TWENTY-EIGHT
M ated.
The word and the memories of what I’d done became a ghost that distracted even hours after the intense claiming.
Atakan had been gone since we were forced to cease fucking the previous evening. I’d spent more time than necessary wondering when we might have stopped if we hadn’t been interrupted. For although I was uncomfortably tender, it was still there, a simmering need for more.
Pride, mostly, kept me from asking for the prince’s whereabouts. Pride and a boatload of fury. So much so that after I’d woken well past midday, I’d paced Atakan’s rooms, imagining the vitriol I would spew at him as soon as he returned.
But he hadn’t. I’d been collected by Pholly after dinner, who’d sniffed and said, “Quicker than I expected.”
I’d frowned. “Excuse me?”
She’d given me an amused look. “No need to be offended. Atakan might have met his match in you, but he’s been swindling his way through life since he learned how to walk.”
We’d vanished before I could wholly realize she’d been talking about accepting the bond forced upon me.
A bond breakable only in death.
The royal city of Cloudfall was a tidy maze of streets crafted from emerald hedges and towering wood and stone structures.
Pholly had vanished us to the business district where we’d meet Phineus and Elion. To avoid detection from any loiterers, we arrived a few streets away from the heart of the city.
Though as I peered into the shadows, I wasn’t sure we’d be successful. Without the protective wards of Cloud Castle, even if we escaped the notice of those out and about at the late hour, I wasn’t sure Vane wouldn’t discover what we were up to.
I cast the worry aside as I imagined the horror he would bring to this beautiful city, and all those who dwelled within it. He could learn that we were hunting his pytherion eggs, but there was little he could do to me, little he could do to stop us, until he enacted his monstrous plan.
More stone than wood made up the buildings lining the cobbled streets. It gave no solace. The amount of fire unleashed by just one pytherion was enough to spread throughout half of this city before it could be contained.
Iridescent plumes dispersed into tendrils that spiraled around Phineus and Elion as they vanished onto the street.
The latter immediately swallowed me in a hug that took me by surprise. He laughed when I tensed and failed to hug him back.
Clasping my cheeks, he said, “You are more clever than anyone could have anticipated. Merely rupturing the wards…” He grinned as bright as the moon above. “Genius.”
I frowned, feeling more confused than clever.
Phineus tugged him away. “You’re frightening her.”
“I am not.” Elion’s deep-blue hair shone beneath the lamplight before he hid it with the hood of his cloak. He then surveyed me, brows furrowed. “Did I frighten you?”
I smiled. “Merely surprised me.”
Phineus chuckled. “Well, you’ve certainly surprised all of us, Princess.”
“Less muttering, more walking,” Pholly hissed from down the street.
We all hurried to catch up.
Phineus, hands tucked in the pockets of his mustard cloak, kept his head low. All of us followed suit, though I wished to look closer at the colored windows and the carvings in wooden doors we passed. Looking at the damp and mossy stones of the street did nothing to curb the riot of feelings within.
I wanted to find this egg and smack the prince in his pretty face with it. I wanted to find it, then find him, and impale myself on his cock while I took my anger out on his perfect lips.
I supposed I’d known. Perhaps I hadn’t known what it was, but I’d always known that my attraction to him wasn’t mere obsession for something too lovely and lethal for my own good. The games we’d played, the punishments we’d served, and the years pushed between us as buffers…
I never was quite certain I should have survived it.
Now, I couldn’t help but wonder if my defiance would have been tolerated had I not been destined for him. Then I wondered how long he’d known that I was, and why he’d never so much as hinted at it, let alone said anything.
I looked up as we walked by a glowing shopfront. A butcher. Within, a golden-haired male in a streaked apron was cleaning. His soil-dark eyes narrowed at the window just as we moved on.
Murals colored any large expanse of blank stone, wood, and even countless doors—sun-drenched fields of wildflowers, faerie hovels within mountain foothills, and many depictions of the sky goddess. In every one, Etheria’s hair was a rainbow and her clothing rays of sunshine or fluffy pink clouds.
Studying the buildings helped keep my thoughts from straying and circling repetitively around the prince. But as always, nothing ever kept him away for long.
A boisterous laugh leaked onto the street from a tavern we’d passed.
As soon as we turned onto another street, Phineus disobeyed his sister and said, thick with amusement, “Anyone else unable to ignore how different the princess smells?”
Elion nudged him.
“I’m right here,” I needlessly drawled.
