by Slade, Jessa
“And you can’t see the future I believe in.” The impossible divide between them made her want to scream, but she was afraid the echo across that distance would sound too much like crying.
“I am leaving,” she told him, and she was relieved her voice didn’t crack. “Even by myself, I’ll keep looking for a portal out.”
“I could stop you.” His voice was as flat and stony as the dying plain around them.
She shook her head. “You can kill me. You can lock me up. But you can’t stop me.”
“You haven’t even found your way back to the verita luna, and that is the heart of what you are.” He lifted his chin to an infuriatingly arrogant angle. “What makes you think you can trick your way through a phae portal?”
The note of desperation kept her anger at his scorn in check. “I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. You told me when I first came through, it was my desire that triggered the passage.”
“And now you desire to leave here.”
The simmering emotion in his tone was as varied as the colors in the ammolite crystals of his cavern. Were there reasons beyond the alleged havoc she’d cause that he didn’t want her to leave?
Slowly, she loosened the silky ribbons that bound the catsuit closed around her breasts. She peeled down the black and gold stripes, sensing Raze’s rising agitation. She couldn’t see anything—although she peeked—since the leather pants were too snug to reveal if another part of him was rising.
The geasa on his hands stood out whitely around his clenched knuckles. “What are you—?”
“You were right. I’ve been afraid to change, afraid to dream, since it went so badly for me last time. But you reminded me, living in fear of what might be is always going to be worse than what is.”
Naked, she stalked up to him, stiff and still in his spiderling black. Careful to avoid his bare hands so she didn’t force him to say anything he didn’t want to, she gripped his leather-clad shoulders.
“You set me free, Arazael, Prince of Flutes.”
She rocked up onto the tips of her toes. Not that she had the height or strength to reach him had he resisted, but he must have unbent enough that her lips pressed to his. She tilted her head, a wordless appeal, and parted her lips in a soft, wet stroke.
With a low groan, he opened his mouth. His tongue swept hers, locking their breath together. She tasted the stone and the storm in him, two conflicting impulses that nevertheless made her tigress growl with pleasure, wanting more and more.
Wanting forever.
She longed for the touch of his hands on her heated skin. Her nipples pebbled against the smooth leather of his vest, and her core melted with longing. She resisted the urge to reach up to frame his face with her hands, to look deep into his eyes and demand he answer: how could he not want this more than anything too?
But his arms stayed stubbornly ironed to his sides. Apparently not even in fairy tales did one kiss solve all the world’s problems.
She felt the verita luna tingling in her bones, a delicious ache. But once she changed... Missing the Second Truth had brought her here, brought her to Raze. For a heartbeat, the change faltered, the deliciousness losing to the hurt, just as she would lose him....
Hovering on the edge of the verita luna, her senses had sharpened, so she scented the new arrival before sound or sight alerted her. The burnt odor was more bitter than the dusty smells around them, and Yelena whirled away from Raze, her pulse hammering.
The tigress had not wanted the change or the kiss to be interrupted.
EveStar watched them, her multi-jointed fingers writhing although the rest of her was utterly still. Her elf-maiden glamour had altered. Her pale hair stood out from her head in a twisted corona and her skin had darkened and roughened like bark.
“I told you the wereling would destroy you.” The phae’s voice creaked like a branch in the wind.
Raze took a step forward, putting his black-clad shoulder in front of Yelena. Guarding, as he always did, she knew. His instinctive response made her heart pound.
“EveStar,” he said gently. “I am not destroyed. I am right here.”
“But you don’t want to be.”
Elation surged through Yelena, amping her heartbeat higher. The phae must see something in Raze’s aura, something he wouldn’t admit to her or himself. Was there a chance for a future, not just for the phae and the werelings, but for the two of them?
“You are a prince of the phae,” EveStar said. She spread her hands, her long fingers flickering eerily. “There are so few of the old ones left, and the Steel Born have forgotten. You mustn’t leave. The phaedrealii needs you.”
The harsh stink of creosote drifted on the air, and Yelena stiffened. In this unadorned place, there were no established illusions to drain of power. Where was the frail EveStar pulling the energy?
Like the twinkle of the verita luna that appeared at the extremities, Yelena saw a glint between EveStar’s fingers. The phae wasn’t taking energy from her surroundings, but from herself.
“Get out of the way, Raze,” Yelena snapped. She’d had enough of the phaedrealii hurting him after all he’d sacrificed.
He turned toward her, and she saw an angry denial already forming on his lips. But the distraction was all she needed.
EveStar’s hands burst into flames, her long fingers dripping fire. Her twisted hair blazed up as she threw the fireball straight past Raze.
But Yelena was already in motion. The verita luna—held in abeyance long enough—caught her in midleap. The fireball caught her too, but only scorched along her tail when she shifted direction, cat-quick. She shoved Raze down, big enough in her tigress shape to stun him before she spun on her singed tail to bound the other direction, drawing EveStar’s fire.
The phae burned like a torch, but her scream was angry, not agonized. “You cannot have him, wereling! He belongs here.”
