3. Veyka
“I thought we agreed that Isolde is not allowed to cook,” I said, dropping down to the stump they’d designated as mine. A makeshift throne, Lyrena had joked.
At least Lyrena was alive to make the joke. After Percival had stabbed her, with the fae magic in her blood stifled by the proximity to Avalon, her ability to crack jokes was nothing short of a miracle.
Even when they weren’t funny.
“Unless you plan on joining the rotation, she gets her turn,” Cyara said from the other side of the roaring fire. I could not tell whose flames they were—Cyara or Lyrena. But given that Cyara had kept the fire going for over a week on her own while Lyrena healed, I suspected the latter.
My harpy of a handmaiden had my spare pair of leggings spread across her lap, stitching the seam that had split along the inner left thigh. Given the way her teeth dug into her lower lip as she stabbed the leather with her needle, I decided not to press her. I turned to Lyrena instead.
Just as I had every single time I looked at her over the past two weeks, I cataloged each detail of her body, checking for strain or weakness.
But Lyrena didn’t wobble or falter as she executed a series of training maneuvers with her sword. I’d refused to spar with her so far, but it looked like that argument was about to die a sure death. She swung the sword with smooth grace, perfect control. All while keeping that fire burning steadily.
She was healed, no question.
Which brought its own host of troubles.
I focused on the most pressing one—Isolde crouching on the other side of the fire, stirring a pot that dangled from a carefully placed tripod of sticks above the flame. I managed not to flinch as the earthy aroma accosted my nostrils.
“Have you just begun?” I asked hopefully.
One claw-tipped finger twitched in my direction. “It’s nearly ready.”
I failed to suppress my shiver and started digging into the pack resting at my feet. There were only a handful of travel cakes left, and they were past stale, but if they meant I could eat less of Isolde’s stew, I’d take them gladly.
I let myself get lost in the mundane. The normalcy of cooking, mending clothes, washing dishes—there were hundreds of little tasks that needed doing to maintain ourselves and our campsite. I’d hated them before. But now, they let me pretend that things were normal. That my entire world had not been ripped apart. Not to mention the state of my soul.
Lyrena sheathed her sword and dropped down onto the ground beside me, sitting on a folded travel blanket to avoid the damp of the dewy grass. We’d retreated just far enough for the magic of the cursed clearing to wear off, to where Isolde’s healing magic worked again, and Lyrena’s innate fae mending ability began. And here we’d stayed for two long weeks. Each day wretched without news of Arran.
“Why won’t the Lady of the Lake let you see him?” Lyrena mused, folding her hands.
Calm. They were all so infernally calm. As if it was not the High King of Annwyn we were discussing. A tremor shook down my arm to my hand.
“The Lady of the Lake does not let me do anything,” I said sharply, staring into the fire. It did not need wood to burn, not with fire-wielders in abundance. But the act of splitting the wood, the perspiration and distraction, would hold the pain at bay.
As I looked around us for probable trees to fell, I caught Lyrena sliding her gaze to Cyara, who did not glance up from her mending to receive it.
“Morgyn can try to issue edicts, but I am the High Queen of Annwyn. I will do what I deem best for my kingdom.” My kingdom. Another weight upon my shoulders. Another responsibility pressing down on my chest and threatening to crush me.
“Including sneaking into Avalon?” This time, Cyara did glance up. She pinned me with her commanding turquoise eyes, her white wings fluttering behind her.
I uncrossed my legs, straightening on that stupid fucking stump. “I need to assess Arran’s wellbeing for myself. We cannot do anything else, make any other moves, if he is not safe.”
Not we. I.
I was making a show of it, but the thought of statecraft, of ruling and making decisions without him, made my stomach turn. Ironic, considering how irritated I’d been only a few months ago, after our Joining, when I’d had to defer every impulse to his agreement.
But decisions did have to be made.
Taliya, still closeted below in the safety of the caves with the rest of the faeries, had said the succubus would come to Annwyn. I might personally detest her, but I had no reason to doubt her truth. The Faeries of the Fen remembered their history better than the fae.
Another thing that needed to be done—research. Parys’ laughing grin flashed across my mind. He’d enjoy the new list of topics I had for him to research in the library of the goldstone palace. Likely, he’d use it as an excuse to never leave those winding stacks.
Succubus, nightwalker, the Great War, the Faeries of the Fen, who the Ethereal Prophecy did apply to, since we now knew it was not me…
“Eilean Gayl is not far.”
Cyara’s clear, confident voice stabbed into my thoughts with all the force of one of my daggers.
A dozen thoughts coalesced at once. Eilean Gayl. Arran. The rifts. Annwyn. More.
I blinked, my mind unable to sort through the torrent even as my mouth formed words. “Eilean Gayl is in Annwyn.”
