Page 1 of Heart of Night

One

Ayna

Lentil soup is something I’ll never get used to. I hated it back in prison, and I’m certainly hating it now when it comes with a side of gloating evil.

It’s been three days since I woke in this suffocating space of russet, cream, and too many ornamentations, and my body still doesn’t feel right. Where strength and determination once were moving my limbs and my magic, shaky weakness is all that’s left. The constant nausea hasn’t ebbed either. Quite the opposite—whenever I think of what happened in the Seeing Forest, it’s like I’m spiraling into a nightmare because, when I come back to reality, I’m in this luxurious room where my wounds don’t hurt and the air tastes of lilies so much it turns my stomach with every breath. Whereas, in my nightmares, I see endless oceans of fire consuming everything and everyone I love. I see them die one by one.

I’m not surprised to watch my father and the pirate captain I once loved go up in flames; the guilt for their deaths has been hovering over me for too long. What’s new is the handsome pale face of the Crow King, motionless like a marble statue before me as I cry tears of despair and fury.

Those tears can never escape when Ephegos is in the room with me, though, for he can never know how close to breaking I am.

As if summoning his attention with my thoughts, the traitor Crow glances up from the piece of parchment he’s reading, training his malicious focus on me with all the ice I’d never believed could show in such warm brown eyes. Although I’ve been here for a few days, it still comes as a surprise how someone whom I once called friend can have betrayed us so deeply. It’s a wound entirely different from my splintered heart where Myron’s death has left an irreparable mark.

I’ll never be the same, and both Ephegos and I know it. Ever since I woke in the mockery of comfort that is this room, I’ve been holding on by a thread—and that is without the pain in my limbs and spine where the traces of battle are still showing.

Myron might have healed the stab wound in my side, but he didn’t have enough energy left to heal me completely before he exhaled his last breath and left me behind in this world where nothing but pain and heartache is waiting for me. And fury. Endless fury at the thought of what Myron did. He fucking sacrificed himself for me.

Biting back the tears building behind my eyes, I take another spoonful of lentil soup and focus on the blandness of the taste. It’s all I can do not to scream my rage at the Guardians. It should have been me, not him. He should have lived to see the curse broken, and I should have died for my own blindness, for my failure to understand sooner that only love could break a curse like the one the Neredynian gods placed on the Crows.

“You should eat more than a few spoons, Ayna,” Ephegos says in that soothing voice I know is as fake as the smiles he used to give me. When I still believed he was a friend … while in secret, he’d been out for my blood.

I spit the soup in his general direction, watching it land on the plush carpet beside the bed where I’m sitting propped up against thick pillows.

In response, Ephegos clicks his tongue in a vivid reminder of the days he used to have a beak to click at me, and I suppress the impulse to shrink into the silken softness behind me.

“Not very becoming of a queen, that behavior,” he scolds, smoothing back his rye blond hair in a practiced manner that tells me nothing he does is coincidental. From his smile to when and how he laces his fingers in his lap in a gesture so casual he could merely be a male feeling comfortable enough to lean back in his chair and keep his hands far from the knives strapped to his belt.

But Ephegos is a spymaster. He used to be the one bringing information from the borders of the Seeing Forest to the Crow King, but I know now that Myron wasn’t the only one to whom he delivered information.

“As betraying one’s best friend isn’t becoming of … well, anyone.” I give him a grin of gritted teeth, which I intend to be scarier than I actually achieve since Ephegos laughs one of those warm laughs I had once considered affectionate. Now I know it’s as fake as the crease of concern between his brows when I catch him studying me from afar sometimes. As if he is indeed worried.

Which he probably is, just not about me—my health or my mental well-being—but about how long it will take until Royad or Clio will find us and make quick work of him—or slow work by torturing him until his blood dyes the fucking plush carpets the color of his suffering. I just hope they are alive to get to me before he can execute whatever evil plan he’s harboring in that traitor's mind of his.

“Can you truly call it betrayal if I haven’t considered Myron my friend in a long time? Longer than you’ve walked this realm, Ayna.”

I hate the sound of my name on his lips, hate how smoothly he delivers a truth, managing to cut all the way to the center of my chest all over again.

“If you intend to insult me by implying I’m young and naive, by all means, try.” There is no way he can do any worse than what he’s already done. He can’t kill Myron all over again, and if he intends to watch me wallow in my own misery, he’s welcome to take a first-row seat. I don’t have any fight left in me other than proving the bastard wrong. I’m not going to break after everything.

“Not insult you, Ayna. I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re still the same delightful creature you were the day I first met you. It’s nothing against you?—”

“Then why? Why bring me here, wherever here is?” I haven’t managed to get that piece of information out of him, and I’m not ready to beg him to tell me. Not yet. “Why not kill me like you did with your king?” Treason is the word I don’t need to speak because it’s in every glare I give him, in every breath I take in his presence.

Ephegos straightens out of his chair, revealing the russet brocade upholstery, and paces to the arched window overlooking a small, forest-framed garden. It’s the only window in this Guardiansforsaken room, and it reveals nothing of value that might tell me where I am—other than that it has to be a noble residence for all the comforts the room offers like the spacious bathing room furnished in porcelain and brass.

“That is for me to know and for you to never find out,” he answers with one of those looks allowing me to glimpse the full evil behind the polished facade of the Crow Courtier and spy.

“Never, because I’ll be dead soon enough?” I square my shoulders, debating leaping out of bed and using my spoon as a weapon the moment he turns his back. At least, it would be something better than my teeth and nails—which I would gladly use if they ensured me any chance at freedom—when I can’t get my hands on a blade. But where strength hummed before, I can barely sit up, let alone wield a weapon of any sort.

My magic hasn’t responded since the battle at the palace. Whether it’s because I depleted myself and it will take time for it to return or because it died when my heart splintered at the sight of Myron dead, I can’t tell. I can’t even think about it without falling into despair. All I know is that I’d have used the soup to boil Ephegos’s eyes had I had a thread of my power left to hurl it at him.

But I’ve become useless, a means to exact a personal vendetta on a male who no longer is around to witness it.

I bite back a tear.

No tears. No tears. It’s the thought I cling to so I don’t fall into despair. As long as I don’t shed those tears in front of my captor, I can keep at least the semblance of strength when I try not to imagine the brands of torture he has in store for me.

“Not dead, Ayna. I have something better planned for you.”