by AJ Lancaster
Wyn would do it—but Wyn should damn well be focusing on Hetta!
The door opened and Rakken strolled in and shut it behind him. The earl started, but Rakken nodded at him.
“Lord Wolver. My apologies for the interruption, but I felt I could add to the conversation at this juncture. You wish all fae to swear guestright within the Mortal Realm?”
“Eavesdropping is considered rude,” the earl said in a tone of ice, his hands digging into the arms of his chair.
“Oh, I know,” Rakken said, seating himself as though he’d been invited. “But the fate of my people is at stake here, Lord Wolver. Surely you didn’t seriously expect me to place more weight on manners than them? Of course I eavesdropped.” Rakken had reeled in his lazy sensuality, but he still moved like a predator, confident and deadly.
He and the earl took each other’s measure. On the surface they were a study in contrasts, but some kind of shared understanding passed between them, a wolf and a panther meeting in the night. And Marius the foolish rabbit caught out after dark.
The earl broke first. “What is guestright?”
“A promise to abide by the laws of the host and not harm the host’s people unless they strike first,” Marius said.
Rakken inclined his head. “Guestright works, firstly, because it is an old and respected tradition, and fae like old things. But we are not bound by mere sentiment. Ultimately, guestright works because of the ability of faelords to enforce it. FallingStar—what you call Stariel—is the only mortal faeland in Prydein that I am aware of. But the faelords of Faerie could set rules for their own people, even outside their faelands, if they were given sufficient incentive.” A flash of teeth.
The earl considered him. “If you were eavesdropping, you know I was speaking to Mr Valstar about the need for a visible fae ambassador to help alleviate public anxiety.”
Rakken smiled. “Yes, I did. And I happen to agree. ThousandSpire is one of the largest courts of Faerie, and I am one of its princes.”
Marius felt faintly indignant, even though Rakken had been upfront about his intent. How did he do that? And he wasn’t even flirting!
“We have received approaches from other fae. The Court of Dusken Roses. They suggested that your brother’s court is in some difficulties and that an alliance between Prydein and the Court of Ten Thousand Spires wouldn’t be advantageous.”
Rakken didn’t react. “Did they also name me a murderer?”
Why would he bring that up?!
The earl’s eyes widened slightly, but more because of Rakken’s frankness than because the information was new to him.
Rakken read him easily. “Ah, I see that they did. It’s true: my sister and I are responsible for the death of DuskRose’s crown prince.” He sat back, utterly relaxed, except that Marius knew intuitively that he was anything but. Sharks swam in the murky depths beneath his unruffled surface.
The earl stared at him. “That’s a curious announcement for a supposed ambassador to make. This other fairy court offered very favourable terms.”
“And yet you have not embraced them whole-heartedly. Perhaps you dislike the thought of your country being used as a proxy for a fae war?”
“I dislike it deeply.”
“I too do not wish ThousandSpire’s war with DuskRose to spill onto Mortal soil. That war has cost enough.” Rakken laced his fingers together. Marius felt as if he were watching a chess match in the dark.
“What are you proposing?”
“That you not take sides. I see no reason why you may only have a single fae ambassador, unless the High King himself appoints one. Without his direction, we are not a united people. You accept ambassadors from individual mortal nations, so why should the courts of Faerie be treated differently? Let ThousandSpire and DuskRose settle their differences in Faerie and without dragging mortal affairs into it.”
“You seem very certain DuskRose will accept that.”
Rakken shrugged. “I do not trust Queen Tayarenn, and I trusted her son even less when he lived. But Princess Sunnika is less war-minded than her aunt, and I assume it was she who approached you.”
The earl attempted to give nothing away, but even Marius could tell Rakken had guessed correctly. Rakken paused. “It’s my understanding that you have not known war here for a generation.” He lost his relaxed posture. For a moment, it wasn’t beauty or charm that radiated from him but the bone-deep weariness of a soldier that made Marius wonder again exactly how old he was. “I would give a great deal to preserve such a state of affairs, if I were you.”
There was a long silence. “I’ll consider what you’ve said.”
