it was only a matter of time before his brother saw how much of a useless burden Rafe had become—with the rumors, the strange looks, and the whispers in the dark, which hadn't ended as he'd hoped, but had instead strengthened.
“Uh, Rafe?” Cassi called. She was standing at the end of the hall, her arms crossed once more. “You’re supposed to be showing me where to go?”
“Right,” he muttered, taking a deep breath. “Right.”
Don’t be a fool, he thought for the second time that day as he hurried toward the owl and turned the corner, leading her. Xander isn’t going to forget you. You’re his brother. He loves you, no matter what. Of course he does.
But as he dropped Cassi off at her room and returned to the hall alone, the idea had become harder to swallow. And before he could stop himself, he found he was racing to the nearest balcony and jumping over the edge, wings catching him as he fell, pumping against the wind that whipped around the edge of the isle.
Rafe floated below the castle, to the rooms underground—rooms for the servants and the guards, and then rooms no one mentioned anymore. He didn’t stop until he reached the lowest level carved into the rock, now nothing more than a burnt-out crisp. A thick layer of ash stubbornly coated the surfaces even after more than a decade. He landed on the balcony outside the remnants of his mother’s room, pausing in the same spot he always did, scuffing his boots over old footprints and forming new ones in the dust. Even after all these years, he couldn’t step inside, not fully. Every time he tried, the memory of that snarl, the overwhelming heat, and the acrid scent of their burning flesh, still so strong in the stagnant air, stopped him.
Instead, he walked to the edge and sat so his feet dangled and his wings shrouded him like the curtains that used to hang there. When the corners of his eyes began to sting, he blamed it on the wind and closed them. And when his cheeks grew wet, he imagined there must have been a storm. And when the loneliness became a physical pain clawing at his gut, for a moment Rafe wondered if the dragon had come back to finish the job. But when he opened his eyes, no one was there.
He stood, wiped his cheeks, and flew back to his room at the top of the castle to do what he had done many times before—wait for Xander to return from a dinner he hadn’t been invited to, and do his best to be needed.
39
Lyana
By the time Lyana returned to her rooms that night, she was numb. Numb from all the talking. Numb from the monotony. Numb from the sheer amount of information they’d tried to shove down her throat. Just numb.
“Long night?” Cassi crooned.
Lyana found her friend curled against some pillows by the balcony, an open book in her hands, tan cheeks rosy from the breeze.
“Long week.” She sighed and collapsed into the nearest chair, dropping her head in her hands. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to call this place home.”
“Ana,” Cassi reprimanded, “it’s only been a day.”
“I know, but everything is just so, so…so different. Everyone gawks at my wings. They stare at me like I’m some piece of art on display instead of a person. The queen is… Well, she’s just miserable. She won’t even allow you to come to breakfast, though I plan on revisiting that later. And everyone is just stuffy, too focused on work, not making room for even the slightest bit of fun. And the prince, he seems to enjoy it! The work, I mean, not the fun. I’m not even being myself—not joking, not teasing, not playing, because I feel so uncomfortable, I don’t even remember how to act.”
Cassi threw her a keen look over the rim of her reading glasses. But Lyana didn’t back down, and after a moment, her friend released an exaggerated sigh as she eased to her feet and left her book facedown against the floor so as not to lose her place.
“It can’t be that bad,” Cassi said.
“It is,” Lyana insisted and dropped back her head to stare at the shadows the oil lanterns made on the ceiling. Even her room was drab—drab and sullen and sulky just like her. “I’m not comfortable in my own skin here. They forced me to have a bath this morning while you were sleeping, like the dead I might add, but didn’t give me a second to grab my own soaps. Now even my skin feels dusty, like it’s thirsty for some excitement. And whatever they put in my hair made it dry and itchy. I don’t know where to find my combs to fix it.”
“Hold on,” Cassi muttered, changing direction midstride as she made for a trunk on the other side of the room that hadn’t been there that morning. Before she opened the lid, Lyana raced to her side, releasing a shamefully pleased breath as she took in the contents.
“Help get me out of this thing, please?” she asked, spinning so Cassi could untie the laces at her back while she worked on the buttons of her overcoat.
Within a few minutes, the formal gown was off, replaced with the silk sleeping trousers and shirt she pulled from the trunk, a set to match the ones her friend was already wearing. Immediately she could breathe again, and she did, inhaling for a long moment, trying to draw the air from the balcony until it was under her skin to keep it there, fresh and wild and full of life.
Lyana untied the messy bun she’d woven that morning, dipped her fingers into the salve her grandmother had given her before she’d gone to the gods, and rubbed it into her scalp. Lyana’s bluebird mother had skin as pale as a raven’s. Her hair was stick straight and easy to brush, more similar to Cassi’s wavy locks than her daughter’s coiling ones. Lyana, like Luka, had inherited her father’s looks—strong traits that Aethios himself gifted to all the doves. At least that was what her grandmother used to say as she gently forced a comb through Lyana's tight curls. The memory brought a smile to her lips as she tried to do the same now.
“Let me.” Taking the comb from Lyana’s hand, Cassi perched on the edge of the bed and motioned to her friend to sit on the floor, as they had often done before. “Small braids this time? So they don’t try to wash them?”
Lyana nodded and sighed as Cassi's fingers began to part her hair, moving meticulously around the crown of her head, weaving her curls into many small sets of braids that Lyana would be able to keep for a few weeks and style easily, without requiring aid from the servants who had tried to help, but had instead made her bitter.
Without anything to do, her mind began to wander.
To her mate.
To his mother.
To the lessons and the advisors.
To the people she’d met.
And finally, to the encounter she’d told herself to ignore, because she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him, or wondering about him, or asking about him. But she wasn’t. Not technically. Not if she played her cards right.
“What did you do today?” Lyana asked lightly, a little too lightly.