by Ella Fields
“At what cost?” I gritted.
Ryle’s grin turned serpentine, and at that moment, I knew. At that moment, I regretted never taking all the chances I’d had to end him.
But if I had, I would not be here. If I had, I might’ve grown more like my father—miserable and unfeeling. Feared and adored but unloved.
I would not know her, and not to know my queen was a thought I could not bear.
“A piece of your soul is returned in exchange for another piece of your soul,” he said. “It’s all so very simple, really.” My teeth ground as my heart raced, roaring so loud in my ears, I could scarcely hear him talk. “Audra has agreed to extend her stay in Beldine. A year and a day in exchange for the safe return of your wings.”
My eyes sought hers, my heart sought an explanation, and my body swelled with the urge to run to her to both shake and kiss her senseless.
That was the issue with loving someone. By making yourself vulnerable and allowing them to see who you truly were, they’d not only use it against you, but they’d use it to try to help you.
But if Audra thought I needed my fucking wings more than I needed her, then did she really know me at all?
And whose fault was that? My own. I only had to look inwardly to find who was responsible for this situation. I’d been raised similarly to her. To conceal and to dodge, to only fight when necessary, and to value the things that mattered least.
For years, I’d fought the link to her, and when I’d given in, it’d taken over a year to have her lay her soul down for me to inspect, to let me in. And when she had, I’d been so consumed by her, so petrified she’d shut me out over the slightest slight, that I’d failed to let her know all of me in kind.
I’d failed us.
And what Ryle would do with her during such a short yet insurmountable length of time... I did not plan to find out. “No.” The word was a bark that jumped off the walls, startling everyone.
“No?” Ryle said, his eyes dancing as he took a torturous step closer to Audra, up onto the dais. “I would not think I need to inform you of an agreement forged in blood, brother, but nevertheless”—he waved a flippant hand, jewels flinging light upon the shadowed walls—“a blood bond can only be undone in death or when the promise has been fulfilled. So it is with little regret I must inform that until a year and a day has passed, you will have no say in what happens to your queen.”
My stomach lurched and sank, dragging my heart with it as I glanced at Audra’s wrist, where he had extracted blood. A white bandage was wrapped around it, dotted with droplets of blood.
My blood.
She’d let someone else take that which she’d only ever offered me. She’d given someone else something that was never again supposed to belong to anyone else.
I stepped back, tripping on nothing but anger as my brother rubbed his cheek. Purposely done to give view to his own wrist, which bore no bandage but ribbons of dried blood.
She’d drunk some of his blood, sealing a bargain I could not break.
For me. She’d done it for me even though I did not and would never want her to.
“You can’t do this,” I snarled.
Ryle slumped onto his throne, kicking a leg over its armrest, and pointed at the crookedly perched crown upon his head. “I can, and I have, and I am so fucking pleased I can hardly breathe.”
Gazing at my queen, he ran a finger over her bare arm. I snarled again, tensing, shaking with the urge to rip his hand from her and his body. “You see, I’ve come to realize that I rather like her company, frosty as she might be.” As he looked back at me, his voice carried his desire. “I feel she’s a good fit for me.”
“Audra,” I said again, rasped, choked, uncaring who heard.
This time, she looked at me, and in her eyes was nothing but that ice-cold vehemence.
She’d made her choice, and she would never apologize for such a betrayal. As I walked closer, my every breath burned as I scented her, scented her stoic acceptance, but underneath, unable to be veiled no matter how she tried, not from me, were the undertones of fear. “Is this vengeance?”
“Zad,” Dace warned.
I ignored him, my peripheral catching him being escorted to one of the two overlapping banquet tables.
Audra did not move, did not seem to breathe. She just held my gaze, no emotion in those blue eyes, then shifted them ahead to our audience.
