To Murder a King
E mbarrassment washed over Bryson. Humiliation. Rage.
Prey.
Prey.
Prey.
Her mind whirled with far too many things and her body contained far too many feelings. Failure was a prominent one alongside the irrefutable sense of humiliation. She’d been degraded. She’d failed to do the one thing she was supposed to. Don’t eat anything, Weylyn had told her. The sensation nibbled away at her insides as her mind flashed back to the other Elementals. All the great things they’d done. Melting iron. Freezing and shattering it. Drowning entire cities with the force of their magic.
What had Bryson done other than get caught? Than be thrown into a pit, hurt and humiliated, forced to strip herself bare before a court that jeered at her from behind golden bars. She’d been reduced to little more than an animal in a zoo.
Humiliated all because she was Weylyn’s mate. But there was a deeper reason for their hatred. A death that lay between them all. It was the root of their ire, and they’d pulled her into it.
Bryson had a right to know why.
“Tell me,” she ordered viciously, her anger burning away the humiliation. Her palms slapped against his chest, nails raking across his skin like she could pull the truth out of him with violence.
His expression shuttered and he pulled away. Like he meant to hide. Wear that mask. Only, it wasn’t a mask. It was an innate part of him that he’d adapted to his very being. Unseelie. High Fae. He was both. And it was that Unseelie mask that fell into place right then between them. The intentionally cruel expression that she’d despised and craved in equal measure.
“Don’t,” Bryson warned, grasping for him. “Do not pull away from me. I deserve the truth. Look at what they did to me.”
Weylyn’s eyes closed.
“Look at me!”
His eyes opened to face the tears. The blood. The scars. The pain she wore like a raw wound.
And his own eyes reflected the same thing.
They were in his mindscape, surrounded by the privacy of his mind walls. They could speak freely here without the worry of someone dropping in or overhearing. Yet Weylyn almost looked... afraid.
“Weylyn.” Bryson grabbed his hands. “Please. Just tell me.”
He took a breath and when he opened his eyes next, the mask was gone and there were decades worth of pain haunting his every feature.
“It is a long and painful story. If I tell you, perhaps you will despise me as much as they do by the end of it.”
Bryson wouldn’t make him empty promises. The truth was, she didn’t even know what she would feel after she heard his story. But she needed to hear it regardless.
“Tell me,” she said.
Weylyn swallowed and took a deep breath.
“Do you know why there is no King of Unseelie?”
“Because your mother doesn’t suffer fools or men?”
His lips twitched. “Because she does not keep men alive long enough to overthrow her.”
“I can see that.” She seemed a rather paranoid Fae, but Bryson supposed all those in power were.
“When she fancies a male, she will either woo them to her side or take them without their consent and trap them here. She uses them to create heirs, and when she has no further use for them, she discards them like trash.”
“That’s awful.”
“That is life in the Unseelie.” Weylyn shrugged. “And my father... he was a High Fae man. My mother took him from Seelie and entrapped him here with fruit. She seduced him. Kept him for years. And after I was born, she killed him for being a nuisance. I never knew him...” His voice grew wistful, filled with pain. “But she spoke of him often. Of the High Lord she managed to snatch from Seelie.”
Bryson’s eyes widened. “ A High Lord ? Your father was a High Lord?”
“The High Lord of the Gold Court.”
Bryson sucked in a breath, blinking as her mind whirled in a whirlwind. “Corvina is—”
“Corvina.” His voice softened as he said her name. “I knew who she was the moment I reached for her with my magic. A bond that tethered us, different from that of a mate, of a familiar. A bond of Mana just as sacred. Of blood. Of family.”
“So Corvina is...”
“She is my cousin. My mother kidnapped her uncle from Seelie, bred him, disposed of him. Corvina’s father assumed the position when his brother never returned home. She is my flesh and blood. She is the only connection I have to the father I never knew. She and Basil are the family I always desired. One, at least, that did not try to kill me every few minutes.”
She recalled it then. The soft way he spoke to her as opposed to everyone else. The gentle way he handled Basil, how fierce he had protected them both, especially when Basil had gotten lost.
