Chapter 30
Draven
Eryx stood with tight features in the war room, a faint sheen of ironfrost coating each of his knuckles, like he was ready to do battle.
From the news he had heard, or with his king?
For several tense minutes, he ran through reports, not bothering to hide the accusation in his tone when he spoke of attacks on the border towns.
Or worse, monsters that had ravaged the villages.
“The patrols managed to stumble upon one portal in the northern mountains,” he added in a terse voice. “But from all we can see, it led to the Thornhart territory. They destroyed it, in any event.”
The Thornharts lived their lives in peaceful herds, rarely drifting out of their territory. Their portal was the least of our threats, which Eryx knew as well.
Still, it was something that the soldiers had seen it at all, since all of Everly’s research had mentioned the many ways in which portals could be crafted with crystals that either helped to disguise them or actively repel people.
All we knew aside from that was that once, each dominion and Court had their own portals to one another’s lands for the emissaries to travel more freely. It was supposed to be for peace, before they were predictably used for ill.
That didn’t bode well either, since the emissaries wouldn’t have needed to travel out to the endless mountains. They would have wanted to come here.
A single doorway to the Skaldwing territory was hardly a threat for war, but I didn’t particularly need their spies gaining easier access either.
“Tell them to keep searching,” I responded.
“Are you certain it wouldn’t be easier to ask your wife?” he shot back.
“Since I can hear her thoughts directly, that would be wholly unnecessary,” I snapped.
He stopped, lips parting. “You’re soulbound with the Unseelie?”
“I am soulbound with the Winter Queen,” I corrected. “Who has given you no reason at all to doubt her loyalties.”
He scoffed. “Just as I gave you no reason to doubt mine.”
“And I never have.” Until now.
“I think we both know that to be untrue. Otherwise, you would have alerted me to the threat to our kingdom.” For the first time, something more than anger brimmed under the surface of his words. “Or to the queen. Unless you thought that threat would come from me.”
The truth of that hung in the air between us. He was right. I hadn’t trusted him with the truth of who Everly was.
“I weighed the risks of her heritage being known against the threats, and I made a decision. It was not personal,” I said, keeping my tone even, though a brittle edge crept in despite my efforts.
“Not personal to you, perhaps, My King,” Eryx replied, his voice low and controlled. “But recall that I have followed your orders, whether I agreed with them or not, for these past ten years. I have stained my hands red with the blood of children because you were convinced there was no other way.”
I didn’t have to think about what he was referring to. Just after the war, Skaldwings who were scarcely younger than I was, were sneaking into the territory. They claimed it was a prank. I hadn’t wanted to take the risk. It was the start of the order to kill on sight.
“They were hardly children,” I reminded him, though the words came out sharper than intended.
Eryx shook his head, disappointment flickering across his features. “You’re still such a young king.”
“Their people were slaughtering ours,” I shot back, my mana rising despite myself. “Kidnapping them at the borders.”
“Yes,” he said, leaning forward, “and you decided on swift judgment. I expressed my doubts. You made your choice anyway, and I followed you. I have always followed you, and most of your decisions have been good ones, but no one is infallible, Your Majesty. Not even the Frostgrave King. So forgive me for wondering if it was fear for your queen that kept you from divulging the truth or if it was your own pride.”
I stiffened with a sharp, cold flare of indignation, mana cracking faintly across the stone floor before I forced it back under control.
“Don’t pretend you don’t hate them as much as I do,” I said quietly, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
“It was never about hatred for me,” Eryx replied, his expression tightening. “It was about loyalty.”
“And yet you called her a monster,” I said, the accusation slipping out before I could soften it.
He met my gaze without flinching. “Would you have done differently in my place? When the queen you were sworn to protect turned out to be the enemy you spent the better part of your lifetime fighting, with no warning? Until that moment, I wasn’t even sure that you knew the truth.”
I didn’t want to admit to him that I hadn’t known the truth right away, didn’t want to feed into his hatred of Everly. Still, his words returned to me.
Fear for your queen or your own pride?
I had only been sixteen years old when I was crowned in blood, the youngest king in a millenium, without the luxury of second-guessing myself or my choices, let alone allowing anyone else to do so. We were so close to an outright rebellion, even before the monsters came.
Perhaps I had owed him more than I gave. More trust. More honesty.
“I didn’t know, initially. You’ll recall that I was given little choice in my bride.
” I didn’t bother telling him what he already knew, that it didn’t matter now how she was chosen or what she was.
“By the time I found out, the circumstances were already… complicated. But as you have seen, they are not her people either.”
“Regardless, it will not be a simple matter of telling the soldiers that she is the exception to their ideals, not when we have allowed their hatred to run unchecked.”
I heard what he wasn’t saying. That I had allowed my own hatred to run unchecked. That I had created the same problem that would now threaten my wife.
“They are still a threat to us,” I reminded him, lest he had forgotten about the slavery and the attacks.
Then again, perhaps he was only testing me. Eryx had always been difficult to read.
His carefully guarded nod gave nothing away.
“They are. Their last gift could easily be seen as a declaration of war.”
I had thought the same more than once. There were no good options. No Visionary to guide us on our way.
I met Eryx’s eyes, seeing those things reflected in the gaze that wasn’t quite as hard as it had been when I walked in.
I needed allies, more so with Nevara gone, and my Lord General had always been just that. Looking back, I wasn’t sure of the exact moment I had stopped consulting him. When the monsters and the Unseelie became overwhelming, when there hadn’t been time to discuss decisions.
“What would be your recommendation, going forward?” The words came through gritted teeth, but I did manage to say them.
For the first time, Eryx’s chilly facade cracked, the smallest bit. He raised a single eyebrow like he knew how the words had pained me.
“I wouldn’t begin to formulate a plan without all of the facts, My King. Otherwise, people might get hurt.”
It was as close as he would come to demanding information. Or to giving a reprimand.
“Then you will have the relevant facts,” I allowed, unwilling to promise him something I would ultimately refuse to deliver.
There would always be secrets, especially where my wife was concerned, but he wasn’t wrong about the risks of forging ahead in the dark, nor about the consequences of having done that already.
His anger didn’t quite subside, but it did shift to the side, allowing for something closer to practicality. It was enough for my purposes.
So I told him what I knew of Everly’s uncle, the threats to the queen. We didn’t discuss the most obvious issue in the room, the fact that however he had felt about the order to kill on sight, he still despised the Unseelie, the Skaldwings in particular.
The fact that I still despised them, too.
When I was finished, he looked down at the map of the borders, making a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat as he pushed the pieces around.
“If we reroute the patrols along—”
But I never got to hear what it was because blind panic flooded the bond. I held up my hand to stop the Lord General, already feeling for the pull toward Everly’s mana.
What is it? I demanded.
The ring didn’t burn. She wasn’t in danger, but the panic only intensified.
It’s Nevara. She’s—.
She is what, Morta Mea?
I felt as she tried to shield her thoughts, but the answer came through anyway, distant and faraway. Unmistakable all the same.
Dying.