THIRTY-FIVE
T he ballroom overflowed with faeries, musicians, and streamers in every shade of blue.
Piped cupcakes melted upon stands at lace-dressed banquet tables. Pholly made sure to eat one of each flavor while pointing out who to avoid and who wasn’t so terrible and who deserved a sewing needle to the eye.
I laughed at that last one, sipping wine to hide how it ended too soon.
Though the sky was clear beyond the stained glass windows, it rumbled. A winged beast screeched as it soared across the castle grounds to meet and tangle with another over the woods.
For hours yesterday, I’d watched Sky Mountain’s new residents from the window in Atakan’s tower, entranced and torn after receiving word from Royce regarding Bernadette.
Any minute now, she would welcome her babe.
Pholly glanced at the pytherions before they vanished from view. She shivered and swallowed a large mouthful of wine. “That’s going to take some getting used to.”
Behind me, Phineus looped his arms around my waist. He whispered in my ear, “Your beast of a husband has returned.”
“I don’t care,” I lied.
Since he’d delivered me to Cloud Castle the night before last, Atakan had been absent. He’d shifted back into his faerie form and, without a word, had vanished me straight to the healer’s room near the kitchens beneath the castle.
Silently, he’d sat watch from the corner of the warm room until I was given a sleeping draught. When I’d woken long after dawn, the wound had almost healed, and he was gone.
I hadn’t asked where he’d disappeared to.
There’d been no need when Elion had gone out of his way to inform me of each meeting he’d been attending with Seelie nobility. Supposedly, Atakan sought their approval of a new treaty for the faerie realms. A treaty Pholly humorously believed he’d prepared many moons ago.
There was no time to waste if we wished to avoid more bloodshed, Elion had said.
I could only imagine what gaining their approval entailed. A single glacial glare was likely all Atakan needed to make them dip their quills into their inkpots.
Though I was glad measures were already being taken to avoid another war, I still hadn’t been able to piece together what I needed in order to wholly understand what Atakan had done.
“Oh, come on.” Phineus stepped before me and stole my wine. He took a hearty sip, then smacked his lips together. “He kept his secrets from me too, you know.”
To all those in attendance, and in all of the realm, Atakan was the villain they’d needed. A savior they didn’t want yet could not shun.
He was half Seelie, half Unseelie. A shifter.
An alpha pytherion.
But now that word had spread of Garran’s death, he was also their new king, and there was not a lick of anything anyone could do to change that. Nor was there anything I could do to change my own fate.
A fate I’d asked for. One I’d brought upon myself.
“You’re his cousin,” Elion said, passing by with a tray containing wet rags. Scenting wine and frosting-tinged vomit, I winced, thankful when he disappeared to take care of it.
“Second cousin,” Pholly said, adjusting the pearls strung tight at her slim throat.
Phineus scowled at her, then gasped. “You’ve got cake on your gown, clumsy thing.”
“Get it off,” she hissed and turned in a circle, although there wasn’t so much as a speck on the black gossamer coiled around her body.
Smiling, I left them. I slipped easily between the guests who’d rather pretend I wasn’t their new queen and out into the hall.
My thoughts clouded after I checked Atakan’s rooms and found them empty. Slowing near the stairs on the third floor, I looked down the hall.
The entrance to what had once been Garran’s tower was now sealed.
Most of the tower lay in ruins upon the castle grounds, as experts tried to devise a way to salvage the ancient tree that matched that of Atakan’s tower. It’d been struck by a fallen pytherion—before Atakan had managed to gain complete submission from the army bred for retribution.
After all I’d discovered, I couldn’t help but find it fitting. That Garran’s rooms had been destroyed with him, leaving little trace of him behind.
It seemed Cordenya had been given new residence on the second floor, emerging from a grand room in a gown of stringy silver beads.
I stopped beneath the stairs to greet her, pondering how she must feel about the loss of her lover.
“Majesty.” She curtsied as best she could in such tight attire. Straightening, she spread her crimson lips in a half smile. “Leaving the festivities when they’ve only just begun?”
They’d begun at nightfall, and she knew as much. But I tipped a shoulder. “Given the state of some of the guests, I’d say better now than later.”
