Page 78 of The Curse of Golden Blood
“Warlord. Lord Commander of Thunder. Ruler of us all.” Gryven’s words were soft and clipped. “For centuries I have been your steward. For centuries I have watched over you. But I can no longer watch over what you choose to destroy yourself.” With a snap of his wings, he rose to his feet, turned, and walked out. The door slid shut behind him. “She has to know, Your Majesty,” came his last, fading murmur.
The door closed with a dull thud. It felt like a nail driving into my coffin. The silence was heavy. Suffocating.
Mira’s breathing was uneven, her eyes narrowing as if she could peel the truth out of me by will alone. “She has to know,” she repeated softly, and there was steel in her voice. “What is it I must know, Zydar?”
I ran a hand through my hair, the motion sharp, restless. The words clawed at the back of my throat, but I forced them down. “Nothing that concerns you.”
Her chin tilted, defiant. “If it concerns me enough for him to whisper it at my back, then it concerns me.”
“Don't let his words get to you.”
“What have you not told me, Zydar?”
Before I could form an answer, a knock rapped against the chamber door.
My jaw clenched. “Announce yourself!” I growled, already braced for Gryven’s shadow to darken my threshold again.
“It is me,” came the reply. Soft. Musical. A voice threaded with light.
Narietta.
I let out a slow breath. “Enter.”
The door opened, and my sister stepped through.
Her hair, cropped short to her jaw, gleamed like silver fog after rain, each strand catching what little light the dawnoffered. Her face was all delicate bones and pale luminescence, as if sculpted from moonstone.
She wore an ivory gown that draped around her in soft folds, her shoulders bare and slender, the skin almost translucent.
“Brother.” Her voice was soft, as always. Softer than our kind. “I've been looking for you. We need to speak.”
Her gaze flicked to Miralyte, then back to me. For an instant, silence stretched taut between the three of us. Narietta saw. She understood. Yet she said nothing.
Mira shifted, tugging the cloak tighter around her. “I should go. Leave you two to talk.”
“No,” Narietta said at once. Her voice was velvet, with a hint of steel beneath. “You should stay, Mira.”
The words were an order, not an invitation. I recognized the look in her eyes. I had seen it many times before. That was the look of a princess. One who would not be denied.
Mira blinked, then inclined her head. She stayed.
I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “What do you want, sister?”
Narietta stepped further inside, her skirts whispering along the stone. When she stopped before me, her voice trembled, just enough to betray the strain beneath.
“Silvyr… She needs help.” Narietta’s hands clasped together, knuckles pale. “You have to let her continue the treatments.”
Her mate. A fae whose body was slowly rotting from the inside out. A sickness with no cure, except for maybe the one remedy that could never be allowed.
My chest tightened. My fist closed slowly at my side until my nails bit flesh. I shook my head. “No.”
Narietta flinched, then straightened, her red eyes locking on mine with a force I had not seen in her for years. Her hands unclasped, trembling as they fell to her sides.
“You say no as if it is that simple,” she whispered. “But what do you know of it, brother? Have you ever sat at the bedside of the one who is bound to your soul and watched her breath falter? Have you listened to the rattle in her throat, knowing each sound could be the last? Have you seen her reach for air, eyes wide with terror, and known you could not so much as brush your fingers across her skin to comfort her?”
Her voice broke, thin but piercing. “Every hour I watch her fade. Every hour I hear the silence stretch longer between her breaths. Do you know what it is to count the spaces between those breaths and wonder which space will be the one that swallows her forever?”
Her throat worked as if the words themselves cut her raw. “You do not. But I am asking you, begging you, please!”
