What's Mine

I don't sleep again after that.

I sit by the fire with a blanket wrapped around me, watching the flames, trying not to see the burning palace every time I blink. Nyssa dozes off next to me even though she keeps saying she won't. I tell her I'm fine. I'm not fine. I just don't know how to say what I actually am instead.

Morning comes, and there's a knock before I even get a chance to fall apart properly.

"Come in," I say. My voice is wrecked.

A man walks in. Broad shoulders, dark blond hair cut short, green eyes that check the whole room before they land on me. Black and silver uniform. He looks like someone who's used to people doing what he says.

"Torin Ashveil," he says. "Captain of the guard. I'm handling your protection."

"Lucky me."

His mouth twitches. Not quite a smile. "You don't sound thrilled."

"Should I be? Everybody keeps talking about protecting me like it's a gift. Feels a lot more like being watched."

"Could be both," he says, and it's basically what Draeven said last night, and something about that makes me want to throw something.

"Does everyone here read from the same script?"

That actually gets a laugh out of him, short, surprised, like he didn't expect me to be funny. "Fair. I'll have two guards outside your door at all times. If you need anything—"

"I need to go home. Can your guards arrange that?"

The humor drops off his face fast. "No. I'm sorry."

"Then I don't need anything."

He looks at me for a second too long. "For what it's worth," he says, "I don't think you're the threat everyone's treating you like."

"That's kind of you."

"Wasn't trying to be kind." He heads for the door. "I just don't like being wrong about people. Figured I'd find out which one of us is."

The door shuts. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"He seems nice," Nyssa says from the bed, not even pretending she wasn't listening in.

"He seems suspicious."

"That's not the same thing."

"Feels the same lately."

Selene comes by an hour later with tea, and something about her being here feels almost normal after the last two days. She pours two cups and waits while I try to figure out how to explain last night.

"You dreamed about fire," she says, before I even start, and I almost drop my cup.

"How'd you know that?"

"I didn't. Not until right now." Her eyes are steady on mine. "But something shifted in you the second I walked in. Healers pick up on that sometimes. Old pain trying to come up."

"It didn't feel old," I say. "It felt like it was happening right then. A palace. A fire. A woman who—" My voice catches. "She gave a child to Draeven and told him to protect her, no matter what it cost."

Selene freezes. "You saw his face?"

"Clear as day. Younger. But it was him."

She sets her cup down slow, careful, like she's giving herself time to think. "Can I hold your hand? I might be able to see more."

I hesitate. Then I nod and reach across the table.

The second her fingers close around mine, her whole body locks up. Her eyes go somewhere far away. For a long moment she doesn't move at all.

"Selene?"

She gasps and yanks her hand back, breathing hard, palm flat against her chest.

"What'd you see?" I ask. "Selene, tell me."

"A throne," she says, shaking. "An old one. And a king, kneeling. And—" She stops herself, shaking her head like she's trying to knock the image loose. "I need time. I need to understand it before I say something I can't take back."

"Please—"

"I'm sorry, Aurelia. Not yet." She stands up so fast the chair scrapes hard against the floor. "I have to go."

She's gone before I can say anything else, and I'm just sitting there with cold tea and a hundred questions with nowhere to land.

Night comes, heavy and quiet. Nyssa finally sleeps, curled up in the chair by the fire, too tired to keep fighting me about staying awake. I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, my mind refusing to settle down, the mark under my collarbone buzzing low, like it knows something before I do.

Then I hear it.

A scrape. Metal on stone. Coming from the window.

I still go. Could be nothing. It could be windy. But the mark flares up hot and sudden, and something older than thought tells me to move right now.

I roll off the bed just as the window breaks inward.

Someone drops into the room, black cloak, fast and quiet. I scramble back, my scream stuck somewhere in my throat, and I see a blade catch the firelight, swinging down toward where I was lying half a second ago.

"Nyssa!" I finally get the word out, and she jerks awake, crying out.

The figure turns toward her voice, and that half-second is the only reason I'm still breathing. I grab the water pitcher off the nightstand and swing it as hard as I can, catching them across the shoulder. It barely does anything.

The door slams open.

Torin comes through like a storm, someone gave arms and legs, sword already out, and he's across the room before I can blink, driving the attacker off me with fast, brutal moves. Metal on metal. The attacker's good, trained, but Torin's better, and in a few seconds he's got the blade knocked away and the attacker pinned to the wall with a knife at their throat.

"Who sent you?" Torin says, low and hard.

No answer. No struggle either. Then, before any of us can stop it, they twist their own head against the blade, and it's over. Just like that. Blood on the black stone floor.

"No—" I say, feeling sick. "Why would they do that to themselves—"

"Because whoever sent them didn't want questions answered," Torin says, stepping back, chest heaving. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine." My hands won't stop shaking though. "Nyssa, are you—"

"I'm okay," she says, thin-voiced, gripping my arm. "I'm okay, I'm okay."

Torin kneels by the body and pulls the hood back. The face underneath means nothing to me. Just a face built to blend into any crowd.

"Court blade," he says, checking the weapon on the floor. "Not Shadowfang. Not some rogue. This came from inside the Court."

My stomach drops out completely. "You're saying someone here wants me dead."

"I'm saying someone here's scared of you." He stands, jaw tight. "And I'm going to find out who."

Footsteps come running down the hall, fast, and then Draeven's in the doorway, half-dressed, eyes wide in a way I've never seen on him before. He takes in the broken window, the blood, my shaking hands, and something in his face just breaks open, for a second, long enough that I see actual fear underneath all that control he wears like armor.

"Aurelia." My name comes out of him rough, like it cost him something. He crosses the room fast and stops just short of touching me, hands hovering like he's not sure he's allowed. "Are you hurt?"

"No," I whisper. "But someone wants me dead, Draeven. Someone inside your own Court."

His jaw goes tight. There's something dark and furious behind his eyes now. "Then someone in my own Court," he says, "is about to find out exactly what happens when they touch what's mine."

The word just sits there in the room, hanging,

and for a second, neither of us seems to know what to do with it.