“ You can’t smell it.” Phineus said to the others, “You must admit the way it screams is distracting.”
That was true. I failed to notice anything different about my scent.
Beside me, Pholly sighed, kicking at a cream rock. It skittered over the cobblestone into the shadowy doorstep of a jeweler. “Only males get a rise out of such archaic nonsense.”
“Don’t worry, Phol.” Elion’s smirk was bright in the dark. “You’ll eventually find a mate who can put up with your gloomy ways.”
“You don’t know anything,” Pholly said.
“We know plenty,” Phineus sang, walking backward and winking at his sister. “And when these wars stop, all of us might just claim our own blessings.”
Pholly sneered. “You’re so hopeful, it’s honestly revolting.”
The sloping street widened into a flat and empty market square.
“Can’t get more center than the heart of the city itself.” Phineus rubbed his hands together.
The thick pillars rising toward the star-splattered sky slowed my feet. A temple. Open to the elements, pink and blue flowering vines delicately choked the cracked stone. As if crafted from both sun and moonlight, the stone was a cream so clean, it seemed to shimmer.
When I caught up with Pholly at the temple, Phineus and Elion were gone. “Are they searching the rear?” I asked.
She laughed. “Possibly.”
Understanding her meaning, I laughed too.
Then I peered into the dark beyond the hedges and fissured stone steps. Only more darkness loomed on the other side, and given how open the temple was, I surmised a pytherion egg wouldn’t be hidden within.
“They don’t get much privacy in the castle.”
I remembered the way Elion had looked at Phineus during my welcoming ball. Perhaps it had been more than jealousy. Perhaps it had been longing. “Why?”
“Phineus’s future belongs to Garran,” she said.
“Do you mean marriage?”
“Yes.”
We turned upon the wide street, studying the long building with pink-stained windows opposite the temple. White paint peeled from a pipe that leaked into a drain at the corner. No gardens. None surrounded the building aside the temple either.
“But he is hardly a prince,” I whispered.
Pholly snorted. “Don’t tell Phineus that.” Her voice lowered. “Garran ordered them to cease their relationship while he tends to negotiations. But those negotiations were halted before the wards on the Unseelie realm were instated.”
I failed to make sense of that. “But then there’s no need. He’s tormenting them, surely.”
Pholly said, “And if we wish to call Cloud Castle home, we are beholden to Garran and his arrogant whims.”
“You don’t wish to live elsewhere?”
“Where else is there for nobility without wealth or other lodgings?” Before I could ask more, she said, “My father disappeared fifteen years ago. We don’t know what happened. He left us to meet with Garran two weeks prior to the Spring Ball, and he never returned.”
I looked at her, noting the hard set of her delicate jaw as she stared at the night sky. She wrapped herself tight in her gray cloak. “It’s all very boring, really.”
“It’s disturbing, Pholly. Did Garran take you in after that?”
She nodded. “A week after our father left, Garran and his entourage arrived at our estate with wagons to transport any belongings we wished to keep. Five or so years ago, I found our father’s will while searching for clean parchment in Garran’s study. It’d been hidden within an old pad of parchment.”
“He took your fortune,” I surmised.
“The Ethermore’s are our only living relatives, so in the event of our father’s death, we were to become Garran’s wards. In exchange for his protection and accommodation, he was entitled to access our fortune.” She drew a breath and almost snarled, “Permitted to use it as he saw fit, and it just so happens that his coffers were nearly drained by a certain someone not long before our father’s disappearance.”
We both knew disappearance meant death.
I whispered, “The Seelie king had no coin to feed his armies.” And at a time when the Unseelie attacks had been worsening.
So much so, Garran had eventually sought help from mortals in the years that followed. From my father.
“Barely enough to feed those in the castle,” she said, uncaring for her volume. “Now, he holds the strings to our fates, and because of the crown he doesn’t deserve to wear, there’s no changing that.”
Garran had taken Pholly and Phineus as his wards to fund the war against the Unseelie. But he’d stood no chance at defeating them. No Seelie army could defeat an army containing faeries who could shift into a myriad of monsters.
So he’d collected as much strength as possible by forging the alliance with my father, and forced their retreat to pen them behind wards. For even with the alliance, I understood now that the Unseelie would not be defeated.
Phineus’s laughter echoed from a distant street, and Pholly’s lips curved into a reluctant smile.
Sensing she was done talking, I said, “If there’s something I can do, let me know.” Although there likely wasn’t much to be done about their stolen inheritance, I shrugged. “I don’t mind a tough game.”
