A War of Three Kings (Dying Lands #2)

12. Keira

Chapter 12

Keira

T he moment they tell me Lord Desmond has joined the invasion, it feels like the flame of hope within me is extinguished. This raises the stakes. There is so much more to lose now.

We ride out from Lord Tomas’ fortress the next morning, and not even the rays of the summer sun are enough to warm my chilled blood. The rolling hillside slips away with the miles, turning from farmland to sparse forest and back.

The day disappears with my mind lost in a haze of dark thoughts. I blink and we have already set up a camp for the night near the edge of Lord Tomas’ vast lands.

I stare into the bonfire until my eyes dry out, the mug of mulled wine in my hands all but forgotten. Those tongues of flame, burning and flickering and consuming everything, drag to mind what this war will do to my protectorate. To our people. These are the consequences of my actions, and they will be felt by all if we do not tread incredibly carefully.

Finan may be a monster of his own making, and he was always going to be a disaster for the kingdom of Strathia—but I was the one who turned his vicious attention to the North.

“We need to travel west! To secure Lord Bradford’s support first.” Caitlin’s voice travels to me across the fire. The warm, glowing light plays across her features and makes her scowl almost demonic. “He can cut us off from our supplies if he backs the king.”

“Lord Adalwolf has more soldiers,” our father cuts in.

They continue like this, arguing over the strategic locations in the North and which lords are more important, while the energy drains from my body and my mind moves in sluggish circles.

The last few weeks have been overwhelming, and I’ve had no time to process the traumas as they pile up. I cannot sleep at night, because I know I haven’t seen the worst of what is about to come.

My body sways to the side as I drift off, and I almost fall off the log I’m sitting on.

“Go to bed, Keira,” my father calls out. “There’s no point in staying out if you’re just going to doze off.”

Soldiers move all around us. Liam and Aiden dump more logs onto our fire, causing embers to spark up, while arguing about the best way to do it. Others roll out their sleeping bags in their low canvas tents and retire for the night. Laughter drifts to me from those who play cards or dice.

Our camp sprawls through this entire large clearing, rows upon rows of tents that reach almost to the woods on one side and a sharply hilly meadow on the other. A crumbling farmer’s cottage snags my attention. I wonder how many decades the building has been abandoned and what it must have been like to live in such a remote place.

A yawn cracks my jaw, and I finally give in to the fatigue and make my way to my sleeping quarters. I can’t help scanning the tents that run in columns away from our central fire until I find Aldrin and Silvan. Their heads are bent together and they are talking urgently, a pair of fire orbs illuminating them.

There is space all around them where soldiers have pitched tents further away from theirs, disrupting the symmetry of the campsite. They look so incredibly alone.

It doesn’t help that the shelters they have created are so foreign to these people. The scaffolding is grown from branches that burst out of the ground and a canopy of wide, glossy leaves overlaps tightly to form the weatherproof barrier.It has such a wild cast to it, with angular limbs of wood sticking out in different directions and beds of thick moss spilling from within. It seems like something more a beast than a man should live in.

A lump forms in my throat and I stumble a step as guilt rolls through me. These fae are my friends. All of them. They took care of me when I was in their realm, and I can’t even save them from my own family, from the nasty words of my guards and the lords who answer to my house, despite how I have tried.

The battles I have fought for them behind closed doors are enough to suck the life out of me, and still, it gets us nowhere. There is always more I should be doing.

I teeter on the edge, watching them, watching Aldrin, wanting nothing more than to run to him.

I miss him. The closeness and trust we held. The warmth of his body pressed against mine when we would sleep under the fae stars on nothing but a shared bedroll. All the hard planes of his chest and shoulders that I could bury myself in. He would wrap his arms around me and kiss the skin at the nape of my neck when he thought I was deep asleep.

I miss the conversations we had for hours into the night, talking of nothing and everything, sharing our dreams for the future and planning them together.

When I move, it is not toward him, but to the pavilion tent I share with Caitlin and my father.I have to be clever and sneaky if I want enough time alone with Aldrin to have a proper talk without my father noticing and dragging me away.

I slip into my crude cot, pull the blankets over my head and wait. Despite my fatigue, sleep doesn’t come. I don’t let it.

I lie awake as the hours pass, anxiety rippling through my body like jolts of fire in anticipation of the conversation I must have with Aldrin. I will lay myself bare before him, and he will judge whether I failed him, despite how hard I tried—and whether he will be able to forgive me again.