It was still raining steadily when the earl dismissed them, and they bundled into a hackney. Marius braced himself for the downpour between the earl’s doorstep and the hackney’s interior, but it didn’t come.
He shot a questioning look at Rakken, who seemed faintly amused by his surprise.
“You used air magic.”
“I saw no need to get wet.”
“Thank you.”
Rakken blinked, as if he didn’t trust Marius’s words not to hold some hidden barb. I haven’t been very nice to him, after all. Though in fairness he hasn’t been very nice to me either. But Marius supposed being sent on a babysitting mission while others sought the answers to freeing his twin hadn’t been Rakken’s idea of a good time either.
“And thank you for guarding me. I appreciate it, even if the need for it annoys me. We can use a portal to Stariel once we get back to Knoxbridge. Maybe there’s some news. I don’t have any classes to teach until after the mid-term break now anyway.” If Aroset was still at large then, what was he going to do? Think about that when it happens. He’d been terrified when Rakken had first appeared, but the more time that passed without incident, the more he began to think Aroset wouldn’t appear.
The way Rakken eyed him made him shift in his seat, uncomfortable with its intensity. After a long, fraught pause, Rakken said, “I don’t require reassurance from you, Marius Valstar. But thank you.” He said the words as if they were slightly foreign objects, with a weight he wasn’t used to. Maybe that was exactly the case. Marius couldn’t imagine Rakken thanking people often.
The wall went up between them again.
“Did you…get what you wanted, from the earl?” Marius asked. The entire interaction had left him both flustered and worried. “Did you mean it, about not wanting a war by proxy here? That whole conversation felt like it was purely to combat DuskRose’s influence—and how did you even know they’d be talking to the queen as well?”
“Because they’d have to be fools not to.” Rakken attention was far away, his face in profile.
Before Marius could stop himself, he found himself asking, “Why did you kill their prince? What happened?”
Rakken didn’t turn from the window, his silence so absolute that Marius might as well have been alone.
Marius swallowed. “Er, right. You don’t want to talk about it. Sorry. But in fairness, you were the one who brought it up with the earl in the first place. And you know, there are other ways to communicate than ignoring me whenever you don’t want to answer questions.”
Rakken continued to ignore him, but the corner of his mouth twitched, and the silence for the rest of the ride was merely cool as opposed to glacial.
Marius paid the hackney, and they emerged under the shelter of the awnings opposite the station. He inspected his wristwatch. “The train to Knoxbridge leaves on the hour. Which leaves us with half an hour before the next one.”
The rain fell in a steady grey drizzle, ageing the day past the actual hour, and Marius grimaced. Should he remove his spectacles? They were nearly useless when covered in raindrops, but walking in public without them made him feel curiously vulnerable, turning everything more than a few feet away into a blurry landscape of indistinct shapes. His gaze drew inexorably to the main entrance, where Aroset had appeared from a portal and tried to kill him. He shivered and took off his gl
asses and put them carefully in his coat pocket. He could cross a damn street without them.
Rakken tensed and dug a hand into his pocket. He held up a disc the size of a coin made of polished metal. “Hallowyn has returned to Stariel.”
“With Hetta?”
“I assume so.” He added before Marius could ask, “It works via sympathy—I left its mate at FallingStar to alert me if a portal opened there.”
Relief flooded him. “Thank Pyrania.” Marius looked at the driving rain. “Unfortunately, I didn’t bring an umbrella, so are you up for a bit more air magic?”
Rakken stiffened. Had Marius’s presumption offended him? But then Marius caught it—the scent that had haunted his nightmares. The stormy edge was lost in the downpour, but the notes of copper and roses were clear enough.
Aroset. Even blurred, Marius could see the distortion forming around the station entrance, the sign of a portal beginning to form.
“Hang on tightly,” Rakken said grimly.
“What?” But the word became a squawk as Rakken unceremoniously hauled Marius into his arms and launched them both skywards.
Outrage fought with utter bewilderment, but both succumbed to the stomach-dropping sensation of flying. He latched his arms around Rakken’s neck and hung on for dear life.