Yelena flexed her muscles to leap atop a boulder only to have it burst under her as EveStar’s napalm struck near her paws.
She went down hard, the breath knocked from her, but she forced herself to roll behind one of the largest fragments and cringed when that too exploded, leaving no protection between her and EveStar. How much of herself could the woody phae burn up?
“Elaeagnacia!” Raze’s shout pierced the crackle of flames.
From the startled, entranced expression on EveStar’s face through the smoldering bark, Yelena guessed he had spoken her true name. Damn it, she didn’t want to feel sorry for the murderous phae just because EveStar hadn’t heard her name in so long she’d obviously almost forgotten it.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Yelena jumped toward another boulder for shelter. Despite its sturdy granite appearance, she didn’t feel as protected as when she was behind Raze.
“Don’t do this.” Somehow, his gentle cajoling carried more clearly than his shout as he edged toward the other phae. “As much as the court needs me, it needs you too. Douse the fire, Elaeagnacia.”
The shimmering flames that had blackened EveStar’s pale hair ebbed but didn’t go out, the fire still licking sullenly along the twists. “The wereling must die first. Her aura touches everything around her.” The phae shuddered. “And she changes all she touches.”
“But the magic will always be here,” he soothed.
The fire in EveStar’s hair flickered lower yet.
Until a chilly laugh reignited the blaze and made Yelena’s fur stand on end. Colder yet, a voice asked, “And does your magic rise to her touch, Prince of Bones?”
A dust devil spun up from the strewn rubble, and the Queen stepped from the center. Despite her festively colorful robes, her previously luxuriant hair was pulled back in a grizzled, yellowed halo to reveal the bony shape of her skull, and her eye sockets were blackened out, emphasizing the sulfurous yellow g
lare of her serpent-slit irises.
Worrisome enough, to Yelena’s mind, until a phalanx of dark warriors emerged from the maelstrom behind the Queen. The menacing flex of their black wings sent a draught across the plain that fanned the flames on EveStar, who whimpered.
Oh, very bad, indeed.
The black trench coat flapped around Raze, making him look as fearsome as the Wild Hunt’s soldiers. He pushed his sleeves back and folded his arms over his chest, taking a wide, dominating stance. The geas scars gleamed silvery-white. “My Queen,” he said, though his tone said, “What the fuck?”
The Queen’s gaze flicked to Yelena. “They say a cat has how many lives?”
Lacking a voice box, Yelena settled for a hiss and flattened her ears.
Raze gave the Queen an unamused smile. “Nothing compared to ours, but I am sending the wereling on her way to live it.”
The Queen tapped at the black lines on her whitened lips with a long, sharpened fingernail. “I think I would rather take her life—all her lives, however many remain—as mine own.”
Raze stiffened. “I thought we agreed to end the disturbances of the sunlit realm in the phaedrealii.”
“Once more,” the Queen said with a long sigh. “For old times’ sake.” Her reptilian gaze narrowed on Yelena. “It will take me a while to consume all this one’s passions.”
“No.”
At Raze’s blunt word, the dark hunters surged forward as one, but the Queen held up her hand. “You want to seal the court, but many of the portal wards have been broken. How long will it take you to lock them again? In the meantime, how many phae will wander out and be lost to us?”
His jaw tightened. “I did it once. I can do it again.”
“And this time I will help you.” The Queen’s voice was as smooth as her glide as she approached him, one yellowed fingernail flicking at the ammolite studding the rolled-back cuff of his sleeve, though she avoided the bared geasa. “With the addition of my power, you can lock the portals forever. All I ask for in return—” she redirected the point of her nail “—is the wereling.”
Raze hesitated, and Yelena saw the longing in his eyes. Everything he’d wanted for so long, finally within reach...
She crouched to spring.
His gaze shifted to her, and she realized his longing wasn’t for the court at all.
He whirled and plunged his hands into EveStar’s guttering fire. The phae wailed and batted at him, but his bared forearms were buried in the blaze, red and yellow tongues licking at the leather.
“The portal, Yelena!” He pointed at the old lichen ring that had suddenly flushed a wild green. “It’s open. Go!”
She leapt.
But not at the ring. She aimed to knock him down again, to smother the flames burning away the geasa he’d carved into himself, one of which must have previously locked the gate now open beside them.
But he anticipated her move and with a strength she’d known was in him but hadn’t truly believed, he caught her and thrust her toward the unfurling portal. She yowled at the touch of his burning hands, and she scarcely caught his murmured words, “Yelena, I wish—”
Whatever he wished was lost in the rush of hunters’ wings fanning the inferno around him into a blistering roar.
Then Yelena was plunging out of his arms, through the phae gateway...
And into the white marble hallway where she’d first entered the phaedrealii.
No! She couldn’t leave him to face the Queen alone.
Tumbling sideways from the momentum of his throw, she broke through the circle of the portal and clanged her head on the massive metal door set in the middle of the gleaming white stone.
She staggered to her feet, shaking the ringing noise out of her ears. Luckily, tiger skulls were thicker than human.
Why had the passage brought her here, and not sent her back to Mad Dog Valley as Raze had intended? What had he wished for in that heartbeat before he threw her away from him?
