by Ella Fields
That gave me pause, and then his smooth voice pulled my eyes up to his. “Do you remember the first time we met? When your mother introduced us?”
My entire body pulled taut at the mention of her, but his gentle fingers coaxed it to relax. “You were besotted with her. I could see it burning in your eyes.” I’d been a child when I’d first been introduced to the lord of the east.
Zad huffed.
“What? You were.”
“You see what you want to see.” He shook his head, his lips lifting slightly. “You were supposed to marry me.”
Frowning, I blinked. Then I sat up, my palm slapping against his pectorals as I glared down at him. “What?”
He smiled, and the effect of it, so rare and genuine, drew apart my lips. He cupped my cheek, his hand calloused and large—threatening and protective. “You were to vow to me before your father devised a way to try to put an end to the upheaval he’d stirred.”
I didn’t want to, but staring at his earnest expression, the openness of it, I found I believed him. “But you loathe me.”
“Loathe is a strong word, my queen.” Rough fingers traced my lips, his gaze too. “I resented that I’d have to marry a child, yes. But your mother was a friend, and she wanted you taken care of.”
That had me rearing back and removing myself from the bed. Memories, so many of them, of him always drifting on the fringes. The times he’d found me when I hadn’t thought I’d wanted to be found—of rescuing me when I’d never dare admit I needed it. Running a hand through my tangled hair, I snapped, “I need no such thing, Lord.”
I traipsed into the bathing room and took my time drawing a bath.
Zadicus as my husband.
Even though it was supposed to come to pass, the idea utterly baffled me as I dipped my toes inside the steaming water. My mother had been an idiot for a lot of reasons, one of the biggest for thinking I’d vow myself to a lord such as Zadicus.
Yet the more I thought about it, watching tendrils of steam curl toward the cracks in the walls, escaping into the frigid air outside, the more it made sense.
Of course, I was to vow to someone like Zad. The silent, mysterious, often cold, well-respected high royal with lands that had belonged to him since any of us could dare remember.
So why had I never given him the time of day after the first time we’d met? Flashes of memories thundered in, and for precious minutes, I let them.
I remembered one instance of being distracted at a ball Zad had attended. I’d been searching for Berron who’d promised to fetch three bottles of wine and meet me in the fields of the lower mountains, where we’d watch the clouds drift and seek pleasure until the sun woke. Zadicus, who’d given me unreadable looks any time I saw him, had faded from view within an hour that night, and he wasn’t seen again until my engagement party.
I blocked that memory of him, built a fortress of steel and ice around it, and threw away the key.
“You were married,” I said, knowing he was standing in the doorway, watching me place bubbles over my arms.
“Nova had…” He paused. “She was gone when your mother and father began serious discussion over the arrangement.”
“Arrangement,” I repeated, sour. “Eternally cursed to become a business transaction.”
Zad said nothing for a moment, then, “One could only dream of brokering such a deal.”
My lips twitched. “You rarely attended court.”
“I didn’t like your father’s antics.”
I smirked at that. “I wouldn’t have guessed you to be weak in the stomach.”
“His brand of cruelty didn’t mesh well with my own, and you can only imagine killing someone in thousands of different ways for so long before you finally snap.” Footsteps drew close, and then he was lifting a sponge to my back. Seated on the edge of the tub, naked, he lifted my hair and squeezed.
Water trickled down my back, and I hummed, my eyes shutting as my teeth caught my lip.
“Why did you come?” He was so much of a mystery to me.
I knew that was my own fault for being too wrapped up in the haunting that gathered and spread thorns inside me. It was also foolish not to know the enemy, but if I thought he had plans to kill me, he would not be in my bed. He’d already be dead for the mere thought.
He didn’t need to ask when or what I was referring to. “I have my reasons.”
I wanted to growl at his vague response. Instead, my hand pulled at his, and he fell into the water with a splash, his long legs draped over the side of the porcelain.
I laughed at his shocked expression, the unimpressed flatness to his lips, and the careful way he blinked at me. “Oh, relax. It’s not as if you were clothed.”
He righted himself in the water, and I moaned when I felt his foot brush the inside of my thigh.
His throat dipped. He tugged me close, slipping his hand between us in the water to massage my swelling center with careful strokes of his thumb. His head angled. “Why all the questions?”
He had cause to be curious. I’d never cared to ask much of him before because I never cared to know. I wasn’t sure if that was changing, or if I was just in need of more to block out what festered beneath my castle.
My eyelids drooped. “You’re a decent distraction, is all.”
Zad’s grin was nothing short of feral, and my breath caught. I averted my gaze, letting it drift over the bubbles marring his scar-flecked chest. “Then by all means.” His eyes filled with something wild. “Let me distract you… thoroughly.” Then I was on his lap, his arms banding around me as he sank inside my body once again.
I was almost asleep, for once curled over Zad instead of kicking him to the other side of the bed, when thoughts of the scars on his chest, of the few on my own body, and those who’d put them there came flooding back in. “I’ve not heard from Berron in almost two weeks.”
He was to send correspondence from the Sun Kingdom once a week, being that the land and its occupants were not exactly thrilled over his presence in their late ruler’s palace.
