Page 73 of The Devil In Blue
“Can the hounds not take care of it? Or you, for that matter?”
“I do not think it’s alone. You’re needed.”
I had no idea what a gripson was, but it made the king shift. He sighed heavily and released me from his arms, leaving my back cold in his absence.
“Escort her back to her room,” he ordered, walking pointedly toward the door without looking back.
Once I was alone with Elanor, the heat that warmed me in the king’s presence turned to ice and I stilled. She looked at me like I was a pest and I still didn’t know why. It had been proven that all of my memories were gone, but she harbored some kind of disdain for me.
“Come,” she demanded. “I will take you to your room.”
I followed Elanor through the palace, feeling uneasy. But that was nothing new. Her presence was chilling and she hadn’t gotten easier to be around.
When we arrived at my room, that uneasy feeling got the best of me. The palace creaked and moaned the way an old wooden house would and it made the feeling worse.
The castle never creaked…
Elanor glanced at her shoulder as if she was trying to see me in her peripheral. I squeezed my hands together, wondering where Naeve and Lura had disappeared. I would have much rather they escorted me to my room instead of Elanor.
We were almost there and I couldn’t wait to be rid of her. When I saw my open door, I skirted past her.
“Thank you,” I said quickly. Elanor glared at me and cocked her head in the most bird-like manner I’d ever seen from the raven. “I’m feeling a bit ill,” I lied, closing the door just as she seemed to step toward me.
As soon as the latch clicked, I heard the heavy lock turn. I stepped back with a start.
Petris had mentioned the palace being alive and I never questioned it. It did things like it had a will of its own and somehow I knew that it thought it best to lock Elanor out.
That made the cold chill almost painful. It was a warning. The palace knew something I didn’t. Or, at the very least, it knew I wanted to be rid of Elanor’s company.
Gripsons. They were grotesque things. A smile that big and toothy on the body of a doe would give anyone chills. They were a minor inconvenience unless they were in a herd. Of all the things that souls evolved into outside of the Labyrinth, they were the most annoying. Children, mostly. They were curious and destructive and, regretfully, unable to be saved once they fully gave into the hunger inspired by the woods.
This one had been small. It was easy to discourage it. So easy that I wondered why Elanor didn’t do it herself since small tasks were a raven’s job. Instead, she’d interrupted my time with Briar at a most important moment. I wanted to be irritated, but perhaps I needed to step away. I so badly wanted to press Briar onto the table to feel every inch of her in ways she likely wasn’t ready for.
Ways I had to accept she might never be ready for.
Blood was splattered on the front of my tunic as I landed on the porch outside the main bathing chamber. The gripson wouldn’t stay dead for long, but it would be discouraged from wandering so close to the Labyrinth for a while at least. Taking a leg or two got my point across very well. No point in taking the head since it could grow another with even more teeth.
I folded my wings in tight and let them fade from physical existence as I walked through the bath chamber doors. My wings were big. Too big, sometimes. Too heavy to drag around with me through the halls of Farrothorn.
I stripped off my tunic and shirt, dropping them to the floor as I headed across the slick tile floor to the long bathing pool that stretched across the whole room. The water would be warm, even if it was rain caught from the open ceiling. Ferrothorn would make sure of it. Though not technically conscious, the palace was alive in its own way. The warmth spread through its walls like blood through veins.
Wasting no time, I stepped down into the water and sunk chest-deep to soak for a while. I needed the time to stew in my thoughts. Not because of the gripson but because my time with Briar had been cut short. I was making progress. I was feeling something between us. Trust. Passion. Lust. It made no difference. Anything besides pain and regret was more than I thought possible when I first discovered where she’d been the past fifteen years.
And the way she beamed when I offered her the necklace. It warmed me more than I wanted to admit, proving I was still so damn weak to her. I would do anything for her. More so now that I knew the truth of where she’d been.
I wished I could have found her sooner. I wished it with all my heart, but even a king could not turn back time. I wished for so many things that I could never go back and fix.
An hour soaking in the bath as well as my thoughts had me eager to see Briar. I got out and headed to my bed chamber, slipping into a loose shirt and pants and rolling my sleeves while I went over all the things I longed to say to her. Things I couldn’t say before because my mind had been too clouded. My eyes had been too blind to the truth.
I should have been able to see it all.
I never should have let myself feel anything but love for Briar.
If I wasn’t so selfish, I could admit that she deserved better than me. But Iwasselfish. Selfish and toxic.
Wings fluttering through my window took me from my thoughts.
“My king,” Elanor’s melodic voice filled my chamber.