An analytical part of his mind was saying things like: he’s compensating for his damaged primaries with air magic and yes, this probably is a much better idea than confronting Aroset. The air around them was so dense with citrus and storms that Marius swore he could see reality warp under the weight of glamour, even through the blurry rain.
Marius closed his eyes because everything going invisible was deeply upsetting this far above the ground. He’s trying to prevent Aroset from seeing where we go, trying to hide in the storm. She’s older than him, and stronger, but the Maelstrom gave him unnaturally powerful glamour. Did the Maelstrom augment all of Wyn’s siblings’ powers in unique ways? Why did Rakken get glamour and compulsion and Aroset get portals? And what did Wyn get? The ability to be sane and relatively normal?
The non-analytical part of him was screaming in panic. How far were they above the ground? How close was Aroset? Could Rakken actually fly for long with his wings still damaged, air magic or not? Marius was flying in a storm, and rain quickly drenched all the parts of him that weren’t pressed against Rakken. Parts of him were pressed against Rakken. He shouldn’t be noticing that. How could he be noticing that while panicking about literally everything that was happening right now: the swooping, gut-dropping sensation of each wingbeat, the rush of wind against his ears, the neat slicing sound of Rakken’s feathers resisting the air, the freezing cold of the rain lashing his skin, and the hum of magic thick enough to choke on.
But how could he not notice Rakken, given how he blazed hot as a furnace in contrast to the ice cold of the storm? Particularly since Marius’s eyes were still closed so all he could do was feel.
He’d never before appreciated just how strong fae—or at least stormdancers—were. Rakken held Marius’s weight with no apparent effort, muscles flexing with every wing beat. Marius might be skinny, but he wasn’t exactly a light-weight even though Rakken was manhandling him like one. The thought sparked indignation, which was unreasonable. Rakken was clearly trying to save them both from ending up as two piles of charred ashes outside the train station. Manhandling was the least of his worries.
Marius’s heart pounded, though he couldn’t separate its rhythm from the beat of Rakken’s wings and the dizzying see-sawing motion of the storm buffeting them. He kept remembering the piercing pain in his head from Aroset trying to compel him, the choking feel of her fingers round his throat, lifting him as if he weighed nothing. He shuddered and tightened his grip.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when they descended, the shock of landing reverberating through him. He opened his eyes. They were outside the greenhouse in Knoxbridge. On the ground. Oh, thank the gods. He needed to extricate himself, but his muscles were locked in place by a powerful combination of cold, terror, and awkwardness.
Rakken dropped his glamour and came into focus, though everything beyond him remained a rain-drenched blur. Marius suspected he himself was doing a stellar impersonation of a drowned, squinting rat, but Rakken looked like some sort of wildly magnificent barbarian. Of course he does. The storm had made wet snaking tendrils of his dark hair, and water droplets clung to him like bits of crystal. His wings were better than the last time Marius had seen them unglamoured but still clipped and missing feathers. How the hell had he managed to fly with those?
“The leylines are quiet,” Rakken murmured, folding his ruined wings behind him. “She hasn’t followed us.” His eyes burned with something more primal than triumph—exhilaration. He’d gloried in the feel of the storm beneath his wings. Stormdancers. It wasn’t an entirely poetic name, was it? How long since Rakken had last flown? It had clearly cost him to fly on his damaged wings—his chest heaved with exertion and there was a hollowness to his cheeks, shadows under his eyes as if the energy had stolen from his very flesh—but he practically shone with triumph despite his evident exhaustion. His heartbeat pounded against Marius where their bodies touched.
Their bodies were touching, and it became abruptly impossible to think of anything except that and the fact that Rakken’s chest was extremely warm and firm and—all the little gods help him—covered in a shirt that was now completely wet. Adrenalin, Marius knew, could have strange effects on one’s libido, but he could do without this particular stab of it right now.
Marius made an inarticulate noise of protest and released his death-grip on Rakken’s neck, sliding gracelessly back into gravity’s grasp. His feet hit the soft ground with a shock of weight, and he would’ve scrambled back except that his shoulder blades immediately hit the wall of the greenhouse.
