29. Kols
“Why doyou still have Aflora’s wand?” Zeph asked as he entered my bedroom without knocking. I’d set her magical conduit on the dresser, desiring to keep it safe for when I went back to her tomorrow morning.
“I didn’t get to see her. Shade had already tucked her into his bed.” I grimaced with the words, not at all pleased about her spending the night with him. Of course, he hadn’t exactly given me much of a choice. I could have fought him, demanded he hand her over, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. As I could sense her emotions now—thanks to the bond—I knew she was safe. If and when that sensation changed, I’d do something about it.
For now, I’d let him keep her.
Just for tonight.
Tomorrow was a whole new day for negotiation.
It also gave me time to replace all her belongings and the bedroom furniture.
Part of me still wanted to kill her for trapping me in this mess with her. Meanwhile, the more logical side of me recognized it’d been a mutual claiming.
I’d wanted her from the moment we first met, and even before that when I saw her at Cyrus’s coronation. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, her long black hair highlighted with strands of blue. Those gorgeous eyes. Delectable curves. Sinfully sweet smile.
Every attribute she possessed lured me to her.
Coupled with her astounding power and royal bloodline, it was no wonder my fae soul sought her out as a match.
I’d been too weak to fight it, and for that, I would pay the ultimate price.
Hating her was easier than hating myself. That didn’t make it right.
“You look like hell,” Zeph said, stopping by my bed. I was lounging in the pillows with a bottle of whiskey in my lap. No shirt. No shoes. Just a pair of gray sweats.
“Thanks. I feel like hell.” I took another swig, wishing like crazy it would make me drunk already. But the power I’d imbibed from Aflora seemed to be eating at my ability to feel intoxicated.
I’d taken the brunt of her outburst, allowed it to fuel my insides, and fed it directly back into the source. Like some sort of damn siphon.
Zeph and Shade had helped, but they weren’t the ones with direct access to the dark arts. So the brunt of it fell on me.
The ink along my arms writhed in contentment, while my insides revolted.
I couldn’t believe any of this had happened, had no fucking clue what to do now. I’d straight up lied to my father, something I had never done before. Not over a major situation such as this, anyway. Little lies, yeah. Major ones, no.
“Fuck,” I muttered, taking yet another swallow before holding the bottle out to Zeph. “Want any?”
He took the bottle and set it aside rather than taking a swig. “It won’t help.”
“Tell me about it.” I’d been trying to drown my sorrows for over an hour to no avail. “Her power is like a live wire running through my fucking soul.”
“Not sure what I can do about that, but my buddy did make us these.” He dropped a pair of brown leather bracelets on the bed beside my hip. “Ching said these will help hide our connection from the others.”
“Ching?”
“My buddy who specializes in hiding bonds. Apparently, mating bonds are a popular thing to hide, so he already had several tools available at his disposal to create these.” Zeph studied the bracelets. “I didn’t give him your identity, mostly because I imagine he’d freak out if he knew. Because there’s only one reason someone would specialize in this type of magic, and that’s to hide things from the Council.”
“But he knows who you are.”
“He does. Just as he also knows I want out.” He met my gaze, daring me to comment.
I didn’t.
Mainly because I was too exhausted to fight with him right now.
I just wanted this night to end already.
Besides... “There’s no getting out now,” I told him softly, my focus falling to the bracelets. “So how do these work?” I asked, giving him a chance to deflect and change the direction of our conversation.
He accepted it. “They’re generic concealing spells. Wearing the bracelet cloaks the mating bond, making it impossible to sense or trace.”
“What about Aflora? If she wears one, it’ll hide her link to Shade, and people will suspect something is up.”
Zeph nodded. “Yeah, Ching is making something special for her. He’s going to try to have it done by morning. If not, we need an excuse to keep her out of class.”
“I’ll just say she was hit by some stray magic during my duel with Shade. No one will question it. Hell, Emelyn will probably be thrilled.” The bitch had painted a target on Aflora’s back solely because of her affiliation with me. Well, that hatred would become a lot worse when she realized we’d mated each other.
Assuming we lived long enough for anyone to find out beyond the Council.
My shoulders slumped as I sunk deeper into the pillows.
“It’s not like you to mope,” Zeph said, his tall frame towering over me as he stared down at me from beside the bed.
“Fuck you, Z,” I muttered, tugging a pillow over my head. Childish, yes, Unhelpful, also yes. But I just wanted to hide for eternity.
“You realize this connection between the four of us is powerful, right?” Zeph asked.
“Haven’t had a minute to analyze it.” My words were muffled by the pillow.
A pillow that disappeared when Zeph took it from me. “Stop being a lazy, woeful dick, sit up, and start thinking.”
I glared at him. “I don’t want to think, asshole.”
“Well, too fucking bad, jackass,” he tossed back. “We broke a few rules. So fucking what? The mating laws are archaic and you know it. You also never wanted to mate Emelyn anyway. Aflora is a much better match. She’s hot as fuck, too. Strong. Powerful. A Quandary Blood. That means, with the right training, she can rewrite all this bullshit in our favor. The only truly shitty part of all of this is having Shade involved. I’d suggest we kill him, but that’d hurt Aflora, which would weaken the bond overall.”
I blinked at him. “Who made you King Practical all of a sudden?”
“I’ve always been the practical one, Prince Crybaby,” he returned.
