by Ella Fields
His brother.
The confusion cleared, the urge to refute his claim fading and making way for many unwanted truths to stumble forward. One after another, they flashed through my mind. The dreams and the king’s resemblance to Zad. His stifling concern since he’d discovered I’d been sleepwalking. Kash and Landen and Dace...
My lord hadn’t just befriended the creatures of the forest.
He was one of them.
Choking silently on every memory, I struggled to picture him as anything but what he was—mine.
He’d lied to me. And for what? I couldn’t and did not have the strength to make sense of it. Closing my burning eyes, I swallowed and reminded myself that now was not the time to sink and fall into the cracks yawning open inside me.
Instead, I pulled back my shoulders and gazed around the circular room. It housed a bed made of feathers—some drifting to the floor around the branch-knotted frame—and worn books in towering piles on a desk and along the walls. Through a set of wooden doors with carvings of fruit and winged creatures etched upon them, I glimpsed what must have been a bathing chamber.
I could make out little else without standing, and although I desperately wanted to, my hands trembled, so I knew my feet would not hold me. Not until I’d steadied my breathing and shoved down the betrayal and fear that had twisted my chest and thoughts into something I could not undo.
“What do you want?” It seemed like the only logical thing to say, really, for he most definitely wanted something. Or else he wouldn’t have haunted my dreams, stole and controlled them, and brought me here. Wherever here was, in Beldine, in Faerie.
The king tutted, as if disappointed, and rose to his full height. I kept my eyes on his boots, unwilling to crane my neck back to take in all that he was. “Have you no manners?”
Scowling, I failed to keep myself from saying, “Apologies, I must have left them in the room you stole me from.”
Stepping back, he shot me a withering look, growing so still that my heart followed suit. And then... he laughed.
My heart boomed painfully, thudding slowly as the sound of his mirth cut through the air in a deep wave that did nothing to ease the anxiety growing within. “Apology accepted, queen. As for what I want,” he mused, crushing lone feathers beneath him as he paced in a slow circle, a snake coiling to strike. “It is not so much what I want as it is what I need, you see.”
“And what is that?” I asked, proud that I’d kept my tone bland.
“My brother, of course.”
I tugged at my skirts, covering my legs and feet to quell the tremors vibrating in my fingertips—to smother the urge to kill and run. But I did not remove my eyes from him. It was instinct, an ancient sense of knowing, to make sure my back was not turned in the presence of this king.
“Not going to ask why?” he drawled, spinning, his eyes two hot coals burning into the top of my head.
“I’m not sure it’s any of my concern,” I threw back, daring to meet his eyes. It was a mistake, as were my words, judging by the way they flashed. “And if there was one thing my mother taught me before she was drained for loving one of your kind, it was to mind my own damned business. Something I really wish you’d have done and left me alone.”
He was before me in an eye-widening instant, his teeth perfect like his brother’s, and his lips peeled back over them as he snarled, “Your mother was a moronic whore, and your father nothing but a child playing with stolen fire.” His nose wrinkled with distaste as his tongue dragged over one of his long canines. “And you are not worthy of a mating bond with one of our kind.” I blinked, and his features smoothed into a shocking calm, his eyes smiling again. “But alas, it has served me well that this is how the fates have played us.”
He stalked to a door I hadn’t seen, for it wasn’t visible until his hand touched it. It swung open, and I was tempted to ask him where he was going and what he planned to do with me.
But even feeling as though I knew nothing at all, I knew better.
Golden light, dancing not with dust motes but tiny glittering specks with translucent wings, crept downward through the spiraling ceiling. Silently, they dived and spun in repetitive loops.
I am your queen.
You may be a queen, but you are not mine.
Zadicus hadn’t been lying. Calling me his queen had never seemed more potent before those dragging hours spent upon the feather-dusted tiled ground.
He hadn’t called me his queen out of necessity or out of respect because he was one of my subjects. He wasn’t one of my subjects at all. He was a stray prince who’d, for whatever reason, chosen to leave his kingdom.
