The High Mountain Court (The Five Crowns of Okrith Book 1)

by AK Mulford

  She started to run, but a twig snapped under her foot.

  Dammit. She was not paying attention.

  Hale stood, spinning around.

  “Remy?” he said, scanning the trees. “Is that you? How are you feeling?”

  He was going to lie to her even now. He did not know she could hear him from that far.

  She heard his feet crunching through the leaves with that fae speed. He moved toward her until he was standing downhill, only a few paces away. One glance at her face and he knew she had heard everything.

  They stared and stared at each other, neither one ready to call the other’s bluff.

  “You really are a bastard,” she hissed, trying not to cry. She saw her words pierce him like an arrow before he steeled his expression again. “If you were planning on killing me, why didn’t you just let me die?”

  “So you did hear that conversation,” he said, almost amused, confirming what he suspected.

  Why was he not angry? Why was he not upset? She felt her heart being shredded, and he seemed so damned calm.

  “Yes, I heard you conspiring with your father against me and the High Mountain Court.” She sneered, feeling a bottomless pit of sorrow opening beneath her, ready to swallow her whole.

  “Interesting,” he said, lips twisting. The gray of his cloak made his eyes even darker from beneath his hood.

  “What?” Remy’s fingers twitched, readying to grab her bow.

  “Only the fae can communicate through fire,” Hale said. “You shouldn’t have been able to hear that.”

  Shit.

  “It was witch magic,” Remy said, even as she retreated from him again. She knew she gave even more away by retreating, but she needed to create distance in case he rushed her.

  “It was not witch magic,” Hale said, his gray eyes darkening as he took a few slow steps forward. She thought she still might be able to outrun him if she summoned all of her powers. “I know who you are, Remy . . . or should I say, Your Majesty?”

  Without a second thought, Remy grabbed her bow and nocked an arrow, pointing it at him. She did it in less than a blink of an eye. If he knew who she was, there was no point in hiding her speed anymore either.

  He knew.

  Hale stared at her in shock, watching her unleash her full speed.

  “You are incredible.” He grinned.

  Why did he seem so pleased, even awed, by her? He looked at her the same way he always had, and yet seconds ago he had promised to kill her. Why was he still pretending?

  “Why are you smiling?” Remy’s voice filled with rage, even as she blinked away the tears filling her eyes. She would not wipe them away. She would not move her hands from her weapon. Let him see all the ways he had broken her trust.

  She didn’t let Hale answer. Her anger consumed her as she released her arrow.

  It flew straight for the middle of Hale’s head, which she knew he would dodge. She knew how he would move, like a part of her lived inside his body. The arrow landed precisely as she planned, pinning the hood of Hale’s cloak to the tree behind him.

  He looked up in surprise. He reached to release his hood, and she unleashed another two arrows in rapid succession. Remy knew Hale’s movements that well. She skewered his sleeves, one above his head and one by his side. He would break free any moment, but it would give her a head start. She turned and took another step uphill.

  “Remy, wait.” She hated that Hale’s voice made her feet halt.

  “Why should I?” The knot in her throat tightened again as she looked at him, and she saw that his calm, amused mask was crumpling too. “You have sworn to your father that you will kill the last High Mountain fae and the bitch witch, and now you realize I am both. My elder brother Raffiel is a ghost, I’m sure of it. I am the reason Vostemur can’t wield the Immortal Blade . . . you will kill me the second you are free.”

  “I will not,” Hale said, his jaw hardening. “I was only lying to my father until I could get you close enough to the Immortal Blade. I will never hurt you.”

  “You liar.” Remy laughed coldly at him, even as more tears welled. “Why not?”

  “Because you are my Fated mate.” Hale’s voice was thick with gravel as emotion overcame him too.

  The breath stole out of Remy. She had known it, too, for so much longer than she was willing to admit to herself. The night Carys told her that Hale’s Fated was from the High Mountain Court, she had wondered. The thought was a glimmer of light in Remy, a whisper of “I wish it were me,” a wish she could never acknowledge even in her own mind. But she had hoped she was his Fated all this time.

