There was a long pause, warmth spreading over my hand from Olivianna’s touch. My skin began to re-stitch, and though I tried to force open my eyes to witness it, I struggled to make out anything but her head of lustrous curls. “You’re not from Nodoya at all, are you?”

“No,” I whispered, feeling her attention shift to my face. But I couldn’t keep my eyes open. “Forgive me, I haven’t slept in a while.”

Olivianna continued to stare at me, clearly wanting to ask why. To ask every burning question she had. But she relented with a loud exhale. “Sleep, we can talk when you wake.”

Just knowing I was here and that he was alive was enough, and so I ceased fighting.

SEVENTEEN

Scythe

Stroking the prickling layer of hair at my jaw, I glared at Dade. “We need to show up on their doorstep and demand they tell us what the fuck they were thinking.”

“And what else they might be planning,” Fang added.

“And by demand I do mean kill their useless king and string the queen and those princesses up by their exuberant ball gowns until they spill all they know.”

Fang paused in carving up an apple with his dagger to swing his eyes to me. “You’ve seen what they wear?”

I shrugged. “A time or two.”

He snorted and continued with his torture of the fruit. “So we hang them from the ceiling, but how will they talk with all that pomp covering their faces?”

“You’re right,” I said, smirking despite not wanting to. “Won’t be able to tell if one of them perishes from all the blood rushing to their heads if we cannot see past their skirts.”

Fang chuckled. “A tragedy.”

“Finished?” Dade drawled, a brow raised as he reclined in his chair beside Fang, who straightened and pulled a chunk of apple from his dagger with his teeth.

I just stared, awaiting the insipid order that was surely about to leave the king’s mouth.

As though sensing I had little faith for whatever he might say, Dade leveled his whole attention on me. “We leave them be.”

“We leave them…” I shook my head and sat forward. “What the fuck?” I’d been waiting for this damned meeting for nearly two weeks—ever since the last of the human soldiers had been ran off, captured, or killed—and this was his answer to all we’d endured?

“Easy,” murmured Fang, ever the irritating voice of reason. “Let him speak before you combust.”

But I continued to glower at our king. The same king I’d recently witnessed enter death before his mate had unleashed some ungodly glowing that’d pulled his softening ass back to the land of the living.