Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  Chapter 31

  The day was unseasonably warm, even for Maeve’s Court. The sun cast a brilliant halo in the sky, bathing the world in gold. Wind flowed like clear rivers around them, fluffing hair and soothing warm skin, and it carried with it the smell of change and possibility. Sweet and light and creamy as vanilla, it soaked into the body and eased tense muscles.

  Standing on the steps of the High Court, Niko stared out at the vista of the city sprawling before him. Alive with movement once again, the streets were devoid of soldiers and special response officers. There was not a gun in sight, and not a sign of fear on anyone’s face. The grip of terror had been lifted from the veins of the Court, and Fae rebounded as typical—quickly and without hesitation. Cars drove by, people walked along the sidewalks, eyeing buildings and shops, laughing and light-hearted. Clubs and restaurants and stores were open, beckoning customers inside with promises of pleasures or air conditioning, and it was almost as though the Woods had never been rooted in every avenue of the Court.

  The suit he wore was uncomfortable, too restrictive and stuffy for Niko’s every-day style, but when the Queen calls you to receive the honours of the Court, formal attire is rather expected. Tugging at the knot of his tie, Niko inhaled deeply, slowly reminding himself what it was to be calm. Being out in the open with his own face and his own clothes was more of a relief than he could put into words.

  “That suits you,” Cobalt said, nodding to the medal affixed to Niko’s breast. It was a heavy golden star, imprinted with the seal of the royal family and the scales of justice and adorned with diamonds at each point. It hung from a length of thick, purple ribbon striped with gold thread down the centre.

  Niko glanced down at it, almost having forgotten it was there, despite the weight of it. He touched his fingertips to the cool metal surface of the star, then unhooked the ribbon from his breast pocket and held it in hand. The highest honour the Queen could bestow upon a civilian in her Court, the Shining Star Medal was scarcely handed out. The last time anyone received one was following the war between the Courts, years ago, that ended with the first Treaty of the Lands. The treaty itself didn’t hold long, but the warriors involved in making it happen deserved recognition for their efforts toward peace. Niko didn’t really think himself worthy of the same honour, but he wasn’t the one deciding that.

  “Not sure I’m a medal-wearing kind of guy,” Niko said.

  Cobalt smiled. “Not the medal. The recognition.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Niko’s temple, eliciting a shiver. “Everyone should know your value.”

  A flare of warmth in his chest, Niko nodded to the identical medal hanging from Cobalt’s suit jacket. “I’m in good company, I guess,” he said. “How does it feel to be the first ever non-Fae to receive the medal?”

  Studying the adornment, Cobalt shrugged. “It’s certainly a high bar to set for life here in Maeve’s Court. Where do I go from here?”

  Niko slipped his medal into his pocket and turned to Cobalt, pressing close to him. “Well, first off, I was thinking you could join me—”

  “Not gonna lie, this is not how I expected my life to go,” Starla interrupted, emerging from behind them. Niko bit back the rest of his comment, Cobalt laughing and pulling him into a kiss as consolation. The warmth in Niko’s chest spread quickly, curling into his spine and leaving him in a swoon. Cobalt enveloped him entirely for a moment, the embrace drowning everything else out.

  “Going from being on one Royal family’s black list to another’s medal of honour recipient is a pretty fucking dramatic one-eighty for me,” Coral said, fiddling with her own medal. “Not quite sure I deserve this—”

  “After calling the cops on us, you definitely don’t,” Preston said, appearing behind her. “But I suppose Maeve is more forgiving than I am.”

  Coral rolled her eyes, still playing with the medal. Starla swatted at her hand, pulling out her phone to snap a picture of herself and Coral with their newly bestowed honours. Uri popped his head behind them, his tongue sticking out, to ruin the photo.

  “This’ll look real nice on my desk in a frame,” he said after Starla shoved him away. He was as happy as Niko had ever seen him, glowing beneath the shining sun. Preston licked his lips and leaned in to whisper something in Uri’s ear. Uri coloured immediately, biting back a smile. “Or there. Yeah, that’ll work too.”

  “Feeling left out, Preston?” Cobalt asked, eyeing the Werewolf as he moved closer to Uri. Niko felt a bubble in him, buoyed up and full of light. It was an unfamiliar feeling to him, and he found he was hesitant to name it, lest it scare easy.