Caitlin and my father enter the pavilion, and I listen to their breaths as they become slow and regular. It is a struggle to sleep in the same room as my father without lashing out at him. Had he listened to a single word I said, he’d know Aldrin was never a threat. Strange, for a man who always empowered his daughters and made their voices heard. It is like something has triggered a deep trauma within him. We don’t talk anymore. We descend into screaming matches instead.

When my father starts to snore, I slip out of my pallet, pull on wide-leg riding pants and tuck my tunic into the belt. I trip over my feet as I tug on ankle boots while hopping to the door. Hopefully he will never notice I am gone.

I slip out of the pavilion and startle the guard on the entrance, nodding to him but not slowing. The soldier looks at me, perplexed, as I walk away. His job is to stop anyone from sneaking into the tent, not out of it.

The night is incredibly still. Not even birds or bats move across the indigo sky, lit up by a purple kaleidoscope of stars. The odd snore tears out of the tents as I pass, and the crackles and pops of the dying fire become a distant sound, but the camp is otherwise still.

I light a small fire orb and peer into the structure of vegetation that Aldrin built for his shelter. There are night blooms all over it, their white petals open and glowing as they bask under the moon.

It would be beautiful if the sight of the man sleeping within it didn’t steal my breath away.

Aldrin sleeps naked to the waist, his blankets tossed haphazardly across him, exposing so much of those defined muscles. There is a peace to his features that is never there by day anymore. The deep frown is gone from those dark, arching eyebrows and his lips are slightly parted.

An intense urge to crawl into his bed with him slams into me, and I bite my lip hard to stop myself. I stand there, gawking at him like a creep for long moments.

I take a step closer and a branch crunches under my boot. “Aldrin,” I whisper.

He moves so fast my eyes can hardly track him, pouncing out of his tent with a knife in his hand. One blink and he is before me, his face an inch from mine. His eyes are feral, gleaming with murder in the moonlight, and his lips twist in a snarl. He doesn’t recognize me for a heartbeat, still stuck in his dream.

Aldrin looks every bit the terrifying fae king.

I suck in a breath and stumble backward. I almost fall on my ass, but he grabs my arm and steadies me. My heart hammers against my ribcage, and I can’t see a thing; half of my hair has flopped forward and covers my face.

Calloused fingers brush against my cheek and my curls are tucked behind my ear.

“You’ll give a man a heart attack, waking him up in the middle of the night like that.” The brutal expression is gone from his face, replaced by an amused smile. “Did I scare you?”

I stare at him, unable to form words. By the darkest realm, I long to touch him. Aldrin’s dark, long hair is in disarray, just like when it is sex-rumpled. Even though he grips my shoulders lightly, the muscles of his biceps bulge, and his perfectly sculpted chest is on full display under the moonlight. I know exactly what it feels like to run my fingers down his abdomen and slip them beneath the belt of his pants to find his huge, hard cock.

His smile only grows as he watches my eyes soak up the sight of him, trailing down his body then flicking back up to his lips. I shake my head as shivers run down my spine.

“We need to talk.” I desperately try to focus on his eyes and fail.

Aldrin raises an eyebrow. “Talk, is it? In the middle of the night, when we are both half-dressed?”

I glance down at myself and realize the hard shapes of my nipples are visible through the light cotton of my tunic and undergarment.

“Talk,” I say. “My father makes sure we get precious little opportunity.”

I stalk off to the grassy region between the edge of the tents and the woods beyond, looking for a patch to sit on. Aldrin flicks his wrist, and two woody chairs grow out of the ground from multiple entwining roots. I sit in one. It’s more comfortable than most chairs, as its structure shifts to mold to my body. Aldrin leans forward over his knees in the seat opposite me.

“Why are you fighting this war for me, Aldrin?” The words tumble out of me.

Aldrin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Do you really need to ask that question? Do you not already know how I feel for you?”

I hug my arms around my body as I shiver despite the warm night. “Even after everything? The way my family treated you. The constant disdain from my people. The way I failed you.” My body locks up with tension as my voice breaks.

“Even after all that.” His amber eyes turn cold and his jaw sets. “But I need to know— where were you , Keira? While I was starved, poisoned and deprived of sleep, where were you? When my people suffered, when your family accused us of crimes, where were you?”

The blood drains from my head at the anger darkening his features, and pain blooms in my chest, expanding until I cannot breathe. My mind wants to shut down from the sheer onslaught of guilt, but he deserves answers.

