Chapter 9 Aerin
AERIN
After slamming the door in the Dragon-Fae’s face Aerin whips around to face her brother. Clad in his dark suit with gold embroidery, hair straightened and tucked behind his ears, Bruin looks the part of regal royalty. The regal royalty Aerin is supposed to be too.
As if reading her mind, the first thing out of her brother’s mouth is: “What are you wearing?”
“Are you kidding me?!” Aerin hisses. “Are you actually fucking joking right now?!”
“What?” Bruin looks at her, aghast, surprised, completely unprepared for what Aerin is about to unleash on him.
Aerin gestures violently to the door. “A personal guard?!”
Bruin rolls his eyes, turning his back to her. “Oh, come on Rin, don’t be so dramatic.”
The anger inside of Aerin simmers, rising with every incredulous comment her brother makes.
“I’m not being dramatic! You, out of everyone, should know how I would react to this!” Bruin casts a droll look over his features, as if Aerin’s being a petulant child. It makes her want to slap him. “The contract has taken everything from me, everything.”
Even as her closest confidant, even as her best friend, Bruin doesn’t know the true extent of the blood contract between Aerin and her father.
“Gods, Aerin, it’s been eight years. I thought you moved on,” Bruin chastises.
The anger grows, and like a spear through her chest Aerin realizes that Bruin, the creature in her life who is supposed to know her best, maybe doesn’t know her at all.
“They are my bond-mates. I will never move on,” Aerin growls.
Bruin swings back to face her, halting his pacing. “They mean nothing! Bond-mates mean nothing!” His voice rises.
“Maybe to you!” Aerin screams back at him. “Because you don’t have any! You have no idea what it’s like!”
Flames burst from the floors around them, lining the walls. Aerin isn’t scared of the fire, and she isn’t scared of her brother.
Taking a metered breath, Bruin puts out the flames with a wave of his palm. “Bond-mates aside, you need a personal guard. You’ve needed one for a long time.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. Father just wants to control me, even more than he already does.”
“Not everything is about Father, Aerin!”
“Then explain it to me, in graphic detail, why I need a personal guard in the safest City-State on the continent.” Aerin folds her arms over her chest, glaring at him.
“There have been attacks. Dark Creatures. Rogues who’ve—”
“Rogues?!” Aerin shouts, her anger rising once again.
Aerin can hardly be convinced the Dark Creatures are more than scary bedtime stories.
And Rogues are not even allowed to enter Valtara, so far behind Fae in technology and societal sophistication that considering them a threat to someone like Aerin is laughable. “That’s a flimsy excuse at best!”
“Gods, Aerin, would you just listen to me?” Bruin shouts, his voice rising to out-do hers, the argument escalating to a level only a fight between siblings can.
“No! You’re turning into a miniature Father, like his clone! I thought you wanted to be different. I thought—”
“Enough!” The flames burst back into existence, higher than before.
Aerin’s rage surges—the betrayal, the excuses, the way her brother is transforming before her eyes into someone she doesn’t recognize.
Anger, Aerin’s old friend, is the only response she has.
The one that grips her tightly and lashes out before she can reign it back in: whether it’s her magic or her words, she aims to hurt.
“You’re pathetic, Bruin. Look in the mirror now and tell me you don’t see Father looking back at you.”
Just as the hit is intended, it lands. Brutally. Bruin’s face contorts in anger, his flames reaching out for Aerin like hands. Before they can touch
her, magic bursts out of her in an explosion, the likes of which Aerin hasn’t achieved in eight years. The porcelain around them shatters, the mirrors fall into thousands of pieces on the floor, the pipes in the ceiling burst. Water floods over them in a downpour, extinguishing Bruin’s flames.
Aerin’s panting when the door to the bathroom slams open and the Dragon-Fae bursts inside.
He’s a force to be reckoned with as he shoves his way between the two Tolvare siblings, creating space where there had been almost none.
His icy eyes look down at Aerin, unease filling them as he evaluates her.
Hardly sparing him a glance, Aerin steps around his massive bulk to scream at Bruin, “You are supposed to be on my side!”
“When will you see, there are no sides?” Bruin shouts back, his own guards attempting to usher him out of the bathroom. Bruin forcefully shoves them off.
Someone outside the bathroom says, “I need a crisis management team to the east bathroom.”
The Dragon-Fae raises his wings, blocking Aerin’s line of sight. Aerin tries to look around him again but when she can’t, all the anger still swirling inside of her turns on him instead.
