by Ella Fields
Too dizzy, I struggled to make out who stood next to him, murmuring rough, urgent words.
His grip loosened, and then I was released, stumbling back and bumping into someone who growled and moved away. I met the stone wall, too hard, and winced. Panting and blinking into the dazzling blur of the room, faces eventually grew features, and colors separated themselves enough to form individuals and objects.
Ryle was entering a doorway near the back of the room. It was small, as though only used for dragging people in and out of.
Which is what happened next. Although he was not dragged.
Ryle was thrown across the room on a blast of invisible fury, dirt and dust spraying as he hit the opposite wall and slid down to his ass.
Zadicus.
Gold chains, looking as though they’d been snapped, trailed behind him upon the tile.
His chest was heaving, his long hair freed and hanging in sweaty strands around his face. Lips peeled back over his teeth, but he didn’t advance on the king, who was shaking his head and rising to a sitting position against the wall.
Zad tore his fevered eyes from his brother and swung them to me.
Zadicus
“Never has there been a fury like that of a mated male,” Ryle muttered, brushing his sleeves as he stood.
Fuck him. I’d deal with his pompous bullshit later.
Everyone moved aside, the clang of the chains they’d attempted to keep me contained with the only sound as I waded through familiar faces. I ignored them all, my only desire, my desperate wish, awaiting me behind the king’s seat at the head of the table.
The sun was soon due to rise, and I was willing to wager he’d messed with her for hours, and that it was just dawning on her now.
As soon as I’d sensed it, that tinge in the air, the metallic essence of my lifeblood, I’d stiffened in my cell. And when I’d felt her panic only grow as if it were my own, higher and higher until I feared her heart might give out, I’d snapped. No longer would I be a pawn waiting to be moved. No longer would I play nice in hopes of getting us out of here safely.
He’d pushed me too far, and I’d killed two soldiers I hadn’t recognized before tearing out of my cage, the chains snapping from the wall in my wake.
The gold embossed iron and the thorn barred door to my cell didn’t stand a chance. I was too old and too tied to this land to be held captive by it.
“You’re bleeding.” Her first words to me. They were breathy but firm even though her chest was rising far too fast, her sapphire eyes murky with exhaustion.
Reaching her, I clasped her heated cheeks, my forehead meeting hers as I drew what felt like my first real breath in days. “My queen.”
Her hands gripped mine, but though I was sure she’d intended to, she did not pull them away. I wouldn’t have let her if she’d tried. Her eyes closed, her breasts lowering as she exhaled a harsh breath over my lips.
For two days and one night, I’d been locked in the bowels of my family’s fortress. Two whole days of hearing all the ways this court had changed and all the ways it had not. Two days of sensing her spiked fear and heightened emotions, knowing she was here, alive and needing me, but biding my time.
Kash and Dace were still in their cells, and at my urging, Landen had stayed behind to let Audra’s court know what was happening and what they should do. Nothing. A feat I knew so many of them would find difficult. I couldn’t blame them, but they knew if they disobeyed Landen’s orders and came here, it would not result in anything good.
Audra swallowed, the sound thick in my ears, in the silence of all the prying eyes. Words she could not say, would not dare to, shaped from her trembling lips. “Take me home.”
I tilted up her chin and pressed my lips to hers, long and hard. That rock in my chest began to beat again, sluggish and slow and desperate for more.
She pulled back, her eyes opening, and in them, I saw the magnitude of all I’d kept from her.
There was no time to explain or apologize now.
“Love,” Ryle drawled, clapping slowly. “Such delicious intensity. Why, I wish we could bottle it up and drink it, bask in its glow, for then perhaps we would not be so inclined to make such brash, foolish decisions.”
With a reluctance that ate at my bones, I released my hold on Audra’s jaw and cheeks, promising with my eyes to explain.