What of Nova, I wondered. Had she been aware she’d married a faerie prince and not a royal? I wasn’t sure they’d been married long enough for Zad to warrant spilling a truth he hadn’t yet dared to admit to me. And what we had went beyond marriage, beyond traditional confinements, and even beyond death.
Yet he’d lied to me even though he could not lie.
I counted back to all the times he’d stumped me with his carefully crafted words, admissions that danced over his drugging lips like drops of wine. Puddles of truth had slowly gathered at my feet. His friends. The reluctance to overshare personal facets of himself. That intoxicating power that rippled from him like a second skin. The way he’d stare at the moon as though it were a friend waving from a faraway ship. How he’d cleaved the earth to save me.
Had he been waiting for me to dig deeper? To pry? To want to know him as much as he knew me?
A slime-infested feeling invaded my stomach as I realized that yes, that was exactly what he’d been doing. Why I hadn’t, well... I didn’t want to acknowledge and wasn’t even sure if I could. Not here, not in the shadowed corner of this foreign rainforest-scented room.
He should have confided in me. This was not a game. His past was not something he should’ve hidden, and now we were at the mercy of a king whose moods seemed to dance from dark to light within two beats of an erratic heart.
He should have told me, goaded me into asking in that infuriating way of his. Instead, he’d chosen to deceive me.
Now, he was just another male who was not what he’d promised.
Who was not who I’d thought he was.
But he was coming, of that I was sure, only what would happen when he arrived was anyone’s guess besides the king’s. He had his plans, and I was expected to sit here until they played out.
The king might have stolen into my dreams, my home, and disrupted our lives, but he failed to do his research. Otherwise, he’d know I was no one’s pawn.
Pushing to my numb feet, I stepped over the drifting feathers and traipsed to the circular window on the other side of the bed. It was open, not a piece of glass in sight, and beyond it...
My breath froze in my throat as I beheld the glittering, crashing waterfall rushing out from below me. Trees, some fat and sagging, some towering into a night sky so dark and bright, and some curling into one another, skirted the rushing chaos of water in a semicircle of lush greenery.
Windows, much like the one I was staring out, were aglow in the trees. Lights flickered, shadows swayed, and laughter spilled out to dance across the water as though something wanted me to hear.
Something that whispered silent warmth across my wind-kissed cheeks.
Life. This place, this land, was teeming with life. As though the very creation of it stemmed from the soil and flowed into the unknowing world beyond.
I looked down at my hands, the wood of the curved windowsill warm beneath them, and then I noticed something else. The spires either side of me, twisting high into the sky to touch the fluffy white clouds, and the sentinels with their crossbows, who marched across the thatched and stone rooftops.
The rooftops of a castle that appeared to be made of stone and trees.
I stepped back, my heart fluttering through every limb as my magic stirred awake. It slithered beneath my skin in a way I’d never felt before. Crawling and hummin
g, it twitched my fingers and filled the rushing beat of my heart, soothing it.
It was so startling that I pressed my hand to my chest against the thud as Kash’s words came back to me.
Half breed.
Half Fae. Half mortal.
I’d known it as truth the moment he’d said it, but now, feeling where the source of that power of mine derived from, in the air, in my blood, unspooling from the light and shadows—it was forced upon me with sharp teeth, and it sank deep enough to reach my bones.
Everything we’d ever thought to be true was a lie.
I whirled for the space the king had touched, running my hands over the walls, frantic and suddenly claustrophobic in this place within the sky with its hidden doors and wide-open windows. To climb out of one was a death sentence I wouldn’t dare entertain, and I didn’t have to.
With a shudder, the wood shimmered, and the door with carved pictures appeared.
Apples and oranges and strawberries and grapes intermingled with leaves and what looked to be children with wings. But I had no time to study such things. I needed to find the king and get whatever plans he had over with—providing they not lead to my death—and get home.
