23
Aenor
The wave I’d created had ripped me from the monster’s grasp, but his magic still shrieked through the water. He wasn’t far, his vibrations trembling cold over my body. My blood turned to ice.
I swam in the depths of the raging sea, searching for Salem. The waters churned in whorls and vortices, life rushing around me. I could stay here forever if I didn’t have a fae to kill.
For some strange reason, the thought of killing Salem spread frosty blooms of dread through my chest. Almost like I didn’t want to kill him.
I searched the murky water for Salem, blood clouding around me. Where was it all coming from?
I looked down at my body, at the brutal gashes on my arm and leg. The Ollephest had sunk his talons into my flesh, ripping it right open. With all the adrenaline pumping, I hadn’t noticed it before. Now, the sight of it sent alarm bells ringing in my mind. As soon as I saw bone exposed through my flesh, pain screamed up my arm and my leg.
I whirled around, trying to find Salem.
At last, in the ocean’s gloom, I saw him. His body glowed like a distant star. I’d seen that before, hadn’t I? A vision or a dream… A silver sphere in the dark seawaters, as beautiful and stark as the dawn of the universe. The cold perfection of the evening star.
The monster’s screaming focused my attention again into a diamond-sharp point. Spurred into action, I shot through the ocean, the water rushing around me. The pain in my limbs was forgotten.
As I swam closer to Salem, I grimaced. His wing had been nearly torn in half. He was fighting against the waves, his wing ripping further.
Despite everything I knew about him, my heart constricted a little at the sight of the blood clouding around him. He was swimming for the surface, but his broken wing dragged in the water.
When I reached him, I gripped him around the waist and kicked. His muscular arms wrapped around me, and his body heated me in the water. His heart reverberated in my chest.
When he met my gaze, I saw his eyes had gone a murky red. Unlike me, he needed air. He wouldn’t die—not without the sea glass in my hands—but his lungs probably felt like they were on fire.
As I swam, the Ollephest’s shrieking grew louder. He was closing in on us. Like me, he might hunt underwater by sound. I closed my eyes, trying to tune in to the feel of solid land anywhere nearby.
After a moment, I felt it.
An island close by, solid in the raging sea. Less than a mile away, I thought. We just needed to get there, drag ourselves onto land. Dizziness whirled in my head as blood flowed out of me.
I closed my eyes as I tuned into the water. Letting my sea magic course through my body, I created a fast current. Roiling around us, the current began ushering us to the shore.
As the cool waters carried us, my mind was going darker, cloudier. I rested my head on Salem’s chest, and he pulled me in close. While the sea carried us, my legs tingled with pins and needles, and my body started to feel cold. Slowly, my hands were growing numb.
But through my mental fog, I could tell the screeching of the Ollephest was growing more distant. Everything was growing more distant, and I started losing my grip on Salem. He still held me close, his heart beating against mine, body radiating warmth. His grip on me was firm, unwavering, and gentle as a father holding a child. Like I was his salvation. Of course, he didn’t know what I had planned for him…
I was dimly aware of the feel of the air, and of Salem carrying me from the water. His powerful arms curled around me. The saltwater stung my wounds. I could no longer feel my legs.
When I opened my eyes, I saw droplets of seawater beading on his skin. He looked determined, and laid me down gently in his lap.
“I’m fine,” I said, but my eyes were closing again, and my head rested on his firm chest.
When I opened my eyes, I saw him kneeling over me. I was flat on my back, on something soft. He pressed his hand against my chest, and heat radiated out from his fingertips.
My gaze landed on his wing, brutally broken, feathers cracked in two.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
His dusky gaze met mine, the colors in his eyes shifting from blue to violet-grey. Heat beamed out from his hand on my chest, washing over me. “You were losing too much blood. This will help, a little.”
Seawater ran down his golden skin in rivulets as he healed me. He was a healer? I didn’t expect that in the skillset of a rampant sadist.
