Where did you go? (Infatuated fae #3)

25. Eli

25

ELI

“Y ou’ll be okay. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

I carried the bleeding woman down a random hallway, mostly just to get her away from Mendax before she woke up. I knew he would never do anything like this to Cal, but it still made me angry. No one should treat another person like this.

My ears perked at the distant sound of voices, so I took another turn and headed in that direction. I continued to follow the soft green walls, grateful to have a distraction from what I’d just done and the agreement I had made with the Fates. I didn’t want to think about it right now.

The woman began to stir in my arms. I talked to her as calmly and gently as I could in the hopes she wouldn’t wake and think that I was the one who had assaulted her.

“Anastasia, are you with me? I don’t know if you remember me, but my name is Aurelius. I’m the prince of Seelie—well, I was until our castle got torn down…and my sister and the Fallen took it over. I guess I don’t really know what I am anymore. Anyway, I found you hurt and am taking you to get some medical attention, okay?”

She blinked her brown eyes up at me for a moment.

“I’m not the one who hurt you,” I added for good measure.

“I know. You remembered my name,” she whispered. “You’re King Felix’s son.”

My steps slowed for a beat. “How did you know that?” The distant voices were getting closer now.

“You run out of things to talk about when you’re with the same people all the time. You get to know everything about them. There aren’t that many of us here.” She gave a weak smile. “Zef speaks only of his family since the day he arrived. He considers Felix, you, and Tarani family. Your father was a hero to many. I have heard so much about you, I think I could pick you and your sister out of a crowd.”

I smiled, but my heart hurt at the thought of my father. “You must be close, you and Zef?”

“We are,” she replied carefully.

A few more turns landed us in a large and brightly scented room full of banging and singing. It smelled like lemons and fresh herbs. Another few steps and I was hit in the face with bushels of hanging rosemary. I had obviously landed us in the kitchen.

“Anastasia!”

“What happened?”

The many people in the kitchen stopped what they were doing to come to our aid.

“Will you be all right?” I asked as I set her down in a chair to the side of the stove.

“Thanks for not leaving me there.” She smiled. “You’re my hero.”

“It was nothing. Is there anything I can get for you before I leave?” Two of the ladies had already begun to clean the blood from her face.

She shook her head. “You should know they have already chosen you to stay with Zef’s daughter. They will announce it tomorrow when the three of you meet for the performance.”

“The performance?” I repeated.

She dabbed her swollen face with her fingers. “Yeah, but you didn’t hear it from me. Thank you for your help, Prince Aurelius.”

I left the kitchen and headed toward the garden. I still needed to see Cal. My thoughts somersaulted over and over. Happiness and nervousness soared and dipped as it all sank in. Everything that it meant.

Absently, I walked through the gardens. The sky had darkened, reminding me of how the human realm darkened at night and lightened in the day. It was nice to feel the coolness touch my skin. Whenever I had stayed in the human realm, it always excited me to wake up and see the sun. It made me appreciate it more.

I couldn’t wait to see Mendax’s face when he found out the Fates had chosen me. I imagined he would try and kill me. It was one of the few things I could predict about him. My imagination jumped to Cal’s face, and it suddenly felt like I’d swallowed thorns. She would be devastated when she heard about Mendax, and I knew it.

I just wanted to help her. That was all I’d ever wanted.

“I swear to suns, Eli, if you come to me with any more shit news, I’ll—is that blood on you? That’s not Seelie blood. What happened?” Cal asked, walking up behind me, catching me completely off guard.

“Cal, I was just coming to find you.” The moment I saw her, I knew I’d made the right decision. Her eyes looked almost hollow, like the life had been sucked out of them. I waved at my shirt, already feeling better about everything now that she was next to me. All I wanted was to see her laugh and smile again. “It is Anastasia’s.”

She looked at me blankly.

“The woman who checked us in—with the brown hair? Mendax beat the shit out of her.”

“Oh my suns. What happened? Is Mendax okay?” Her tired eyes ignited.

“Yeah, he’s fine.” I recoiled at her lack of empathy. “I took her to get some help. She’ll be fine too,” I answered.

“What was he doing?” Her pretty blue eyes started to fade again.

I shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him that.” We began to walk as the awkwardness returned between us.

“What were you doing?” she asked. We paused to look at a garden bed of tulip-looking flowers that glowed against the dark as if fireflies were trapped inside. Tiny speckles of light rose from each one before drifting off into the other parts of the lush garden area.

“I was coming to find you,” I repeated. “I don’t like how we were earlier with each other.”

“You’ve always been that way.” She gave me a small grin. “Do you remember that time we fought because you couldn’t come watch the solar eclipse with me?”

My shoulders lightened and relaxed a little. I smiled at the thought of our young stupid problems. “I had a war tactics panel, but that’s not why you got mad at me.”

Her brow wrinkled, and she let out a chuckle. “What do you mean that’s not why I was mad at you? We had been planning to watch it on my roof for, like, a month!”

I shook my head and grinned. “You got mad because you dropped that notebook in the stream and it washed away, remember? I wasn’t even there.”

She laughed and dropped her mouth open in mock exasperation. I loved when she seemed light and unburdened like this. One day, I would make sure I made her feel that way every day.

“It was my first field notebook, and I was waiting in the stream for you when I dropped it.”

A soft breeze had picked up in the garden that caused all the flowers and leaves to sway. Cal kept trying to hold the hair out of her face, but it continued to blow in her eyes as she missed one or two pieces. I moved in front of her and brushed the two or three pieces she kept missing into her hand.

“I found that notebook though.” Happiness gushed through my veins at the memory of her face when I’d handed her the soaked notebook. She never knew it, but it had taken me almost two days in my fox form, trailing that stream before I’d found it. And I’d do it all over again just to see her happy. She deserved to be happy.

She smiled so wide, her eyes almost closed. “You did, and as I was saying, you couldn’t stand the thought of us being in a fight, so every time after that, you would just show up if you thought I was mad at you.”

I moved to the other side of the short grass path to look at—well, anything that was not that close to her. “You were never mad though, not really.” I leaned over to smell a dark blue bush. It didn’t smell like anything, and I found myself a little disappointed it didn’t have some sort of berry scent.

She joined me on the other side of the path. “You should know by now I could never really be mad at you.”

“Promise?” I pressed. I really needed to hear she wouldn’t be mad at me for what I was about to do…or at least that she would eventually get over it.

“Promise. You want to stay at my cottage for a little bit? I met up with my father,” she said.

“You did? What did you guys talk about? I’ll stay for a little while, but I think Mendax would have an aneurysm if I stayed all night.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought. He was going to have a lot more than an aneurysm to deal with soon.

Immediately, she let out a large breath and looped her arm in mine. “So that bitch that Mendax bloodied up? She took me to my cottage, but wait until you fucking hear what it was.”

And so continued her detailed account of everything that had taken place between her and her father. I stayed in her new rooms into the wee hours of the morning. Occasionally, she would pause and wait for my opinions and comments. It felt just like the good old times and was exactly what we both needed before what was probably going to be one of the worst days of her life.