It opened with a near-silent exhale of air, and I stood back, stunned, as I half-wondered if this could be a trick.
The hall was dark, but with each step I took, glass orbs in bronze sconces flickered to life. Peering behind me, I saw them wink out, and I felt that darkness at my back like a living creature.
Soil and something spiced floated upon the air, and I followed the scent, more lights coming awake to guide the way. I paused when a painting nestled inside an onyx frame inlaid with emerald jewels caught my eye.
A family, it seemed.
But the eyes of the young male, who I knew had to be Zad, had been scratched out. Above him, with a hand set upon each of his shoulders, stood his parents. Regal, with a swanlike neck, his mother gave a hint of a smile I’d recognize anywhere to whoever had created this portrait.
Her hair was a light brown woven with strands of gold. Her eyes blue, flat, and muddy like the sky before rainfall.
A cruel twist of the lips of which he’d bestowed upon his son, Zad’s father stared with a darkness that shouldn’t live in such vivid, golden eyes. His angular cheeks were harsh, the auburn fire of his hair falling around his shoulders in thick waves.
He was his son, and his son was him.
But where the other son was... I looked again at where Zad’s eyes had been scratched out and reached up as though I’d touch his boyish features, the hands he’d curled into a ball before him.
“I made some adjustments.” Ryle’s voice slithered out of the dark.
My breath caught, and I lowered my hand, but I didn’t dare hurry to turn to him. “I’ve not any siblings of my own,” I said. “None that live anyway, but I cannot say I’d make the same... adjustments.”
Ryle chuckled, the abrasive sound causing my shoulders to stiffen. “But they say you are truly wicked.” Orbs fired to life in more sconces as he slowly approached, his hands behind his back. “Rumors are, of course, usually nothing more than muddled musings of the deliverer, but in this case, I had hoped them to be true.”
“Oh, do not despair.” Smiling, I angled my head, taking a cautious step forward, and met those lupine eyes. “I merely prefer not to waste my time with”—I tossed a look back at the portrait—“such childish actions.”
His expression wavered between glee and anger, and I found I rather liked that I could do that. It suggested an inkling of power, and if I’d need something to get home in one piece, it was that. “What did he do?” I pressed, the words more of a purr. “Steal your favorite lover? Best you in battle? Win the affection of Mother dearest?”
“She was never my mother.” The cold, brash words cleared the dust and cobwebs from the ancient portrait behind me and told me all I needed to know.
Keeping my tone and expression neutral, I said, “A bastard, then.” I felt it, the shift beneath my feet as though his ire, the bruising I was no doubt giving his ego, had awoken what he was.
The High King of Faerie.
I’d heard for the rulers of Beldine, the High King and his three queens, being a monarch was similar to those in Rosinthe—our powers tied to the land. But I’d also heard it ran deeper here, and that violent shift, the thickening of the air around us, gave truth to that.
That bone-deep, instinctual fear made itself known once more, urging me to tread with far more caution and to quit poking the beast.
Fine.
“You’d be wise to mind your tongue,” he hissed.
My eyes sank into his; my spine taut even as my lungs squeezed. “A threat?” Again, I smiled. “Or a dare?” Inwardly, I winced. I had never been very good at doing what I was told.
Prepared for fight or flight, I waited for his wrath as it unfurled like a growing mid-winter night.
Then he laughed. It roared into the hall, echoing into others I’d not yet traversed—hoped I did not have to—rusted and sharp as though it’d been some time since he’d done so with no restraint.
“Winter queen,” he said with a sigh that spoke of surprised satisfaction. “I do believe you and I will have more fun than I first thought.”
I raised a brow as he stepped to the side. “I have to wonder if our definitions of fun might vary, King.”
Another bout of laughter, low and edged. “Why wonder when we can find out?” He sketched a half-hearted bow, gesturing to the looming darkness. “After you.”