Her laughter sounded genuine, lighting her silver eyes as she stepped closer. Noting the way I tensed, she smiled again. “I mean you no harm, darling. In fact,” she reached out to touch a curl that’d escaped my updo, “I am rather pleased by all that’s transpired because of you.”
I sensed there was more and waited.
“But I must advise against trying to get rid of me. There’s a reason I was the only one who knew his secret, and why I put up with Garran after years of mistreatment.” Cordenya’s gaze sharpened. “Atakan might not have grown in my womb, but I will always be his mother.”
Rather than tell her I had no interest in getting rid of anyone, except perhaps myself, I just nodded.
“Now, having said that…” Her lithe fingers stroked my cheek. “Give him all the trouble he deserves.” Then she glided down the hall, her long wine-red hair covering the bare expanse of her back.
I continued my search downstairs. My heartbeat increased when I sensed his.
I hunted the sound, as well as his scent, into the throne room. Gently, I closed the doors behind me, then slouched against them when I caught sight of him.
Dressed for a ball he’d yet to attend, Atakan lounged in tailored black across the throne, legs draped over the branch-twined arm. In his hand, jewels glinted.
His father’s crown—soon to be his—twirled around his pointer finger.
He watched the jewels throw colored orbs of light over the aged tapestries upon the wall. “If it isn’t my darling wife.”
“If it isn’t my monstrous husband.”
Finally, he looked at me, eyeing where I stood against the doors. “Afraid, Princess?” He hooked the crown upon one of the carved branches arching high above the throne’s seat. “Apologies, I meant to say queen. ”
Taking three steps deeper into the room, I stopped within a strip of moonlight. Not because I was afraid of him, but because it was necessary. This bond only made the spell of his proximity all the more potent, and it reduced my mind to distracted mush.
“You tricked everyone, Atakan.”
He dragged a finger beneath his lower lip. “This surprises you.”
My whisper echoed across the long room. “You tricked me .”
For five bruising heartbeats, he simply watched me with those eerily beautiful eyes. Then he smirked. “You’re welcome, Mildred.”
My fingers curled.
He noticed before I could unfurl them. “What truly upsets you?” Arching a brow, he rose to his feet. “What I am?” He stepped down from the wooden dais. “What I’ve done?”
I didn’t move as he took measured steps toward me. Each soft tap of his boots over the floor might as well have been bolts of lightning, as I struggled to keep still.
But he didn’t try to touch me.
He circled me, slow and predatory. “Perhaps it’s something else entirely.”
“Were you going to kill him?” My quiet words seemed too loud in the silent throne room. “Take it all?”
His eyes gleamed as he walked in front of me. “If I had, would you have been heartbroken?”
At my silence, that mischief vacated his eyes. The green flecks flared, as did his energy.
“He wanted you to free his people.” Halting beside me, his seethed whisper stirred the tendrils of hair at my cheek. “I made you the queen of mine.”
“Answer my question, Atakan.”
A throaty sound, almost a snarl, came from him as he continued to circle me.
Just when I began to think he wouldn’t, he answered. “As much as ripping his head from his body would’ve satisfied me a great deal, alas…” He stopped before me. “Ruling both faerie kingdoms was never what I wanted.”
“Then what was the point of this game?”
He exhaled a soft laugh. “Survival.”
My eyes lifted from his chest. As they met molten bronze, some of my resolve melted. “Survival,” I repeated.
He stared at my mouth for a moment. When our eyes locked once more, his lips curled. “You know a thing or two about that, don’t you?”
Indeed. I almost laughed. “It was you I had to survive, Atakan.”
“And did you?” His head tilted. “Did you survive me in the end, dread?”
We both knew I had, and as a result, that I hadn’t survived him at all.
I didn’t answer. Instead, I asked, “Why did you hide what you are when it could have been used to end this war?” I couldn’t resist voicing my assumption. “Because you would have been used?”
He circled me again. “I’ve spent my entire life being a pawn for my father and his numerous mistakes. If I was going to cause immeasurable bloodshed, and risk my life and title, it would be when it suited me and no one else.”
Though maybe they shouldn’t have, those words stung. Even as I tried to imagine what it must have been like—hiding who he was for so long.
