Page 135 of Threaded

Somehow, she hadn’t appeared to notice his presence. Or his absence, for that matter.

It was as if she’d given up. Given up on looking for him. Given up going after him.

Given up onhim.

And the worst part was he deserved it. All of it.

As the week passed, he’d stepped further and further away, no longer tailing her around the palace like a lost pet. He put more distance between them, deciding instead to seek out his father at the Laurent residence in the mountain district. He figured if he couldn’t be by her side, protecting her, then at the very least he could focus his attention on keeping his father distracted, his gaze turned away from her and her Solstice.

If that was the only action in service to his queen he could take without risking her life, then by the Goddess, he would do it. The knowledge of who he was truly serving helped make the painful meals and awkward drinks shared with his father just bearable enough. Lord Laurent was certainly coldly curious about his son’s sudden interest in him, but he didn’t question Andrian about it, either. Instead, their conversations remained on the most mundane of topics: the state of things in Antoris, where Andrian’s younger brother Gabriel currently ruled in his father’s absence, that year's crop yields, the gossip amongst the Royal families.

Every once in a while, the conversation Andrian had overheard between his father and Lord Shawth would slip into his mind. He came close, quite a few times, to revealing what he’d heard to his father and asking him to explain. But each time, the words would die on his tongue, and he would choke down more burning whiskey and return the cold smile that was perhaps the only feature he shared with Julian Laurent.

Andrian couldn’t recall when, exactly, it struck him that everything inside of him was quiet. And not in a good way.

It must’ve happened some point after he’d given up on following Mariah. Some point after it became clear she’d given up on him, as well.

His magic had retreated deep inside the darkest parts of his soul, probably the very same part it’d once crawled out of. Where he normally would’ve felt it whispering and slithering through his veins, he only felt eerie silence, all the darkness instead coiled and burrowed so deep he could hardly scratch it. Just once he tried to summon those shadows out, those shadows he normally had to work to quell and keep hidden beneath his skin.

They’d responded with barely a whisper. A lick of darkness around his index finger. A subtle dimming of the bright sunlight of his room. But the rest of it, the beast he could feel curled up and slumbering, refused to answer his call.

Utterly useless. That was all he let himself think. This magic he had … it’d always been such a waste.

Just like him.

Perhaps you’re no longer worthy of it.

That was what the small, quiet voice of a ten-year-old boy with brilliant blue eyes whispered to him at night. It was those whispers that sent him shooting from his bed, kept sleep an elusive thing he feared he’d never truly know again.

Andrian’s shoulders slumped as he walked down the long hallway to the queen’s wing and his own quarters. He wasn’t worried about seeing her; he knew she was still away, somewhere else in the palace, preparing for the Solstice. He wouldn’t have let himself be seen so brazenly in this hallway if he wasn’t sure.

His mind was still wandering, adrift in the black sea of his thoughts. He pulled out the one long shadowy tendril that still obeyed his command and absently watched it wind over and under and over the fingers of his left hand. Andrian rounded the corner that would take him to the last few rooms in the queen’s corridor when a sound spilled out from the air in front of him.

Not just a sound.

Avoice.

A voice he would knowanywhere, even in death.

For the first time in days, his magic leaped in his soul, and his eyes shot up from his hands and collided with those of brilliant, resplendent, glowing forest green.

She was so beautiful. He didn’t think he would ever not have the wind knocked clean out of him at the sight of her, all sun-kissed skin and dark hair and fierceness etched across the planes of her face.

Before he could yank back his control, before he could wrap all those feelings back into himself, pull it all in and let himself suffer the slow, agonizing death he knew he deserved, a single word slipped from his mouth. A word that was like a prayer, a call to home, a desperate plea for forgiveness and hope and salvation.

And he realized then he wasn’t strong enough to do what was best for her. Would never be strong enough. He couldn’t fight it, fightthis, anymore. There would be another way to protect her; he would make sure of it.

So, he let that word fall from his lips, and didn’t pull it back.

“Mariah.”

CHAPTER57

“Mariah.”

Andrian stood at the end of the hallway, looking nothing like himself. His shoulders were stooped, his presence diminished, the cocky and arrogant male who’d tormented her since she arrived at the palace nowhere to be seen.

But that wasn’t what froze her in place, what caused the threads of light in her veins to leap for the first time in a week, for her heart to start hammering in her chest at an uncontrollable rhythm.