Chapter 56 #2
“Kait!” Arienna squeals as she throws herself at a blonde woman she’s only met once in her life as if they were the best of friends.
Kait freezes, her eyes flicking to me in uncertainty. I smile at her, but that doesn’t really seem to put her at ease any. Clearing her throat, she pats my wife awkwardly on the back.
Arienna pulls free but still holds on to her shoulders. “How are you? Has Kyle made you orgasm yet?” The guy in question is standing right beside her.
Kait blushes hard as he grins.
“Your queen asked you a question, Commandress Kait Mangum.”
Her mouth opening and closing, she clears her throat. “My apologies for the delay, Your Majesty. Ah, yes.” She coughs. “Yes, he has.”
“Took fucking ages too,” Kyle says as my wife hugs him too, “but I kept at it.”
“It took twenty minutes,” Kait says with a roll of her eyes as my wife steps back.
“Fucking ages,” Kyle repeated. “I could’ve come twice in that time.”
Her eyes laughing, she smacks him on the shoulder. “You did come twice.”
“But I kept going.” He licks his lips slowly, and she turns the most adorable red.
“Uh... excuse us, Your Majesties.” She bows quickly. “I have a husband I need to discipline.”
“Yes, please excuse us,” Kyle says, “because I want to make sure my wife answers correctly next time.”
As they walk away, Jace shouts, “The closet to the left has a lock on it!”
Arienna giggles as those around us go silent.
Kyle lifts an arm in thanks. Kait buries her head against his shoulder, but she doesn’t protest as he turns left.
“Oh my gods,” Nicholas says, coming up to us with a slice of cake on a tiny plate. “You have to try this. It’s better than sex.”
“Your sex maybe,” Arienna says, making me tense. “Not ours.”
Fuck, here it comes.
“Richard lets me peg him.”
Nicholas freezes with the cake half-way to his mouth. Cursing, he places it back down on the plate and hands the whole thing over to Jace before he walks away.
Laughing, Jace takes a hearty bite, and my wife turns to him.
“You want to know what Richard fantasises about? Me pegging y–”
Wrapping my arm around her mouth, I drag her away from him as he stands there laughing. “That was one time,” I growl in her ear.
“I wouldn’t be agai–” he starts.
“Fuck off, Jace.”
As our other guards move with us, we leave him behind. He’ll slip through the crowd, keeping an eye on any threats, alongside whatever ants Evangeline has stationed here.
Speaking of the devil…
Evangeline slides up to us in one of her disguises. The only reason I recognise her is because she winks at me and pats her thigh – the prosthesis hidden under her suit.
“I’d say glad to see you’re not dead, Dickie, but really, I wouldn’t have cared either way.”
“You don’t mean that,” Arienna says, frowning at her.
“Of course not, Your Majesty.” She smiles at her; a lie. But it makes Arienna relax all the same.
“Thanks,” I say, genuinely meaning it. We might never be friends again, but I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to her. Because of her, I have my queen. “But next time, don’t leave Redric tied up in my bathroom.”
She looks at me blankly. “Who?”
My eyes narrow. “How do you not remember him?”
“I mess with a lot of people, Dickie. That’s kinda my whole job.”
I start to say something, but she’s already gone, having vanished in the crowd.
“That was amazing!” Arienna gushes, but all I feel is annoyance. Talking to Evangeline is like headbutting a wall, only at least with a wall, you still have a chance of breaking through.
“Berry!” Arienna waves at someone in the crowd and then starts moving towards her. “How are you? Have you read any of Fabia’s books yet?”
“Yes! And oh my gods, they’re amazing. I’m learning things I never knew about myself.”
“I know, right! Like who would have thought a slug dick gangbang would be so fucking hot?”
“I was totally all for Gage winning that though. He was the sexiest out of all of them. When he started fucking Nolan’s dick...”
Tuning them out before I can learn how the hel a slug dick can fuck another slug dick, I look around the room.
Dragon Bailey catches my eye. With a small smile, she nods at me over the rim of her glass before raising it slightly.
The threat of a coup is still on the horizon; we haven’t crushed all the threats against us.
But it seems we are making at least some allies in the Court.
I nod in return, and she turns to focus back on Petre.
“…Gage’s dick ripped into…”
Nope. Still not getting back into that conversation.
