Chapter 70 Aerin
AERIN
Aerin adjusts the gold bodice of her dress in the mirror for what feels like the hundredth time.
The dress is stunning. Sent to her door by Esalin Tolvare earlier that day, the gold shimmers like liquid, strapless with visible boning in the sheer gold panels of the bodice.
It falls from Aerin’s waist to the floor in a pool.
Her hair is coiled, half up and falling down her back in loose curls, held together by various jewels.
The only other jewelry she wears is the small ring on her index finger.
She looks iridescent, exactly how a Princess should look on such a momentous occasion.
She adjusts the bodice again.
“You look amazing,” Quinn sighs. The Viper is laying on her stomach on her bed, feet kicking in the air behind her.
“She’s right, you know.” Theo’s voice comes from the doorway. Aerin meets his eyes through the mirror. He looks sinful in sweatpants and a black tank top.
Despite her protests, her father had been clear; the event is invitation only. Theo, Emrys, and Reyna are staying behind. Quinn and Vyx can’t be there either. Khortland is looking forward to the dinner perhaps even less than Aerin if that’s even possible. And Malice…
Aerin doesn’t know what Malice is feeling. The distance between them feels like a chasm. One that grows every day. He’s been hovering closer than ever, but they’ve exchanged only a few words since last Friday when he ran out in the middle of the night.
“On that note, I’m out of here,” Quinn says, leaping up from the bed and crossing the room to Aerin. “It will be fine,” the Viper reassures her, planting a light kiss on Aerin’s cheek before slipping past Theo and out of the room.
Theo crosses to Aerin, placing his hands on her shoulders and rubbing them in a soothing motion.
“It’s just one dinner,” he assures her.
Aerin nods, adjusting the bodice again.
The dinner feels like her father parading her around, as if he’d bested her, tamed her. A display to show the entirety of Novhelm that she may have her fun, but at the end of the day she is what she’s always been: a girl in a cage.
Aerin carries no illusions about being good.
In fact, she knows her personality is ruled by many negative emotions: jealousy, pettiness, rage, selfishness.
But when she found herself daydreaming of not just usurping her father, but ending him, of driving a sword through his heart or blasting his head clean off, she wonders if her father has driven her to madness.
All the secrets. All the control. All the lies.
The things she’s discovered eat away at her, like she’s a moth-eaten rag, gilded in gold.
“I’ll go, if you need me there,” Theo offers. Aerin knows he sees something in her. Something wrong. Something he doesn’t like. The worry is cast over his features clear as day.
Aerin shoves it down. She shoves everything down.
Turning in his grip, she brushes his cheek with her hand. He truly is stunning, even in sweats. His hair hangs down his back. His cheeks are slightly flushed from the summer heat and lack of time in the water.
“No, it’s alright. We’ll be back tonight,” Aerin promises.
She doesn’t kiss him, doesn’t hug him, but she looks in those green eyes and smiles faintly.
“I can’t wait to be bonded-mates with you, Theo,” she finds herself saying.
Theo’s eyes flutter shut, as if the admission sends a wave of pleasure through his body.
When they flare back open, he says, “Don’t say things like that when it’s already taking all of my self-control not to rip this dress off and ravage you right here.” He grins.
Aerin doesn’t feel joy, but she paints a smile on her face for him anyways.
Aerin and Malice walk in silence. Khortland left ahead of them, off to schmooze Royals and nobles at pre-dinner drinks.
When Aerin arrives, their status as Paramyrs will be formally announced.
Her father will gush over the blessing while subtly reminding all the Fae in Valtara of the strength of the Tolvare line.
They will eat. Then, it will be blessedly over.
Her side aches where the blood-bond lies, as it does so much of the time these days. A near-constant reminder of the turmoil between her and Malice.
As if he knows she’s thinking about him, he clears his throat. “I will be against the wall, directly across from you,” he informs her. He’s tense in the Royal Guard suit he hates.
“Malice,” Aerin tries, her voice thready and weak.
She pauses her strides, but Malice continues forward, pressing against her with his wing to keep her moving. It’s the most contact they’ve had in a week. Aerin shrugs him off.
“Your manipulations only get you so far, Princess,” Malice growls, tucking his wing tightly into his body.
Aerin wants to scream at him. Wants to make a raging scene. Wants to blast apart the window of the shop behind him.
“You are a bastard. A jealous, selfish, self-loathing, bastard.”
Aerin watches as everything tightens. The way he’s ready to snap: Aerin relishes in it.
She craves it. If fighting with him is the only way to get him to move past this, she’ll argue with him for hours.
She’ll take every cruel comment he can dish out, if only to hear what she knows in her bones to be true.
Malice seems ready to say something, but the Royal Village comes into view, alight with flames flickering in torches.
Aerin pulls on her usual mask as Malice takes his place behind her.
It only takes a second more for someone to recognize her.
The guards keep the public on either side of a lined walkway. Creatures cheer for her. Cameras flash.
Aerin pushes everything down and keeps her strides even across the walkway.
She doesn’t pause, doesn’t stutter. She paints her face with apathy until she reaches the doors of the formal hall where the dinner is being held.
The large building is on the cliffside, the sound of the ocean churning below.
Tall pillars tower up to the ceiling and ornate carvings grace the arched entrance.
The space is usually reserved for balls, with its massive domed ceiling and intricately painted walls.
Tonight, it holds over fifty of Valtara’s highest ranking Fae nobles.
