9. Mendax
9
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I wondered if the Fates would take pity on me and keep Calypso alive if I shoved the prince of sunshine off the ledge of this mountain. The trip had been quiet for a while now as we walked and walked. Caly had distanced herself from me the smallest amount. Nothing one would even notice unless they were obsessed with her—like I was.
Something was going on in that beautiful mind of hers, and whatever it was, she kept it and any feelings associated with it far away from the bond. I could feel her blocking something from me, and I loathed it.
Snorts and giggles from the two of them bubbled up the edge of rock and curled around my head. It stuck me in the gut like a harpoon. I wished more than anything I could evoke that same wild laugh from her lips.
It made complete sense to me why Aurelius was so full of cheer and happiness. Those two had spent a lifetime together. I had only known her existence for a speck of time, and she made my world shades lighter than I had ever known could exist. She’d provoked feelings and desires within me that I refused to believe existed before she conjured them. I’d probably be as jovial as him too if I’d had a lifetime of her.
When silence had filled the air again, I envisioned smashing the Seelie prince’s head against the rough wall of rock to my left—repeatedly. I continued this daydream with every passing boulder, adding to the imaginary assault with every crackle of laughter I heard from her. I realized as we progressed up the mountain that something had changed between the two of them, and it worried me. Laughter and jokes flowed easily now. There seemed to have been guards up from one of them, if not both, that now, for whatever reason, had been torn away. Never had my patience been tested as it was while thinking about the chance of her loving him back.
Deep animallike snorts sounded behind me. I spun in my tracks to see the Seelie had lifted Caly up onto his back, her arms wrapped around his neck as she laughed so hard that noises escaped through her nose instead of her mouth. My eyes shot to his hands on the bottoms of her thighs, holding her up. My smoke fought and pulled as it tried to build inside me—unsuccessfully. No doubt fate had designed it that way, for in that moment, I didn’t have the restraint not to kill him. It wasn’t just the fact that he was touching her but how she was responding to him. She looked so…happy with him.
A lock released in the secret, buried compartment inside me, and for the first time, I questioned if maybe I should let her go.
I knew my many strengths, but I also knew that it was far beyond my capabilities to make her laugh and smile like Aurelius could. The sound of her passions was a drug to me. The sound of steel and fire when she wanted to burst forth in flames and fight. The sound of her screams when they bubbled up her lungs like a babbling brook before they ripped free. The breathy little intakes of air that whispered from her lips and made my cock as hard as forged iron. But unlike the other sounds she made, of which there were too many for me to properly give justice, her laughter and happiness seemed to pour into the broken box hidden in my chest, as smooth as faerie mead and as dangerous as poison. Her happy sounds had set up a little home in that box in my chest, and I found that I missed it, even felt frightened when it wasn’t there…when I couldn’t feel her happiness.
Aurelius took note that I was staring at his hands on her. His demeanor changed, but it wasn’t unfriendly. He was so odd, that one.
“Finneas,” he said as something mischievous danced in his eyes. Caly puckered her lips and raised her brow in confusion over his shoulder. The Seelie grinned. He was always grinning . “That’s what we decided to name our firstborn child.”
Before I realized I’d moved a muscle, I was on him. His windpipe vibrated against my palm as I squeezed it. I tossed my free arm around Caly’s waist and yanked her off his back, holding her tightly to my side. With a hard and heavy hand, I slammed Aurelius into the mountainside just as I’d been imagining, reveling in the feel of his throat finally collapsing under my grip.
“Stop! Stop!” Caly cried against my side as she flailed.
The golden piss stain of a fae had the gall to grin—to grin still? To grin again? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was he was smiling at me and what he’d said about Caly.
I moved to hurl him over the steep edge of the mountain.
He made a strangled sound as he attempted to say something, still smiling . I squeezed harder, looking to see the worried change in his eyes when he realized I wasn’t going to stop this time.
“Mendax! Stop right now! You’ll kill me too! You don’t want that, right? Stop!” the vixen wailed frantically. She knew I was going to do it this time; she could feel it. I was going to crush his throat. Her heart rate slowed, stealing my attention and making me realize what was happening.
