by D. D. Chance
More than that, Aiden seemed constantly braced for the next attack, like it might burst out of the walls or drop down from the ceiling without warning. He carried the weight of his responsibility as king with a snarl and laugh, like a sword that pointed him into the next impossible clash, all for the love of his people. He was every swashbuckling pirate or boot-pounding superhero ever born, and on top of all that, he was probably enhanced by illusion magic. Or at least I damned well hoped he was.
And I seriously needed to stop staring at him.
I swung away as he bent to pull on his clothes and strode out of the bedroom, gritting my teeth against his quiet laugh.
As soon as I reached the main chamber, though, my own discomfort fled. Instead, the angst that had been here the night before returned to me, a tension that seemed to reverberate through the room. I discounted it because I was no longer as afraid as I had been, merely resigned. And yet…
“How long has it been since you’ve been to the castle? Since you slept in these rooms?” I asked as Aiden stepped into the room.
The redirect caught him off guard, and he cocked his head. “Never. These are the chambers of the High King. They are mine by default, but this is the first time I’ve used them.”
“So your dad slept here?” I asked, making a face.
He chuckled again, watching me. “Not for two years. Everything in this room was moved from my other chambers or was a part of the castle’s stores. Why?”
“Because something’s not right here. Something about this room makes me scared, unhappy, edgy—and not just you,” I said, waving off the obvious conclusion. “What’s new? What haven’t you seen before?”
“I…” He looked around, frowning, then stiffened. A painting hung in a shadowy alcove, a long, lithe woman with hauntingly gray eyes playing a small, elegant harp that she had propped lazily on one thigh. His face darkened with fury even as a knock came at the door.
“Come in,” he snapped, and the doors opened to reveal Cyril and two other guards. But Aiden wasted no time. He pointed to the painting. “Get that out of here.”
Cyril blinked in obvious surprise as one of the guards scrambled to do Aiden’s bidding. As the painting came off the wall, Cyril’s eyes widened, but not in actual recognition of the painting, I didn’t think. More about the subject.
“I had no idea that was in here,” the slender advisor said, seeming truly surprised.
“I don’t care. Remove it.” Aiden shot me an amused glance. “Congratulations. You’ve already earned your keep.”
16
Aiden
I didn’t bother offering Belle an explanation. I didn’t need to.
Cyril certainly had understood what happened the moment he’d seen the figure in the painting. Yasmine Bellecourt had been a favorite of my father’s, likely in ways I didn’t want to speculate on too closely given her relative youth. I hadn’t seen her in years, and she’d clearly grown up into a striking adult Fae. How long ago had she hidden this painting in my chambers? I’d been at the front for two years since my father’s death, so she’d been waiting a long time for me to return to see it.
I smirked. Either way, Yasmine likely hadn’t expected me to show up at the castle with a witch in tow. From what I could recall of her, it wouldn’t have slowed her down if she had known, if she’d somehow set her sights on me as another acquisition.
I hadn’t seen her last night, but then, I hadn’t been looking for her. Either way, I wasn’t my father. And the witch was proving to be far more interesting than I ever would have expected. No, interesting wasn’t even the word. Captivating. Devastating. I’d watched her reactions to the history of the Fae, even as I’d burned with pride for their sacrifice. She hadn’t mocked me, or my people. She’d simply taken it in, her eyes wide while compassion flowed from her, despite her mistrust. Her reaction was emotional, honest, and deeply felt, shimmering around her like a gossamer cloak—so vibrant and breathtaking that I honestly didn’t know how my grandfather had survived his witch’s departure. Belle would consume me if I wasn’t careful. If I didn’t control the attraction that I felt for her, and guide it.
She believed that attraction was driven by some sort of spell intended to render us into the mindless automatons of our forefathers. I disagreed. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t know the truth until we located the blasted contract and understood why it had been made. Much like dealing with Yasmine, these were problems for another day, I decided, as Cyril squared himself to confront the witch.
“Were you given any instruction on what to expect as a witch of the High King?” he asked her. I didn’t miss the slight slump in Belle’s shoulders. She hadn’t been, I already knew that well enough.
“You’re going to have to start from the top,” she said, then she brightened. “Wait—first, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” Cyril smiled, but that smile flattened as Belle’s hands came up, almost supplicating.
“The—the contract between the Hogan witches and the king. You do have it, right? It’s here in the castle?”
To my surprise, Cyril’s mind flashed to a winter storm, a frozen terror, even as he answered Belle smoothly. “The king has told me of your request, Mistress Hogan, but it has been centuries since we’ve recovered it from the archives. It will take some time to locate.”
“But you will?” she pressed.
He glanced at me, seeming to take solace in my short nod. “Of course,” he said. “After we get your instruction underway.”
Belle shrugged, finally seeming to accept the futility of her delaying the process any longer. “Well…okay. You can tell me as much as I need to know, I guess. I don’t plan on staying long.”
Cyril nodded, not even bothering to send another glance my way. The witch’s defiance didn’t matter. No one in the room believed it did, likely not even her.