  She had hoped because she knew there was this undeniable thread tying them together. She loved him irrationally from the moment she first looked into those smoky gray eyes.

  “Why should I believe you?” Remy gritted out even as another treacherous tear slid down her cheek.

  “Because you know it’s true.” Hale’s body remained taut as he stared at her, a hint of desperation on his face.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Remy bit her lip between her teeth to keep it from wobbling.

  “Because I thought you would either run or shoot an arrow through me . . .” Hale looked up at the arrow lodged mere inches from his head, “I suppose I was right. Your name is Remini, isn’t it? Remini Dammacus, third child of the King and Queen of the High Mountain Court?”

  Remy floundered, staring at the prince trapped against the tree. When was the last time she had heard her full name? She could not remember.

  The morning sun rose in the sky as the birds sang.

  “It’s you though, isn’t it?” Hale’s throat bobbed, overcome by the same emotions that were roiling through her. “You are my Fated mate.”

  The tears came slipping heavily down her cheeks as she heard him call her that. That’s why she couldn’t deny him anything, why she stepped toward him when her brain told her to pull away. Fate had pulled them together.

  “When did you know?” Remy still stood there, frozen, as tears poured down her cheeks.

  “You run through the woods too easily, too fast. You can hunt in the dark. But I truly suspected when the Shil-de ring glowed in your hands. That ring was meant for you, for your family.” Hale’s cheeks dimpled even as he swallowed again. “But there is only one reason I know for certain that you are my Fated.”

  “What?” Remy could barely breathe.

  “I am so desperately in love with you,” Hale said as tears welled in his eyes.

  A sob racked Remy.

  Hale slid his arms out of his still-pinned sleeves, leaving his cloak like a ghost against the tree. He ran to her. Colliding into her, he pressed Remy against a tree trunk as his lips covered hers. He kissed her with a desperation she matched with her own.

  It was real. Her Fated mate.

  She wasn’t sure whose tears covered her cheeks. Remy wrapped her arms around Hale’s back, pulling him in tighter until every part of them touched. She needed this, needed him for so long. He was the other half of her soul. Their love had existed before they were even born.

  “You almost died,” Hale cried, his lips still on hers. The impact of that past night was hitting him at last. She thought of his grief-stricken face holding her lifeless body and kissed him harder.

  “I’m here,” she promised, sliding a hand up to his cheek.

  Hale’s hands gripped her hips tighter. Remy opened her mouth to him, letting his tongue explore into her. Hale groaned hungrily. Remy grabbed him around the neck and hoisted her legs up around his hips. He pinned her against the tree, and she moaned as his hands moved along her body. She would not feel whole until their souls melded into one.

  An ear-splitting growl rent the air. They froze. She heard their horses’ restless whinnies from far away. It did not sound like the mountain lions from the night before, but some other beast that called this forest home.

  They both looked at each other, resigned and deflated that this joining would have to wait until later.
They needed to get out of the forest. Hale gave Remy one last gentle kiss and put her down. His fingers threaded through hers as he led her back to camp, unwilling to let go of her.

  As they began their long trek out of the forest, there was nothing else, nothing but their certainty and the silence in the morning forest between them. They were Fated mates.

  Having sold their horses at the Northern Court border, they now trudged on foot. They planned to buy Northern horses, bred for the cold weather and thick snow, once they reached their lodgings in Andover. Remy knew Rua was alive, and so they could not delay. They had come so close to death. The quiet now pulled those horrors into stark relief. The adrenaline had worked out of her system, and she faced the terrible truth of who she was: the next in line to the High Mountain throne.

  How could she claim that? How could she put an entire court’s hopes onto her shoulders? She and her sister may be the last of the fae, but there were the red witches to consider too. Yexshire was home to others as well: many humans, witches, and fae who had called Yexshire home, all displaced by war. She would need to rebuild the city . . . and that’s if she took back the Immortal Blade from her family’s murderer, King Vostemur. It was too much, far too much to even fathom.