Zad’s body turned to granite beneath me, his rich voice deep with sleep. “You’re certain?”
I scoffed. “I would not say so if I wasn’t.”
“We’ll send another sparrow. If there’s still no news…” He paused. “Then I’m afraid we’ll need to go.”
I yawned, agreeing.
His chest slowly deflated, but it was a long while before he fell asleep and took me with him.
We waited four days until I couldn’t handle it any longer, and we found ourselves at the stables, preparing to leave for the three-day journey to the border.
Berron was one of the few I trusted implicitly. Hence why I’d asked him to take on such a huge responsibility in the first place.
Coward, I berated myself as we cleared a village and set up camp by a smattering of large rocks on the outskirts of the Winding Woods. I couldn’t stand the thought of traveling to the kingdom and submersing myself in every facet of what was once Raiden’s life without him.
With what remained of myself. The memories and the lies and the questions that didn’t need answering.
And it goes without saying that I’d likely have been assassinated before my first week as ruler was through.
Zadicus eyed me from across the fire as Garris gave the thirty-some soldiers we’d brought with us their orders to either retire or stand watch. “I’m sure he’s fine.”
I didn’t look at him. I watched the flames dance and crackle. “You don’t know that. No one does.”
His voice was too calm, annoyingly so. “We will know soon enough.”
“Not soon enough for my liking. We should’ve taken the furbanes.”
Zad snapped a twig in half, tossing the pieces into the fire. “Taking the aerial approach, speeding through the skies, would make it seem like an act of war.” Leaves and twigs crunched beneath his boots as he shifted forward to gather more fuel for the fire. “Besides, there aren’t enough furbanes for t
he soldiers, and splitting up could very well be suicide.”
He was right, but I wasn’t going to admit it when he already knew so. I’d known too, hence the horses tethered to the trees behind us, munching on the thawing grass, but I was impatient to find out what was happening.
The closer we neared the border, the more the weather morphed into autumn. Then it would be grass, the color of Raiden’s eyes, for as far as the eye could see, blanketing valleys and skirting creeks. And when we reached the Sun Kingdom, that spring warmth, that promise of fresh flowers and new life, would morph into that of insect-infested, blazing-desert territory.
The Sun Kingdom’s palace was an oasis in a land filled with dry, decaying things.
Even when I’d surrendered myself to their prince, the mere thought of stepping foot onto their cracked soil, should there be any, was something I’d wanted to avoid.
One of the soldiers, of whom I’d forgotten his name, bowed before the fire. “Your tent is ready, Majesty.”
I glanced up at him, then at the trees looming behind us like shadowed ghouls. “I won’t be sleeping.” I jerked my head at Zad. “Lord Allblood will take it instead.”
Creasing his brows, Zad looked from me to the soldier. “Thank you, Creig.”
Creig left us and took his post by the road where several other soldiers were keeping watch.
“He doesn’t look like a Creig,” I muttered.
Zad grunted. “The same could be said of your ruthlessness.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” He poured a cup of tea from the thermos he’d brought in his travel satchel, then handed it to me. I took it, the heat seeping into my frozen hands. “No one would look at you and expect the things you say or do.”
I sipped, relishing the burn. “You sure have a way with compliments.”
“If I thought you needed to hear compliments, I’d give them to you.” He capped the thermos after pouring himself a tea, then picked up his cup from the grass and brought it between his bent knees. “And you’re in no need of compliments right now, my queen.”
I studied the sly curve to his lips, and the bright gleam to his burnished eyes. “I find your lack of affection quite puzzling.” I didn’t care that there were soldiers amongst us who could likely hear our conversation from their tents. Let them.
Zad’s tea paused halfway to his lips, his head tilting. “I can be affectionate.”
I grinned. “Lies.”
His shoulders straightened, the all-too-familiar rigidness returning to his marble-hewn jaw. “If I’d have shown you affection, just like any other cretin who tried to weasel their way into your good graces, would I be sitting here now?”
“Would you be warming my bed, you mean?” I drank more tea, eyeing him over the rim of the cup. “No, I suppose not.” I stopped his roguish smile in its tracks and stabbed a finger at him. “But that doesn’t mean you’re affectionate, Lord. You most certainly are not.”
“For the right female,” he insisted, then lowered his voice as his cup rose to his lips. “I am.”
Heat unfurled in my stomach, and I scowled, wondering if he was referring to someone else. His late wife, perhaps.
Then I screamed, almost flailing into the fire as I felt the whoosh of something fall and land on the ground behind me and heard the ting of swords unsheathing.
Zadicus dived over me, taking the blithe to the ground.
I turned to find pointed ears, black teeth, bright green scales covering a too thin face and a dagger that looked to be stolen from one of our soldiers heading straight for my chest. I grabbed the hilt, threw my body down, and flipped the blithe over my back. The dagger came loose when the creature hit the dirt, and then it was imbedded in its chest, ichor oozing between my fingers and onto my palm.
I left it there so it would stay down and spun to kick another who’d appeared over top of it.
Stumbling back, I grabbed my teacup and slammed it into its face. It screeched, a sound akin to nails down a chalkboard but a thousand times louder, and scrambled toward me, four talons protruding from each of its webbed hands.
