Chapter 42
forty-two
Rune Kalygorn
I was always restless when she wasn’t with me, and this time was no different.
I expected it. I knew I would be sitting on needles all the way back to the Midnight Court, but I was still surprised by the weight of the guilt.
By the image of my own self in my head that I created whenever I left her side.
Unworthy of her love. Good for nothing. A coward—because there were ways to stand beside her and take on the world. There were ways—there had to be.
But there weren’t—not to make sure that I never left her side again.
So, here I was, showing up with my chin raised and my shoulders back, two soldiers riding behind me, the gates to the kingdom that was somehow mine wide open as the people waited for my return.
A lot of them were on the streets, chanting while I pushed my horse to run faster.
The sun had yet to rise for another few hours, but every second I spent here and not with Nilah was a second too long.
So, I ran, and I tried to ignore the chantings and the cheers of the people who seemed to be genuinely happy to see me, and even now I imagined they were meant for someone else.
I was no king. I was a bastard. I wasn’t worthy.
Yet they continued to cheer, almost every second of the way until I could see the Midnight Palace rising in the darkness ahead.
The horse underneath me was getting tired, but I still pushed him to run faster.
He could rest when I was there, when I made it through the open gates of the Midnight Palace, the front of it swarming with soldiers wearing their black armors and their emblems with pride.
Fae lights burned everywhere, and I’d gotten so used so quickly to the dim light of the Unseelie Court that I realized now how bright Midnight magic really was. How weakened the Unseelie one had truly become. How little of it remained in that court.
Then, there was Raja, together with a man and two women who stood behind her, with their velvet suits and their dark eyes on me, waiting for me right there by the palace’s doors.
It was no surprise that Raja was pissed—she had been even before I left, but when I jumped off the horse and rushed toward her, she looked more furious than I’d ever seen her before.
“Your Highness,” she still said, bowing her head as the people behind her did the same. They must have been from the king’s council, possibly the only three she trusted enough to keep her back turned on them.
“Say it, Raja. I’m all ears,” I said and headed inside straight away. She was going to follow me and tell me exactly what was on her mind no matter where we were, and I’d rather be moving, anyway.
“How nice of you to finally make it back, My King. I’m ashamed to say I was naive enough to think kingdoms weren’t supposed to be waiting for their rulers to come back whenever it suited them—but what do I really know?
” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. She walked beside me up the main stairway, and the others followed close behind.
“You learn something new every day, I guess,” I said, a bit hyper now that I was here, and now that the time had come to do exactly what I had planned to do for such a long time now.
Raja wasn’t going to like it, that much was certain, but I could always try to calm her down before she found it.
“Oh, we’re joking now. How nice,” she said through gritted teeth, and we were on the sixth floor now, but when I made to turn toward the hallway that would lead to the throne room, she stepped in front of me, gave me a stern look.
“You wear a crown now, boy—not something you can simply set down when it’s convenient.
Your people look up to you, and when you disappear, they feel it. The whole kingdom feels it.”
I never knew how true that really was until I saw the inside of the Unseelie Court.
I sighed. “I understand that, Raja. But I had business to attend to.” Which she knew.
She knew exactly what kind of business, too—the kind that was going to ensure that we did not perish together with the entire realm.
That’s why the look in her eyes softened a little bit. “I know why you left, but that still doesn’t erase your duty here. Things might look calm right now in the middle of the night, Your Highness, but they haven’t been. People have rebelled. Fires have started.”
“And I’m sure you’ve handled them much better than I ever could.” And she knew it, too.
“That is not the point,” she hissed, then threw a look at the council members who’d stopped a few stairs below as if they wanted us to think they couldn’t hear us.
“Then what is?”
“Your job is to stay ahead of the next fire before anyone else has even smells the smoke, Your Highness. The putting out of fires isn’t the issue—making sure they don’t happen at all is.”
She did make a lot of sense. For a king, I would wholeheartedly believe that was his duty.