  “Are you okay?” Hale’s voice sounded so far away from where Remy sat resting. He appeared through the midday fog like a phantom. He knelt down to her and placed a warm hand on her cheek. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until that warm hand was there. Snowflakes dotted the air and snow would soon cover the land. Hale took off his jacket and wrapped it around her, that salt air smell enveloping her as he sat.

  “I thought you were dead too,” Remy whispered, exhaling a curl of steam.

  The vision of his gaunt, skeletal face flashed in her mind. She still felt gripped by that fear, thinking of the scaly beasts emerging through the murky water. An unwelcome tear slipped down her cheek. Now that she had started crying, she wasn’t sure if she would ever stop.

  “Hey,” Hale said, wiping her tear with his thumb. “I’m okay. We’re okay, we’re safe now.”

  The word safe was her undoing, and the tears spilled down her face once more.

  “Remy,” he murmured, as he gathered her into his arms, holding her with a gentle firmness.

  Safe.

  She had never felt safe in the past thirteen years. She knew she wasn’t safe from the world, even now. But being in Hale’s arms, feeling that warmth and love radiating into her from every angle, it was the closest she had ever felt to safe.

  “I had to jump into that lake. I had to,” she said into his chest, the tears heavy again. “I couldn’t watch another person I love die.”

  Hale’s arms tightened around her in silent acknowledgement.

  She heard his voice through the rumbling in his chest, “I love you too.”

  He stroked a hand softly across her tousled, black hair, circling her back. With gentle, caring strokes, he moved as though massaging the pain out of her body.

  He loved her.

  She pulled back again to look at him. Her Fated mate was so handsome. The moment she met him, she had thought he was the most gorgeous male she had ever seen. Looking into those shining gray eyes made it hard to breathe.

  She knew they were Fated mates, but to hear him say it, the last little barrier surrounding her heart crumbled. She loved him. She loved him, and it was terrifying. The Northern King had taken everything she ever loved from her.

  Remy looked out over the mist-covered hills. Frost covered the grass. She heard the faint bleating of sheep as the sun warred with the clouds, its strong rays banishing the mist.

  “I wasn’t in the castle that night,” Remy said into the fog. She felt Hale’s eyes shift to her. “I was meant to be at that banquet. I was meant to put on a pretty dress and parade around to the courtiers and have the Northern King and his soldiers compliment my clothes and my features and make some inane comment about how I make an excellent princess, perhaps one day I would even make a good queen, and try to bargain my hand to Renwick.”

  Hale growled at her side.

  “The council had been gossiping about it for weeks before the Northern Court’s arrival. My father knew Vostemur was ambitious—he thought that meant he’d try to secure a High Mountain bride for his son, not . . .”

  She couldn’t bring herself to say it. Not slaughter all their people.

  “I was six,” Remy continued, sniffing, “and so stubborn.”

  “I see some things never change.” Hale laughed. Remy elbowed him.

  “I knew all the secret ways to sneak out of the castle, all the low windows I could climb out of. The servants indulged me. I remember their laughs and how they rolled their eyes at me. I thought I was so sneaky, but they all knew what I was doing and let me do it, anyway.” She laughed.

  “I was on my way to the red witch temple—it was a short walk through the valley, sitting on the foothills of Mount Lyconides.”

  “I remember it well,” Hale said. Remy stole a glance at him, lost in his own memories.

  “I forget you had been to the Castle of Yexshire yourself. Of course you had.” She sighed.

  They had probably met each other before, though she had no memory of it. King Norwood would have seized every opportunity to get Hale before the High Mountain Court, presenting him as their future son-in-law.

  “You were at the temple when it happened?” Hale asked, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his legs.