“No one knew I cared for you because for some years, I didn’t. That changed when I felt what fate was doing. The bond,” he said.
The question punched free of my chest, as if my heart demanded an answer. “When?”
“I first felt it when you poisoned me.” His voice was soft, almost wistful, as he said, “The way you raised your wine to me when you should have been fleeing for your half-mortal life.” He kept walking. “Not long after that ball, the plan to defeat the undefeatable was formed. I’d already heard murmurings of the Unseelie’s intent to breed an army of pytherions.”
“So you volunteered to help ward The Bonelands?”
“A curse ends the same way it begins.” Cold words I’d heard before. “My mother’s stolen heart began this war. I was to be used whether I liked it or not. I knew they’d need my blood to trap the Unseelie.” His deep laugh lacked humor. “The plan was indestructible, as you cannot steal a heart from the heartless. So even as the bond with you became undeniable, I still made it a point to reject you time and again.”
He went quiet for stretched moments, and his slow steps soon matched the pained beat of my heart.
“I hid it.” His tone changed, lowered. “I loathed you while I loved you, as it was the only way to get what I needed. To be free, I needed my birthright.” He gestured across the room. “This throne and the pytherion army.”
Although what he’d confessed seared straight through my flesh to the core of who I was, I couldn’t believe him. Although the proof glared in the broken wards surrounding the Unseelie kingdom, I refused to believe him.
“To steal them, you needed me to eradicate the wards.” My eyes burned, but I didn’t let them fill. “You needed me to fall in love with Vane.”
And for that to happen, Atakan needed to make sure I didn’t love him.
“Yes.” He halted with his back to me. “I was supposed to let you go to him.”
I frowned at his back. “That day in the woods…”
“I was watching you,” he confirmed. “Waiting.” His voice turned lethally silken. “Anticipating that you’d wander into enemy hands, just as I needed you to.”
“But you stopped me.”
Silence.
“You stopped me,” I said again, harsher. “You took me into that garden shed, Atakan, and you—”
He whirled as he growled, “And accepted that I couldn’t fucking do it.” His chest rose and fell sharply. He dragged a hand through his hair, held it there as he gazed up at the muraled ceiling. “You were mine.” His eyes returned to me, ablaze with the anger roughening his voice. “I knew then that I would rather remain trapped for eternity than let anyone think you’re theirs.”
I didn’t want to believe that either, yet the heated memories were proof that he spoke true.
Casting his gaze to the throne room floor, he shook his head. “But then you made your own way there.” He hummed. “Words cannot describe how it felt to discover that you hadn’t simply fled, but that you’d ended up in the Unseelie realm after all.”
Recalling what Pholly had told me that night in the city, how he’d reacted to my absence, I struggled to look at him.
Atakan stepped closer.
So close, I was given the mercy of looking at his clean-shaven chin and those ever-tempting lips. “Words cannot describe what I felt when I sensed the fractures in those wards—what it meant that I could finally reach you.”
Guilt I shouldn’t feel, for I’d asked for none of this, cinched tight around my chest.
“I expected to loathe you in earnest, but one look at you was all I needed…” His fingertips brushed my hand. “You’re still mine, dread. Now, you will forever be just mine.”
He was right. Even without the bindings of this bond and marriage, I was irrefutably his. No matter how much I’d tried to deny it, I was undeniably in love with him.
Perhaps I always had been.
But although it had failed to protect me, I couldn’t simply drop the armor I’d worn for all these years. I couldn’t just accept all he’d said, no matter how true it was. I couldn’t surrender to this love after so many years of fighting it.
I didn’t know how.
Gentle fingers clasped my chin. “Your heart is beating so fast.” He lifted it to search my watery eyes. “Dreaded Mildred, don’t you see?” His head lowered. “My entire life has been a game of survival, and now…” His finger stroked beneath my chin, tilting it until our noses skimmed and our lips nearly touched. “I win.”
Something within me both healed and bled at the relief staining his voice.
I cupped his cheek and slid my thumb over it. “Congratulations.” Our eyes met as I kissed him, a quick caress before murmuring, “King.”
Then I left him with his crown and his throne.