Mostly—right now—I was doing my best to ignore the fact that his hand rested between my breasts. His eyes were on my wounds, his brow furrowed.
As his magic slid along my body, the warmth carried along with it emotions. A sense of longing, maybe.
He yearned for something always out of his grasp, a heat and brightness he’d once possessed. He no longer felt complete, and all the fire in the world couldn’t keep him warm.
As his magic coiled around my body, his torment moved along with it. The sound of drums beat in my mind.
This was too close, too intimate, until the feeling of longing dimmed. Slowly, a deep sense of relaxation took over, and the pain ebbed.
My eyes fluttered closed for a moment, and I felt Salem’s hand pull away. When I opened my eyes again, he was kneeling above me, holding moss and strips of cloth. His wing looked half torn from his body.
Kneeling by my side, he gently lifted my arm. This was all getting too… close.
“I can bandage myself,” I muttered.
“Aenor, you’re not going to bandage yourself up with a single arm. I need to get this done properly, since you’ve already inconvenienced me enough by allowing the Ollephest to shred your limbs open.”
“How rude of me,” I said wearily. “And you allowed your wing to get shredded. Does it hurt?”
“Are you concerned for my well-being? I’m touched.”
“It’s just a detached curiosity. I’ve never had wings before, so I don’t know what they feel like.”
“It hurts like you wouldn’t believe, but I can heal myself once I’m done here.”
He pressed the moss against my arm, then bound it in the cloth. Sunlight streamed over him, gilding his shoulders and wings. It took me a moment to realize he’d ripped up his own shirt to make the bandages. He knelt bare-chested, the eight-pointed star beaming on his abs.
A little light flitted around him—a bright sphere with a twilight sheen. It flitted and bobbed around his head like a lightning bug.
“What is that?” I asked.
He went still for a moment, watching it. As he did, his chest went taut, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. Whatever that little thing was, it unsettled him.
He turned to me again. His expression was sharp, even though his hands were gentle as he wrapped a strip of cloth around my arm. “Never mind that little bug. I’m fixing you only so you can bring me where I need to go. You’ll need to rest now. As soon as you can produce this soul cage, it will all be over. We will never need to see each other again.”
It will all be over when you’re dead.
“What did you see?” I asked. “What’s the worst fear that the Ollephest showed you?”
He paused in his bandage wrapping and stared at me. “Death.”
Surprise flickered, and maybe a little guilt. “That’s it? You’re scared of death.” It seemed too… ordinary for him.
“Not exactly. But you haven’t told me what was in your vision. It only seems fair that you share, too.”
My eyes snapped open; I was suddenly alert. Nope. No way in hell was I telling Salem my vision. Gods, what was that about? Had there been… spanking? I’d sooner boil myself alive than tell him. I’d rip my arm right open again just to distract from this line of questioning.
Come up with a lie. “Parakeets,” I blurted.
“Parakeets,” he repeated.
I swallowed hard. “They terrify me. With their vaguely human voices, repeating words ad nauseam. It’s just not right.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Is there
a reason you’re blushing?”
“Look, I’m not going to tell my worst fears to the devil. Anyway, what do you care?”
“It’s nothing more than a detached curiosity. It’s just that I’ve never had shame, so I’ve never blushed.”
The sunlight filtered through leaves above us and streamed over his wings. Every time I caught sight of them, of the fragmented bones sticking out, I had a sense of wrongness. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of them. Looking at the shattered wings felt like having a jagged knife scraping on the inside of my skull.
He deserved it, of course, for everything he’d done, and yet…
Maybe it was because his wings looked so delicate, but the sight of the blood spattering his feathers was too much. “Are you going to fix your wing?” I said, more irritated now.
He caught my gaze again, but ignored my question. Instead, he moved down to my leg and pressed another patch of moss against my thigh, just under my skirt. I winced as he lifted my leg a little to get the bandage around. It would have hurt a million times more if he hadn’t already hit me with his healing magic.