Guards open the doors and the announcer to her left booms, “And now entering, third in line to the Tolvare Throne, Princess Aerin Tolvare.”
Sitting between Bruin and Khortland, Aerin is bored out of her mind. Khortland is flexing his well-practiced courtly manners as he engages the nobles seated around him.
The announcement went smoothly. They vowed to become bonded-mates.
Her father beamed like he won a grand prize when he gave his approval.
He then proceeded to announce he’d love for the binding to occur late summer, as if the staff could organize such a gaudy event in only a matter of months.
It’s a threat Aerin sees right through. Aerin lets her eyes shoot daggers whenever they drift to where he sits at the head of the table.
It’s hard to ascertain where to look. There is her brother, who she’s barely mended fences with, her father who she loathes. On the other side of her father, across from Bruin, is Esalin, the Fae who pretended to be Aerin’s mother for over thirty years. Next to Esalin, Cisera.
Cisera looks regal in her own golden gown with its high neckline and long sleeves. She’s yet to dignify Aerin with a simple congratulations, let alone conversation. Aerin hasn’t spoken to her since she lost control in Aerin’s apartment building.
Instead of looking at any of them, Aerin endures the third course while staring at the male just beyond Cisera’s shoulder. Malice stands on alert against the wall, his hands clasped behind his back, eyes on Aerin constantly. The ice blue eats into her.
Aerin isn’t sure if it’s better or worse than conversation with Cisera would be.
Malice looks at her but is doing his absolute best not to see her. Aerin hates it.
Wait staff are pulling now-empty plates to ready the table for the next course when Aerin finally feels herself snap.
Standing abruptly, she excuses herself and storms out of the hall.
The building has few rooms off the main one, but like every building in the Royal Village, Aerin knows the one farthest from the revelry.
She shoves into a washroom near the front of the building and places her hands on either side of the sink. Only seconds pass before Malice follows her inside.
Like everything her father builds, this washroom is one of excess.
A plush couch sits against the far wall, while paintings and carved crown moldings adorn the room.
In the corner stands a statue of a female Fae, water spilling from her outstretched hands.
The sound of the water is supposed to be soothing. Right now, it isn’t.
Aerin whirls on Malice, ready to spit more vitriol at him.
“Would you stop that?” Aerin snarls.
Malice stands directly across from her. The door to his left shut behind him. Aerin seals the entryway with her magic, preventing sound going in or out. The last thing she needs are rumors about a fight with her lover after just announcing her Paramyr to the City-State.
“Stop what?” he asks incredulously, folding his arms over his chest.
“Looking at me like the very last thing you want to do in the world is look at me,” Aerin bites. Her hands are shaking; she tucks them into fists.
Malice shrugs and Aerin wishes she could punch him.
“I have to do my job, Princess.” His voice is low and threatening as he glowers at her.
“You know what? You’re fired!” Aerin shouts throwing her arms in his direction in a rage.
His eyes flare. “You don’t have the power to fire me. I will protect you.”
Her chest hurts, like she’s being carved into. Despite all his protests, Aerin knows Malice wants to be a part of her Bond Group, wants to be more to them than her personal guard.
“You don’t get to have both, you don’t!” Her voice wavers, emotions she doesn’t want to release surfacing.
“I don’t want both,” he assures her, tightening everything back up, closing right before her eyes.
“Yes, you do!” Aerin rebuts. Malice shakes his head.
“Just give it up, Aerin,” he sighs.
She wants to scream, to shake him, to shake the whole building. Instead, she inhales sharply and shouts at the stupid male.
“I can’t! Don’t you get that? You think I want this? You think I want to feel like this? For you to have this power over me?”
Something in Malice cracks, his cool exterior explodes with emotion as he roars at her, “I never asked for this! I never wanted this! You forced this on me! You—”
“No, I didn’t!” Aerin screams back, they are close now, only inches apart. His chest heaves right alongside hers. “I’ve known,” Aerin says more carefully, her tone exasperated more than enraged. “From the moment I met you, I’ve known. The same way I did with the others.”
Malice is her bond-mate. Not just a creature she strong-armed into a blood-bond, but one meant for her. Even if he doesn’t believe it, Aerin knows. He reels through emotions before settling back on anger.
His lip pulls up, revealing his canines as he snarls, “Don’t blame the Fates for your inability to handle rejection.”
“Ask Reikan!” Aerin shouts back. The Dragon who knew from the instant he laid eyes on Aerin that they were made for each other. Malice catches her wrist with a touch of cruelty. Hurt hangs in his eyes.
“Don’t you dare bring him into this,” he says, his voice dark and low.
If bringing Reikan into it is the only way to get Malice to see reason, if it’s the only way to end this pain between them, then she’d do it.
“Maybe the two of you were meant for each other, but not me. I’ve never had a choice, not in any of this. Not with him and certainly not with you.”
Aerin all but rolls her eyes at his self-sacrificing bullshit. She rips her wrist from his grasp.
“Gods Malice, please,” she sneers. “You will never convince me this is one sided. I know you feel it.”
Aerin lifts her hand to her ribs, rubbing the blood-bond. Malice’s wings flare outward, his teeth clenching together.
“I can feel the way you feel it. I can see the way you feel it. I feel it when you look at me. I feel it when you fuck me. You’re in love—”
Aerin is cut off when the wall behind Malice blasts apart.