31. Ayna
Ayna
It’s been ten days since the attack.
Ten.
Long.
Days.
I’ve counted every heartbeat.
One million and seventeen beats.
Myron came to see me the first two days.
I sent him away.
Royad came on the third, pleading on his cousin’s behalf to hear him out.
I sent him away, too.
On the fourth day, Clio and Kaira came together, telling me the female we saved at the Flame estate survived. They told me how lucky we were that Jeseida wasn’t there that day.
I shook my head at them before sending them away.
They came back on the sixth and the seventh day again.
I told them not to return.
On the eighth day, Myron poked in his head, a crease between his brows as he asked if he could stay with me for a while.
I didn’t look him in the eye when he sat silently at the foot of my bed for hours.
Silas visited on the ninth day, his sarcastic grin wiped off his bronze features for once and his eyes black like the night.
He told me to pull myself together.
There is nothing to pull, so I continued gazing at the high ceiling.
The tenth day has been quiet. Darkness is falling over the gardens behind the fairy palace in Aceleau, my eyes adjusting with every vanishing ray of sun.
I haven’t lost my fae senses even when I’ve lost myself.
I’m sick of the elegant wallpapers in this room, but I don’t complain. My voice is inconsequential. It can’t change what happened. Stacking my fingers on top of each other on the windowsill, I continue to stare at the twilight creatures crawling from the trees and bushes.
From my place by the window, I can see the tower on the edge of the palace and the balcony adjacent to King Recienne’s throne room. Yesterday, the Fairy King was standing there with his sister and his general, locked in an animated discussion .
I didn’t even try to listen in.
Absently, my hand reaches for my braid, tugging it over my left shoulder so it won’t slide into the wound on my right that refuses to heal. The soft, cream dressing robe I wear hangs loosely over the bandages Recienne’s healer changes every day.
After Clio got all of us off the battlefield, site-hopping one after the other to this palace, every fairy available tried to heal my wound. Myron was the first. For long minutes, he snapped and growled at everyone who would come near me. When he realized his own powers weren’t enough, he fell into a brooding silence, stepping aside to let the others try.
To let the others fail.
“You look awfully cheerful.”
I only mildly startle at the sound of Herinor’s voice inside my room—the room that was meant for Myron and me, but he’s sleeping elsewhere since I screamed at him until he left when he attempted to lie down beside me the night after the attack. What’s the point of startling in a palace full of fairies who can site-hop in and out at their leisure?
Herinor doesn’t take my silence as an invitation to leave, but I don’t have it in me to speak either, so I keep watching the rabbits ducking under the bushes.
“You know I’m a horrible creature, Ayna.” He lowers himself into the brocade chair a few feet to my side, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. “You’ve seen what I’m capable of.”
From the corner of my eye, I can see his brows rise when I don’t react .
“Do I need to spell it out again?” There is no anger in his tone, no aggression. Only endless calm.
Because he hasn’t come to talk about the attack, I tolerate him, but I don’t know if I want to hear any of the stories of his past, so I shrug with my good shoulder.
“All right. Since you’re so eager to hear it.” Herinor gets up, draws his chair up to mine, and sits right next to me, elbows braced on the windowsill as he studies me from the side.
“Back in Neredyn, long before Vala decided we were unworthy, I liked to go hunting.”
He pauses, waiting for my reaction. When I show none, he continues.
“Deer was one of my favorites. Rabbit too.” He gestures at the two brownish-gray rabbits searching shelter under low-hanging branches of a hazel bush like they can feel his gaze. “But do you want to know what I’d hunt on special occasions?” He doesn’t wait for me to tell him I really don’t want to know. “Human.”
My stomach constricts, making my lungs suck in a startled breath after all.
Herinor grins at me from the side, but he doesn’t continue to speak for so long that I wonder if he’s pondering the merits of slaughtering a broken once-human. His gaze travels to my neck, then to my shoulder where my wound is covered but never ceases to throb. “I never ate human meat. That was for the lowly bastards who couldn’t control their urges.”
“And killing them isn’t lowly?” The question is out before I can think. Herinor’s grin widens when I turn to face him with a gasp .
“Who said I killed them?” The look in his eyes spells victory.
“What did you do to them then?” It’s easy to be angry, to face Herinor and despise him for what he’s saying. Much easier than hearing Myron’s apologies, his self-blaming for what happened at the Flame estate.
I still can’t think it. It’s easier to remain numb.
“Most of them, I let go—only to hunt them down again the next time that felt like a special occasion. But some of them…” He stops himself as if what he’s about to say might be too much. Apparently, he decides I can handle it since he leans in a bit further and whispers. “Some of them begged me to get a little taste of them between their legs.”