  “Not really,” Preston said. He was not awarded a medal, for what Niko thought were obvious reasons. He was, however, given full immunity for his past crimes in exchange for his testimony in regards to all the Woods’ enterprises and members, as well as the role he played in stopping Phoebe Linden. He was also meant to hand over all earnings resultant from criminal enterprises to the Court, but he was to do so at his own discretion. Not sure how he got that one past them. “I’m not in it for the medals.”

  “In what?” Niko asked.

  “Being a good guy,” he answered with a wolfish grin. “I hear my official business cards are in the mail.”

  Nodding while rolling his eyes, Niko said, “Right, right. So what are you in it for then?”

  With a waggle of his eyebrows, Preston grabbed Uri’s ass and yanked him in close, causing Uri to yelp in surprise. “All the hot guys, obviously.” Preston winked at Niko and Cobalt, and Cobalt pulled Niko away, toward the far corner of the stairs.

  “What, you mean Ambert Redwood and Lucius Linden weren’t hot enough for you?” Starla shot.

  “Definitely not now they’ve had their riches stripped from them,” Uri said. “Prison jumpsuits don’t really complement their colouring.”

  “Oh, I think prison uniforms suit Ambert and Lucius perfectly,” Preston answered. “But they look even better on Noor and Phoebe.” He scratched at his head a moment. “Come to think of it, the majority of the people I know are now sporting those jumpsuits. I think I’m going to have to find some new allies.”

  “Friends,” Uri corrected. “Regular, non-criminal people call them friends.” He shook his head and wrapped his hand around Preston’s pristine tie. “I think I’ve an idea where you can start looking.”

  “Wait, so does that mean Linden is out of hospital, then?” Coral asked. “You guys work fast here.”

  Preston shrugged. “She’s still in recovery, but they transferred her to the prison medical centre. Doesn’t seem to be complaining, though, which is new for Phoebe. Whatever Niko did to her must have been—ah, life changing.”

  Niko shot a glance over his shoulder at the others. He hadn’t explained to anyone, save Cobalt, what had happened. He hadn’t even managed to explain it fully to Cobalt, frankly, because he himself didn’t really understand it. From what Uri told him, he’d begun glowing pure white, almost impossible to look at. There was no sound at all anywhere while Niko glowed, but it lasted only a few seconds. It ended with an earth-shattering rumble and bang, light exploding from everywhere, and then Niko was panting, Cobalt was fine, and Phoebe Linden was pinned to the wall, covered in magical burns and screaming silently in agony. She couldn’t do magic anymore it seemed, and her voice still hadn’t returned. She also refused to look anyone in the eye since the event, though Niko wasn’t certain that was the magic at work.

  “After what she did to Cobalt, she should have known something insane was coming for her,” Starla said. “Niko did promise if any harm came to Cobalt, he’d dish it out tenfold on her.” She shivered though the day was hot. “You were pretty scary when you said that, too, Niki. I don’t know what came over you, but let me tell you, I’m going into witness protection if I ever so much as knock Cobalt by accident.”

  Niko laughed along with the others around him, but something about what she said struck him deep. It worried at the edge of his mind, picking away at the corner of s
omething Niko couldn’t grasp. He’d made the threat, yes, and even then acknowledged it felt different. But he hadn’t thought it was bound in any kind of magic. Maybe it was. Though what kind of magic, Niko didn’t know.

  Cobalt brought Niko back to the present with a brush of his fingers through Niko’s hair. Leaning in close, Cobalt pressed his lips to Niko’s again, for only a moment. “It seems we’re actually free now, Pet. What shall we do first?”

  A surge of excitement flooded Niko, his body warming in specific regions. He licked his lips, his eyes on Cobalt’s mouth, and breathed in the open ocean smell of his lover.

  “We should celebrate!” Starla proclaimed.

  “Yes! I want to try some real Maeve’s Court food, not the instant shit we’ve had to live off on the run. And drinks! I heard good things about alcohol. Gotta try that.”

  Preston laughed. “You’ve never had alcohol? Please let me take you to a bar right now. I’m buying if you let me choose the drinks.”

  “It’s barely noon,” Uri said.

  “We have fermented fruit in Azure’s Court, but liquids are kind of difficult, being underwater,” Coral explained as though they were all morons. Cobalt laughed.

