Chapter 40
forty
Rune stayed with Hil when the fake king and queen’s advisors and chancellors apparently separated into two groups—the ones who opposed Hil and who demanded he be hanged in front of the people for treason, and the ones who believed him to be the rightful heir since the very throne had accepted him, and those statues of animals had come alive to protect him when his life was threatened.
The soldiers who’d been in the room with us, as well as all the staff who’d been standing outside the doors had been witness to the whole thing.
Codessa, apparently, was found dead in her chamber after having taken the Iyandra that was reserved for queens.
She’d killed herself because Maera suspected Lyall had just left her and fled the kingdom.
She knew without the morvekai her husband had made she couldn’t fight.
No Unseelie fae could really, truly fight with magic after so much damage was done to the kingdom and the balance of power. At least not right now.
Luckily, Chancellor Ryat, the guy who’d first found us at that settlement, was on Hil’s side.
He had the ear of most of the people clinging to power in this court, and he looked mighty relieved that the fake king and queen were gone, even if he tried to hide it.
More than that—he was willing to sit down with Hil and Rune to talk about the most pressing matters with the court’s assembly.
The ones who weren’t trying to kill Hil, at least.
I asked Rune before he left what those most pressing matters were, and apparently, they had to decide this very day about ways to restore order in the palace after the death of the usurpers.
There were only three hundred active soldiers in the Unseelie army, which, according to Rune, was a very, very small number.
He expected riots and rebellions from other nobles who wanted a taste of power now that Lox and his morvekai were gone, and they would try to take advantage of the situation, so Hil had to be prepared.
His safety came first, on which we agreed.
Because it wouldn’t be surprising if Lyall tried to assassinate him the moment he went out to speak publicly to his people the next morning.
They had to make sure there would be no loose ends.
There would be ceremonies, he said—to formally crown Hil and to declare the royal bloodline restored.
Hil would also need to choose all members of his assembly anew, decide whom to keep, whom to exile, whom to imprison—and that was without even touching on bigger issues, like the harvests that had been failing regularly for years now, the people who were almost starving, the infrastructure of the kingdom that was basically in pieces, and the lawlessness that had spread through its every corner.
Then there was the issue of foreign relations, too. Which Rune thought would be easy enough between Midnight, Unseelie, and Frozen. He didn’t say it out loud before he left, of course, but he counted on me taking over the Frozen Court, too.
Now that we were so close, now that we’d put Hil on the throne—holy fuck, we’d actually put Hil on the throne!—it had all become so very real for me. Pieces I didn’t think we’d even find had fallen into place in this mess of a puzzle, and it would be my turn soon. Very soon.
What the hell did I know about foreign relations and kingdom infrastructure and commanding armies? How could I possibly hope to take all of this on, just like that—and alone?
Too much. It was all too much, and my head was constantly threatening to fucking explode. That’s why midnight found me in front of an open window in the room the help had taken me to, crying in silence.
The room was clean, as big as others I’d been to in the fae palaces before, except the furniture, the walls, the paintings all seemed…
dull. They lacked the life that had been so prominent in the Seelie Court, less so in the two others.
It was almost like time itself had forgotten this place completely.
But the faucet worked and the water was warm, and I took my time cleaning myself up when Rune left, tried to scrub the weight of that life I took all by myself this time, with soap.
It didn’t work, of course, but I thought I was getting used to it.
Soon, I might forget it was even a part of me, hopefully.
I was dressed in clean, pressed clothes, too—a pair of brown pants and a pale-yellow shirt underneath the velvet jacket that the help had been so kind to bring to me when I returned the dress they first suggested.
They didn’t look at me weird, which was a surprise.
They looked old and worn out and concerned, yes, but they were also curious when they came to the doors of the room I stayed in.
Maera had collapsed from exhaustion in the room next to this one before Rune even left to meet with Hil, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t woken up yet or she’d have come knocking.
It was best if she slept until morning, and it was best if I did, too, but the bed was too big.