Fuck!
I let out some feral noise and reluctantly released my grip on his throat. He coughed and choked, still with a stupid grin plastered on his oddly symmetrical face.
Caly was angry and shouting at me, but the words were muffled and lost in my mind. I squeezed her tightly around the waist and began to walk away with her in my possession.
Where she would remain—laughter or not.
“Ivy,” Aurelius’s grating voice called out, now a bit hoarser.
I stopped in my tracks.
“If we have a daughter,” he said.
I whipped around to descend on the fucker. If I couldn’t kill him yet, then I would beat him to the point of unconsciousness so I didn’t have to listen to him exist anymore.
The fae had balls though, I’d give him that.
Dare I say I could even begin to understand a little better why Caly gave him her time. Aurelius had always owned the heart of a warrior. On opposing sides, it was an easy task for me to tear his character to shreds. The things his mother had him battle for were foolish and greedy. Not respecting the man was getting a bit more difficult though when we fought for the same thing.
I moved for him again. I was most notably not the type to be taunted twice.
“Tell him, Eli!” Caly bellowed from under my arm.
“Tell him what?” Aurelius asked. “That you are already carrying my child?”
Another. Fucking. Smirk.
I dropped Caly to the ground and leapt at him, gripping two fistfuls of his shirt—the one that Caly had worn earlier in the journey. Smelling her on his shirt made me blind with lividness. With as much force as I could produce given my lack of powers, I hurled him to the rocky ground and began to unleash on his pretty face.
“Enough! Stop!” Caly screamed as she tried to push me away. When that didn’t work, she shoved herself between my fists and the bastard’s bloodied face.
I put my hand to her sternum and shoved her away from the ledge of the mountain, which had somehow gotten closer than it was only a few moments ago.
Aurelius’s mask slipped, taking the stupid smirk with it. The air between us shifted. “Don’t you fucking push her,” he seethed, landing a lucky hit to my left eye. Another strike, then another to my side, all of them catching me by surprise.
Tartarus! Had he fought me like this in one of our many battles, I think that I would be the one wearing the majority of the scars. Ironically though, it seemed that he only fought with this urgent passion and ferocity when it involved her .
Somehow he had gained control of the situation and had me pinned. Hits came from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Nothing rested beneath my head when it snapped back from another blow, and I realized it was because my head and neck were hanging over the ledge of the mountain.
He heaved and panted as dark gold blood dripped down his battered face and onto me. Where had this wild, unpolished man been all this time? This was someone I wanted as a cohort!
He had bested me, and we both knew it. Over his shoulder, I scanned the mountain’s wall on the other side of the trail, looking for Caly.
She stood a short distance behind him. Her beautiful round eyes were red with worry, but she remained standing tall and proud. The only tell that gave away her discomfort was that her arms were crossed as she hugged herself while watching with miserable eyes.
“Don’t you ever, ever touch her like that again,” Aurelius stated through clenched teeth. “Ever.”
I had no words. Walter was the only one who ever got shots in on me like this.
The quick and swift image of my cousin in our sparring suits blurred, replaced with the image that provoked my nightmares: the image of the golden queen’s blade—Aurelius’s blade in the queen’s hand—colliding with Walter’s head. The amount of blood that spilled from the man who was like my brother onto Seelie soil was something I could never forget, and I would never let any Seelie near me forget.
Overcome with emotions, I made a move to flip Aurelius, but once again, he shocked me with a firm block that pinned me to the edge of the mountain with even more force.
This fucker was going to kill me.
Nothing was stopping him.
Unlike their tie, Caly wouldn’t die if I died. And I recognized the rabid look in his eyes.
All because I had pushed Caly.
I nodded somewhat to myself and stopped my attempts at moving him. A spider-sized amount of admiration for the man crawled in and stayed with me.
I locked eyes with Caly behind him. “Your fiancé seems to be under the misapprehension that you still can’t handle yourself. Tell me, pet, have you not been so enamored with him that you have drawn a blade to put against his throat? I happen to know that’s your favorite form of foreplay, my queen.” I laughed coldly. “You try to rip me off him, but you stand by and hover as your apparent lover drops me from a mountain?” I yelled the last sentence, surprising myself. It all came out sounding different than I had wanted it too.