“Get out of my way!” she shrieks. Instead of moving the Dragon-Fae looks at her critically, appraising her. His eyes roam from her face to her chest, down to her shoes and back up.
“Get out of my way!” Aerin repeats, shoving against his chest. The Dragon-Fae rocks back on his heels, though if he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it.
Aerin shoves against him again, but her ire is already draining like the water around her.
Swirling away into nothingness, gone as fast as it came.
The Dragon-Fae’s large hands wrap around her wrists, holding them to his chest. Aerin weakly tries to pull away, but as her adrenaline falls so does her energy.
The Dragon-Fae’s returning pull on her wrist causes Aerin to stumble forward, closing the space between them, her forearms pressed into his firm chest.
“Let it go, Princess.”
The tenor of his voice sends a shiver down Aerin’s spine. It’s sharp, demanding. Aerin always lashes out at being told what to do, but this command is one she almost wants to follow.
Looking up, Aerin searches his face. Like before, Aerin is taken by how handsome he is. It’s a rugged type of handsome, dark and foreboding.
Aerin looks away, forces her eyes to avert to his wing behind him, still spread. His wings hover around them, creating their own personal cocoon. Aerin inhales deeply, even though it means breathing in the smokey scent of the Dragon-Fae.
“Did you do this?” he asks quietly, eyes flicking to the demolished bathroom around them.
She raises her eyes to his again. “I think you know the answer to that question, Dragon.”
It hits her then, like a ton of bricks.
She demolished the bathroom. She demolished the bathroom. The amount of magic that would have taken… Aerin looks inward, at the frozen lake. Though still icy, it has cracks on the surface, portions where the ice is broken through, as if someone took a battering ram to it.
How? How has she done that? And why in the last eight years is this the first time it’s happened? Unless… Aerin looks at the Dragon-Fae in front of her, recalling the specific clauses of the blood contract.
It clearly states Aerin would not be assigned a personal guard if she submitted to all the other types of surveillance Father wanted. Her father must have assumed that by using Bruin to assign the guard, he’d circumvented the contractual stipulations. But what if he hadn’t?
Is the contract dissolving? Is she finally going to be free?
“Malice.”
The word snaps Aerin out of her thoughts. She blinks, furrows her brow.
“My name is Malice,” the Dragon-Fae clarifies.
“Malice,” Aerin repeats, only slightly dumbfounded.
How fitting.
Aerin swears she can feel his body shutter when she repeats his name, making her realize how close they still are. She becomes hyperaware of every point at which their bodies touch.
His hands are massive, wrapping all the way around her wrists and holding tight enough to be felt but not to hurt.
His chest where her forearms are pressed is broad and firm, thick with a truly ridiculous amount of muscle.
His wings continue to wrap around them both, shielding them from the outside world.
Aerin looks up again, and despite her height, he lingers over her. His face is stern, rapt with precise control.
“Well, Malice.” Aerin breaks the moment. “Do you think you can dry me?”
Malice releases her immediately and Aerin takes a step backwards. If he’s surprised she knows details about his magic, he doesn’t show it. Instead, his magic swirls as carefully controlled heat, pulling water from her dress with precision and evaporating it away into the air.
Once they are both dry, Malice’s wings twitch inward, ready to pull back to their normal position, but a flick of Aerin’s palm halts him. Aerin lets her forehead fall to his chest, taking two deep breaths of smoke-scented air before she straightens again.
Control. She needs control. If she’s going to play this right, she has to think.
When Aerin raises her head again, her mask is back in place. Impassive Princess. Hardened Fae. Selfish bitch.
She takes a step back and Malice drops his wings, pulling them tight to his back. Aerin strides out of the bathroom. Malice follows, and for the first time, instead of feeling trailed, Aerin feels protected. Like someone has her back.
She shakes away the feeling. She can’t trust him.
When Aerin meets Bruin in the hallway, straightening the lapels of his jacket, he’s perfectly dry. Her voice rings cool and deadly as she speaks. “I don’t care whose idea it was. I don’t care that you think I need it. You betrayed me, Bruin. I will never forgive you for that.”
Bruin’s anger has washed down the drain with their fight. Anguish flashes over his features. Guilt. Worry. Sometimes Bruin is too easy to read.
“Aerin, please—” Aerin doesn’t want to hear his pleas. She doesn’t spare him another glance.