“Audra.” I heard Zad from my left and glanced over briefly to see my sword flying toward me. I unsheathed it right as a kick landed to my side.
I went down, aiming the sword up as I did, and the blithe, not the smartest of creatures, impaled itself to the hilt.
More blood sprayed, flooding over my hand and arm like a racing black river. Wincing, I shoved it away before jumping to my feet. I stomped on the body and tugged my sword free, straightening to find the last of them being cleaved in two or bleeding from their eyes, mouths, and noses, thanks to Zad.
He’d cut one down while using his magic on another, and transfixed, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It occurred to me that I’d never seen him fight before. I’d also never seen his magic in play.
Blood puddled beneath piles of blithe, evicted from their bodies with just a thought from the lord of the east.
I’d heard of it—tales of his ability—but I’d never actually seen it.
It was both horror and beauty. It was bright life one second and the darkest death the next.
Such ease in its killing blows, such harrowing power… I shivered, then blinked and pivoted, searching for more of the disgusting creatures.
But the rest were fleeing into the trees as a horrid, whining laughter echoed throughout the woods. They didn’t care that their kin were dead. They were riding the thrill, and they wanted a chase, knowing if they stayed, they would surely perish.
“Did no one scout the trees?” I asked, cringing as I swiped the purple and black gore from my cheek.
Garris came forward, applying pressure to a deep gash on his arm. “Yes, my queen. We passed their homes miles back.”
The blithe built homes in the trees—some of the most archaic creatures in the land besides the royals and the Fae. They were thought to be a kind of lesser faerie, stupid but deadly if they caught you unaware.
Once our neighbors, a part of our land, the Fae were now gone. Should any remain, they did so in hiding, for during my father’s reign, he ordered them all hunted and slaughtered on sight. The rage that’d leaked from him during those first weeks of the new law being implemented was enough to have me never asking why. Rarely ever had I asked him questions, knowing I’d either not like the answer, or he’d punish me for having the audacity.
Still, some of the lesser faeries, creatures unlike those that could resemble man and woman and royal, remained. For some reason I didn’t know and probably would not understand, they hadn’t been a priority during the faerie raids.
Unsettled, I peered around, studying the burning night, all the dead bodies on the ground. Three of our males, one female, and at least twenty blithes.
“We need to move,” Zad said, refilling his satchel with the few belongings strewn about on the grass near the fading embers of the fire.
The rest of the blithe had retreated, but that wasn’t exactly reassuring.
“I don’t think they’ll return,” said one of the soldiers as he helped Didra strap her knee.
My blood was humming, pressure bubbling in every vein and pushing at every muscle. We couldn’t afford to stop. We rode through, or we returned home.
“We don’t stop,” I declared. “We ride on with short reprieves until we reach the border. The wounded may return to the castle.” I paused when I saw a young female struggling to breathe as a male worked on repacking her insides. “Or head to the nearest village to see a healer.”
No one protested, not that I thought they would, aside from Zad or Garris. But they both nodded when I looked at them, and then everyone began tearing down the tents. Well, the little that was worth taking with us. Most of them were shredded or had collapsed with dead blithes and gore strewn across them.
I spied my scabbard by the fire and leaped over a dead soldier to grab it. I eyed him as I sheathed and strapped on my sword, realizing I had no idea who he was, or
anything about him.
A howl from the north broke the thrum of activity, and we moved faster.
Reaching Wen, I rubbed his glossy black coat as I inspected him for injuries.
A few minutes later, we disbanded, and as I gazed back at the clearing, the pressure in my blood pressed at my skin. “We need to set it on fire.”
Otherwise, we could be tracked more easily by use of personal belongings and things containing our scent.
Fire. A gift that Raiden had.
Zad’s blood magic, should he unleash it, might have been able to kill any creature with one thought, but it was harder to kill multiple people in one sweep. The cost was greater on one’s eternal soul and often resulted in him needing to feast on that of a pureblood in order to rebalance and recoup what he’d expended.
Such things were not permitted unless in consensual acts, lest he accidentally take too much. It was entirely too personal, required the highest amount of trust, and I’d heard it could render those with his type of magic a libidinous beast for hours until they regained control of themselves.
I’d never seen it myself, but I’d heard of it happening to Zadicus after a skirmish broke out by The Edges before I was born. He’d apparently wiped out a band of exiled who were holding a high royal hostage in order to regain entry into the Moon Kingdom.
Raiden’s fire-filled palm entered, uninvited and strangling, as I watched one of the soldiers march toward the campsite and crouch down to light a fire with his sword and flint.
I blinked slowly, encouraging the breeze to build and set the campsite ablaze.
We had no fire callers amongst us, and such skills were rare to find in the Moon Kingdom. Most magic holders carried abilities born from their home’s climate. There were plenty of wind changers, water wielders, and frost makers in Allureldin. But my bloodline was the only one to carry every elemental ability gifted to our land.
While we waited, my eyes swung to the dark canopy of the woods, and a shiver rolled down my spine. Once nothing of our short stay remained, I released the breeze, and the flames guttered swiftly.