I didn’t say the rest. We’d have to go through a rift. We’d have to leave Arran.
I shouldn’t need to.
“What is Eilean Gayl?” Isolde asked around the claw she’d lifted to her mouth to taste her concoction.
“It is Arran’s ancestral home,” I said, wishing that raging flame of the campfire could do something to warm the ice spreading inside of me. The cold that had been growing ever since I’d plunged Excalibur into my mate’s chest. “I am not leaving Arran.”
Cyara did not waver as she stared right at me, the leggings in her lap seemingly forgotten. “You could open a rift to Annwyn.”
And maybe I was more messed up than even I understood. Because instead of shutting the entire conversation down, I actually responded.
“I’ve never done that.” I blinked again. My universal sign for overwhelm. “I’ve only been able to move between nearby places in this realm.”
There were no feigned expressions of disinterest or sideways glances now. Lyrena and Isolde were watching us, eyes sparkling, the latter stirring the pot absently with one clawed finger.
“But you did it before, after the Joining,” Lyrena said, leaning forward noticeably.
A beat of silence.
They probably thought I needed it to think.
Wrong.
I was trying to tame the terror clawing its way up from the pits of my stomach, through my chest and up my throat like bile. I remembered it, as stark and clear as if it had happened yesterday. The feeling of being ripping apart. Of falling headfirst, without a shred of control. The terrible cold that dug its claws into me.
I had done it at the Joining. And I never, ever wanted to do it again.
Moving along one realm was one thing. The idea of trying to travel between realms… and without Arran. Arran had been the one to push me, to show me how to reach into my magic and start to control it. To take this new step on my own… I did not want to contemplate what that might mean.
“We are not leaving Arran.” A thousand years and a thousand more. That was the promise I had made. I would die on these blasted shores before I would leave him.
“How does the magic work?” Isolde asked quietly.
She did not express an opinion. Merely asked a soft, gentle question. It was telling—she considered herself my subject, but also an outsider. Less than Lyrena and Cyara, my Knights of the Round Table. I tucked that nuance away for later.
I sucked in a breath. “I wish I knew.”
Stares from my friends.
Exhaled.
“I can enter the void between realms,” I explained, as if that sentence actually did much clarifying. “Arran is my tether. Without him calling me back, without the bond to center me, I could become lost. I do not know if I can do it with him…”
Gone.
I could not say it.
My chest was going to cave in on itself. The shredded golden thread would not be enough to hold me together—
“You can feel the bond in your chest.”
My teeth gnashed, a snarl rolling up through me as my focus shifted outward once more, annoyance and relief at being pulled back to reality.
“Do you know everything?” I bit out.
“I know you,” Cyara countered. “If you could not feel Arran, you wouldn’t be sitting here calmly waiting—”
“You call this calm?” Lyrena interjected, her grin stretching across her face, her golden tooth catching the rays of the rising sun.
“—you would be slaughtering your way across Avalon.” Everyone stared at her—myself included. But Cyara was unwavering. “You can use your power.”
She was right, of course.
I’d been about to use it on the lakeshore, to spite Morgyn and her edicts.
I turned back to face Isolde, now scooping the concoction she called a meal into bowls. “Moving between places in the same realm is simple. I can step into the void, then step back out. I’m hardly even there. Jumping between realms is something else.”
Isolde nodded, passing the bowls around the campfire.
She paused when she reached me, one claw-tipped white finger tapping against the side of the wooden bowl she held. “But you can do it. Create a rift.”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
I did not want to.
But in my bones, in the center of my soul where that shining ember of power slumbered, I could feel that answer with certainty. Even if nothing else in my life was certain anymore.
Isolde slid the bowl into my hands, retreating back towards the fire. Instead of sitting, she crouched down, balancing her own bowl in the cradle of her curved claws. Close enough to the fire, she ought to have burned. But her translucent white skin glowed softly instead.
She did not reach for a spoon or lift the bowl to her mouth to eat.
I swallowed back my own saliva, too tense for a bite, knowing more was coming. Already tense because I knew what came next.
“And you could take someone else with you, from one realm to another?” Isolde asked.
Another swallow. “In theory.” My eyes darted to Cyara, eating her bowl of mushy green stew and ignoring me; letting me sort through the feelings and fears on my own. The first time I’d brought someone through the void with me, when I hadn’t been ready, hadn’t meant to… I looked down at my arm, half expecting to see the bloody stump of her hand there. I sucked in a breath. “But it is not safe. You could end up maimed, or worse.”
It was impossible to tell for sure with her already white skin, but I imagined that Isolde paled.
We ate in blessed silence for a few minutes. Maybe I would get lucky, and they would let the conversation drop. I needed time with my thoughts, anyway. To figure out my next move. Ancestors, how I missed Arran’s warmth and strength at my side.