  “Okay, we’ll go drinking later on,” Starla compromised. “But nowhere good is open until later. So what do we do until then?”

  The wind played over Niko’s face, drawing his attention outward toward the coast. Beyond the buildings and streets and cars and groups of people, the ocean shone a shimmering blue-gold. Running his hands over Cobalt’s arms, he smiled.

  “Let’s go for a swim.”

  ***

  Sickle Beach was never as busy as Maeve’s Court’s main beach strip. But since the discovery of Prince Indigo’s body on its shores months earlier, it had suffered a significant drop in popularity. The area was cleaned and cleared of any remnant of the crime scene, of course, and it was regularly patrolled, night and day. But something about sunbathing in the spot where a Selkie prince lay bloodied and dead was kind of a turn-off for most tourists. It still surged in business for the surfing and swimming competitions traditionally hosted there for its unusual waters, but the rest of the year, only a handful of people were ever found on its shore.

  When Cobalt suggested Sickle Beach, Niko was somewhat surprised. He’d had a much closer connection to Indigo than anyone else, once calling the prince his brother. But Selkies were somewhat different about death than Fae and other land-dwelling races, so who was Niko to think twice about it? And once they’d arrived and found the beach virtually empty, the arcing surf essentially theirs to claim, Niko was grateful for the suggestion.

  Cool water rushed over his body, drawing him in, deeper and deeper, with every crashing wave. The undertow coaxed Niko’s feet deeper along the sand banks, and the waves comforted his skin and muscles in an unexpected way. He hadn’t been swimming in the ocean in years, deciding he never had the time for it. Perhaps it was because he had no positive memories related to the beach to relive and no one to go with most of the time. So though Niko did love to swim, he had contained his water sport activities to the pool in the precinct or else public gyms. But as schools of fish squiggled by, lighting the water with silver glitter, Niko wondered why he had ever convinced himself he had no time for this.

  A spray of water assaulted his head and shoulders, still unsubmerged, and he looked over to find Uri holding back a mischievous smile. Niko shot him a playful glare before launching after him. With a chorus of laughter, Uri kicked away, deeper into the water, only to be caught by Preston and thrown back toward Niko. Niko swung his arm around and slammed a large curl of water into Uri’s face in revenge.

  Coral popped out of the water nearby, her black curls flowing freely on the water like it was part of the current. Starla floated in a starfish position on her back, soaking up the sun until Coral grabbed her around the middle and pulled her down with a giggle.

  A pair of arms wrapped around Niko’s middle and hefted him into the air, throwing him unceremoniously off to plunge back down in a monsoon of displaced water. He sank to the bottom in a flurry of bubbles, his trunks gently tapping the sandy bottom before he pushed himself back up to standing to wipe the water and hair from his eyes. He turned to find Preston laughing and trying to capture Coral for a similar trick, but Coral was much too quick for him, and she swerved around him, catching him instead. With surprising strength, she lifted him and tossed him as he had planned to toss her.

  “Never think you can catch a Selkie in water, Wolf,” she shot with a smirk.

  “Hot,” Starla said, puckering her lips.

  “What’s Cobalt doing?” Uri asked, shading his eyes with his hands and looking up to the rocky cliff that closed in part of the beach. Niko followed his gaze, squinting to see Cobalt standing at the edge of the cliff, his iridescent swimming shorts glistening in the bright sunlight.

  He seemed to notice Niko looking, though he was quite far. With a short salute of his hand, two fingers in the air, Cobalt stood at the very edge of the cliff and raised his arms to dive. Niko gasped, jerking forward to try and call to him, to stop him. The water was too shallow at the base of the cliff, the jump much too dangerous to make safely, but before he could speak, Cobalt was in the air.

  His body moved like a black ribbon on the wind, curving and waving in smooth, silky motions as he dove straight down to the water. Niko stood straight and frozen, his eyes following Cobalt’s lean body cut across the blue sky, a wisp on the wind. As his pointed fingers came upon the water, the water seemed to respond, rising up in a smooth and narrow surge to meet him midair. It swallowed him in one motion, Cobalt’s body sliding down into the ocean as though it was always part of it, never separate, never breaking the surface. And the moment he was submerged, his body arced upward, slipping seamlessly beneath the surface in a straight shot toward Niko.

