Chapter 21
By the light of the will-o’-the-wisps that danced in the tent above them, Gerard watched Lorelei’s cheeks pinken with her long, luxuriant sip of fae wine.
The exacting fae bargain might have allowed a mere drop in her throat to suffice—but of course, Lorelei would never do anything by half-measures.
Gerard felt something twist deep inside his stomach as she lowered the jug at last and her eyes reopened, silver glitter sparkling decadently on the tips of her long eyelashes.
Gods. Had it been self-destructive madness, after all, to insist upon sharing a tent tonight?
No. This was the best chance he would ever have of working out her most elusive truths. He couldn’t walk away now.
“My turn,” Lorelei announced, and smiled dangerously as she leaned towards him. “What do you really think of our dear little Otto as your emperor?”
“I … think he deserves my allegiance.” It was the truth; the bargain surely couldn’t question that.
But its eerie, invisible force tugged once more at his skin, raising goose bumps and the fine hairs on his wrists once more; in other words, his answer hadn’t gone deep enough to suffice.
Breathing deeply, Gerard added with firm conviction, “He is my emperor by right of law, as sanctified by the Imperial high priest.”
“That sweet, pacifistic old man he just had arrested for so-called corruption and treason, you mean?” Lorelei’s voice was perilously dry.
“Or were you referring to the new Imperial high priestess Otto appointed from his own family so the Empire wouldn’t have any mitigating counterforce to stand against him any longer? ”
Thank Jovar, the bargain required no answer to that second question. Instead, with finality, Gerard said, “I swore vows of loyalty.”
The shock and horror that he’d felt at High Priest Bohdan’s arrest would not soon subside, but he knew—he was certain—that the Emperor could be persuaded into leniency with the man’s final sentence, if only for the sake of appeasing general opinion.
It was one of the many reasons Gerard had to return to Fiora soon—to make that argument and hold to it long enough to shape Otto’s fluctuating opinions.
“Hmph.” Lorelei narrowed her eyes at him. “Well, if you can’t share your true feelings about him, you had better take a sip of wine.”
The bargain plucked at him even harder in agreement. Resigned, Gerard picked up the jug that she had set down between them and raised it to his lips. The sparkling, effervescent concoction lit up his senses like fireworks as he swallowed.
No wonder Lorelei had flushed when she’d drunk it!
He had taken the smallest possible sip, but even so, as he returned the jug to the ground, Gerard’s cheeks prickled with a new, much-too-pleasurable warmth.
This was no ordinary, mortal wine … and this game might well prove to be more perilous than he’d realized.
Still, her question led to the one he’d been wanting—and fearing—to ask ever since their argument earlier that day.
Could he bear the answer?
Bracing himself, Gerard said, “Do you really believe that Otto is a secret supporter of the Purifiers, or was that only a ruse?”
The fae bargain wouldn’t allow Lorelei to lie; of that much, he was certain. Still, he half expected her to scoop up the jug once more, only to torment him with uncertainty.
Instead, she let out a sigh that sounded genuinely weary.
“Darling, if it were up to me, I’d never give those pathetic would-be villains another thought—but Ailana’s spies report that he’s met secretly, many times now, with a whole assortment of Purifiers, including their leader, that foul Feodor Rapenthe.
No one knows, yet, exactly which promises have been made, but Ailana is certain that Otto’s planning to use their cause as his banner and rationale to conquer the rest of the continent, just as he’s been yearning to do all along. ”
Hoping to conquer the full continent—that much, Gerard could not deny.
It had been Otto’s most passionately expressed dream for as long as Gerard had been a member of the Emperor’s rarefied private council.
As far as he knew, though, Otto didn’t have any higher rationale but the goal of reclaiming all the lands of the legendary first Serafin Empire, which had ruled uncontested for nearly a thousand years before its destruction five centuries ago.
Otto’s grandfather and namesake, Otto I, had formed the new, less-all-encompassing Serafin Empire in its memory, and Otto II had grown up with the firm conviction that it was divinely ordained for him to finish the job …
regardless of all the innocents who would be killed in that expansion for no reason but his own personal glory.
Still, Otto had never once claimed in any council meetings, not even the most private, to have any specks of fondness for the extremist bigots who screamed about “Purification” and drunkenly assaulted harmless nonhumans at any opportunity.
“Ailana is certain,” Gerard repeated carefully. “So, in other words, you’re basing your conviction on the Queen of Nornne’s spy network and her claims.”
It was a second question, uncompelled by their bargain, but Lorelei answered anyway. “I would trust Ailana with my life.”
The bargain might not judge this answer, but Gerard didn’t need magical confirmation to believe the loyalty that rang through it.
It was the same strong, protective emotion she’d shown to both of her fellow Queens of Villainy at the border of Kitvaria, days ago.
Back then, it had startled him and seemed uncharacteristic, but he was coming to understand that it was just as essential a part of her nature as her incorrigible mischief.
Like him, Lorelei kept most of her true feelings buried in public most of the time. Her own outer facade might be the opposite of his, but underneath …
What actually hid beneath that mask of frivolity felt unsettlingly— compellingly—irresistible.
“My turn,” she said. “If you believed me about Otto’s plans, would you listen to your conscience and abandon your post to fight against the Empire?”
Gerard’s breath stopped as his vision whited out.
He was back at the military academy again, covered in bruises and walking into the dining hall under the gaze of all the other students.
“Little traitor…”
“There’s the traitors’ son…”
“Bad blood runs true…”
“Did your parents wail like cowards while you watched?”
“Gerard?” Lorelei’s voice broke through. “Are you unwell?”
If only the bargain would accept that question as the one he had to answer!