She lowered her lashes, and I gritted my teeth, turning to face my half brother. “You think to chain me like some mutt while you exert yourself and my queen with your immature games?” I took a step forward, purposely blocking Audra from the king, a move which he noticed. “You know better.” I threw up my arms, the chains dangling. “You probably even expected as much.”
“You never do disappoint with your predictability.” Strolling toward the dais, to where I refused to let my eyes wander, he rubbed his head, granules of dust bouncing from his hair. “Almost six hundred years, and here you are, seemingly unchanged.”
“Seemingly,” I said through my teeth.
He nodded, lips pursed in mock thought as he stopped before his throne. He fell back into it, a granite crown encrusted with onyx berries and thorns appearing on his head. “Tell me, tell all of us,” he said, gesturing to the still crowd, “how much you miss your home, what you miss the most, and I promise not to dance with your winter queen again.”
The air grew drunk on anticipation. If I answered him, he won. If I did not, he won again. “You know the answer to that.”
A short nod and the crown tilted back with his head as he gazed up at the wall behind his throne. “Again, predictable.”
He snapped his fingers, and the iron chains fell away. Red, angry welts foamed around my wrists. I paid little mind to the pain for it would fade. The pain of what I’d given up, however, of what I’d exchanged for something I knew I possibly shouldn’t have, never did.
Muscles in my back twitched, Audra’s eyes probing the area as if she knew. She likely did. She likely knew an assortment of things I wished I’d been able to tell her myself.
But I was a damned coward, and there never seemed to be a good time to cough up a confession as huge as this.
“Rightful heir.” The words were whispered amongst the gatherers surrounding us.
And it did not go unnoticed by the king, whose jaw flexed as he stood. “Come then,” he said to me, standing and rounding his throne. “Come and say hello to them. I’m sure they’ve missed you, too.”
My feet itched with the urge to move, but I couldn’t. To do so would reveal another way in which he could control me, and that ache, that sense of missing a limb, a part of my very soul, flared and burned. I wasn’t sure I’d survive nearing them, let alone getting close enough to touch them.
Stakes, onyx with rubies embedded in the hilts, held them to the wall, and I flinched. Searing agony crawled over me as though they were still attached, when Ryle pulled one of them down, ripping through muscle and bone and tissue and cleaving through feathers.
They floated to the ground, one resting over his boot, and he finally stopped.
My teeth were dust, I was sure. A steady hand on my back helped soften my breathing.
No longer was Audra behind me, but beside me, her touch an iced breeze to fight the inferno engulfing me.
Ryle noticed, of course, his hand falling to his side as he came forward and descended the dais. “Sweet,” he said in a tone that conveyed he thought it was anything but. “He deceives you, mates with you, hides from you, and has you dragged into his treacherous past, yet you still dare to comfort him.”
Audra wisely said nothing, and she did not remove her hand.
“Get rid of her,” Ryle clipped, his darkening eyes on mine as the guards left the walls.
I snarled at them, keeping Audra at my back.
They hesitated, but their compulsion, their built-in inability to disobey an order, had them reaching for her.
I shoved one away. My magic wrapped around the mind of the other, ready to squeeze, but Audra st
epped forward, and my jaw slackened as she walked to the doors.
The guards watched, then raced to keep up.
My eyes swung back from the dark that’d swallowed her when the king called, “Have her taken to my rooms.” His gaze, more black now than gold, sank into mine. “Where she’s less likely to misbehave, at least, with our rightful heir.”
Before I could lunge for him, he was gone, and I made for the doors only to have them close in my face. Growling, I tore at them, splintering the wood. He couldn’t have her. I’d given him everything, but he would not get her. She wouldn’t let him, I knew, but that would not stop him.
A crawling hush traveled over my skin, raising fine hairs, and I paused.
Turning back to my audience, I found them all bent at the knees, and when they straightened, one by one, they came forward.
“Prince.” Dunn, a wolf who’d been in my family’s service since I was growing into my power, was first to greet me. “We know this comes at a great cost, but my pack and I thank you for returning.”
