Chapter 7 Golden Balm #2
Luella came face-to-face with golden eyes, a small ball of black fur. A tiny kitten, with black whiskers and eyes too large for her little face, pawed innocently at the furs tangled up by Luella’s shoulder.
"A kitten?" she gasped. The kitten mewled as if to answer her question. Luella smiled at the gentle creature. Far too innocent and dependent. "Where did you find her?"
Her hands grasped at the furs as she half pushed herself up, turning her head back around toward Tharen.
Her back twinged, but it was muted. She felt a paw on her hips, and Az made a tsking sound, before the kitten was gathered up in his arms and placed over her other side, so as to not disturb her healing body.
"I couldn’t leave her. We found her in the castle. She was in our way." Tharen’s eyes flicked to Az’s.
Luella felt as though that was not the full story. "But you will keep her?"
"That’s up to the King," Tharen said.
They all looked to the male in question, and Luella couldn’t stop her eyes from growing wide with desire to keep this small, innocent thing with them. She found she wanted to have a creature depend on her for once, instead of doing all the depending.
"The Prima has a habit of rescuing lost things.
" Vale’s green eyes left invisible burns on her exposed flesh; she could never hide from him, and his words spoke of more than just sprites and kittens.
"Do not let his indifference fool you, darling.
" He let out a low hiss that made the kitten’s golden eyes darken with wariness. "It can stay."
She watched the kitten place her front paws on Az’s thighs, as if testing him. Her small head lowered, brushing against the demon once he was deemed satisfactory.
"She needs a name," Bastian supplied.
Luella found herself looking at Tharen again—she always did that, it seemed.
The mage’s eyes narrowed. "Give her a name, lamb. She might like you more than me. It’s your soft heart that appealed to Vale, but you might want to keep her in your sights. Dragons eat kittens—and lambs," he added.
One by one, the Prima rebuilt his walls of stone, locking her away.
Holding his eyes, Luella mused, "Raven."
"Raven?" Az murmured, large hands nearly eclipsing the kitten as she kneaded the furs by his thigh.
The fever made her bold, but sleepiness made her eyes half-lidded as she glanced to the raven shifter, whose eyes had never left her. She wondered if they ever would. "The shade of her fur reminds me of your feathers, Graves…"
Graves’s hands clenched at her words.
Tension was thick in the air until…
"You name her after him when I’m the one who found her?" Tharen’s words were a barely controlled explosion of dominance.
She tried to hide her smile, but failed. An invisible piece of stone that encased his heart fell around him, toppling to the ground.
"I’ll call her… Ven." Luella sighed as she looked at the kitten, wishing every moment could be so pure and light as this.
This soft, stolen moment. It was neither soft nor stolen, however. Strained and taken. The air in Vale’s den was terse and tinged with fever, and it was not stolen with liberation but taken by their hands, carved into the fabric of their fate by bloodied fingertips and wet, stormy clouds.
But here, now… she felt a small, splintered piece of her—one that she had wondered would ever heal—soothe over, just a bit.
As if someone had placed a golden balm over the cracks of her soul, healing it.
The cracks were still there, still hurting, still threatened to splinter outward if she moved too much, thought too deeply, but it was a start.
A small, shivering, delicate thing, wrapped in the bloodied innocence of her wings and built upon the soured foundation of her hidden lineage.
The terseness to the air returned as moments of silence passed, and finally, with evident reluctance, Tharen reached for his cloak, discarded on the stone ground by his legs. From inside a hidden pocket, he pulled out two things that made her brows raise.
A small, purple, leather-bound book—nameless. And a crumpled note.
The mage all but slammed the two items down on the furs, making Ven jump slightly, stopping her kneading with a low hiss.
Luella swallowed, feeling the dryness in her mouth creep back to attention.
"I got the Compendium of Fates before we left the castle." Tharen tapped a long finger atop the leather cover, the sound deafening in the sudden quiet.
"Where did you—when did you—" she stammered, feeling caught and helpless.
"Did you really think I didn’t know when you got it? When I stumbled into you in the halls that night?" Tharen arched a brow, firelight casting shadows on the hollows of his cheeks.
"Luella, who do you think put the Compendium in the library?