He couldn’t meet Rakken’s eyes because it would make the entire thing far too intimate, and his heart was beating so fast he wasn’t sure it could take any additional stimulus. Instead he stared fixedly at Rakken’s throat.
“We should…the portal. Um. Thank you. Again. Right.”
Fingers touched his chin and he started violently. Rakken tsked and tilted his chin up. “By the stormwinds, Marius Valstar, you are bad for my ego.”
Rakken’s eyes were too green. Marius knew words for at least twenty different shades of green, but he couldn’t find the adjective to adequately describe the colour now. Emerald was too cold a word, too bound up in hard stone. Rakken’s eyes were a living green. Perhaps some variety of moss growing under the dappled green light of new spring leaves? Why the fuck was he thinking about that with Rakken’s fingers still resting under his chin? Actually, maybe green was an excellent subject to focus on, except he couldn’t not be aware of those little points of heat against his skin. Rakken was close enough that Marius could see the occasional gold hairs sprinkled amongst the black of his eyelashes. The supple fullness of his lips, which Marius was absolutely not looking at.
Marius swallowed and rasped, “What are you doing?” Almighty stormwinds, Marius, do you really need to ask? No one would stand this close and touch like that by accident. But what if this was some peculiar bit of fae culture Marius had yet to encounter? Gods, he couldn’t imagine anything more awkward than misjudging such a thing from Rakken of all people.
Rakken tilted his head. “I can practically see your thoughts chasing in all directions. Apparently, I’m not being sufficiently obvious. What a surprising reflection.” He brushed the pad of his thumb along Marius’s jawline, heat against rain-cooled skin.
Marius took a deep breath, trying to dispel the surge of lust tightening things low in his body. Gods, I do not want Rakken to know how he affects me if this is all some bizarre joke to him. Cold showers. Ice on the lake.
Rakken sighed. “Apparently still not sufficiently obvious. Marius Valstar, may I kiss you?”
Marius jerked and whacked the back of his head against the side of the greenhouse
. “Ow!” Sweet Mother Eostre. He rubbed at his head, ringing with shock. “You…you what?” The words didn’t seem to adequately capture the situation. “Why?”
Rakken glanced skywards, as if for patience. “Because I desire it.” He met Marius’s eyes. “May I,” he repeated, “kiss you?”
Lust and confusion ripped through Marius so viciously he could hardly breathe. “You—you can’t—why are you asking?” He didn’t recognise his own voice, it had gone so scratchy.
Rakken looked down at Marius with the predatory gaze of a panther. “To receive an answer, obviously. Which is…?”
Marius’s mouth went dry, but he opened it to say of course he didn’t want Rakken to kiss him, the arrogant cad, and what kind of question even was that? You couldn’t just ask people that sort of thing out of nowhere, and you weren’t supposed to actually verbalise it in any case. It was all just supposed to—to happen, as it were. In a way that was no one’s fault and definitely no one asking for anything.
And weren’t they supposed to be portalling to Stariel as quickly as possible? What if Aroset had managed to follow them after all? Was this truly a sensible activity to be proposing right now?
And why in Pyrania’s name did Rakken want to kiss him, Marius Valstar, skinny botanist with a history of bad judgement? Yes, like the bad judgement that is happening RIGHT NOW. He should shove Rakken away.
But the words stuck in his throat and failed to come out, held back by sheer animal want. What was he doing? He wasn’t an animal, to be ruled by instinct, but he was shivering with cold, and Rakken practically radiated heat, and he was so close, and Marius thought he might die if he didn’t close the gap between them. Oh yes, try to justify this bout of insanity with some vague need for body warmth! Marius couldn’t argue with his inner voice of cool reason, but he still said nothing, caught in the grip of a much hotter and far less reasonable emotion. The silence wound tighter and tighter.
Rakken canted his head. “As an alternative to your indecisiveness, I’m going to kiss you now, Marius Valstar, unless you wish to voice an objection?” He paused, raising an eyebrow.