Her smirk brought some shine back to her eyes. “Egg hunt first. Treason later.”
Withholding a laugh, I turned to the hedges lining the temple. “Suppose we start with the gardens.”
“Seems foolish when they’d be quite large.” Pholly studied them, too. “Hiding one in there would be difficult unless it was half buried in the soil.”
“Other than atop the surrounding buildings, there’s nowhere else it could be.” I surveyed the square again. “Vane personally saw to hiding the eggs near the castle, so I assume he did the same here.” Needlessly, I said, “And he can fly.” Though I kept from mentioning his fear of heights. Just another lie to endear me to him, most likely.
Pholly sighed. “Well, we certainly can’t.”
“Gardens it is.”
We began our search at the farthest ends of the hedges, slowly making our way toward the temple entrance. Beetles scurried and thorns tried to prick, but although it seemed impossible, I looked for any unusual disturbance in the soil.
Night birds sang soft tunes from atop the temple, as if discussing what we might be doing.
Pholly reached the hedges closest to the steps first, near enough to hear me. “Thank you for freeing me.” I brushed a spider from my finger, adding when she said nothing, “From the dungeon.”
Her quick laugh was mischievous. “I didn’t even know you were in there until Atakan told me when to let you out. I suspect the dramatics were to keep Garran from discovering your return before he left to meet with our military.”
I must have looked as stunned as I felt because Pholly eventually straightened from the hedge. “My skies, are you about to vomit?”
An owl hooted as it soared overhead.
I swept a hand through my hair, knocking the hood of my cloak back. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, do keep your distance. This cloak belonged to my mother.”
A comfortable silence settled, interrupted only by the birds and the crunch of our boots shifting over the cobblestones. “What did Phineus mean before?” I asked. “About the war ending and mates?”
“You shouldn’t listen to him. Hope is contagious and deadly.”
“Simply curious.”
“Curiosity is just as bad, you know.”
I couldn’t exactly refute that, but I said, “Humor me.”
After a handful of moments, Pholly finally did. “It’s become rare these past decades,” she said. “As if the twins have decided that we aren’t to be blessed with such a connection due to our violent antics.”
“How can they abhor violence when they enjoy chaos?”
“The goddesses crave the balance they upset. Death must be met with life. Hatred must be matched by love. All things need balance, or all things will perish.”
A thorn sliced my finger while I failed to snuff the urge to ask more. “Do you know what happens when a bond is formed?” Believing it would never concern me, I’d never much cared to learn.
Peering within one of two large potted shrubs on the steps, Pholly paused. “The intensity is the same for all. An attraction that can be fatal if ignored or a mate is rejected.”
“Because it hurts?”
“No.” She snorted. “Because too often someone is already with another, and that other is too often killed.”
My eyes widened. “Oh.”
She laughed, then swiped dirt from her hands as she leaned against the ribbed column of the temple. “For some, I’ve heard that when separated, they can share thoughts. But only if those thoughts pertain to one another—to the connection.”
The voice I’d heard when the wards had fractured. Atakan’s voice.
My stomach dropped.
As if she sensed it, or noticed the paling of my face, Pholly smirked. “Dreams, too,” she whispered, her eyes dancing. “If one from the pairing is not nearby but they’re awake and thinking of them, then the dreamer can glimpse what they’re doing.”
The dreams of Atakan prowling into the dungeon and down the hall in Cloud Castle struck through me like a spear.
“Supposedly, it’s as if you’re truly a part of them in those dreams,” Pholly continued. “Privy to what they’re feeling, seeing…” She shrugged. “Hearing.”
An unsuitable warmth filled my chest as I recalled the silk scarf in Atakan’s pocket during the dungeon dream. But cold dread replaced it when I thought of him glimpsing what I might have been doing when he’d been asleep.
For I’d thought of him many times when I shouldn’t have. Even when Vane had kissed me.
“Over time, as the bond intensifies, these abilities can manifest. Magical, yes,” Pholly said a touch wistfully. She then straightened with a forced sigh, and her tone turned mocking. “Also a massive invasion of privacy, if you ask me.”
I laughed, but the sound was brief and roughened by lingering shock.
Attempting to hide how unsettled I was, I cleared my throat and continued searching the hedge. “I didn’t think halflings could find a mate.”
“I’ve only heard of two.” She paused before saying, “It makes so much sense now. Atakan searched high and low for you for days, believing you’d somehow fled. He didn’t stop until we learned the Unseelie king had you, then…” Her voice quietened. “He just disappeared.”