" Vale inquired lowly. "The Fates? My father, the prior King of Serpentis, perhaps?
Or did you know, somewhere deep down in the pit of your stomach, that we knew it was there all along, because we put it there.
" A dark, cruel grin touched upon his lips, and with the cloak bundled around his shoulders, a small triangle of muscled, tanned skin exposed where it was clasped at his neck, she saw him as the cruel King he was proclaimed to be.
In this moment, not the male who murmured darling to her and forced her beyond her limits, believed in her powers.
She needed to sit up, needed to see—she didn’t want to be vulnerable, like prey on her stomach with five predators looming around her in this den of smoke and fire and cool whispers of air.
Bracing her hands under her, her arms shook fiercely as she tried to push herself up. She felt her torn, tattered gown slip down past her hips, the numb tingling of her back making it hard to feel much else save for the faintest tickle of air on her skin.
"Angel, wait a moment." Az stayed her with a hand on her upper thigh, and she shivered but did not relent.
"I want… to sit up," she managed, struggling.
It was Tharen who came to her aid. Carefully, as if afraid she might break—a feeling that was weird coming from him—the mage fit one hand under her leg, the other snaked under her chest to grab at her shoulder, his forearm brushing her bare breasts.
A soft sound of surprise escaped her, and she felt her whole body hone in on that faintest brush of feeling.
It made her… remember.
She didn’t want to remember. Not right now.
Not when it was all so fresh and aching.
"Shift your hips," Tharen said, helping her to sit up. She grabbed weakly at the furs with one hand, tugging them up to her chest to conceal her modesty. "Lie back, but not fully."
Luella tried, but it was hard. A strange position she was forced into due to her wings.
She couldn’t lie back, but didn’t want to be on her stomach anymore.
She looked at Az, teeth digging harshly into her lower lip.
Her lashes brushed her cheeks as she stared at her lap, wavering as she held herself as still as possible. "Can you hold me?"
The crackle of the fire seemed to grow, and as she waited, her heart lodged in her dry, aching throat.
"Of course, Lu. Always," Az said gently.
She looked up and met his eyes, a brief moment for just the two of them in the grey of the den. He took her, then, wrapped his arms around the furs and tucked them up to her chest, pulled her onto his lap, sitting sideways, with her feet brushing Tharen’s thighs.
From this position, she could see everyone in the room.
She still sat strangely, keeping her side away from the demon.
His arm was banded across her nape, instead of her back, as he held her to him.
But it was enough—for now. It made her feel small and safe.
Just for a moment. It was all she felt she could ask for.
The bracelet was still in her palm; she didn’t want to let it go.
She tucked it close to her chest and folded her hands under the furs.
She eyed the purple cover of the Compendium.
"You’re right. I did know, I guess, in some small piece of my soul, that I could never hide anything from any of you.
It wasn’t that—that I thought you put it there, hidden in the library, but I’ve realized that no matter how hard I try, I can never win. " She swallowed. "Not against you."
"We do not expect you to," Vale said.
She supposed that was the problem. She had been trying to win against them, and they had been trying to use her, conquer her. They had gotten it all wrong.
"If I cannot win against you—any of you—then perhaps I will just have to join you." Her voice was achingly soft, slightly scared.
Waves of shocked possession filtered down the threads, tangled around them, between them, like the furs around her legs. The strongest was from the dragon shifter, a sparking, ember-like twist of threads burning with covetousness, as if he thought her to be a jewel in his hoard.
"Joining us is not something you can change once it’s done," Bastian said lowly, as if he were trying to talk her out of it.
She knew that, and she knew she had no other choices. "I… understand."
"Do you?" Vale arched a golden brow. "Tell me, Princess Luella, do you understand what standing by our sides would entail for you?" A quiet demand was simmering within his words, barely hidden, and she felt the Binding mark on her chest quiver in anticipation.
She answered him; not because she was forced, but because she wanted them to understand:
"Even the clouds have companions. They don’t drift in the sky alone. One cloud isn’t dangerous by itself, but when combined with a mass of others, only then are they truly a storm… a-a tempest." Her fever made her mind cloud with delirium. Was she even making sense?
Luella recalled the pointed forks converging upon the sea, whipping toward the castle. They didn’t act alone. So neither would she.
