Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“Yer personal guard is ready and knows to follow ye without being seen.” Wrekas Darkcord, Sevenrest’s sergeant-at-arms and Jeros’s most trusted friend, shuffled from side to side in the doorway as if he had more to say but thought better of it.
“Speak yer mind, Darkcord. Never have ye held yer tongue before for as long as I’ve known ye. Why start now?” Irritated and on edge, Jeros roamed back and forth across the width of his solar, occasionally scowling at the closed door to Lexi’s suite of rooms.
His own bedroom suite was on the opposite end of the breezy, window-filled space, as was once considered proper for the private floor of a royal and his consort.
After visiting several other realities in the Dreaming, he had once toyed with the idea of redesigning the floor plan so he and his intended would share a suite and spend every night in each other’s arms. But now he was thankful that the archaic design kept him separated from his fated mate.
He didn’t relish being in the same room with someone who hated him with such a passion that she had already threatened to kill him—even if she meant it in jest. And he was not so sure about that.
He turned and glared at his friend. “Speak, damn ye! What would ye say that has ye biting back the words?”
“Are ye certain this mortal woman is yer fated mate?”
Jeros went to the windows overlooking the thicket of pines between Sevenrest Hall and the loch at the base of the hillside.
“’Tis is a strange and frustrating thing, Darkcord.
I need to be with her, always in her presence, and whenever I touch her, an irresistible energy teases my fingertips.
Aye, I believe she is my fated mate, but I erred and taught her to hate me rather than claim the bond and allow herself to love me. ”
“Ye could not overcome her scars, then? They dinna seem all that bad once ye see how she treats everyone, and she bears the mark of Pegasus. Can ye not look past a few flaws?”
“I believe I could—if given time to unlearn everything taught to me by my mother, by the Seelie race. Ye know how we worship perfection.” He slowly shook his head.
“I tried too hard to ignore her scars. I foolishly rushed in with too greedy of a seduction that felt forced, and in so doing, I hurt her.”
“Ye dinna have a problem with my scars,” the one-eyed warrior said. “Ye never have.”
“Ye are a fighting man, and I also dinna plan to make ye my wife, either.” But Darkcord’s observation gave Jeros pause. If he could overcome imperfections in his best friend, why could he not overcome imperfections in Lexi?”
“Because ye have yet to admit and overcome yer own imperfections,” Mairwen said as she shimmered into place beside him. “Ye will never know the purity of unconditional love until ye accept not only yer fated mate’s imperfections but yer own.”
“Darkcord? Are the wards not in place?” Jeros bristled with barely checked rage. The old one had no right to appear in his private chambers uninvited and unannounced.
“The wards dinna work on the Divine Weavers. Ye know that well enough.” The commander offered Mairwen a deep, respectful bow. “Especially not on the mighty one.” He backed toward the door. “And I shall be leaving the pair of ye now to give ye yer privacy.”
“Coward,” Jeros spat.
“Aye,” Darkcord said. “And not too proud to admit it, either.” Then he left and closed the door behind him.
Jeros turned back to Mairwen, grudgingly bowed, then directed her toward a chair at the table in front of the wall of windows. “And why, pray tell, am I blessed with this visit, old one?”
“Dinna be rude. Sarcasm is beneath yer station.” Mairwen went to the windows, but she didn’t sit.
Instead, she stood there scowling at the view of the evergreens gently swaying in the breeze.
“The Fifth Kingdom’s rumblings grow louder.
Yer insult to Princess Faeniana stoked their anger even more.
They will stop at nothing for revenge, including causing harm to Miss Lexi, the woman ye alienate even more with every false declaration of my own. ”
“I am trying to overcome my shallowness. But the better I get to know her, the more I see her kindness and caring, the worse those feckin’ scars remind me of the suffering she has endured.
Her unimaginable suffering breaks my heart and makes me wish I had found her sooner, so I might have saved her.
If I had traveled to her family in the Dreaming, warned them about the accident, maybe I could have prevented it.
It grieves me that I did not help her. I feel as though I failed her, Mairwen. ”
“Then tell her that.”