My cheeks are hot, and my heart is stuttering in my chest. He didn’t just say that.
Herinor merely shrugs, leaning back in his chair as if that was nothing. “Others begged me to let them have a drop of my blood.” When I blankly stare at him, he explains, “It’s not commonly known, but apparently, our blood is intoxicating to humans.”
“I’m not human.”
Herinor barks a laugh. “I’m not offering.”
Ignoring his amusement, I turn back to the window. The sun has vanished entirely, leaving the purplish shapes of the night. My Crow senses allow me to track the two figures meandering the gardens, and my heart throbs.
Clothed in familiar black, Royad and Myron are conversing as they slowly follow the gravel path leading from the palace to the fountain at the center of the greenery. While Royad has tied back his hair, Myron’s tresses are billowing in the wind. There’s something wild about him that I haven’t noticed before, and I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I do now.
“Why are you here?” My tone is flat, but the bite is there anyway.
“Better.” Herinor nods, acknowledging the change. “And because I’m the only one allowed to be mean to you without consequences.”
He shoots me a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Because you’re Ephegos’s tool?”
“Because you need someone to push you out of your wallowing, and I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it.”
“Even when you’re helping me.” I grit my teeth at him, a grimace resembling an animal about to attack.
“Doesn’t feel like helping when it’s basically torment.” A dark laugh follows his words.
“So, you do enjoy tormenting people after all?”
“I’ve already told you I used to be the worst of Crows.”
“But you’re not anymore.”
He doesn’t correct me.
My eyes follow Myron’s movements, the powerful strides even when he’s walking at a casual speed, the strength resonating in each of his gestures even when his shoulders are hunched. Royad is reaching for his cousin’s arm, squeezing, and Myron stops, lowering his head in defeat.
“You want to know what they’re talking about?”
“I don’t.” I do , but I can’t admit that. I can’t, or I’ll start crying and will never stop.
“They are talking about why you keep rejecting your mate. ”
Mate. The word hits me like a blow to the gut. On my shoulder, the wound is pulling with pain, and my head swims at the mention of what I lost.
What was taken from me.
I want to be angry, but I’m not strong enough, so I resign to defeat.
“I’m not rejecting him. They burned his mate mark out of me. I can’t feel him. I can’t fucking feel him anymore.”
I didn’t mean to say that out loud, but Herinor has a way of provoking a response out of me that not even Myron manages.
“So, you decide blocking him out entirely is the best way to deal with this?” The disapproval in his tone isn’t the Herinor I know. It’s a different version, one who cares about me.
“There is no way of dealing with losing a mate.” No emotion makes it to the surface as my eyes keep following Myron and Royad on their gradual tour around the gardens. “Erina had them take my mate mark.”
“I was there when it happened.” Guilt wells in his voice, but he buries it like he’d bury any weakness. He can’t be on my side in any of this; his life depends on it.
“At least, you weren’t the one to hold the torch if you weren’t the one to prevent it.” My stomach is sour, my mouth, my heart. I’m a lemon squeezed out over salt that’s to be spread over my own wounds.
Herinor’s fingers come to gently rest on my forearm. “No one could have prevented it, Ayna. It was an ambush. Erina set up the attacks so the fairies would come looking. He was hoping we’d be with them so he could get his hands on you.”
“When he had the information of us conspiring with Recienne tortured out of one of the fairy scouts, he knew it was only a matter of time until you’d show up.”
“He’s been tracking all our moves…” The fact hits me in the chest, forcing my focus away from the aching burn on my shoulder for once.
Herinor nods. “He really is. He’s been working with the Flames through Ephegos. I know that because I was there when Ephegos gave the order to bring you to him that first time after the battle at the old Crow Palace.”
“Flame Palace,” I correct.
Herinor tilts his head. “Does it matter?”
I realize then how much information he’s giving away, and a sense of unease fills me. “Aren’t you helping me with all this knowledge? Ephegos surely wouldn’t approve of you spilling secrets.”
“They’re not secrets if they’re in the past and there’s nothing to be gained from them.” A big frown distorts Herinor’s features, stretching the thin scars scattered over his face. He measures me for a long moment, fingers interlacing, pulling apart, playing with the hem of his black sleeve. In his light green eyes, doubt and worry fight a battle until he can’t sit still anymore. “Talk to Silas. He’s older than any of us.”
He leaps to his feet so abruptly I barely catch the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth, but I do catch it.
“Herinor—”
I call after him a few more times as he bolts for the door like he’s running from Eroth himself, but he doesn’t reappear once he crosses the threshold. And I remain with the screaming emptiness where my mating bond lived inside me only ten days ago.