“Fear not, brother,” Ryle said with forced cheer. “You’ve got your wings, and in a year and a day, unless she chooses to stay, you will also have your lovely half-mortal queen back.” He chuckled, appearing good-natured, though he was most assuredly not. “Although I cannot promise she will be the same queen once I am done with her.”
Before I could lunge, he clicked his fingers, and I was cuffed from behind. I’d been too shocked, too lost to the flames of betrayal to realize the guards behind me had been prepared and waiting. Growling and gnashing my teeth, I shoved and thrust my power at them to no avail.
The scent of that power-sucking rock—Vadella—infiltrated, burning around my wrists. How like Ryle to seek something that could slowly kill us if kept too close. Like the animal I probably appeared to be, I was dragged in chains, cussing and twisting and head-butting and kicking, to the floor below the dais.
There, I was held down as more rock inlaid cuffs were strapped to my ankles, then I was spun to my stomach, my chin smashing into the floor. Blood filled my mouth, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from my snapping teeth or the warriors, and I didn’t give a shit.
As I looked across the tiled floor, every muscle strained with the urge to fight, to make every spectator to this torture bleed out. But I could do nothing.
“Alahn,” Ryle called.
I flinched, not realizing the ancient healer was still alive and in Ryle’s service until now.
“Do affix these ghastly things to my dear brother’s back, and make it snappy. I find myself tiring of the sight of them.”
“Yes, my king,” came the reed-thin voice of the male faerie who used to tend to every wound of mine growing up and who tried with every strength and spell he possessed to save my dying mother while I’d stood paralyzed behind him.
His hand pressed gentle yet firm upon my lower back, soothing even as I wished he’d fuck right off. “Easy,” he cautioned. “This will hurt, you know that, but it will hurt a lot less if you don’t fight it.”
A wave of cooling air swallowed me, rendering me wholly still. It felt as if I were floating rather than trussed up on the floor beneath my mate’s and brother’s traitorous feet.
I didn’t have it in me to feel embarrassed. No. I was far too angry for that.
I was rage personified, whether the healer held me within his spell or not, and once I was unleashed, I would kill my bastard brother of whom I never should’ve held an iota of love for. I would snatch him around the throat and tear his ears from his head with my teeth, I would—
A cleaving of bone stole my breath and my every murderous thought, seizing my lungs and mind in a vise intent on wringing nothing but unadulterated agony from every pore.
Perhaps I roared. Perhaps I moaned like a dying beast.
I didn’t know. I passed out. Then I came back to, but the pain was so complete that I sank in and out of consciousness over and over.
And when I finally woke from it all, I was no longer in the throne room.
Snow fell outside the familiar stained glass window. Sunlight was snuffed behind the fog, but it was daytime, perhaps late afternoon. It was an illusion, surely, and I had no knowledge of where Ryle had stolen the power to create it, but I was done.
We were leaving.
A silent curse dragged from my throat, my teeth meeting and clenching, as I rolled and my wings twitched, feeling returning and rivers of pain accompanying.
Fuck.
I’d already left.
I was in Audra’s bed, her scent wrapped around me like a fragrant blanket I longed to smother my face in while t
earing it to shreds.
I sat up, every breath gritted and whistling through my teeth, and stared over at the crackling fire. I swallowed, my throat raw as though I’d been screaming for hours on end.
The bone and muscle in my back howled, twitching without prompt, adjusting to old muscle what had to be only hours later—even as I tried to gather much-needed breath.
The doors opened.
“My lord,” Mintale said, bowing deep with a bowl of something within his hands and every line of his face creased with concern. Bandages were draped over Truin’s arm, who stood behind him, peeking around his shoulder with the same sentiment in her brown eyes.
Kash entered behind them, prompting them to hurry into the room. He stalked to the armchair by the fireplace, where Dace slept, still in the putrid clothes he’d worn in the dungeon.
“What happened,” I said, my voice so hoarse it was barely detectable. I tried again, wincing as I cleared my sore throat. “What did she do?”