“The cup?” he asked, his voice a notch more gentle.
She blinked, but of course she knew what he meant. She moved to her meager pile of belongings and pulled out the palm-sized packet. She reached inside and emerged with the cup that expanded to its proper size upon its release from its bag. Cyril nodded, then looked to me as if I knew what in Fomoria to do with it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do anything. The cup filled as Cyril held it, the scent of honey mead flowing across the room.
Belle stared at it. “You know it would have been handy if it had done that even once back home,” she muttered.
Cyril chuckled, the sound so foreign in his raspy throat that I stiffened. Cyril had never chuckled once in all the years I’d known him—yet another indication that Belle was truly magical.
“Perhaps if you had even once filled it with the elixir of its homeland, it would have returned the favor,” Cyril countered, not unkindly.
Now it was Belle’s turn to stare at him. “The cup is from here? My grandmother stole it?”
“It’s definitely wrought of the Fae,” he agreed, but his voice had quieted again. “The book,” he instructed next.
Belle reached for the bag again, pulling forth the large book and it assumed its proper size of the width of her hands put together and two hand-lengths tall as it emerged from the bag.
She grimaced almost apologetically as she turned to Cyril, but before she could speak, Cyril waved at her. “Open it. Any page will do.”
She sighed but did as he instructed, opening to a page richly inscribed with gleaming ink. I watched her closely as her eyes nearly fell out of her head. She was expecting it to be blank, much as my book of spells was almost completely blank. I could feel her curiosity spike, her keen desire to riffle through the other pages but Cyril shifted toward her, so she showed him the book’s ornate pages. I expected him to read the spell in full, but even that wasn’t necessary. After uttering a mere two words of the old tongue, the mead in the cup fizzed with crackling energy as if it had been fermented for celebration.
Cyril handed the cup to Belle. He gestured to me, speaking quickly. “You d
rink, then he drinks, and the spell is set. Your ability to compel him with your voice will come to an end.”
“Wait, what?” Belle’s head popped up and she stared from me to Cyril in clear astonishment. “That was a thing? How did I not know that was a thing?”
Cyril continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You will be constrained to this land, unable to flee until you have met your obligation to the High King.”
Belle gaped anew, completely distracted by this last bit, and I knew exactly where her rabbiting mind had taken her. Until you have met your obligation…
If this was the terms of our binding, how had her great-grandmother managed to escape? Reagan Hogan had not fulfilled her role in the end. The realm had fallen into ruin upon her departure—slowly, insidiously, but definitively, and well before my father had become king. She hadn’t kept the Fae safe. She hadn’t taught us enough magic to protect ourselves for even a single generation.
“And if I don’t drink?” Belle murmured, her hands now trembling as she held the cup.
“Then the king will find another Hogan,” Cyril said smoothly, saving me the trouble. I couldn’t keep the dark outrage from surging up at the very idea of Belle rejecting her obligation, but let out a soft hiss of relief as she closed her eyes, nodded, then lifted the cup to her lips.
She drank, and I felt the taste of mead flow through my mouth and down my throat. I barely forestalled myself from choking at the sensation, and Cyril practically ripped the cup from her and thrust it at me, the fizzing concoction sparkling.
“Now. It’s best that you hurry.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. The heat of Belle’s lips still radiated from the rim of the cup and I pressed it to my mouth eagerly. It was my second kiss of the morning—this one all the sweeter for having been stolen. Belle wasn’t as successful at smothering her gasp as I drank down the rest of the mead, the cup filling again even as I emptied it until I had taken a deep draft. I lowered it and fixed my gaze on Cyril, because Belle had simply grown too bright for me to look at directly. Light and sparking fire spun around her, circling her wrists. Cyril spoke again as if from a great distance, and I vaguely had the sense of him turning to Belle, instructing her. She lifted a still-glittering hand to me, then flinched away, crying out even as I jolted in reaction to the heat that poured off her. Not the soothing heat of desire, but white-hot flame.
It lasted only a moment then was gone, but Cyril nodded, looking pleased as Belle and I blinked, finally staring at each other in mutual shock.
“The boundaries are set,” Cyril said, sounding smug. “Your safety lies in each other’s hands, and you cannot strike out against the other, not until your obligation is fulfilled.”
“Ah…when will that be?” Belle asked. She stared at her fingers as if they were the hands of a stranger.
“You’ll know,” Cyril said. He gestured to her wrists, and I realized what Belle was staring at. Not her hands, but her wrists, which were now each encircled with three bands of jewels—emerald, sapphire, ruby. I’d never seen such workmanship in the finely spun gold threads that held the stones in place. But Belle stared at them, frowning.
“These aren’t right.” Her eyes went slightly unfocused as she recited a line that sounded as if she’d memorized it long ago. “They will come for you with shackles of steel and an emerald crown, and when they are fixed upon you, there is nothing you won’t do for them.” She spoke the words almost like a mantra, though she looked mystified, as if she’d never heard them before.