Too cold. Too dark. It felt like I might lie in a coffin if I lay on one of those pillows alone.
Alone.
As I would be soon. As I would be always.
The marble cube that was once Vair kept me company.
I whispered to it now and again as if I hoped to hear my own voice speaking back at me each time, though I knew I wouldn’t.
But I still asked it questions as I looked out at what remained of the Unseelie Court, the dim lights and the fires burning atop torches, the people that I could barely see in the night in the distance.
I asked it what the hell I was going to do now when my entire heart had been ripped to pieces, too many to count.
I asked it if there was any way out—any way at all to escape this dreaded fate, of having to be like this. Alone.
No Rune.
Without him, I wasn’t me. I wasn’t living. I was merely…surviving whatever came until I could live again in his arms.
Now I’d be surviving forever, I guessed.
Eventually I sat on the floor with the cube in my hands, my back against the wall, the window right over my head.
I looked at the door on the other side of the bed and I imagined opening it and just walking out, and never stopping until I got to the Neutral Lands, so many times. I imagined it in detail.
I never even made an attempt to stand up.
Then the light came.
I knew what it was the moment I felt the energy, slightly cold. Then the blueish glow simply slipped through the wood of the door, and it was already shaped into a bird. My bird, the little nightingale that Rune had made me since we first met. My friend that kept me company.
It flew all the way to me and sat on my raised knee, never making a single sound, the light of it so bright, so perfectly balanced. I reached out a finger as if to touch it, and I did feel the heat of the magic that made it. I smiled at it, too, because I knew exactly what it meant.
Rune was close. He was coming.
I wanted to get up and go to the doors, open one and wait for him—I really did.
But the best I could do was wipe my face in case I still had tears on my cheeks and wait.
A few minutes later, the handle moved and the door opened, and Rune came inside with a plate in one hand, and a bottle in the other.
I let go of a long breath as my lips stretched into a small smile.
I was going to be okay, after all. At least for tonight.
“Everything okay?” I asked as Rune came to me, walking like he was on a damn runway.
God, he was perfect. It wasn’t even fair because he was clueless to it, too.
“It will be,” he said and came to sit next to me against the wall, putting down the plate and the bottle of honey-colored liquid in front of us on the floor.
I didn’t need to move at all. He wrapped me up in his arms and pulled me onto his lap with such ease and held me like I was the most precious thing he’d ever touched.
The noises in my head quieted down within the second.
Rune fed me and had me drink straight from the bottle.
It was juice, he said, made from a specific kind of honey that only bees in the Unseelie Court made.
Hil had gifted him the bottle, he said, though it was possibly much older than the both of us, but he’d found it in an old cellar, and he’d wanted me to try it, too.
I no longer asked questions nor did I want him to give me answers. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to think. I just wanted to have Rune for as long as I could with no interruption.
So, while he fed me delicious grapes, I raised my head and kissed him.
It was slow at first, and I took my time to kiss his lips, lick and bite them to my heart’s desire, and Rune let me. Slowly, I turned toward him and straddled him, wrapped my arms around his neck to make sure he couldn’t go anywhere if he tried.
The fire burned in the fireplace, giving him a rich orange hue on the left, while the blue light from the bird sitting on one of the windowsills on the other side bathed half his face in an ethereal glow.
His hair was so smooth, and the colors seemed to be gliding on each string like they were made of liquid.
His eyes were both fiery and a deep silvery blue, too, and I forgot to breathe as I analyzed his face for a minute, sitting there on his lap, our breaths one, our parted lips less than an inch apart.
Who needed air, anyway, when I could kiss every part of his face, from his forehead down to his chin?
I could touch his lashes with the tips of my fingers, then run them through his satin smooth hair.
I could kiss lower down his neck, behind his ear while his breath hitched and goose bumps erupted everywhere on his skin, and his hands around my ass fisted tightly until I felt the perfect amount of pain to add to my pleasure.