Scowling, I bunched my hands as he bowed and moved back, and more warriors and courtiers came forward to offer their gratitude and well wishes.
Immobile and hardly breathing, I stood there. I wouldn’t disrespect them and all they’d likely endured while visiting the Onyx Court by tearing out of here like I so desperately wished to.
Finally, the queen of the Silver Court floated over, her hands bound together and hidden beneath shimmering silver sleeves. Her bright eyes were dim with what looked like defeat.
“Este,” I said, my brows lowering.
“I feared because of your mate, you might not return.”
“Why would I return?” I almost laughed. Surely, they knew of the bargain my brother and I had made all those years ago. “We had a deal.”
She nodded as if understanding. Her voice was soft but thick. “Beldine is starving. The rain doesn’t visit as frequently as it should, and the springs often grow cold. Many creatures in the forests grow ill and are losing their young, and so are we.” Taking my hands, I felt hers tremble and saw her lips do the same. “It needs you, and the power only you, as its rightful ruler, possess.”
“No,” I said, now understanding the source of the sorrow in her eyes.
“We must feed it.”
I swallowed, wrenching away from the queen, and ran a hand through my hair as all eyes pressed heavily on me. The expectation, the hope, and the responsibility... I wanted none of it.
“I won’t,” I said, gruff but firm. “Apologies, but fuck no.”
“Surely, your half breed will understand, just as our loved ones must understand.”
Audra would never understand, and I would never dare expect her to. Darkness, even I didn’t fucking understand. Bastard or not, Ryle was my father’s son, and it showed. So the idea of him not being able to feed our land and our people with his presence was something that had never so much as crossed my mind.
A warrior left the room via the entrance I’d stormed through, and Este backed up, her hand fluttering to her mouth. Her near-white hair fell to conceal her expression as she moved back toward the members of her court who were in attendance.
“What does she speak of?” asked a voice I’d have loved to have never heard again.
Adran. I sighed. Of course, the pest would live. “None of your concern.” Marching toward the table, I grabbed a leg of chicken and tore the flesh from bone as people dispersed to their rooms.
“I’m sensing a sensitive subject, yes?” Adran poured a goblet of wine from a glass carafe. He passed it to me, but I refused. He lifted a shoulder, then drained it. Idiot.
“They were discussing why the king has stolen our prince’s half breed queen,” said Mortaine, queen of the Gold Court. She and her few court members were the only ones still seated at the table.
I glared, but she only smiled, sipping her berried wine—the shade similar to that of her eyes and shoulder-length curls. “Long ago, he made a deal with his bastard brother that forbade Ryle from ever troubling our dear prince again. So our High King, desperate as he must be to keep what he’s taken, went and stole something else.” Thin, plum-colored brows rose. “Or should I say someone? The only thing that would ever have our stray prince here skipping back across the Whispering Sea.”
“Finished?” I said through my teeth.
Adran shifted.
“Well,” Mortaine purred, pushing her breasts into the table as she leaned forward. “Being that it has been an awfully long time...”
Withholding a slew of curses, I wiped my bloodied hands down my soiled shirt and growled, “Enough,” then waded away. I had to get Audra from the king’s rooms or find the asshole and make some other bargain so he’d leave her alone.
“Interesting,” Adran said in a dry tone. “But I’m dying to know, what exactly does his majesty need his brother for?”
“To feed the land,” someone said as though he were daft.
“Gathered that already.” Sarcasm dripped from Adran’s voice. “Now, would you be so kind as to inform me how one does such a thing?” I was certain he already knew. The insufferable rodent merely wanted it confirmed.
“The act,” Mortaine said, all venomous silk.
“The act?” Adran repeated.
I walked through the mercifully reopened doors as Mortaine explained, and Adran’s laughter chased me up the stairs.
Audra
That speckled, glittering black touched slender fingers over everything. The more time I spent in this castle of doom, the more I came to see onyx interwoven among the moss, tiled floors, and the walls.