“You already know what she agreed to do,” Kash said, toneless, as he stripped back the bloodied bedding. He stopped when he realized I wasn’t going to be able to stand. Not yet. “The king, however, left us little choice. We had to sweep you back here before you regained consciousness.”
“And you did,” I said the obvious. “Knowing I would want to kill you for it.”
Kash stared down at the pearl button in his hand, then tucked it back inside his pocket. Audra’s mother, his former lover, had given the button to Kash so he could sweep in and out of their meeting places within the castle grounds. I withheld a slew of violent curses.
We could have used it days ago.
“You needed to heal the land,” he said without a hint of remorse, knowing exactly what I was thinking. “Besides, she’s been...” He stopped, eyes downcast. “It’s been so long, and it’s so worn. I wasn’t sure it would work.”
I still glared at him.
When he looked up, his eyes flashed. “Kill me later and thank me now.”
I bit back a groan, my tense muscles fueling the burn in my back. “Why?” I gritted.
Awake now, Dace sat forward and cracked his neck. “The king could not kill you, but he thought to make one of his queens try for failing to mate with you.”
“Audra protested,” Kash said, looking as though he wanted to roll his eyes. “Of course, she had not thought of his adept skill at trickery while making such a brash decision. Disappointing, really, as he truly makes it his first priority. She reminded him it would be a mistake to end you, being that they might again need your assistance. So I said we’d leave with you right that very second and that we would not return until her time with the king was up.”
“A gamble.” My eyes flicked to where the button lay inside his pocket.
“It paid off,” Kash said, watching Mintale scurry forward to set the bowl of ointment upon the nightstand. Tipping his shoulder, he added, “Maybe. Before the king could neither agree nor disagree, we were close enough to you to leave, and so we entered the void.”
She would not stay there. No matter how furious with her I was, no matter what bargain she’d made, I was going to kill the king and break it, and bring her home.
Dace nodded, understanding when I looked at him. Kash merely stared, and I wondered if he’d stay behind this time.
With nothing to do for it now, now that she’d rendered me useless for the time being, I beckoned Truin and Mintale to begin the torturing task of changing the sopping bandages wrapped around my torso.
Truin’s voice was soft, as though she feared me when she never had before, but she asked anyway. “She is okay?”
I grunted, my eyes upon the snow-dusted window. “She is fine.” I saw nothing but the bandage upon Audra’s delicate wrist and the unflinching resoluteness to her eyes.
Landen entered. “Welcome home.”
I was home, but my home was not here. She’d tossed me out as if she’d done me a favor, but I knew it was more than that.
Audra rarely forgave.
She retaliated.
Audra
Ryle had been waiting in my rooms, sprawled across my bed as though he had every right to be there.
He was the king, so perhaps he had.
I didn’t regret it, especially when I remembered the longing, the flinching, his shadow. There was little chance Ryle would ever agree to give his brother’s wings back, and although Zad’s reluctance to kill his brother might have been understandable, it was also foolish.
For as long as he had a piece of him, he could control him, and if he’d destroyed them, of which he’d hinted at... I loathed to think of what might happen, of the effects of murdering such a vital part of my faerie prince.
“I fear I’m not quite ready to have you leave, winter queen,” he’d drawled, twisting the gems around his long fingers.
I’d stopped at the foot of the bed, and said, “I have my own kingdom to rule.”
“Continent, it would seem.” His eyes lifted from his fingers to mine. “You have your king to take care of such tedious matters. Why not stay a while longer? Why, you’ve only just begun to discover the wonder of Beldine.”
I’d discovered more than I’d ever dreamed, and as mesmerizing, alluring, and beautiful as it was, I was content with leaving. “Tempting though it is, I must return home.” I’d then turned for the window. A dangerous thing, putting my back to that malevolent force while secluded in such a confined space, but also necessary.
Proven so when he’d said with dragging boredom, “Perhaps I can tempt you some more.”
