I was a fool not to see the similarities between them until now.
Asden never spoke to me to tell me anything about his life or his family, and I’ve never been allowed to talk to anyone myself to glean anything, even after his death. I only learned his first name when I overheard someone at court say it a few months after we began training.
To realize all this time it was Asden Laederic sends me spinning. Nox, the king’s best and brightest soldier, is the son of the man who taught me to be strong.
The son, who tied his fate to mine.
I swallow as Nox clutches his knife tighter.
“Evening, princess,” he says.
“Isn’t this past your bedtime?” I ask, feeling a fierce bravery in my stomach.
I’m not scared.
There’s a Last Army soldier standing in the dark at the foot of my bed with a blade that glistens like moonlight. It should scare me, but it doesn’t.
“I don’t sleep,” Nox says. He moves beside my window, swift as a breeze. “Aren’t you going to scream?”
“Aren’t you going to stab me?”
“Maybe,” he says.
The wind from the open window ruffles the curtains against the floor by his feet.
“I’m taking my time. Murder is a tricky business.”
Liar, I think.
If Nox wanted to kill me, he’d have done it by now.
I sit up farther, pushing my pillow against my headboard and leaning back to call his bluff.
He truly does look the spitting image of his father. How had I not seen that before? How had I pushed so many details of that night down into the very pits of myself?
What would Asden say if he could see us both now?
“Take your time,” I say to Nox.
He is like a shadow, part of his face lit up by the candle but the other part coated in night, so I can only see half of him.
Just one side to Nox Laederic, but I suspect there are so many more.
Nox clutches his knife and it shimmers under the light. It’s a weapon Asden would have been proud to display on the rack in our old training room. The handle is as red as rose flowers, dripping on to a pure black blade.
I wonder if it was a gift, from father to son.
“Why are you really here?” I ask.
“I’m here to talk about my future.”
Nox glances briefly outside the window, to the sky that beckons below.
“I want a second prediction.”
I’m torn between laughter and disbelief. “Did you forget that the king and my mother already offered you one and you turned it down?”
“I don’t want it from them,” he says. “I want it from you.”
Why he wants such a thing is beyond me. If it’s a vision Nox is after, then the real witch is the best one to give it.
Just a few hours ago, Theola stood in this very room and warned me not to step out of line. Giving Nox a prediction behind her back would be doing just that and then some.
Nox moves into the light, knife still tight in his hands. “You helped me before,” he says. “You can do it again.”
I scowl, but Nox is undeterred.
“If you don’t,” he says, “I’ll tell the king you’re the one who rescued me in the tavern the other night, denying him my soul.”
My mouth drops open.
I can’t believe the nerve of him, using the fact that I saved his life to blackmail me.
I pull my bedcovers back and step onto the floor.
The wood is cold under my feet as I walk over to Nox. I look at him, dead in the eyes. He’s close enough that I can see the scar on his face up close.
I swallow, remembering what it was like to touch him.
“You should watch who you threaten,” I warn.
Nox simply stares at me. “What is it you’re going to do exactly?”
Without warning, I make to elbow him in the stomach, just like his father once showed me. Only Nox dodges it just in time and so I twist and go for his blade.
I manage to graze the handle before he moves it swiftly out of the way and slices open my palm.
I recoil, bringing my bleeding hand to my chest.
A blink later, his knife is at my throat.
“Impressive,” Nox says. “But not too smart.”
I keep my gaze steady. “Are you talking to me or yourself?”
His blade presses harder against my skin. “I didn’t realize witches needed to know combat.”
“You’d be surprised how much you don’t know about me.”
Nox smiles, quickly, like he can’t help it.
“I’ll bet.”
He lowers his knife and looks to my hand.
It stings, but it’s nothing compared with wounds I’ve gotten in training. I’ll be able to heal it within a few minutes. I’m more concerned about the blood dripping onto the floor. I’ll need to clean that up before anyone notices.
“You saved my life at the tavern,” Nox says.
I wave my bleeding hand in his face. “And this is the thanks I get for it. Forgive me if I don’t jump at the chance to do it again.”