The last thing I should’ve been doing was placing a creature such as himself at my back, but as we stared, our eyes locked, his amused and mine assessing, I knew I had little choice.
I walked ahead, and surprisingly, he fell into step beside me.
Within a few tense breaths, the shadowed hall revealed a set of ever-winding, circular stairs, and at the bottom down a short length of a pitch-black hall, we entered what appeared to be a throne room.
It was empty and mostly dark with only two sconces lit upon the far wall behind the throne. The sconces in here were larger, black with twisting, snake-like necks, and inside them were not orbs of flickering light but dancing flames.
The throne itself was a monstrosity of woven birch wood. In spindly, glittering pieces that reached for the tree-woven ceiling—which cleaved between what had to be the upper levels of the castle—the wood splintered into jagged, sharp spires in an arch behind a large velvet black cushion.
Little care had been taken for the armrests of thick whorls of birch, wrapped tight and punching straightforward. The legs curved outward, stabbing into the mosaic tile slabs like wooden blades and puncturing them.
Some would think it crafted with no thought for its king until they looked closer and saw the way it shined with ancient specks of onyx. And those legs, they hadn’t punctured the tile at all, but rather, the tile had been laid around the throne, as though it could never be moved.
“A thing of callous beauty, isn’t it?”
I struggled to find the words, but not because he was wrong. In fact, his description was quite possibly the best there was. But because of what was pinned to the wall behind the throne, trapped between the two burning sconces.
Wings. Giant black-feathered wings.
“Oh, yes, those,” the king said, taking the three steps up and behind the throne with a prowling grace that anyone who didn’t know better would call lazy.
As though he had all the time in the world, and I supposed he did, he rubbed his chin, staring up at the wall to admire what I was sure was his handiwork. “Has he said he misses them? I mean, it has been an awfully long time, but nevertheless, I’ve often wondered.”
Audra
It took one sharp lungful of air to gather exactly who this he was, and the shock was so heavy, so acidic in the way it rendered every limb useless, I couldn’t keep it from showing even if I tried.
“Ah,” Ryle said. “He did not tell you about them?”
>
I could feel his eyes searing into my profile, as my own refused to remove themselves from the brutality before me.
Those wings, their span so magnificent they took up almost half of the back wall, crumpled where they’d once joined and sank beneath Zad’s skin—they’d been torn from him with such vicious savagery. Hatred glared in the warped sinew and muscle that’d been cleaved from his flesh.
The two long scars upon his back, scars I’d traced with my eyes and fingers, flashed before me. He hadn’t reacted. He hadn’t flinched or given any sign that a part of him was gone.
Ryle began to circle me, a hunter eyeing his prey.
The bitter sting of tears infiltrated, and I swallowed the urge to release all that howled inside. Zadicus hadn’t just lied about where he was from. He’d always seemed more than us, more than anything I’d ever encountered. I’d stupidly perceived that splendor as part of our link, our eternal bond, the magnetic force that drew and caged me, instead of seeing him for what he truly was.
A different creature entirely.
“I’d have you lashed for lack of response,” the king said, tutting. “The utter disrespect. But I’d be both blind and cruel then, wouldn’t I?” he asked, not waiting for an answer that wasn’t coming. “For it seems you are very... shaken.”
I blinked then, my nails scoring into my palms. A faint wind curled tangled strands of my hair and cooled my flushed skin.
Ryle’s footsteps ceased, his eyes narrowed, studying. “Am I right to assume you had absolutely no idea that your mate is not who you thought he was?” I kept my eyes trained on his and lifted my chin. I might have been looking at Ryle, but it wasn’t him I was seeing. A wolfish grin blurred his features, but they were not his, and golden eyes, far brighter than that of the king before me, caught fire with his rich laughter.
My chest was too tight, the organ inside it pushing at its confines with every swelling beat.
Ryle’s breathy laughter broke the spell, and I closed my eyes before gazing back at the hideously beautiful throne. “Interesting. How very interesting indeed.”