Page 221 of Onyx Cage: Volume II

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

Maybe I had been injured after all. Maybe this was all some elaborate trick of my imagination, a way for my mind to comfort me in the minutes before I succumbed to death?

She stopped in front of me, and all I could do was stare mutely, my breaths forming a fog in the freezing cold air between us.

For all that I usually read her so well, the cold, hard lines of her face were unfamiliar to me, and again, I wondered if she was even here at all, even as she stuck her sword into the ground.

Then her eyes met mine, and the unrelenting fury burning in their bright-green depths was enough to bowl me completely over. I knew then that this had to be real. There was no version of her in my imagination that would look at me like that.

“Lem—”

A lightly gauntleted hand roughly connected with my cheek before I could finish the word.

I was stunned into silence. By her presence. By the literal weight of her rage. By the fact that she had shown up at my castle with an army and the miracle we needed.

While I was still reeling from all of that, she yanked her sword out of the ground and walked into the estate.

“Lemmikki.” I belatedly followed her, but she didn’t slow down until she got to one of the young squires who was waiting inside the door.

“Please see that these are cleaned and returned to me.” She handed him her blades with hands that trembled slightly.

He nodded, looking nearly as overwhelmed by her presence as I was.

She took off her helmet as she turned to a second squire.

“I need you to fetch Lord Taras for me,” she told him.

The boy nodded, taking off at a run.

“What do you need with Taras?” I asked, confused.

I had been fighting for days with only scattered minutes of sleep. My mind was more sluggish than it should have been, still struggling to process the reality of my lemmikki standing in my midst—of having walked through a literal battlefield—when I thought I would never see her again.

And sounding colder than I’d ever heard her.

Now she was asking for my cousin, who, to my knowledge, she had never once sought out?

“I need someone to take care of a few things for me,” she said without looking at me, continuing toward the main stairs.

I bristled in spite of myself. Whatever else had happened between us, I had storms-damned well always taken care of her and provided everything that she needed.

But now she wanted Taras.

“And you don’t think the duke of the entire clan could help you with that?” I pointed out, working to keep my tone even.

She didn’t falter in her footsteps, not so much as glancing at me from the corner of her eye.

“I’m sorry.” The sarcasm dripping from every syllable very much belied that sentiment. “What I meant was, I need someone I can trust.”

The words were like a punch to the gut. After everything.

I do trust you. I always have.

Until now. Perhaps I had misjudged her capacity to stay angry. Then again, this felt like more than anger.

My lips parted, but before I could respond, she spun around to head toward the East Wing. Where our old rooms were.

She paused only long enough to ask a maid to send Taisiya to her room, clarifying that she meant the ones in the East Wing. I opened my mouth to ask her about it when Taras’s voice sounded behind us.