You don’t appeal to the Ancestors anymore, the voice in my head reminded me.
Right.
I broke a stale travel cake in half, dipped it in the green stew, and tried not to wrinkle my nose as I forced down bite after bite.
Of course, I was not actually lucky. Not in the way I’d hoped, at least.
Isolde was fascinated. Eager to press, she leaned forward on her toes, dangerously near to the fire. “So, if you moved through the void, from the human realm to Annwyn, you would emerge on the same spot?”
I nodded. “Like one of the rifts.”
“But that is not what happened at the Joining,” Cyara said between bites.
I was going to strangle her. Even if it meant facing the harpy hiding beneath her skin. “No. It is not.”
I turned to Isolde, the only one who hadn’t heard the story. “I crashed through rifts, realms, uncontrollably. Painfully.” I shot a look at Cyara, to remind her. As if she needed it, after all she’d been through. “I saw the Split Sea, and a castle I did not recognize, and Avalon.”
Isolde nodded along, her white eyes sparkling as she considered. “But those are not in the same location, through the layers you describe.”
I shoved the last bit of travel cake into my mouth, the stale grain sticking in my throat. “No.”
“So you could enter the void here… and step out on the other side in Baylaur? On the other side of the continent, in an entirely different realm?” Her voice was full of wonder. What would it have been like to learn about my void power in safety? To explore it as a gift, a beautiful wonder, instead of a means to an end? A weapon for battle?
It did not matter, I told myself. Making my body into a weapon had been my choice from the beginning. The only way of protecting myself.
There was no use in second guessing that reality.
“Yes,” I said to Isolde. She was right—in theory. But I hadn’t done it.
“And other realms? What about other realms? The monolith above the faerie caves showed many layers.” Isolde’s mouth hung open with excitement.
Of course, she’d have examined the monolith. It was directly above the entrance to the refuge of the Faeries of the Fen. Perhaps they’d erected it at some sort of marker, thousands of years ago.
I looked accusingly at Cyara and Lyrena. Had they been discussing this with Isolde? Had clever Cyara set up this whole conversation, to push me to make decisions, to move forward?
There would be no moving forward. Not without Arran. And if my Knights were foolish enough to believe otherwise, then as their queen I owed them a lesson in reality.
“I haven’t done it,” I said sharply.
Isolde licked her lips. “But you could.”
“If I truly command the void…” I closed my eyes, pushing down the flare of power and light inside of me. The void called to me, eager for me to come and play. As if my power knew what we discussed and yearned for me to try. I shoved it down, willing that ember to rest. “I do not know what I could do.”
That was the starkest truth.
I wondered if I would ever stop hating this vulnerability. Sharing these suppositions aloud. Not about the wellbeing of Annwyn or some plot, but about myself.
A shiver slid up my spine, through my shoulders, and down my arms like lightning to my fingertips. I tried to shake it out; pulled the cloak that I wore around my shoulders. It was always so damn cold in the human realm. Yule was only a few weeks off, and then it would turn even more frigid.
I hated the cold.
But if I had to sit here in the snow drifts until my mate was healed, I would.
I stared into the fire, unable to meet any of their eyes. I heard the familiar sound of steel being drawn from its sheath, then the repetitive swipes of Lyrena polishing her sword. Goldstone Guard, Knight of the Round Table. That was the warrior who finally broke the silence. “We would have allies in Eilean Gayl.”
I let my eyes get lost in the dancing orange and yellow flame.
Lyrena’s blade sang as she applied pressure to a particular spot. “You could be back here in a second.”
The cold inside of me was not the same indifference I’d felt after Arthur’s death. Then, my focus had been singular, selfish. Revenge at the cost of all else. Now, too many emotions flowed through me to process. Too many responsibilities and too many friends to worry about. So much, that my mind and body began to institute an icy freeze to stop them from overwhelming me completely. “Maybe. Or maybe I’d end up back in Baylaur, or at the Crossing.”
“What are our other options?” Lyrena said, her voice still carefully diplomatic.
I did not answer her. So Cyara did. “Return to the faerie caves. Return to Baylaur. Or go to Eilean Gayl.” She paused, drawing in a delicate breath before adding, “And on to Wolf Bay.”
I ripped the dagger from my belt, hurling it through the air. Well over their heads. It embedded in a tree on the other side of the clearing, all the way to the hilt.
“We are staying here.” My voice was cold enough to freeze water.
The flames of the campfire flickered.
But Cyara did not back down. “You are the High Queen of Annwyn.”
I slid off the stump, landing easily on my feet. Towering over the fire, over my friends, all still seated.
“Arran is the High King. And my mate. I will not leave him.”
Lyrena and Cyara exchanged a look that I didn’t even pretend to ignore.
I stepped into the void, blissful and silent, free of their expectations, and went to retrieve my weapon.