Siri had once believed that knowing the future would give her control. She was wrong. The gift had only shown her what she wished she’d never seen. She woke to warmth, not light.
She’d been blind for weeks, but she could feel the give of the mattress where Fergus sat, smell the clean soap on his skin. Three months married, and his touch still steadied her. He squeezed her hand. “You’re awake.
Cordelia brought soup. Your stepmother stayed up half the night making it. ”
Siri’s throat tightened. Ariadne, who’d held her when Oz got sick, who’d held her again when he died, who stayed beside her every day after the same illness came for Siri and took her sight.
And Fergus, who’d proposed anyway. “I don’t deserve you,” she whispered. “You have me anyway. ”
Light bloomed behind her closed eyes.
Color. Real color. Gold and amber and the warm honey shade of afternoon sun through tall windows. But she was in bed.
Why could she see a desk? Fergus stood near it. Cordelia walked into the library, wearing only a silk dressing gown that slipped off her shoulders. It fell to the floor.
Cordelia pressed herself against Fergus’s chest, and his hands came up to grip her bare waist. Siri tried to shout, but nothing came out. They couldn’t hear her. She could only watch as Cordelia climbed into his lap, as his hips lifted to meet hers.
“Fergus,” Cordelia gasped. “Oh, Fergus. ”
He pulled her down harder. “I need you.
I need—”
The library vanished. Siri was in her bed again, in darkness, her heart slamming against her ribs. She jerked her hand free from Fergus’s. “Siri, what’s wrong?
”
She scrambled backward. “I need you to go. ”
He left. But it hadn’t been a dream.
She knew it hadn’t. Siri swung her legs over the side of the bed, counting her steps by touch. At the top of the staircase, voices drifted up from below. Fergus and Cordelia.
“What if she knows? ” Fergus asked. “How would she know? She’s human.
She can’t feel the mate bond between us pulse. ”
Mate bond. Wolf shifters had one true mate. Fergus and Cordelia had a mate bond.
“I need you, Cordy. I can’t keep pretending—”
Soon, my love. Mother said we’d only have to wait a little bit longer. ”
“How much longer until this slow-acting poison finally claims Siri’s life?
”
Poison. Cordelia laughed breathlessly. “Mother assures me she’ll be out of the way soon. You’ll have me, and we’ll have Siri’s fortune.
”
Siri found the servants’ stairs. She ran blind through the rain, away from her home, from the family she’d loved, from the people who’d been poisoning her for months. She didn’t know where she was going. But she’d seen a vision of a carriage waiting in the dark.
She threw herself into the road as the carriage approached. The driver shouted, but the door opened. A man’s hand touched her arm. “Are you all right?
”
Siri lifted her chin. “You nearly killed me. You must compensate me. ”
The man helped her inside.
He gave her a cloak when she shivered. His name was Roman. He said he was a shifter. “I’m in danger,” she admitted.
“I know. I’ll protect you. ”
“Why would you do that? ”
“Because you need help.
”
When she woke, he told her they’d arrived. He helped her down from the carriage, and the voices around her murmured, “Welcome back, Your Majesty. ”
Roman was the Alpha King. “Why did you bring me here?
” she demanded. “Because you’re my mate. ”
Siri went cold. “No.
I was raised by shifters. I know how this works. My husband felt a mate bond with my stepsister while promising to marry me. Your bonds mean the rest of us just have to accept whatever we’re given.
”
“I’m saying whoever hurt you made an enemy of me the moment they touched you,” Roman said. But Siri had stopped listening. A terrible realization had taken hold. Her little brother, Oz, had warned her years ago.
They look at us different. Like we don’t belong. She’d dismissed it as a child’s imagination. Then Oz died from the same “illness” that had come for her.
“It wasn’t illness at all, was it? ” she whispered. “They were poisoning him. ”
The healers confirmed it.
Systematic poisoning, extended exposure. The trials were painful, but Siri endured them, visions tearing through her mind whenever the poison fought back. “I want revenge,” she told Roman. “I want to take everything they took from me.
I want them to feel what I felt. ”
Roman’s voice was steady. “Then that’s what I’ll give you. ”
They devised a plan.
Fergus was the weakest link, desperate and separated from Cordelia. Siri posed as her stepsister, dressed in Cordelia’s clothes and perfume, hidden behind a carved screen. “Fergus,” she said, pitching her voice breathy and high. “Tell me about the poison.
”
“Your mother gave it to me. Three drops every evening in her tea. She said it had to be slow, had to look natural. ”
Siri stepped out from behind the screen.
“You know who I am. ”
Fergus dropped to his knees before the assembled guards. Roman’s voice rang out as he annulled the marriage and condemned the conspiracy. But when Fergus was hauled away, Siri felt only emptiness.
That night, a wolf came to her room. It stood at the foot of her bed, and Siri reached out, her fingers finding thick fur. She talked to it in the darkness, confessing her grief and fear. “I don’t know how to trust anyone anymore,” she said.
“I don’t know how to let someone be good to me. ”
The wolf pressed closer, its warmth seeping into her. A week later, Roman traveled to the estate to confront Cordelia. Siri stood in the doorway, disguised as a servant, and listened as her stepsister spun lies about being a victim.
“I’m a victim here, too,” Cordelia insisted. She moved closer to Roman, lowering her voice. “If you were to help me, I could make it very much worth your while. ”
Something inside Siri snapped.
She stepped forward. “Enough. ”
Cordelia spun around. “Siri?
”
“I’ve been here the entire time, listening to every lie. ”
“She’s lying, your majesty,” Cordelia said desperately. “She is my mate,” Roman said, and the words fell like thunder. Cordelia was taken into custody.
Morning came, and Siri woke to light with clarity to it. Shapes held their edges. Colors announced themselves. Her sight had returned.
And when she turned her head, she saw Roman sitting in the chair near the window. He was devastating to look at. Sharp cheekbones. A jaw carved from marble.
And his eyes. The same blue she’d seen in the wolf. The realization crashed through her. It had been him.
All of it. Every confession she’d made in the dark. He’d been listening. Rod through the bond, he said, “You are mine.
”
Siri completed the bite. The bond blazed, snapped tight, and she felt his life force anchor to hers. Roman gasped as the bond locked into place. “I will never leave,” his thought came back.
“You are mine. ”
Roman fainted, but by the next morning, he was healed. And by the next month, Siri was queen.
They ruled together, bound by love and the thread of fate that had brought a blind girl and a king together on a rain-soaked road.