Cyril and I exchanged a startled glance, because I certainly had never heard them either. “Mistress Hogan?” he asked, and she shook herself.
“I’m not wearing these.” She pulled off the beautiful bracelets and tossed them onto a nearby table, but kept rubbing her wrists as if she’d been burned. I didn’t care what she wore, though. I cared only for what I knew to be the truth.
“It’s done?” I asked roughly, ignoring as best I could the surge of pleasure as Cyril nodded. He then spoke in the tongue of the Fae.
“Niall has much to discuss with you, King Aiden. Once you have established Belle at the academy, he’ll join you. She’ll need to identify an advanced curriculum that she can deploy quickly to as many of the royal family as possible. We don’t have the luxury of merely instructing the High King.”
“I don’t want to be the only one instructed,” I informed him brusquely. “Certain magic, of course, but everyone needs to be able to fight this battle in whatever way they can. Has there been a development?”
Cyril nodded grimly. “The wraiths have taken another castle, and there are rumors they’ll turn on the monster realm next, picking off our kind. The Laram have begun to mobilize. They plan to move to the human realm until the threat has passed.”
“Wait, what?” Belle protested, blinking hard. “The Laram can’t move to the human realm. They can barely contain themselves around Wellington Academy. They’re the enemies of witches, and they’re a pain in the ass to the other monsters who are trying to cobble together a living in the shadows. We can’t let that happen.”
I shrugged, deeply satisfied. Belle understood our language now. But it was only the beginning of the things she would come to understand. “Your great-grandmother should have thought of that when she fled her responsibilities,” I informed her. “It’s time to go to the academy.”
17
Belle
The trip to the academy was necessarily forestalled by breakfast. Fortunately, this was not a full family get-together again, but a dozen people at the high table, where once again the food had already been laid out for us. Fruit and some light, fluffy dairy concoction that tasted like a cross between Greek yogurt and whipped coconut, nuts, and berries. I’d never wondered about what Fae ate, but I had to admit, I was a fan.
No one from Aiden’s family was present, only the Fae generals, both female and male, who apparently made up his closest staff. Today, he didn’t pay any attention to me, though I sat right by his side. The bench wasn’t long enough for me to be more than two feet distant from him, and I supposed with the arcane binding ritual we’d now gone through, he didn’t worry about me straying too far. Whatever. I remained silent, happy to marinate in my own conflicting thoughts.
Those bracelets Cyril had locked onto me had freaked me out, but they hadn’t been right, exactly. The manacles of Hogan servitude had been steel, not lacy strands of jewels. And there’d been a crown. I was sure there was a crown. Plus, Aiden had given not one fuck that I’d tossed the things aside.
That couldn’t be right.
Either way, I was pretty sure I’d have more time now to figure all this crazy out. It seemed almost impossible that Aiden would remain at the high castle. He apparently had a personal hand in routing the incursions of the wraiths at the border. If that proved to be the case, I’d only have to endure his presence for a few days, and then he would be gone. I could teach whatever members of the high family he wanted me to, as they would be infinitely less difficult to manage on a personal level than he was. Even if they were assholes, I doubted they would get under my skin quite so much. I didn’t know who the woman was whose picture he’d removed from his chambers—he’d never told me her name—but the moment the painting had been removed, I’d felt no more angst in the room. Whoever she was, she was bad juju.
Why hadn’t he told me her name?
As Aiden leveled orders to his team, I lifted the heavy mug of what almost tasted like coffee to my lips. Harsh and bitter, leavened by sweet cream, it wasn’t as good as even the most basic of brews back in Boston, but it would do. I was grateful for anything that even got close.
I lowered my cup to find Niall staring at me, his eye patch slightly askew, enough to show the slightest edge of scarring around his orbital bone. I didn’t know a lot about the high Fae and their physicality, but I suspected that like most members of the monster realm, they healed fast and well. For a wound such as Niall’s to take hold, there had to have been magic i
nvolved. And he had to have been in a place where he couldn’t be helped for some time.
His gaze narrowed slightly, as if he could trace the line of my thoughts, but his words surprised me. “You need to eat more,” he said roughly. “Humans don’t have the stamina they’re accustomed to in realms not their own. You don’t want to get sick.”
There was an odd tremor in his voice that took me by surprise. I sensed Aiden’s attention on us both.
“She’s protected by the High King,” Aiden pointed out a little laconically.
“So am I,” Niall shot back, tapping his eye patch as Aiden barked a sharp laugh. In their banter, I could tell they had been friends a long time, though I sensed Niall’s humor was a little dark.
I ran through a half dozen possible responses, but settled on an unlikely one. It would do me no good to stand on pride with these people. I was their slave no matter how they wanted to dress up the term. It also wouldn’t serve me to remain ignorant. Anything they could teach me, I needed to be more than willing to learn.
“How many humans do you have in the Fae realm at any given time?” I asked, not missing how Niall’s focus zipped to Aiden, then back to me. The warriors around the table continued their side conversations, but I sensed their heightened attention as well. The Fae, it appeared, could multitask.