A year and a day.
I circled my wrist, then plucked off the bandage, tossing it to the floor with not a small amount of disgust. For the king. For myself. For what I must do. For what I’d done.
An extended stay was all too easy to agree to when I hadn’t been ready to face what we’d become when it would be just the two of us once again.
Now, I had a year to either make peace with all Zadicus was or move on, and I’d managed to give him a piece of himself that’d been missing for far too long. Now, all I had was the memory of his agonizing roars, his powerful thrashing body engulfed by warriors and pain, and those gold eyes, burning with betrayal, to keep me company.
As well as his brother.
We’d been fools to think this would end after the act.
I’d been naïve in thinking he’d leave me be. “Come,” he said now, standing in the doorway to my rooms in a purple velvet cloak that matched his pants and a ruffled black shirt. Somehow, he managed to look utterly ridiculous while looking entirely too good.
An illusion. A trick of the eyes to comfort when you should run.
Walking over, I ignored his offered arm and headed out into the hall.
Streams of starlight slanted over the floor, the paintings scattered amongst the walls, from the holes cut into the ceiling.
“Not going to ask where we’re going?”
I tucked my hands inside the gray woven sleeves of my gown. “I’m assuming it’s nowhere I wish to go, so no.”
He said nothing as we took the stairs down to the throne room. Save for some of his guards and heaping trays of steaming food upon one banquet table, it was empty.
They’d all gone.
The members of the three other courts and their queens had left the following evening after Zad’s departure. The only one remaining was Adran, though I didn’t know where he’d scuttled off to. Presumably someone’s bed or a tavern.
“Eat,” said the king when I stared at my empty plate. “We’ve places to be.”
I didn’t ask, but I did eat. Stuffed crab legs larger than my hand were piled onto my plate by a server, followed by green beans soaked in a white sauce, and a mound of some sort of meat.
“Roasted sea serpent,” the king supplied, cutting into his own. “A delicacy.”
In silence, we ate, the throne room seeming larger than ever before in the aftermath of all that’d transpired. My skin began to itch wit
h my growing discomfort. With the reason I was still seated here, next to the silent king, who ate his food with careful slowness, his eyes upon me.
To accept the link to Zadicus all those months ago had been a mistake. I’d known it at the time, but it was unavoidable. Rarely ever did someone refuse to accept a link—that invisible, inescapable pull they felt toward another being—and go on to live a happy life.
I’d have been miserable either way, and so I may as well be miserable while giving Zad something he missed, something he cherished dearly when I could not yet come to terms with giving him myself.
Hope, often useless, and so often precarious, was all that remained. And I hated it. Hated how I’d given myself but a feeling that could unfold into dark nothing that slipped through the fingers like time.
Finally giving in, I sipped the wine poured for me. He’d have to release me after my time here was up, whether I’d drunk the wine or not.
Supposedly, it could only bind you to Faerie for months at a time anyway. Besides, I cared not if I wound up within the Whispering Sea or lost inside a forest, unable to escape Beldine’s clutches. After all this mess, I dared this land to try to keep me. I’d be ready.
So I drank, the king looking on with keen eyes as my mouth tingled, my own eyes flaring wide. “I daresay you’ll never enjoy your finest wines again.”
“We’ll see,” I said, blinking away shadows that grew over the table. My limbs loosened, the throbbing in my chest lessened, and my eyesight worsened.
And then it adjusted. As though I’d been seeing the world through muck-splashed spectacles that’d now been wiped clean, the world exploded.
The king’s skin glimmered with a light sheen of perspiration, his scent becoming more apparent—Elderberry and something spiced.
His hair was no longer dark but differing shades of porous brown, the ends struck through with gold. It was his eyes, though, that truly unnerved. They were unchanged, save for the growing flecks of onyx within the gold that rimmed the pupil. His lashes lifted up and down, longer than I’d noticed before.