  Breath caught in his throat, Niko didn’t breathe until Cobalt emerged from the water, with the barest sprinkling of droplets as he shook out his hair to face his lover. Niko’s heart pounded in his throat, his lips parted in surprise. Cobalt wrapped an arm around him, pulling their bodies close, skin to skin, swim trunks to swimsuit, and Niko found his erection matched against Cobalt’s. As Niko exhaled into the embrace, his eyes found the spot on Cobalt’s chest where his Soul Stone normally glowed. But there was no Stone there now, only the blank mark on the skin.

  “I believe we made a deal,” Cobalt whispered. “Dive for dive, I think I won, don’t you?” Breathless, Niko nodded. “Which means you must grant me one wish, no matter what it is, correct?”

  “No matter what,” Niko repeated, his eyes never leaving Cobalt’s. His lover’s face was open and clear as the ocean, but Niko still couldn’t put words to what he saw there. His heart beat hard, his chest heaving, and he felt full and still expanding outward.

  “I wish you to answer one question,” Cobalt said, and then he opened his hand between the two of them, his fingers uncurling to reveal his Soul Stone in his palm. It glowed green and blue and golden like Niko had never witnessed. He heard the Song of it in his heart, filling his chest and body and mind, and he wanted to sink into it forever. Cobalt pressed his forehead gently to Niko’s and whispered, “Will you bond with me?”

  Niko looked up sharply, caught between a mass of emotion he couldn’t begin to untangle. His voice vanished, disappearing into eternity, and his eyes were wide and searching Cobalt’s. But in the Selkie’s crystal irises, he saw only the one emotion Niko couldn’t put the name to. He couldn’t speak it, couldn’t even think it, it was so large, so weighty. For the span of an eternity, Niko was frozen, unable to move or answer or even breathe. And as he opened his mouth, trying to move his tongue and make his vocal chords work again, he found a strange set of words meeting his ears.

  “Ah, this is awkward.” Confused, Niko turned to find Coral looking apologetic near them. He was reassured to find he wasn’t the one who spoke, but the confusion did not lessen. “You can’t give him that. Not
yet, at least.”

  Cobalt frowned at his sister. “And why not?”

  With a vague gesture between them all, Coral said, “He made a promise, remember? To take me back to Azure’s Court to find answers. I’m guessing you plan on coming along, and if you are, you’re going to need to hold on to your Soul Stone for the journey.” She shifted, looking as though she wished the situation was literally anything but this.

  Niko sighed, nodding gently. “She’s right. I did promise.”

  With a heavy exhale, Cobalt nuzzled his nose to Niko’s, his eyes closed. He pressed the palm of his hand back to his own chest, replacing the Soul Stone. The mood deflated somewhat, but when Niko looked at his lover again, Cobalt did not seem disappointed. Instead, that same unnamed emotion filled his eyes.

  “Oh, this is so exciting!” Starla squealed, wrapping an arm around Coral. “I’ve never been to a bonding! Are they like in movies?”

  “Not really,” Uri said, tilting his head to the side with a shrug. “I mean, unless you want to spend a small fortune. Most bondings are pretty low-key affairs.”

  “Define ‘small,’” Preston said, considering.

  “You planning on footing the bill?” Starla asked.

  Preston shrugged. “I like bondings. It’s just an excuse for a massive party, isn’t it? And I’m all for that.”

  A flurry swirled in Niko, his chest heaving slightly, and his mind raced. He couldn’t look away from Cobalt, couldn’t remove himself from Cobalt’s embrace, but neither could he do anything. His brain felt assaulted on all sides by too many things, too many thoughts, too many emotions. Cobalt shook his head gently, pressing a finger to Niko’s lips.

  “Don’t answer until you’re ready,” he said, realizing, unlike everyone else, that Niko hadn’t actually said yes.

  And the permission was all he needed, it seemed. Limbs liberated from their bindings, Niko reached up and pulled Cobalt into a kiss, pressing their lips together in thanks and promise and relief and so many other things. He relaxed into the kiss, letting Cobalt coax his mouth open and grip him tighter. Niko didn’t know what was in store for him after this moment, but for the first time in his life, he let himself forget to worry about it. Whatever would come, would come, and he was certain, at least, that he and Cobalt could face it together.