Chapter 13
Thirteen
A fairy never goes back on their word.
Even if it takes multiple lifetimes to uphold. - King Richard
“Are you really not going to go to your own wedding?” Jace pesters for the umpteenth time. If I didn’t owe him my life, I would’ve killed him for this.
Glaring at the document in my hand, I try to focus on its contents – contents that outline Vyla’s surrender and will see peace brought to our northern border for the first time in centuries.
And yet, despite having fought for this for over a decade, all I can damn well see is the way Arienna rose out of the emerald pool.
The droplets sliding down her skin. The parting of her lips.
The lust clear in her eyes – which are the same pink, perhaps, as other parts of her…
The pen snaps in my hand.
Cursing, I lower it to the desk.
I refuse to meet Jace’s knowing eyes.
“Did you know,” he says cheerfully, “that it’s brownie custom to kiss at weddings?”
My gaze flies to his. Scowling at his disrespectful grin, I reply, “There won’t be any kissing.”
“I don’t know... She’s pretty hot, and Nicholas seem–”
He dodges the first half of the pen I throw at him. The second one too. The bastard has the reflexes of a snake.
Placing both pieces back down on the desk –a move I’ve absolutely no idea how he manages given I watched them both fly past him– he grins. “If Nicholas is going to be your stand-in, he’ll have to kiss her. A brownie marriage is not recognised otherwise.”
“Bullshit.”
“Maybe. But are you willing to take the chance? I saw the way you looked at her.” He pauses.
My sixth sense doesn’t like the glint in his eyes.
“You remember those stories we got told as kids?” he asks with a cock of his head. “Little kids, I mean – before we went to war.”
I don’t answer, knowing it will be pointless.
“Specifically the one about lifemates?”
“She’s not my lifemate.”
“Are you sure?”
“The likelihood –”
“Is miniscule, I know.” He waves a hand. “But even when you were engaged to Evangeline –”
Before the thing with Aurelia, he means. Not after. She’s hated me ever since.
“– you never looked at her like that.”
“We were a political match.”
“You were more than that, and you know it. You might not have loved her more than you do me –”
My eyes thin into slits.
His grin widens. “– but you loved her. And yet, you still never once got jealous over her.”
“Evangeline scared all the men away for me,” I say dryly.
He laughs. “You know, I once saw her crush a man’s head with her thighs?”
Given she’s a witch, she has the magical power to do so. Given she’s a psycho, she’d do it while laughing.
The tightness in my chest eases a bit as I think about the time we fought on the frontlines together. She was one of the very few I trusted at my back. “Remember – fuck, what was that guy’s name?” I lean back in my chair. “The noble she kept gluing to the tree with his pants down?”
“The one whose balls she kept growing, you mean?”
“And shrinking his dick.”
He snort-chuckles. “You know, I don’t think she ever did lift that curse.”
I cough, but I can’t stop the smile that stretches across my lips.
All curses are breakable as long as you follow the rules.
The more powerful a curse is, the more simple it is to break – on paper.
Whereas, weaker ones can have whole paragraphs outlining what must be done in order to break it, stronger ones are restricted to one short sentence that can be interpreted a variety of ways – all of which are able to end the curse.
That’s why paragraphs of specifics are often needed.
But they can also be broken by a more powerful witch.
Unless you’re cursed by Evangeline. There’s no one more powerful than her when it comes to twisted magic.
“Redric!” Jace exclaims, snapping his fingers, and I nod. “I wonder what he’s up to. Maybe with this peace treaty, I can pay him a visit.”
“Not a chance,” I cut in, giving a king’s order. The last thing I need is him starting another war. Redric didn’t quite see the humour in Evangeline’s “jokes” then, and I doubt decades of having balls the size of his fists has made it any funnier for him.
Jace chuckles.
I grin.
But just as I focus back on my work, he innocently says, “I bet Nicholas is going to kiss her with tongue. It’s been years since he’s been shown any affection.”
The earlier sexual frustration slams back into my body. I glance at the sharp half of the pen on my desk. If I’m quick, I might be able to stab him now that he isn’t standing.
Grabbing that half of the pen, Jace twiddles it between his fingers.
The dull half will still work if I shove it hard enough...
Laughing, Jace tosses the pen back on the desk. “Alright, alright. I’ll drop it before you sprain that muscle ticking away at your temple.”
When he leans forward to poke it, I swat his hand away. “One of these days, I’m going to call my debt to you done.”
He smiles with all the confidence of a falcon spotting a mouse. “No, you won’t. Your guilt will push you to pay me back across multiple lifetimes.”
“Did you do it?”