He pressed his hand against my heart again, magic thrumming hot over my body. I breathed in the scent of him, the pomegranate and smoke. Something else there… a garden… a bone-deep, jagged sense of loss. Ragged emptiness, falling… A light snuffed out, spirit crushed into ash.
For just a moment, I almost felt like my heart was breaking.
“Falling,” I whispered, not meaning to say it out loud.
Then he pulled his hand away abruptly. My eyes opened, and he stared at me.
“I didn’t say anything,” I added quickly. That was a worse lie than the parakeets.
After a moment, he said, “After a few hours of sleep, you’ll be fine.”
He rose and walked away from me, his wing practically hanging off him. Wrong.
I pulled my gaze away from him to survey my surroundings, wincing as I pushed up on my good arm.
It felt like a brief, peaceful respite here. Salem had laid me down on a mossy patch at a forest’s edge. Sunlight pierced the branches, dappling the ground around me with dancing gold flecks. The sea breeze whispered over my skin, and leaves rustled above me.
As I watched Salem, I saw how he healed himself. Silvery-blue light flickered around his wings and feathers. His warrior’s body beamed with light. His power rippled over me in waves, but he wasn’t healing fast enough. His wing still looked ravaged.
Some strange instinct—like an invisible thread pulling at my chest—forced me up onto my elbows, then onto my feet. A sharp tug yanked at my chest, drawing me closer to Salem.
I’d once read that a man who’d done too much cocaine found himself temporarily with a powerful sense of smell. Like an animal, he could tell when another person had been in the room or where they’d walked in the woods. He felt as if he were reclaiming something forgotten—a skill left dormant by evolution.
That was what this felt like—a buried knowledge coming alive again. A dim certainty that I could heal him, too, the way he’d healed me.
On my injured leg, I limped toward him. With his eyes closed, I had a clear look at his face, the sweep of dark eyelashes against his skin.
That tug on my chest compelled my hand to his sternum. His heart beat against my palm, steady and even. His eyes opened, and they burned with a bright blue as he looked down at me.
My sea magic rushed along my arm, pulsing into his body through my splayed fingers. It curled around him in wispy tendrils, twining with his magic.
I stared as his wings and feathers began to straighten a little. The music of our magic mingled together—his a deep rhythmic beat, and mine sad melodies that rose and fell.
“What do you want from all this?” I whispered, to myself more than to him.
His eyes focused, and he looked like he’d just snapped out of a spell. “To leave this place.”
Now, his wings looked completely healed, the bones straight and feathers gleaming. His wings shimmered away.
“It’s worked, right?” I asked. “Why, exactly, did that work? I’ve never done that before.”
He studied my face, his brow furrowed. “Get some rest on the moss, Aenor. We need to move on from here soon.”
24
Salem
While Aenor slept, I patrolled the shore, staring out over the waves. I’d been here for hours in the sun, waiting for my sword to return to me.
I’d lost Lightbringer in the sea, but she always found her way back.
Just like the sea was part of Aenor, my blade was a part of me. And while I waited for her to return, I felt her absence like a missing limb.
A stab of guilt shot through me. It was like I’d severed Aenor’s soul when I took her magic away. I’d felt her loss when she’d healed me.
Guilt… What a ridiculous, useless feeling.
In any case, it wasn’t as if she was blameless for her loss. She was my mate, that was all. A perverse twist of fate.
I glanced back at her where she slept soundly on the moss. I had an infuriating impulse to curl up next to her. In another life, she’d have been in my bed by now.
My chest tightened. Usually, I had a perverse compulsion to tell everyone everything. I laid out the wild beasts of my soul like a grotesque menagerie—here you see me burning humans for fun, and here are the broken hearts, and please don’t miss the fact that I despise everyone alive. Look at my horror; feel revulsion.
It delighted me.
And yet with Aenor, I had to keep secrets—the secret that she was my mate.
I chafed against the constriction of it. I wanted to tell her everything all at once. I wanted to spill my secrets out like blood through the water.