She knew damn well what she wanted. She’d fallen into this dream in the hopes of finding herself again. Instead, she’d found him. And now she was going to find a way back to where he’d abandoned her on that empty plain. She wasn’t a wistful, motherless teen anymore, too confused by her loss to fight back, and what she’d almost lost at that warlord’s hands was nothing compared to what she stood to lose this time.
Dread slammed through her at what might remain. She’d accused Raze of being worse than the Afghan warlord, but neither of them had anything on the Queen of the phae.
Who could face down that menacing monster?
She blinked up at the black metal looming over her.
Cold iron, she realized. This was the court dungeon. She hadn’t made the connection when she’d intruded on Raze working his magic here, since iron didn’t mean much to werelings. But now she studied the huge cell door.
The construction would’ve been imposing enough for human smiths and must have slain any number of phae in its presence. The solid expanse of iron was cross-strapped for extra fortification and riveted with bolts the size of her human fist, and the padlock was almost as large as her tigress head. Though utterly imposing, the door was still finely finished. Smaller rivets were decorative only, and filigree—the etching almost invisible against the black of the iron—looped around the small rivets in a delicate floral pattern, like an apology for the punitive darkness.
A doorway fit for a King. An imprisoned King.
Yelena prowled the width of the door, whiskers bristling. She’d made so many mistakes while wanting only to make changes for the better. Could she risk making another failure?
If the alternative was leaving Raze to die while she made her escape...
The Queen might be a monster, but she was a beast. A big one.
She summoned up the power of her tigress—nothing magical, just fury and might and the desire to return to the one she’d chosen for her own. With a single blow of her huge paw, she twisted the lock on its thick eyelet. The iron was fatal to phae, but it was old. A second swipe tore the hasp loose with a grating scream. A third strike broke the lock in two.
With a more tentative paw, she latched her claws around the edge of the iron and pulled.
It was heavy and the hinges creaked a protest, her last warning.
She stood back and waited for the King of the phae to emerge.
Chapter Eleven
“Ruiner, did you think I would let this go?” The Queen stalked a tight, agitated circle around Raze.
Though his spine prickled in warning when she disappeared behind him, he could not bother lifting his head to watch her. The frigid scorch of iron manacles around his neck and limbs—bared by the leather vest since they’d stripped him of the spiderling coat—made the effort seem pointless. He’d beaten down several of her dark hunters, but that had just made the rest more eager to thrash him. Lashing out at her with the iron chain that bound him probably hadn’t been wise either, but he didn’t think submission was going to appease her anyway.
No, she wanted blood.
Not that he had much left.
“I should have known you’d betray me,” she hissed. “After all, you betrayed your own brother. He heard the song from your flute calling the warriors to the last battle, and instead you led the phae against him.”
That did force his head up. “Everything I’ve ever done has been for the phae.”
“I wanted the wereling for myself!”
Despite his precarious situation, he sympathized with the Queen. He’d wanted the wereling too. Which is exactly why he’d sent her away, and he’d regret that choice to his last breath.
Which might come any moment now.
The Queen’s entourage lurked around the edges of the throne room, drawn by the lure of her gathering power but reluctant t
o catch her serpent-yellow eye since they knew as well as Raze that her wrath could lash in any direction. Their restive, uneasy magic had no focus—the Queen being too incensed to bring the energy to any sort of convergence—so the throne room took no particular form. A drifting fog obscured the middle distances and left shimmering droplets on the curves of the Steel Throne, the only constant in the phaedrealii.
The Queen emerged on his other side, her sulfurous eyes narrowed venomously. “EveStar is gone.”
He stiffened, not caring that the iron shifted to burn more flesh. “She left the phaedrealii?” Like him, EveStar was one of the old ones. If she had made her way to the sunlit realm, the trouble could be starting even now.
The Queen sneered. “Not left. Dead.”
Shock went through him, crueler than iron. “She was no threat to you.”
“I did nothing. The dryad burned through all her magic. Left not even enough cinders to roast the remaining geasa from your skin.” She glowered at him as if that was his fault.
So he truly was the last. His head felt too heavy to hold upright. Perhaps it was just as well he too would finally come to an end. As Yelena had pointed out, the Iron Age was long gone. The Steel Born would forge themselves into something he’d never dreamed of. And their violent fire would be the light of the sunlit realm.
Despite his weariness, he met the Queen’s gaze. “You loved once.”
If he had struck out at her with his iron chain she would have not have recoiled faster. “I will pierce your tongue with iron for saying that aloud.”
He shook his head. “When the Lord of the Hunt came Undone, he claimed you loved him. He asked only that you admit it.”
Her lips drew back in a rictus of a smile. “His madness was not mine.”
“I think he knew it was. And in losing him, you lost a part of yourself.”
She lunged at him, her fingers curled like claws. But she stopped short of touching him, held at a quivering distance as if by some magic beyond her own.
“That love you lost,” he murmured, “give it to the phae. Give them what we couldn’t have for ourselves. Guide them to a place where that dream is finally real.”