Gerard swallowed hard and met her gaze as panic roiled sickeningly within his gut. “I would never willingly abandon my post,” he said, “but I will listen to my conscience.”
“Oh, for—!” Sitting back, Lorelei flung up her hands in disgust as the weight of the fae bargain lifted. “How could that answer have been allowed? It’s utter nonsense.”
“It is the truth,” Gerard repeated steadily. “As Imperial high general, it is my duty to make use of my position and advise His Imperial Majesty against any choices whose consequences he might not fully comprehend.”
“He comprehends them perfectly well,” Lorelei muttered. “That’s not the problem! But what will happen when he orders you to carry out Purification anyway and makes it into a law you think you don’t have the right to break, because it’s your godsdamned duty?”
That was a nightmare beyond imagining. Fortunately, it was his turn to ask the questions. “Why did your mother send you away from the Efaelen court as a child?”
Glowering, Lorelei reached for the jug—and then stopped, her hand hovering in midair, as Gerard raised his eyebrows pointedly.
“Fine.” She drew in a deep, put-upon breath and directed her gaze to her hand as she lowered it to the silken floor. “I had a more important mission to fulfil.”
Pressure mounted around them, and strands of her long, curling hair lifted from around her face with the force of the fae bargain tugging at her. “It was foretold,” she gritted finally. “I couldn’t stay at my mother’s court forever. I had to inherit the Balravian throne, no matter what.”
“Or else…?” he prompted.
When she looked up to meet his gaze, her expression was stark. “You must know the answer to that yourself, by now.”
Gerard frowned. As he recalled, the other candidates for that throne had been an assortment of useless human cousins only known for their inept turns in military service and sloppy drinking parties.
He couldn’t imagine any of them—unlike Lorelei—having the sheer drive or conviction to force Balravia into any great political movements, so …
Aha. They couldn’t have resisted those movements, either. The answer settled into place. “You think you were put on the throne to save Balravia from being enfolded into the Serafin Empire.”
“Not only Balravia.” She shook her head slowly, her voice unyielding.
“And I’m not fighting only to preserve political independence.
Ailana isn’t wrong about Purification, Gerard.
No matter what you need to believe to comfort yourself for working for a villain …
if we don’t win this war, no fae will be left in the mortal realm in fifty years’ time.
My mother was shown that truth. THIS FIGHT IS FOR MY PEOPLE’S FUTURE. ”
As she spoke, her voice deepened and echoed with skin-prickling effect. It was as if someone else—no, Someone else—was speaking in divine chorus.
Gerard abruptly remembered that vast, sighing voice that had rippled the trees with its force when it warned him this morning to protect Lorelei, in that impossible frozen moment out of time.
In all their years of enmity, he had never imagined flighty, flirty Lorelei as the avatar of an actual goddess.
But as he looked into her eyes now—their blue irises sheened over with an impossibly bright, forest green—he finally understood.
More than that: He believed.
“You are goddess-touched,” he breathed. There was a strange, tight feeling in his chest: mingled wonder, awe, and …
Was that regret? No: pain. Aching pain for the child who had been torn much too early from her home and sent into a realm that hated her to take on a task with impossible weight.
He knew that feeling all too well.
“Who do you think set my mission in the first place?” As her eye color returned and that impossible echo vanished, Lorelei’s lips curved ruefully.
“Only my mother and her closest handmaidens know—even her consort has never been told, for fear the news might spread and panic lead to disaster—but Sylvana came to my mother long before I was born. That was why Queen Morgana was able to let me go so easily and forget me so quickly: She’d been waiting to give me up from the very beginning. ”
Her smile faltered, but her voice did not. “One daughter is hardly too high a price to pay in order to save an entire people … from the armies that you’ll be leading.”
“Lorelei…” It hurt to breathe through the constriction in his chest. Still, Gerard leaned forward, ignoring the ache, and reached out to take her smaller hand in his. Light tremors shivered through it as he closed his fingers firmly around hers.
He wouldn’t break his sworn word and betray his empire even for her sake—but this was a wholly different matter. “I will not let the fae be eradicated from the mortal world,” he told her. “I will not allow my troops to carry out any orders of Purification.”
Lorelei left her hand in his, but her lips wavered into a bitter smile. “Fine words, General,” she murmured, “but can you actually carry them out?”
“It is a promise,” he said firmly. “I swear it to you, now—and you know I honor all of my commitments.”
No, he couldn’t simply walk away from his post and all of his responsibilities, the way she had apparently imagined.
But what stronger position could he hold at this profound turning point than the right hand of the Emperor himself?
As Imperial high general, Gerard could and would fight with every political and diplomatic lever he held to change Otto’s mind before it was too late.
Now that he knew the imminent danger, Gerard could convince his emperor of just how unforgivable such a course would be and how harshly the history books would judge Otto’s reign if he gave in to that temptation.
Gerard had the miraculous opportunity to end this forewarned madness before it could ever take effect. That was his new mission. That was a goal he could wholeheartedly believe in.
Thank the gods Lorelei had kidnapped him, after all! If she’d tried to tell him any of this two days ago, he wouldn’t—couldn’t—have believed her. But it wasn’t only the magic of the fae bargain, preventing all lies, that proved the truth of her words to him now.
It was the trust and respect they had gained for each other across the last two days of trials. It was the compassion she’d shown, again and again, to everyone with less power than herself, and the strength and the heart that shone through all her illusions.
Now that he’d finally been allowed to see behind them, he would never look away again.
“Trust me, Lorelei,” he said, tightening his grip on her hand. “I won’t betray my vows to the Empire—but I won’t betray you, either.”
“Ohhh…!” Lorelei shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes. Then, with a muffled sound of despair, she shoved the jug of wine aside and launched herself at him.