I still struggle with the haunted look he cast me that day. The weeks of silence. The year he disappeared.
“Although,” Jace says as he stands, “if you attend your own wedding as the groom, I’ll count one of those lifetimes paid.”
I push away from the desk, not even pretending to study the bilateral agreement anymore. “Why do you even care?”
He heads for the door, his smile long gone. His eyes as empty as they were that day, he murmurs, “Because Aurelia would’ve.”
My heart stops.
I glance at the only photo in my study, sitting on my desk. I curl my hand into a fist. After all these years…
Her bright smile, radiant and pure, looks back at me, frozen on a day I’ll never forget. A day neither of us will ever forget.
“Did you do it?”
He doesn’t look me in the eye. Barrelling past me, he is the epitome of a haunted man. A broken one.
“Jace!” I call out after him.
He spins. A knife buries itself into the door behind me. My cheek burns from where it grazed me. I stand in shock as I stare at my best friend. He glares back at me, breathing hard. Shaking harder.
And then he said the only words he would utter to me for weeks.
“You owe me.”
Jerking my gaze away from the photo, I slump back in my chair. “Fine,” I call out, not looking up. Not being able to see the pain in his present-day eyes even though they’re already haunting me in my memories.
“I’ll be there.” Yanking open a drawer for a new pen, I resist the urge to grab the bottle of helfire in the drawer beneath. “But there will be no kissing.”
He chuckles, sounding as if he’s right in front of me. I glance up to find him on the other side of the room. My ears straining for the slightest of sounds, I slip a throwing knife out of its sheath on top of my wrist.
“Got it,” Jace says, projecting his voice across the room, making it sound as if he’s still sitting at my desk. He moves like a phantom towards the door.
He glances at me when he’s a step away. Nodding, I rise to my feet, ready for whatever attack the Court is planning this time.
Now that I’ve backed them into a corner, they’ll get more desperate in their attempts to stop me.
Not that anyone they send will get past Jace.
There’s a reason they always wait until he’s not around.
Opening the door, he grabs whoever is behind it, jerks her inside, and shoves her face against the wall. The door slams shut from his kick, and his foot pins it there fully.
Leaning in close to her, he murmurs, “Hello, sexy.”
Annoyed, I put my knives away.
“Careful, Jace,” Nicholas calls through the door. “This one bites.”
“I also stab,” Fabia growls.
Jace’s head dips as he glances between their bodies. “You will need a bigger blade than that to do any damage to my dick.”
“Just the tip, right?”
He laughs as he leans in. The smell of blood pierces the air. “Marry me,” Jace begs.
“What in Hel’s name is wrong with you?” she snaps.
“A lot,” I answer. Striding over to them, I order, “Let my brother in.”
Taking his time, all the while staring into Fabia’s silver, irritated eyes as she looks over her shoulder, Jace leans back and lowers his foot from the door. Stepping back, he holds up a small, familiar knife in his hand. “Nicholas.” He grins. “Stop letting women play with your knives.”
My brother swears as he barges in. He swipes for his knife, but Jace holds it out of reach. It disappears from his hand a moment later.
“Cut the magic shit,” I growl, thankful yet again that he doesn’t have actual magic. He’d be unbearable if he knew even the simplest spell. And dead. Very, very dead. Because we’d all kill him.
“That wasn’t me,” Jace says, dropping to his knees in front of Fabia. Looking up at her in adoration, he begs, “Please marry me. I cook. I clean. I do the laundry. I’m all up for knifeplay, and my cock is –”
“Bleeding,” she cuts in coldly, but there’s a smile tugging at her lips.
“Well, now you know I have no issue with it being covered in blood. Sex on one’s period is more stimulating, you kn–”
“Gods, Jace! Learn to have a fucking filter,” my brother snaps.
“Why, when I get to see a beautiful goddess blush?”
Nicholas looks at me, but I refuse to get involved.
“Where’s Arienna?” I ask, turning the conversation to actual important matters.
“In the Dressmaker’s Suite, getting her hair done. Ajax will be here in two hours with a range of dresses. There are three guards on her door.”
“Who?”
“Saragese, Marrabel, and Irin.”
I nod. They’re all good women. Trusted women. But still… “If Evangeline was back, she’d get past all of them.”
“But she’s not. She’s in Gretadal on assignment.” He glances at Fabia. “I’m heading back to the Dressmaker’s Suite now anyway. I just came up to drop off the new maid of honour.”
“Irin is her maid of honour,” I remind him.
He holds up his hands. “Trust me. This is not a hill you want to die on.”
His lack of faith in me is irritating. “Get Irin in here and take this one back.”