“I tried to pull you from him because you are prone to fits of violence, and I know I have a small amount of sway with you occasionally! I thought I could make you see straight and stop.” She swallowed hard.
My eyes followed the movement of her throat. It was godly.
“Eli hates violence,” she continued. “If you pushed him to that level, I know well enough there was no stopping him.” She shook her head wildly with a feral laugh. “Both of you are foolish, but you’ve reminded me of something the two of you had made easy to forget: I don’t need anyone to defend me. I don’t need either of you. I am the only villain I truly fight, and I am the only hero I need to save. Fight each other to the death if you like, but don’t look at me to rescue you. My hands are full.”
If there had ever been a single, minuscule, unintelligible moment that I doubted or questioned my undying infatuation with this woman, this statement put it to rest. What had I become? I was close to salivating for her on the ledge of this shimmering mountain in the middle of nowhere. Had my hellhound been wielding a knife, I think I would have come in my trousers like an inexperienced virgin.
Aurelius turned from Caly to smile down at me.
He leaned over and spoke so softly, I assumed I was the only one who could hear his words. “She doesn’t need me to kill you. In fact, I don’t doubt that the heathen would rather do the deed herself.” He sat back on his heels a bit but shifted, blocking her, so I could see only his ugly, smiling face. “She is correct. She has never needed me to save her, but no matter how hard she fights it, I will. Always. Touch her like that again in my presence, and I will gut you before either one of you has even gathered a breath to protest it.” Reluctantly, he lightened his grip on me.
A newfound respect and admiration for the man rested heavily in my bones. He leaned in once more.
“And you should know, I’m no longer competition to you. Calypso and I have and will always be the closest possible friends. Soul-tied friends if you will. Nothing will ever come between us, no matter how hard anyone tries. You should know that romantically, there is nothing between us and never will be. Do not take what I say as a removal of my claim of her. Quite the opposite. Now that she and I have fully had a bit of calm to discover the true ingredients of our friendship, I will be watching you closer than ever, because no matter what, she is family to me. She’s right—I dislike violence and strive for a peaceful realm, but do not think for one second that means I will not disembowel you for hurting her in any way.”
He gave one final shove as if he needed to purge the last pulse of anger before he let the situation go. Then Aurelius rose, leaving me half-stunned on the ground.
What an absolute lovestruck fool he must have thought me, and he was right. The fucker had baited me with names— names . And I’d stepped right into it. Neither one of them felt romantically about the other? When had this occurred? The attachment had always seemed to be most prominent from Aurelius’s side. Had he just been spurred on by the jealousy of another man in her life?
That was what had changed between them, what caused the relaxation between them. It made sense now.
I stood, feeling the slightest tinge embarrassed by my weakness. I don’t know why. I’d always known she would be my weak spot, the tender pocket of me that no armor could shield. Aurelius and I both knew that had I possessed my smoke, he would have been gone. Leastwise, that was what I continued to tell myself, even though, to be honest, I wasn’t all that sure anymore. He was loyal and protective, I would give him that. I didn’t hate the idea of someone with that type of fight protecting my woman, as long as he understood to whom she belonged.
“Are you all right? Did I hurt you?” I asked Caly. My fingertips coiled around her hip like a snake. I had to touch her.
She shook her head. Something was still off with her.
“Would you like me to?” I asked, bending down to run my mouth over her earlobe.
She softened slightly under my touch.
“Knock it off,” Aurelius said.
“I thought there was nothing between the two of you?” I asked, pulling her closer.
“I still don’t need to be the third wheel,” he grumbled.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Caly.
“Nothing. Let’s hurry before you two spend the last of your energy fighting and I have to carry you,” she said with a fake smile.
Aurelius appeared to have bought the expression, but I knew by the map of her eyes better than to believe the lie.
“By the way, I still like Finneas and Ivy. Aurelius has a nice ring to it also should you ever be in search of the perfect baby name,” he laughed, quickly back to his lighthearted self.