"You will never be our equal. Could that be enough for you?" Graves countered, eyes sparkling like dark sapphires.
She toyed with the bracelet under the furs, fingers fiddling with the charms. Ven had padded her way over, tucked into a small ball nestled by Az’s thigh. It seemed she was not the only innocent thing that felt safe in the demon’s presence.
"It will have to be," she revealed, knowing that, perhaps, it would never be.
But could anything ever be enough for her?
When she had spent her life nestled within the pages of books, living countless lives, while her own was abysmal at best. She yearned for it all, but knew, realistically, she would have none of it.
Air whistled through the den, chilling her slightly, and Az bundled her closer, one hand smoothing over her temples and pressing upon her brow, feeling the flushed heat on her cheeks and forehead.
Her numb back tingled as air passed over her wings.
Graves’s eyes tracked the movement of her twitching feathers.
His throat worked—her feverish mind clung to the tempting image.
The shadow of hair along his jaw was darker, only making him appear more attractive. She had to force herself to look away.
Tharen tapped a finger against the Compendium, shifting the crumpled note that lay on top.
"Another thing." He lifted the note, smoothing the edges down.
She squinted, trying to read it, but he spoke before she could.
"'Come find me, M.' This was in my apothecary when we got back from the Temples.
The whole place was ransacked. No magical trace left behind… "
"There are only a few that have that type of power," Graves mumbled. "Do you think—"
"I know," Tharen interjected. "Merath. She most likely used a glamor crafted by Emarelia to hide her presence when she snuck in."
"Vexing female," Graves seethed. "How does she want us to find her? Is that all the note says?" He sat up, scooting forward across the stone until he was closer, no longer on the outskirts of their strange circle.
Luella felt a soft stab of jealousy at the raven shifter’s words, speaking of another female, but she shoved it far down.
Tharen waved the note before him. "Nothing else. It makes me wonder if the note was left as an afterthought?" he questioned.
"Or perhaps she was trying to keep where she and Emarelia are hidden a secret," Bastian stated. "She’s a smart female—has to be if she’s the lover of the prior Prima, once the most powerful—"
"And dethroned by me," Tharen asserted, a snarl etched into his severe features. "No mage is as powerful as I am, now. I should be able to see past the glamor. I should be smarter than this."
This was… bothering him, she realized. Being tricked.
From the way Luella sat, nestled upon Az’s lap, the fire flickering in the hearth cast amber light over the backs of Tharen’s tanned hands, illuminating the pale, weathered paper of the note. She could see the feminine scrawl inked on the other side. And… something else.
Her brows furrowed, and she found herself leaning closer, nearly tumbling from Az’s lap, if he didn’t settle her with a strong, large hand. "Angel?" he questioned. "What is it?" His voice was a low murmur.
"Is that…" She trailed off, staring at the paper clutched in the Prima’s hand. Az followed her gaze, and she knew the exact moment he saw what she did, that it wasn’t a product of her feverish mind and tired body.
"Flip it over," Az barked, making Luella jump slightly from the increase in his tone. He offered a silent apology in the form of a hand soothing over her nape.
Tharen eyed him. "What?" His teeth flashed.
"Flip the note. Hold it up to the firelight," the demon said hurriedly.
Her gaze drifted to Vale and Bastian, who watched with interest and rapidly growing understanding. Graves was quiet.
Tharen did so with a strange reluctance, tilting the note up to where the light of the fire glowed softly over the back of it. And it revealed—
Wings.
A dark etching, as if done with some unique sort of invisible ink. A pair of wings, outlined over the scrawl of the words Tharen had read, only revealed when held up to the light of a fire.
Vale’s prideful stoicism cracked as his eyes narrowed, calculating.
"Wings?" Luella breathed. "Why wings?" She was scared of what they would say. Scared of what this female, the prior Prima, meant to them all.
Az leaned down to whisper into her ear, fingers brushing her white hair to the side, "No one will ever be you, and no one could even try."
She shivered, feeling soft, blooming love replacing green jealousy.
Tharen’s fingers curled around the note, disrupting the image of wings. His tongue poked into his cheek as he thought deeply, and finally, he said, "The Fallen Isles. They’re hiding on the Fallen Isles."