  “No, I had just left the castle. I dressed as a human child to fool the guards. I had thought nothing of all the extra soldiers outside. I thought that the Northern King was just overly cautious . . . I did not know they were there for battle. I just thought it was strange.” Remy took a deep, slow breath. “I was nearing the tree-lined path to the temple when Baba Morganna . . . well, she was just Morganna then, she came running through the forest. A few breaths later, the screaming began.”

  “Her first Sight?” Hale recounted from the story Remy had told them around the fire weeks ago in the Western Court.

  “Yes,” Remy said. “She had Seen the doors locking, the fires starting—heard the screaming before it happened and ran to warn the guards. Instead she ran into me. She stopped to save me—if she had kept going . . .”

  “Don’t,” Hale warned, his voice the only thing holding her to this moment and keeping her from being sucked into the depths of that horrible memory. “Don’t play that losing game. She would not have been able to save them. It was all she could do to save you.”

  Remy bobbed her head. Guilt still twisted a knot in her gut. She had thought she was the only one spared that night. Now she knew Rua had made it out of there too.

  “She bade me to run. She practically dragged me into the woods through the snow. I tried to turn back: I saw the fires blazing and heard the screams. The smoke was so thick, even from that far. The smell . . .” Remy swallowed a hard lump in her throat. “I could hear the skirmish of our guards with theirs. I heard the swords clashing. I heard so many people die.”

  Hale put a steadying hand on Remy’s back as she willed the tears welling in her eyes not to spill over again. She wanted to curse those tears. She had never shed so many in her life.

  “So many people fled into the woods . . . but they had expected that. Soldiers were stationed at the other side, waiting to cut down whoever ran forth. A few more red witches had found us, and we all ran together. Our only option was to go up and over the saddle of the northern mountain, Eulotrogus. It was a straight climb.”

  “You were six.” Hale shook his head.

  “The witches’ magic helped me,” Remy replied. “They practically levitated my body up and over. But the soldiers chased us—they knew we would go that way. They were torturing blue witches for their visions even then.” Remy let the anger wash out of her in a heavy breath. “There were so many of those soldiers chasing us. Baba Morganna turned back. I watched as her magic crushed the top of that peak: she brought down the sum
mit of Eulotrogus with magic alone, and I watched as the rocks tumbled into the saddle and blocked the pass.”

  “They say her magic felled a hundred soldiers, the rocks falling perfectly all around her so that only she survived,” Hale whispered. “No one knew a High Mountain Princess was with those fleeing witches.”

  “I did not know Baba Morganna lived for many years. I thought it was her midon brik”, the last stand of a witch, used to swap her fate with another, “I thought she was swapping her life for my own. All five of the other witches went that way: one by one, we were chased down, and each one sacrificed their life for my own. Heather was there when the last red witch fell, and she took me in. They sacrificed their lives for me.” Remy seethed against that pain. “They sacrificed their lives for a hope that even after thirteen years amounted to nothing.”

  “No,” Hale said in an adamant voice. “Not for nothing. They pledged their lives to protect your family, and they died with honor, fulfilling that promise. That sacrifice is meaningful, powerful.”

  “It is only powerful if I make it count for something,” Remy said with quiet wrath. “And I have done nothing but hide. I have not once dropped this glamour since I was six.” Hale’s eyes widened at her. “What?”

  “I forgot that this is not your true form,” he said, shaking his head. She would not have been able to convince many that she was a human, since she could not glamour her witch magic the way she could her fae form. But with her red witch magic, it was easy enough for people to assume she was just that: a witch.

  “I don’t feel fae. I don’t know that I want to feel fae,” Remy said more to herself.

  “Can you do it? Can you drop your glamour?” Hale asked. “Are you ready to?”

  Remy half grinned. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”

  Dropping her glamour meant facing who she really was, something she had been hiding and denying for the past thirteen years.

  Hale put his hand on her knee and squeezed it. He didn’t need to say anything. She knew he didn’t care what form she possessed, that he saw her true essence through any glamour. He, of all people, knew what it meant to face the truth of who you are.