Because they were family. His blood. Corvina was his cousin.
Bryson leaned forward and grasped his hand in hers, offering him support. “Why haven’t you told her?”
His jaw tightened at that, almost as if he were too afraid to answer, but Bryson could read his silences well enough.
“You’re afraid she will reject you like your other siblings do.”
He didn’t give her confirmation of her words. He just continued his story. “I was the youngest until... until my mother met a male she actually loved and Cossima was born. My sister.” His golden eyes lit up. “We all loved her. As much as an Unseelie can love, we loved her. And when her father died, the queen was devastated. Devastated enough to protect the princess with all she could and all she was. We all protected her from the cruelties of our own court.”
“What was your sister like?” Bryson asked.
She couldn’t recall the last time anyone had asked that of her when it came to the memories of her family. She didn’t speak of them often, if ever. She should have. She should have kept them alive by speaking about what they were like instead of burying them beneath layers of hurt and pain. Beneath her own bitterness. She’d tried to keep their memories alive by being what they’d always wanted her to be, but instead she’d become a bitter, angry creature and had lost their memories as well as their lives.
Weylyn looked at her as though he felt the same. As though no one had ever asked him, and she supposed they hadn’t, because he’d kept her a secret. He’d kept his whole identity a secret from everyone. She wondered if he’d ever lost himself in the process of keeping all those secrets.
“She was sunshine,” he whispered. “And starlight and magic. She illuminated our darkness and evil. She was mischievous, but she was good. Better than anyone I’ve ever known.” His eyes shone with what Bryson suspected were tears. “I loved her. And she loved me, more than anyone else. She was my greatest friend.” He took a breath. “Until I killed her.” His expression hardened and he pulled away from Bryson, distancing himself from her touch.
“ You killed her?” She didn’t want to believe that, but there was pain in his voice, so bad it fractured her. “ How ?”
“One thing you have to know about Cossima is that she was too adventurous and far too manipulative. A trait she got from our mother, no doubt. I am unsure how, but she wanted to leave Unseelie. To explore beyond the borders of what she knew.”
“And you took her,” Bryson guessed.
Weylyn gave a mirthless smirk. “She was very convincing. In and out, I told her. Before our mother could catch on to what we were doing.”
“Why did she ask you?”
“Because of my ties to Seelie.” He shrugged. “I’d gone before, in secret. She knew and she exploited that. So I took her, not just to prevent the queen from discovering my exploits, but to indulge my sister’s curiosity. So I took her to the border where Unseelie meets Seelie.” He choked and that burning anger flamed higher in his eyes. “I should not have taken her there.”
“Weylyn... what happened ?”
“We were doing nothing wrong when they showed up on their horses. Majestic beasts covered in jewels. Arrows pointed at us. I will never forget the leader of the group, astride a black stallion, crown atop his fucking head as he stared down at us... I will never forget the way he smiled down at us or the thoughts that flicked through his mind as he looked at us. Unseelie scum, tainting his precious court. His thoughts were vile, and when they saw my sister...” He shook his head. “He wanted her dead. He wanted us dead. For nothing more than merely existing, for stepping onto his lands. I should have eliminated him then. Gone into his mind and rendered him nothing but a shell, but I was young. Too young and inexperienced with my own magic. I was too slow, too fucking slow to stop it. I tried to fight, but they got me. They got her. And they made me watch as they killed her. Slowly. Painfully. And they left her body there on the ground to bleed out. Flowers grew around her. Even in death her blood had created something beautiful. But me... they thought they’d killed me. Mana spared my life. I thought it was so I could take my sister’s body back to Unseelie, but when I did, it was in shame.
“My mother was... furious is too kind a word. She broke. They all did. I did. And when she had me beaten, whipped with iron, I deserved it. It was my fault. I killed her. I killed my own blood by taking her into Seelie. It was my fault and I deserve their scorn. I always have. And I tried to drown my sorrows in Unseelie drugs. In powders in my nose that would help me forget, but there was no forgetting what I’d done, and there was no forgiving either.