Catching the eye of a waiter, I gesture for a glass of ambrosia. He comes towards us with a fresh bottle. Marabel takes a sip of the first shot, then when she doesn’t die, she steps back so Arienna and I can have one. He pours two more, and picking them both up, I turn to my wife.
“I was so shocked when Gage asked to keep it,” Berry says.
“Right! But also a bit excited.”
They giggle, and I pray to the gods that was the last of the conversation.
“Are you talking about Queen Persephone and Her Five Warriors?” a woman asks, sliding up to us as Arienna takes her glass.
My brow furrows for a second, recognising her from somewhere. When it dawns, I look at her dryly. “I thought you were deaf.”
The librarian turns to me with a smirk. “I am. I can read lips, but I don’t respond to people being assholes.”
Arienna turns to me, surprise on her lips and in her eyes. “You went into Aurelia’s Library?”
I shift uneasily in the other women’s presence. My eyes on my wife, I say roughly, “I was looking for you.”
Reaching over, she grabs my hand. “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
And fuck, her smile is worth the discomfort of an audience.
Leaning up on her tippy toes, she kisses me, tasting of ambrosia and some other sappy shit that makes my chest feel light. Dropping back onto her heels, she looks at me as if she’s feeling the exact same thing.
“So have you read King Morningstar Gets Railed By Six…”
Blocking that monstrosity out, I pull my wife away with a mental note to order Fabia to burn all her damn books. I make my way to Jace. He’s standing by the table with my brother, eating a gosberry and almond cake. At the sight of me, Nicholas blanches and immediately leaves.
“So about that pegging –” Jace starts, only to curse when my knife slams into his cake, then skirts off the plate. It embeds in the wall behind him, and he laughs at me.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Arienna says, cutting herself a slice from the three-tiered cake on the table. “That photo on Echo’s desk –”
We both still, looking at her intently.
“It’s of a woman and child.”
“A child?” Jace asks.
I can see her being gay, but I can’t see her being a mum in any regard. “Maybe she kidnapped it?” I say, looking at Jace.
“Maybe she ate it.”
“Sucked its soul into her eye.”
“That’s not true, is it?” Arienna asks. “Can she really do that?”
We both turned to her. “Yes.”
Although I’ve never seen it, I know a lot of people who have.
Jace shudders. “Why would she keep a picture of it on her desk then?”
My skin crawling, I frown. “I think… we’ll need more than a shot of ambrosia to figure that out.”
Fabia walks towards us, rolling her eyes. “You know she will probably end up killing you if you ever find out.”
I scoff. “I’m the king.”
Jace shifts uneasily. Even still, he asks, “You want to help us figure out who they are?”
She shakes her head as she picks up two slices of cake. “No need. I already know.”
“What? Fabia –” Heading off with her, Jace asks her a million questions. She stops beside my brother and gives him one of the slices of cake before turning to Jace, most likely to tell him off.
Laughing, Arienna turns to me. “Evangeline said that’d bug the shit out of him.”
My eyes narrow on her. “Do you know who they are?”
“Nope. And I don’t want to know. Anyone capable of being that close to Echo scares me in all honesty.”
A low chuckle rumbles in my chest, but I can’t help but agree.
As the evening wears on, we make our way around the room, conversing with a thousand fucking people, most of whom I don’t want to speak to. But Arienna is keen to meet them all, and so I stay well into the night.
An hour to midnight, my eyes keep flicking to the clock. Jace stays by our sides, and my hand burns with the desire to be stabbed before Aurelia’s anniversary is over.
Turning to me while she’s mid-conversation with a noble, my wife frowns.
Then her eyes flick to Jace.
A sadness pooling across her face, she grabs my hand and says her goodbyes. Pulling me outside, she turns into my arms so I can fly her back to the castle. The fact that she noticed and realised what I need… My wings snapping open, I duck my head and kiss her for the entire way back.
Nicholas joins us sometime in the air. He lands beside us on the balcony to the royal chambers. The energy pouring off Jace is eating into the three of us, binding us with a memory that can never be forgotten.
But perhaps it is time to heal…
Turning to my brother, hating myself for what I’m about to ask of him, I say softly, “What caused your scars?”
I want to finally let the three of us heal, but I don’t want to live without the memory of what I did, without the only memento I have of my sister.
