Chapter 6 Aerin
AERIN
Eight years ago, only days after coming into her adulthood as a Fae, Aerin sat across from her father, Oberyn Tolvare, and signed her name in blood.
On the heels of a night so traumatic she’d have nightmares about it for years to come, Aerin found herself stuck in a trap, lured by the honey that was Father’s reassurance, and then caught with no means of escape.
Though no one physically laid their hand over hers and forged a signature, the effect was the same.
Aerin had no choice, and in her naivety, she believed she could find a way around the stipulations.
There is no ‘around’ a blood contract: only through.
Blood contracts are fickle, finicky, things.
Old, dark Witch magic that requires a sacrifice made in blood to bind the signatories to its stipulations.
Aerin’s contract controls her entire life: where she goes, how much magic she uses, who she talks to.
Outlined in explicit detail, it’s iron clad, never bending to Aerin’s will despite many attempts to make it so.
But every blood contract has a loophole, and once breeched, the contract dissolves. Every stipulation Aerin has been bound to like iron chains over her soul could dissolve away into nothing, granting her freedom once again, if only she could find that loophole.
Aerin has clung to this small shred of hope for eight years: that in the end, it will be the frivolity of such old, tenuous magic that will set her free.
Aerin thinks, just maybe, that loophole could be standing before her.
Despite the hope he may represent, Aerin still finds anger pulsing through her hot and bright like a weapons forge.
He represents everything she detests: her father, the Valtara crown, someone else’s control over her.
He walked straight through wards that gave Quinn a bloody nose the first time she tried to enter Aerin’s apartment.
Straight into her life as a living and breathing reminder of everything Father has stolen from her.
Aerin wants to scream. Wants to explode.
Once upon a time, she would. Could. Her magic would burst out of her in a violent wave, shattering any windows and glass in her proximity.
Somehow, Aerin always felt better after, like pressure being released.
Now the violence is omnipresent under her skin.
Her magic is a frozen lake under the will of the blood contract.
Aerin can only access a small, melted puddle on its surface, everything else trapped below no matter how she tries to break through.
The Dragon-Fae at the end of the hall speaks, his tone a mix of disgust and anger as he says: “You know you’re being watched?”
His dark eyebrows stitch together before he forces his body back to neutral.
Wings close to his body, fists hanging loosely by his side, he’s the picture of indifference, and yet Aerin can sense otherwise.
The way his forearms ripple, dying to clench those same fists shut, the way he stitches his teeth together to keep from saying more.
“Of course I am,” Aerin snipes back, arms folded over her chest defensively. “I’m not stupid.” Aerin isn’t sure which makes him more naive, thinking she wouldn’t be under surveillance in her own apartment, or thinking that she wouldn’t know about it.
He keeps that stupid look on his unfairly handsome face. His expression portrays apathy, yet Aerin senses the disapproval simmering under the surface. She keeps watching him closely, her own anger looming.
Aerin has known this anger all her life, it never leaves her.
“I’m forced to fight for every freedom I have, and in case you haven’t caught on, you being here is just another way the King has taken that from me,” Aerin snarls.
“I’m not here to report on your whereabouts.” The Dragon-Fae has the gall to act as if that’s reassuring.
Painting a nasty smile on her face, Aerin stills. The smile is practiced, sharp, a warning flag for whatever comes next.
“If you really believe that, then maybe you are the stupid one.” Aerin holds the smile, watching as he struggles against his own anger.
She keeps going, egged on by the way he seems to be teetering on the edge of something.
“My father wouldn’t send you here for any reason other than as a warning, a message.
Don’t deceive yourself into thinking anything you’re doing is important. ”
Anger flares in his bright blue eyes. Flames of orange dance inside of his pupils, like wrath reincarnate. He is breathtakingly, irritatingly, beautiful.
Aerin plows on, knowing she’s close to something. She doesn’t know why she wants it so badly, only that she does—his wrath, his rage, and everything that lies beneath it.
“I don’t need your protection. You are a pawn in a game you don’t even understand, and unfortunately for both you and my father, I do not fold.”
The Dragon-Fae fires back his response, “I am not here to report on your whereabouts!” His wings flare outward in a burst, jaw clamped shut again as soon as the words pass over his lips.
Aerin finds a sick sort of satisfaction in getting a rise out of him when he was resisting it so intently.
“I can prove it,” he says, tucking his wings close to his back once more, standing straighter.
Aerin says nothing.
“I know I am not a pawn of your father’s because I don’t work for your father.”
Aerin’s heart rate spikes, her stomach climbing to her throat. Like a collision she sees coming yet can’t do anything to stop, he keeps talking.
“I work for Bruin Tolvare.”
Recoiling as if she’s been slapped, Aerin feels like a knife has been plunged into her back. It twists as she finally uncovers the thing that’s been causing Bruin to lose sleep.
A new type of anger blooms inside of Aerin. No longer a resigned fury towards her situation, the contract, her father. No, this is something new. The scorching of Bruin’s duplicity, so hot and bright Aerin thinks she just might burn up if she can’t let it out.
Carefully, and with the utmost control, Aerin speaks. “We have an event at seven tonight.”
Something like guilt paints the Dragon-Fae’s features.
Aerin’s not interested in his pity. She says nothing more before storming to her bedroom, slamming the door so hard the entire apartment shakes.
Aerin tries and tries, but she can’t wrap her mind around the fact that her brother, her best friend, the good one, the kind one, the one who sympathizes with her and stands up for her…
Aerin tries and tries, but she can’t get the knife out.