I closed my eyes and paused for a moment because I didn’t want to piss her off any more than she already was. “I had no choice but to leave,” I said—again, something she knew.
“I was told it worked,” she then said, raising her chin and looking down at me like a mother chiding her child for misbehaving—and I did wish in those moments that that’s all there was to this whole exchange.
“It did. The Unseelie King sits on his throne and I’ve walked him through all the safety measures you walked me through when I first took the crown,” I told her.
Light flashed in her eyes—and I could just tell that she was proud when she said, “Good.”
“I sent the soldiers you sent for me with Nilah, too, to make sure she would sit on her throne.” Which made perfect sense to me, when I thought about it now. It fit perfectly with the world as I knew it. She really was a queen. She was made for it.
“And you’ve come back.” Raja closed her eyes to show her relief, if only for a second. “In one piece, thank Emer.”
I smiled. “Where is Jasewine, Raja?”
“In the throne room,” she said and turned around to walk right toward it.
“She’s had a conversation with the seer, which I was not aware of nor allowed to hear whatever reading she did, mind you.
” Perfectly clear how much this bothered Raja, but she continued.
“She won’t leave the throne room before your return, she said, and she’s stayed true to her word so far.
” The doors to the throne room were right there, just footsteps away from us now.
“You’ve given her a taste of power, I’m afraid, and I’m not sure what that will look like in the future. ”
If she only knew…
The time, I stopped her, turned her toward me, and put my hands on her shoulders.
The others who’d followed, together with a few of the royal guard that had stepped away from their positions near the walls to bow, pretended they couldn’t even see us.
“Raja, please breathe. Can you do that?”
She raised her thin brows. “What does breathing have to do with anything?”
“You’re not going to like my talk with Jasewine, but I need you to do one thing for me. Just one.” The way her face changed right before my eyes wasn’t funny at all. “Try to understand that what will come tomorrow is for the best of all.”
I rested my forehead to hers, closed my eyes, allowed myself to breathe, too.
Raja was my family. The closest thing I’d had to a mother since my own died.
I hardly remembered her face, but I remember Raja.
She’d always been there, and I didn’t doubt that she would remain my rock forever. I would be hers, too.
But for now, I straightened up and turned to the other council members and the guards.
“Please, join us in the throne room.”
The doors opened even before I’d finished speaking, and my half-sister stood there in the middle of the room with her hands to her side, pale cheeks and dark eyes full of fear and panic on me.
Almost like she knew.
It was easy, easier than I expected to walk up to her and smile.
She didn’t wear the crown on her head—instead a tall thin table had appeared near the throne chair atop the dais, which was also a little different, wider if I was remembering correctly.
But the crown stood atop the table made of black glass, not on her head.
“Finally,” Jasewine breathed a sigh of relief to see me but arched a brow at the brown and dark red velvets I wore. Hil had insisted, and I didn’t want to seem rude.
I could hardly believe it myself, but I did like him. I thought he’d make a good king despite his past. His heart was in the right place.
Of course, I’d never be caught saying that out loud—to anyone but Nilah—and I was also aware of how quickly things changed in the faelands of Verenthia, but right now Hil was where he was supposed to be.
“How have you been, Jasewine?” I said as she continued to curiously analyze the others who’d followed us into the throne room. “I invited them to join us,” I added.
She grabbed me by the wrist the second I stopped in front of her and pulled me toward the tall table near the open windows from where we could see the waterfall pouring down the mountain and the glass-like surface of the Eternal Water.
She sat me down at the head of the table, pushed me in place with all her strength, then moved to the other side.
Meanwhile, I watched her, a little stunned, a little amused.
“Well? Tell me—what happened?! How did it go?” she demanded, and I had to force the urge to smile down with all my strength.
But I did tell her everything that happened.
Raja came to stand on my other side to hear the story better.
I told them about the moon’s eye, and Ashfall, told them about the dragon that Lyall had hoped would do his dirty work for him and wipe the three of us out when he lured us into Santra.
And I told them about the death of the Unseelie usurpers, too.