“They told me you were safe, that they were taking care of you. I had no idea?—”

“What do you think I was doing for over a week, Keira?” Aldrin snaps. “Reading a cozy novel by the fireplace?”

“I couldn’t find you.” The pure desperation of frantically searching for him fills me anew. “I searched everywhere and tried everything. I dragged Diarmuid into the ancient dungeons so many times to search for chambers they could be hiding you in. All I could dream of was the inky darkness heavy with dust and mildew, and the sight of century-old bones discarded in every cell. I spent every other moment in screaming arguments with my father and grandmother, but there was no breaking them down.”

I scrub tears away with frustration.

“In the end, it was Caitlin and Diarmuid who found you. They manipulated the guards into revealing where you were. I had no idea the enchanted cells for holding fae even existed before that. I’m so sorry, Aldrin. I wasn’t smart or fierce enough to save you. You may never forgive me, and I understand that. Our trust is broken on both sides. If things can’t be the same between us?—”

Aldrin grabs my arm and tugs me out of my seat, forcing me to stumble the distance between us and land in his lap. His strong arms wrap around me and press me into his chest. I melt, burying my face into him. The floral scent of spring combined with leather and a hint of masculine sweat floods me.

I feel like I have finally come home.

He kisses the top of my head lightly. “They told me you never wanted to see me again. That you hated me.”

I pull back from him and peer into his face. “No, Aldrin! I could never hate you.”

“You see how they have twisted the truth, do you not? How they put a wedge between us? They had me believe you turned your back on me without a fight.”

I place my hands on either side of his face. “That is not true.”

There is a raw vulnerability in his eyes. “I am struggling with the fact that the black-market trade of fae flesh is still very much alive in this realm. That you lead hunting parties to kill fae, then invite your king to festivals to feast on them.”

“The beasts were too much of a danger to let live, Aldrin.” My voice is gentle. Pleading. I let my hands slide from his face. “We only killed threats, not innocents. There is no benefit in letting the meat rot. Have you never eaten Cú Sídhe?”

“Of course I have, Keira!” He looks away, then drags his eyes back. “It doesn’t make this any less triggering. Gods, you are now a priestess of an order that sneaks into my realm every cycle to kill our nymphs for their heart-stones and steal our babies. It slices a knife through my heart every time I see you in the white of the Mothers of Magic. I know the blood of these atrocities is not on your hands, but your family are their greatest supporters. The magic they steal is ours, and we need every drop of it.”

I stiffen as horror washes through me. It is true. All of it. Those amber eyes seem to pierce down to the depths of my soul.

“Maybe that is why my people cling to the prejudice that the fae were our slavers and abusers. That they are all cruel monsters,” I say. “Because the realization that we humans are the villains here is not an easy thing to stomach. I am sorry, Aldrin, for all of it. If I could end the pilgrimages and the division between our people, I would without a second thought. I want to do it together, if you can ever forgive me.”

It isn’t a fair thing to ask of him. Especially not when my forgiveness has been so slow in coming.

“Ah, Keira, call me a fool, but I already have.” He runs his thumb over my lips. “It is not an easy thing, to question the indoctrination of generations.”

A single tear drops from my eye. “I don’t deserve you, Aldrin.” Guilt rolls through me anew, heavy and oily in my stomach.

“I’ll be the judge of that.” He grips my chin, tilting my face up to his, while his other hand slides up my thigh. “Are you still angry with me?” His voice is low, sultry.

“Are there any other secrets you are keeping from me?”

“None that come to mind.” His eyes heat as they focus on my lips.

I elbow him in the ribs, but smile. “Aldrin. Take it seriously. Are you holding back anything else? Secrets, lies, half-truths or prophecies?”

His eyebrows shoot up. “That’s quite the list. No. There was just the one huge, ugly truth that I had no idea how to approach. Do you want a blood oath?”

I shake my head. “I shouldn’t need one to trust you.”

“Then do you trust me?”

I gaze into his eyes as that layer of ice coating my heart melts. The rage, betrayal and soul-deep guilt all fall away from me. “Aldrin, I?—”

A high-pitched sound whizzes past my ear. A gash of red blood appears in an arc across Aldrin’s bicep and he cries out in pain, immediately jumping to his feet and taking me with him.

Everything happens so fast. We suddenly stand apart as another arrow embeds itself in his thigh. Two others whistle past us and lodge into the ground, standing erect.

We are under attack.