Though no place was as heavily occupied by the stone as the king’s quarters.
I stood in the antechamber for long moments, studying the way the rock crawled between, or perhaps behind, the tree-woven walls. A dark green chest of drawers took up the space to my right, and atop them laid a collection of skulls that varied in size and shape too much to be anything other than real.
Human skulls, I mused, daring to approach and brush a finger over the brow of what had to have once been a woman.
Beneath my slippers, a burgundy rug inlaid with sharp black diamond patterns rolled into the adjacent room. His bedchamber. To my left, a door leading to the bathing chamber. It was cracked open, revealing a tub the size of a small pool inside.
A memory washed in, violent in the way it seized my heart and held it within its unforgiving fist. Of my lord in my own bathing pool, and myself on his lap with his adoring, hungry eyes staring up at me.
He was here, and besides looking as though he’d walked through a rose bush and was cut by each thorn, he was okay. I found solace in that—a relief heavy enough to loosen some of the weight in my chest, but only some.
He was both my ice and the burn.
“I thought you might like those.”
I withheld the urge to startle, still trying to grow accustomed to his vanishing and appearing act. Though I doubted this king was something one could ever grow accustomed to.
Half a millennia.
They’d been under his rule for hundreds of years. The implications of that had hit me like a boulder to the head in the throne room, rendering me dizzy once more—most of all, what it meant for Zad.
For how old my lord truly was.
“I did not pick you to be the type for trophies,” I said, keeping my tone clear of emotion. My finger paused on a skull missing the back of its head.
“He was bludgeoned to death,” the king supplied with cool grace. “And I’d thought, given the rumors of your cold heart, that you’d have”—he paused—“what did you call them?”
“Trophies. Souvenirs, if you will,” I said, taking a step forward, loathing that he was yet again at my back.
“Ah, yes. I’d thought you’d have many souvenirs of your own.”
“Souvenirs are nothing but portable bruises.” I reached the doors to his bedchamber, and they opened silently.
Unable to help it, I fli
nched when my hair was gathered from my back and wrapped in his hand. Warm breath fogged the skin of my bare shoulder, and he murmured, “Bruises. Bruises on what?”
“Your soul.” I continued forward, and he mercifully released my hair.
A half-tester bed, the wood stained a rich brown, stood in the center of the room against the far wall. Two glassless windows sat on either side, a soft, springtime breeze flowing through.
The scent of jasmine, damp, and the sound of rushing water was everywhere, but not enough to smother Ryle’s suffocating presence. Like oil, it dragged slick and slow over my skin. I longed to wash it off, but I knew trying to do so would take considerable effort.
The room was huge, circular, and I suspected if viewing from outside, it would be the highest point of the castle—if that was indeed what this place was.
I crossed to a long desk planted before one of the diamond-shaped windows, inkpots and parchment lined in tidy succession. “Has this always been your room?”
“Full of questions this eve.” Noticing the fading stars outside, the pink and gold hues that had begun to erase the night, he corrected, “Morning,” then chuckled to himself. “My, my. Time indeed flies when you’re having fun.” Hands tucked within his pant pockets, he rounded the bed, the emerald and black linens untucking themselves as he stripped.
“How long was I dancing for?” I was certain I already knew the answer, but the gravity of it was needed. A reminder, as unnecessary as it was, of where I was and who I dared to duel with.
“Not long. Five, maybe six hours.” Shirtless, the skin of his chest lighter than his brother’s, and his arms and torso far leaner, he shoved at his pants.
I leaned back against the desk. “Why not magic them away?”
“I like to watch you squirm,” he said so plainly, eyes riddled with that cruel mirth twitching his lips.
They were thin, I realized, and a faint dimple appeared in his cheek.
“You sleep clothed?” he asked, running his gaze over my body in such a way that had me glaring when his eyes met mine again. He shrugged, grinning as he slumped over the bed.