“They’d all come to hate me far more than they’d ever had before. But they never hated me more than I hated myself. My mother could no longer stand to look at me, and I was banished to Seelie. She had hoped, prayed I am sure, that the one who murdered my sister would find me and murder me, too.
“But when I arrived at Seelie, he was no longer there. Her blood was no longer there. And I had nothing but my own pathetic sorrow, a pocketful of powder that slowly began to kill me, and wounds that never truly healed.
“So, I wandered through a court I’d always longed for but never truly belonged to. A place I knew of no one but my sister’s murderer. For days I survived on powder alone. It kept me tethered to my anger and my rage. It helped feed it until I was a starving Fae aching for only one thing that could sate me: revenge on the Fae man who had done it.
“Eventually it was those thoughts that weaned me off the drug. It was that anger that pushed me towards the Seelie Court to study and spy and find the perfect opportunity. But then the war with the humans came and the world rendered into chaos. I thought I’d lost my chance. I thought I would no longer bring his head back to my mother as a gift, an apology.
“But then he came to me with his horde. They found me, turned their weapons my way. I stared the Fae in the eyes, and I wondered if he’d recognized me. Years had already passed. So many years. But for me it was like it had happened a day before, hours before, minutes, even. It was so ingrained into my being that it felt too close. But when he looked at me, when my thoughts reached for his, I knew he did not remember me. He did not remember my sister.
“The rage I felt. The way I wanted to reach out and rip his heart from his chest. We’d been just another moment to him. Something unworthy of note. We warranted no remembrance. The death of the most beloved person in my family’s world had been nothing of consequence to him. I knew then that I would not just kill him, I would kill everything he loved and held dear. But I would take no gratification from doing it slowly.
“He did not deserve such an easy death. So, I infiltrated his mind. I gave him a hint of my magic and magic like mine is far too rare. I pledged myself to him. I got down on my knees before my sister’s killer, and I fucking bowed even if everything within me revolted at the action. I pretended to revere him. I feigned my loyalty if only to get close to him. To read his thoughts. To learn his court. To find the perfect opportunity to let the world around him fucking burn . Because killing him was not enough. No. I wanted to completely and utterly destroy his house. His court. His crown.”
Weylyn took a breath and looked up at Bryson then. There were tears. Of sorrow, loss, rage. They made his golden eyes shine that much brighter and made her heart pound that much harder and her feelings for him grow that much larger.
“I have been at his side for years, waiting. Because when I murder him, I want it to be slow. I want to watch his soul bleed out of his body, and I want to laugh the way he laughed when it was the blood of my sister trickling onto the ground. And when I have his head, I will hang it above my mother’s throne so the entire court can see that I, Weylyn Xanth, murdered the Seelie King.”
Tears had slipped down Bryson’s eyes, but she didn’t wipe them away. The salt was strong against her lips, and when she sucked in a breath, it tasted of the sea.
Weylyn took a breath and his own tears slid down his cheeks. He straightened, expression hardening once again. “So you see, my little mate? You see what a monster I truly am. I caused my sister’s death. I killed her. I have been pretending to be loyal to the monarchy that tore my family apart. I am planning on murdering your king. I am unworthy of you, of anyone , because of what I have done and what I will do. That is why they despise me. That is why they will take it out on you every opportunity.”
Silence pulsed between them and when Bryson finally found the courage to speak, she shook her head and reached for his hands. “I don’t believe that.” He tried to pull away, but she held firm. “You’re not a monster.”
“Were you not listening?” He huffed a frustrated breath.
“I was, and you know what I learned of you?” She pushed on before he could respond. “I learned that you’re a man who dreams of a family who loves him. A man who loved his sister more than anyone in the world, so much that you’d do anything to make her dreams and curiosities come true, even at the expense of your own well-being. I learned that you suffered misplaced hatred from your entire family for years. You have suffered violence and drugs, and yet your love was so strong it became an anger acute to revenge. You know what I learned about you, Weylyn Xanth?” She sobbed. “I learned today that you and I are the same, and if there is one thing that you are, it is worthy. And if there is one thing I know, it is that if Mana gives me the choice, I will choose you, my mate, every single time. And if you choose me, too, then I will be happy to watch the world burn alongside you.”