The sea wind whipped over my body, howling.
Love was not part of my destiny, and it never could be. And here I was, prowling the shoreline like a wolf protecting his mate. Keeping her safe.
The waves lapped at my feet, warm and frothy, and a thrilling wind swelled over me. I tried to ignore the tiny blue will-o’-the-wisp buzzing around my head. That thing was a tiny spy, reporting back to my ancient enemies.
The sky darkened to ruddy hues as twilight arrived. Dipping lower, the sun seemed to grow larger over the horizon, yellow blending to harlot pink. As the lurid colors darkened to somber blue, the evening star gleamed—a jewel in the crown of the sky. That was where I belonged.
This was the time of day when my magic grew strongest, and when things crossed over from one world to another.
At last, a blue glint in the water heralded my sword’s arrival. I felt the muscles in my chest unclench a little, and I rushed into the waves to get it. As soon as I had the iron hilt in my hand, power surged through my body, and I let out a long breath.
Unlike most fae, I wasn’t hurt by iron. This iron came from the center of the evening star itself. The sword fit into my fist perfectly, and when I sheathed it again, I loosed a breath I’d been holding.
I’d lost my shirt when I bound Aenor’s wounds, but I smoothed out my trousers, still damp from the sea. I hated looking disheveled.
When I reached Aenor, her eyes opened. I pulled my flask from my pocket to hand it to her.
She blinked. “Not really feeling like brandy right now.”
“I filled it in a freshwater spring.”
She sat up again, wincing a little, and took the flask from my hand. She drank from it deeply, then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Thanks. How is it that you kept hold of your flask, but you lost your sword?”
“The sword always returns to me. The flask I have to keep a tighter grip on.” I pulled it from her and drank from it deeply. When I looked back at her, I found that she’d fallen asleep again.
Her chest rose and fell slowly, her dark eyelashes sweeping across her skin. I wanted her to rest, but we had to move on.
I stood and crossed back to the shoreline. Something was nagging at the depths of my consciousness. Something that didn’t quit
e seem right…
I scanned the churning sea as the sun lowered over the horizon.
Ah… there it was. It was almost imperceptible, the low, hissing sound around me, but it raised the hair on the back of my arms. I unsheathed Lightbringer, searching for the source of the noise. It grew louder behind me.
I whirled, catching a blue shimmer in the air. Something flitting around me, nearly transparent. Just a blue sheen floating on the breeze. Around me, the air grew cold, and webs of frost spread over my body.
This was how I’d felt around Beira, the Winter Witch, all those years ago. That icy hag wasn’t here, was she?
Another hiss behind me, and I spun, gripping my sword.
Slowly, they materialized around me—swords drawn. They were muscular fae in scaled armor, eyes murky like the sea. Six of them stood before me, wearing the Merrow’s symbol—the trident encircled by a snake. “We won’t let you unleash the Fomorians. We won’t let you burn the world.”
My heart pounded like a war drum. I was ready to kill them all. But when I swung for one of them, he disappeared. My sword cut through shimmering air.
I conjured my magic, searing the air around me with heat. Smoke wrapped me in darkness.
My lip curled. Phantom fae always got on my nerves—denying you that delicious thrill of a blade carving through bone and flesh.
The fae materialized again, lunging for me with his sword.
I moved faster, whirling and ducking as the warriors attacked through the smoke. Another hot pulse of my magic blazed down my sword. The air smelled singed—burned cloth and flesh.
That was interesting. Even if I couldn’t cut them with a blade, they seemed vulnerable to fire.
But they outnumbered me, and one of them caught me in the back with his blade.
Anger started rising in me. All this to protect what the Merrow did—a sin.
I spun, moving faster now, my burning blade searing their flesh a little before they flickered away again. Sweat dripped down their faces as I burned the air.
Even so, there were more of them now, bodies flickering into existence around me.
Fallen King (Court of the Sea Fae Trilogy Book 2) Page 12