Jeros stared at the old woman, who more often than not was a thorn in his side. “Has protecting the Highland Veil driven ye mad? I canna tell Lexi all that I just told ye.”
“Why not?”
“Because I sound like a pompous arse, trying to control her destiny.” Another thought occurred to him. “And I have yet to tell her I am over a thousand years old—by her Scotland’s reckoning. In the Seventh Realm, I am but a prince in my prime.”
“Now, ye did sound like a pompous arse that time.” Mairwen shook her head, causing her silvery white hair to shimmer with an ethereal glow.
Some said she was the daughter of the goddesses Bride and Cerridwen, and a once-powerful king of the Seventh Realm.
Jeros had no doubt they were right. He sensed her Seelie blood, sensed their connection through their ancestry.
“Our Lexi has a rare trait, which I am sure you have already discovered,” Mairwen said.
“She knows when something is false. Be it words, looks, or actions. Since the accident, when she was naught but four years old, she trained herself to read people. She recoils from pity, but values honesty and integrity. Do ye possess either of those traits, yer highness?”
“Do ye enjoy insulting me?”
“I do it to get yer attention.” Mairwen drew her colorful shawl closer around her narrow shoulders.
“Be honest with her. Has dealing with yer mother and the Fifth Kingdom made ye forget how?” She shook her head again as she closed in on him, cutting through him with her startling blue-eyed glare.
“A fated mate is not just a wife, or a mother to yer children. A fated mate is a partner in this life and every life thereafter. She can help ye if ye but give her a chance. Show yer trust in her, yer regret at being unable to save her from the cruel fate this life dealt her, show her by bringing her to yer side and empowering her to help ye with this feckin’ mess yer parents seem unable to overcome.
Yer father and mother are so busy warring with each other, they ignore the Fifth Kingdom and risk the entirety of the Seventh Realm.
Is that what ye wish? Do ye doubt what I tell ye? ”
He had no doubt about what she said about his parents. Nor did he think they would ever rise from their personal war long enough to be the wise monarchs the Seventh Realm needed and deserved. Jeros scrubbed his face with both hands, wishing destiny and fate had dealt him a better hand.
“We are dealt what we are dealt,” Mairwen said, reminding him she had no qualms about barging into the personal space of his thoughts, either. “We must make the best of that which we have—or the worst of it. Which do ye choose?”
“What if it is too late?” That was his greatest fear.
He had researched what a felony was in Lexi’s Scotland because she had threatened to commit one before she received her coffee.
His heart had crumbled when he realized she had said she was ready to kill him, even in jest, but serious enough, because his foolish theatrics had hurt her so. “I fear it is too late.”
“What if it is not?” Mairwen arched a silvery brow, pinning him with a stare that made him want to squirm. “Why are ye so willing to give up so easily? Is a thing as rare and wonderful as a fated mate not worth fighting for? Is it not worth trying harder as many times as it takes to be successful?”
“Ye could speak with her on my behalf.” Jeros almost cringed. He sounded like a whining child.
“If I speak with her, all she will ask about, at least for a while, is how to return to her time. Under no circumstances must ye allow her to walk through the evening mist if the goddesses choose to tempt her with it. She must be kept here until the two of ye meld yer bond.” She pointed at him with a finger crooked with age.
“If she returns to her time, to her Scotland, she may never be allowed to return to the Seelie realm. She will be free to time travel again, but ye ken as well as I that the only reason the goddesses allowed her entry into the Fae realm was because the bond the two of ye share is more powerful than usual, and the Veil would profit greatly from it. Ye know the goddesses still take issue with Seelie and Unseelie alike.”
“And yet, here we are.” Jeros couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone.
As far as he was concerned, the goddesses caused as much trouble as they caused good, and he knew deep down that Mairwen felt the same.
The only ones he truly respected when it came to the Highland Veil that separated the worlds and planes of time were the Divine Weavers, and even then, only the Weavers of the Light.
The Weavers of the Dark were known to cause as much mischief as the temperamental goddesses and the Unseelie.
Mairwen perked like a hound on the hunt. “She comes. Remember all I have said.” Then she disappeared.