I shouldn’t have cared enough to ask, but I did. “For how long?”
Pholly shrugged. “He’d return every few days and leave almost instantly. It didn’t cease until he brought you back.”
Heart beating hard, I stared at the hedge, lost to wonderings of what Atakan might have been doing. Had he been searching for a way to retrieve me from Vane? Hunting remaining Unseelie warriors and sympathizers who’d been attacking the Seelie?
The cut on my finger left beads of blood on the shivering leaves. I sucked it clean, then stepped back when I realized the leaves weren’t shaking from the breeze.
The beads of blood rose from the leaves.
They formed a small and translucent bubble. It bobbed before me, as if making sure it had my complete attention, then floated away.
I turned to Pholly to ask if she knew what was happening, only to find she’d moved inside the temple.
I looked back at the crimson orb drifting toward the building across the street from the temple. I followed, hoping it wasn’t another faerie’s magic luring me someplace to snatch me.
But it couldn’t be. It was my own blood.
The bubble dropped to the moss-laden drain at the corner of the building.
And popped.
Bunching my cloak and skirts, I crouched and listened closely for any creatures within the drain. Then I lowered to my knees and wedged my fingers in the grate. I pulled, surprised to find it lifted with ease.
Perhaps because someone had recently opened it to hide a pytherion egg.
For seconds that might have made minutes, I just stared into the dark drain. Black scales blended among the muck and gloom. A shard of moonlight slicing over my shoulder illuminated the sharp crest of the egg.
A second later, the shine vanished as if the scales had absorbed the light to feed the babe within.
Softly, Pholly called my name.
Fear became a pattering beat in my chest and ears as I reached into the drain. Carefully, I touched the scales, and the cut on my finger seemed to warm when I pried the egg free of the puddle of muck.
It was heavier than I’d expected. Though I should have expected it, being that Vane had selected eggs that had already been incubated in pytherion nests.
We want to use them, yes, but not risk them.
The beastly babe was likely due to hatch soon.
Pholly’s steps sounded right as I set the grate back over the drain. Holding the egg in my lap, I turned onto my ass and smiled up at her. “Look what I’ve found.”
Her eyes widened as she reached me, then narrowed as they met mine. “What beneath the skies possessed you to even think to look in there?”
“It’s the perfect spot, really.”
Phineus and Elion returned, the former laughing before he whistled to us and said, “I think that king was feeding you false information to earn your trust, Princess.”
Pholly was still staring at me—assessing me as if trying to piece a puzzle together.
Uncomfortable, and not because I was sitting on a dirty street, I swiped some wet grit from one of the scales and extended my hand for Pholly to help me up.
Phineus slowed when they neared us, and he spied the dark egg held tight to my chest.
“Brightest fucking skies,” Elion breathed, fingers fluttering to his kiss-swollen mouth.
Phineus asked, “Where was it?” He took a step closer to touch the egg.
“Mildred found it in the drain.” Peering around the empty square, Pholly said, “We should go.” She took Elion’s hands to vanish back to Cloud Castle.
As Phineus aligned my back to his chest to do the same, he whispered, “How did you know it was in there?”
I stared at the drain, unsure if I could form the words to describe it. As the night grew darker and a tunnel of wind sucked us from the city street, I decided on, “There are few other places it could’ve been.”
Tension seared before the air around us settled and our bodies ceased swaying in the foyer.
A tension that shouldn’t be in a slumbering castle.
Phineus cursed. “He’s back.” He released me before I could confirm he’d meant Atakan. Leaping onto the stairs, he then spun back. “Take it to your tower and stay there, all right?”
I nodded, following him up the stairs. He disappeared in two heartbeats, his hurried steps in three.
I should have pondered what had him so on edge, but the egg’s weight and what I’d done to find it became all I could think about.
My arms protested, but I continued up the tower stairs to Atakan’s rooms without pause. I wouldn’t set it down until I found somewhere safe for it. Pholly had promised the eggs wouldn’t be destroyed. Rather, they would be vanished into dense woodland near the warded borders of The Bonelands.
I sensed someone beyond the door and wondered where Phineus had run off to if Atakan was here in his chambers.
But it wasn’t Atakan who’d returned.
The door closed behind me like an echoing drumbeat.
King Garran turned from the open doors of the balcony. The scarf stained with my innocence slithered between his fingers as he smiled warmly. “Welcome back to Ethermore, Mildred.”