Nicholas stumbles as he turns to me, his face as pale as the moonlight shining through the balcony behind us.
“Helfire,” he rasps. “She threw a bottle at me before…”
He trails off, then looks away. Arienna wraps her arms around him, squeezing tight. Closing his eyes, he hugs her back, his muscles shuddering with a weight he no longer has to carry alone.
I clasp him on the shoulder as I look at Jace. “If you’re okay with it, I want it to scar permanently this time.”
His muscles lock tight as he nods at me. I can see it in his eyes, the desire to continue this tradition until one of us dies, but Aurelia would’ve wanted this.
She would’ve wanted me to look after him.
Would’ve wanted me to stop using him for my own pain.
Every year, I made Jace relive his ‘failure’ to save his Arienna. How the fuck he hasn’t killed me yet for that, I don’t know.
But it’s time to be a better friend than I have been.
“Soak it in helfire first,” Nicholas says, pulling away from my wife, his voice shaking as much as his body. She holds his hand still, refusing to let go, and his knuckles are white as he grips her.
“Thank you,” I say, my fists clenching with a need to kill his bitch of an ex-wife.
Turning from me, he continues down the hall.
We make it to my chambers, where he immediately goes to grab a bottle of ambrosia from the kitchenette.
Jace waits for him to move out of the way before he digs out the helfire and pulls a knife free of his belt.
It’s the same one he always stabs me with, the one he always carries but never uses outside of one day a year.
It’s the same one he stabbed me with originally, a blade of guilt and pain.
I place my hand on the counter. He uncorks the bottle with his teeth. Arienna tries to take it from him, but he doesn’t let go. They stand there staring at each other for a few seconds.
Then with a sharp nod, he releases it. Turning around, he plays with the knife in his hand, twirling it with the same energy eating him up inside.
Facing me, Arienna gives me a small, comforting smile. Then she pours the helfire over me. After emptying most of the bottle, she moves over and holds my other hand. Jace steps up to the side she vacated, the knife still twirling, a gate over his eyes.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” I ask him, willing to let him stab me year after year if he needs to, if he isn’t yet ready to let go of this himself. Fuck. He watched me find my happiness while he’s still suffering the hole in his heart. For him, I’ll suffer until I die.
“She would have wanted this,” he rasps. His forgiveness. Him moving on. My sister loved him and never would have wanted him to stay this tormented.
But with our stabbing ritual gone or not, I know he’ll never move on.
Every time Jace fucks someone, he punishes himself, carving his guilt into his skin.
The only place he never touches is the thigh with Aurelia’s tattoo.
He gave it to himself after she died – a mirror copy of the one he’d forced on her when they’d been children.
It’d been payback for her getting him six months of latrine duty.
If she hadn’t been my sister, I would’ve helped him kill her for that.
But the bastard loved her even then – well before she loved him back. I didn’t notice that at the time, but looking back on it, all the signs were there.
Perhaps in his next life, they’ll be reincarnated together and he can finally have the happiness he deserves, that they both deserve.
Nodding, I hold his gaze, being there for him as he always is for me. Arienna’s hand squeezes mine, and with a flicker of pain twisting his face, Jace stabs me without hesitation.
Agony shoots up my arm, my whole hand burning with the flames of fucking Niflhel. I grit my teeth as I worry I’m squeezing Arienna’s hand too hard. Her fingers bunch tight beneath mine. She doesn’t whimper or pull away though. She just leans in and kisses my shoulder.
She offers her other hand to Jace, but he ignores it. His eyes leaving mine, he pulls out the knife. He turns to clean it, and my gaze finds Nicholas’. Pain in his eyes, he raises his glass of ambrosia to his lips. It shakes so much, it barely meets his mouth.
Seeing the hatred for his ex-wife in my eyes, my brother shook his head, pleading with me as he always does when it came to her. Don’t hurt her.
Relaxing my grip on my wife’s hand, I broke his gaze.
It’s his choice, I told myself.
Just like being queen was Arienna’s.
Turning to her, I bring her hand to my lips. She smiles at me, helping me carry my pain.
“I love you, my queen,” I say, thinking of all the times I’ll be able to say that. Every day for the rest of our lives.
And all the lifetimes after.
“I love you too, my king.”