I stare into the tree bark of his eyes and I can see Nox is torn between apologizing and just slitting my throat now to get it over with.
“I’m trying to convince myself that you’re not evil,” he says. “But you’re making it difficult.”
“All witches are evil,” I remind him, because it’s true.
It’s what my mother taught me best. And if Nox truly knew what happened to his father, he wouldn’t even be debating it.
“Yet, I’m somehow not killing you,” Nox says.
To him, everything is as simple as kill or be killed. He doesn’t understand what it’s like not to punch his way through every problem or to have no solutions to something at all. To have to just bear it. Forever.
He’s never had to accept his enemies, because he’s always been given permission to fight them. Even now, standing in the bedroom of a Somniatis witch, he thinks there are only two choices to be made.
How lucky for him to have a choice at all, after he has taken away mine.
“Selestra,” he says.
My name is strange on his lips. Melodic, in a way it’s never been when my mother says it or the king growls it.
“You’re going to give me this vision.”
I roll my eyes and try to shove Nox away. It’s a last act of defiance before I know I’ll relent. After all, if helping Nox survive helps me survive, I’d be a fool to refuse. Only when I push him, it’s like pushing a statue. He doesn’t move, except to brush the front of his shirt, as though I’ve wiped death all over it.
“You really need to work on your manners.” He wags his knife in the air. “I’m a guest, after all.”
Souls, he’s infuriating.
I curse death for trying to glue our fates together like tree sap.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I tell him. “If you think you can threaten me into helping you, then you’re wrong. What you need to do is say please.”
I go to push him again.
Such a small, meaningless thing.
Except this time Nox catches my wrists, and by the time I realize I’m not wearing my gloves and see the satisfied raise of his eyebrows, it’s too late.
My pulse thumps against his fingertips.
Nox’s skin burns into mine.
Then death comes.
We’re in the castle and the rumble of thunder shakes my bones enough that my legs feel unsteady beneath me.
Outside, the sky is an angry black.
Nox holds on tight to my gloved hand and pulls me through the halls of the castle. I try to keep pace, but he’s running too fast and I trip.
Nox’s hand slips from mine.
I fall to the stone.
He yanks me back up, but as he does, lightning explodes against the window beside us, smashing glass across the marble.
The king and Theola step from the shadows. “I know what you have done. There is nowhere you can hide,” the king says.
I back away, but suddenly the corridor is a tiny room and we’re boxed in. All I can see is the moon, darkening in the distance.
“You’re so much like your father.” The king turns to Nox, a beat of disappointment mixed into his disgust. “Him and that forsaken sword, you and this damn month.”
Nox pushes me behind him.
“Kill them,” the king says. His voice pounds inside my head. “Kill them both like the filthy traitors they are.”
Theola advances toward us, yellow-green eyes growing large as a forked tongue slithers between her teeth.
“You can’t kill me,” I call out. “I’m the Somniatis heir.”
The king pulls his thin lips into a smile, desperate for destruction. “You don’t have to be,” he says. “Theola can make me a new one.”
He presses a hand to my mother’s stomach, mocking me with my own irrelevance.
“Goodbye, Selestra,” my mother says.
And then Nox is shaking me, jolting me back into the real world so swiftly that my neck almost clicks.
His hands are wrapped around my wrists, eyes searching mine, desperate to know what I’ve seen.
I open my mouth to speak, but the words get stuck inside me.
The serpent crest aches against my palm.
“What is it?” Nox asks.
I look at the young soldier and see my future swimming in his eyes.
If he dies, I die. Every time.
It’s an anomaly. A trick of fate. The thread of destiny a fine chain that binds us together. A part of me thought that maybe if I stayed away from Nox, rather than seek him out again, I could escape. But it’s clear that fate won’t let us stay separate.
As long as Nox is part of this bargain, then I am too.
It dawns on me then that I’m not safe in this castle I’ve called home, or in the walls the king said he built to keep me protected.
I’m not protected at all. I’m replaceable.
And when the king eats Nox’s soul, he’ll eat mine without a second thought.
I can’t wait for that to happen.
If Nox wants help to survive the month and cheat death, then fine.
But first he has to get me out of this castle.