“I am not a crybaby.”
“You’re lounging in a pile of pillows feeling sorry for yourself instead of realizing the opportunity that exists here. She’s fucking powerful. You felt it tonight when we grounded her. The Council is going to lose their shit over it because they can’t battle it, unless we bend over and take it up the ass. Which I’m not keen to do. You?”
“What happened to they’ll probably just kill her and then you?” I asked. “Isn’t that what you said just a few hours ago?”
“Yeah, and you told me you weren’t going to let that happen. And I believe you. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and help me figure out a solution. As you said, there’s no getting out of this now. Let’s figure out what to do with it, unless you have a time spinner lounging around that I don’t know about.”
“That’s a whole different realm of fae beings,” I muttered, thinking of the Paradox Fae. “But they would be so useful right about now.”
“Yeah, except they’d never help us. Actually, they’d probably make it worse.”
I snorted. “True.” They were deceitful little fuckers who loved to play tricks with time. To ask a favor of them required significant payment, and even then, it was never guaranteed that they would follow through without leaving some devious surprise lying in wait. “Still an avenue to keep in mind,” I said. Because all options had to be considered.
“Not really. I think we’d end up bonding her regardless of how we played it.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I felt the pull from the moment I first saw her.”
“Me, too.”
We shared a long look that ended in a mutual sigh.
“What I still want to know is what Shade has to do with all this,” Zeph continued. “He knew this would happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wasn’t surprised at all tonight. Just accepting. What kind of Midnight Fae doesn’t mind two other men taking liberties with his mate?”
I frowned. “I’m certainly not keen on her being in his bed right now.”
“Exactly.”
“Yet I allowed it,” I added.
“Because you’re not opposed to sharing women. But Shade is notoriously alpha in his preferences and not the type to share.”
“True.” I sat up, my hand rubbing down my face as I thought it all through. “He didn’t seem pleased by my suggestion to bite her, though.”
“He seemed worried,” Zeph agreed. “But not about our claim. He was concerned for her and what would happen if we couldn’t get her power under control. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, there is,” I agreed, recalling the fear in his eyes as he watched her fall apart before us. “He really does care about her.”
“He also saved my life tonight when she blew up that first time. If he hadn’t shadowed me out, I would have burned right along with her. Only, I’m not equipped to survive cerulean fire.”
That was when I’d arrived, having felt her power mounting through our bond. I’d been able to absorb most of her destruction, keeping the energy centered in that courtyard with an electric current stirred directly from the source.
“This is such a mess,” I said, blowing out a breath. “I asked him about his motive tonight. He replied with his usual cryptic bullshit.”
“Do you trust him?” Zeph asked.
I scoffed out a “No.” Because I absolutely did not trust that bastard.
“Neither do I.”
“So what do we do?”
“We monitor him. And we protect Aflora.” He locked gazes with me as he said it. “There’s something about her, Kols. Something important. And it goes deeper than her Quandary Blood.”
“She’s an abomination,” I reminded him. “That could be what you’re sensing.”
He shook his head. “I keep feeling like she’s the key to some long-buried secret. It’s just a sense I get. One I want to understand before we decide how to proceed.”
Zeph’s instincts had proven reliable over the years, and I wasn’t about to deny them now.
“We should start by looking into her origin,” I said, thinking about her past. “Her parents supposedly died when she was young. Everyone thought it had to do with the Earth Fae plague, which they later realized was caused by an abomination.”
“I’d put money on there being more to that story,” Zeph replied.
“Me, too.” I’d have to involve Exos or Cyrus in this to request some details. Maybe I could ask them for information on her background and claim I needed it to help exonerate her or something.
“You’re thinking about asking the Elemental Fae Royals.” A good guess, one born of years of knowing each other.
“I am,” I confirmed.
“A good start.”
I agreed with a nod before saying, “Well, I guess we need to put on these cuffs and hope your friend comes through with something for Aflora.”
“He will.” Zeph picked up the brown leather bracelets and handed one to me. “Cheers, Kols.”
I huffed a laugh. “Yeah. Cheers.” I tapped the band against his, then snapped it over my wrist. Aside from a slight humming sensation, I didn’t feel any different, but the nod from Zeph told me it’d worked. When he followed suit, situating his into place, I understood.
The slight traces of the mating bonds were gone.
Now we just had to see how long these things held.
Solve the mystery of Aflora’s existence.
And figure out what the fuck Shade was up to.
“This is going to be one hell of a challenge,” I said.
Zeph smirked. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” He pulled the sheets back on my bed. “Now scoot over. I’m sleeping in here.”
I arched a brow. “Your room is next door, Guardian.”
“Shut up and move, Kols.”
My lips quirked as I obeyed. “Lose the pants.”
“In your dreams.”
“Or we could play in Aflora’s,” I suggested, thinking of how fun it would be to fuck with Shade. “Make her moan our names so loud that the Death Blood can’t sleep.”
A sinister glint darkened Zeph’s gaze to a forest-green color. “It’s late and I wasn’t planning to rest much anyway.”
Yeah, it was nearly half past noon outside. “Then let’s have some fun. We’ve earned it after the last twenty-four hours.”
“You already had fun earlier,” Zeph replied. “Tonight, it’s my turn.”
“Then have at it. I’ll follow along.” And jump in when offered the chance.