58. Chapter Fifty-Eight
58
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
KAIUS
S torming my way through the mountain pass, anger wrapped its thorny grip around my chest. Blair kept pace despite her smaller legs, the cold air making me keenly aware of the blood cooling rapidly on my clothes. We stepped past the wards ringing the valley as I called on magik to take me from this place. Let it flood through me as Blair’s hand slipped into mine and that familiar pressure bore down on us until we were nothing but particles in the wind. Twisting and turning and aching to forget we belonged to a physical body of blood and bone. I clamped down, forcing it to take us back to the palace, when a new energy reached into my chest, pulling at something that was definitely attached to my heart, and the course changed.
There was nothing I could do as we were pressed through whatever force it was that made travelling possible, until it spat us out into the darkness between trunks of trees that loomed above, cutting off most light. It only took a moment for recognition to slam into me, but this patch of forest to the west of the palace was not where I had been headed.
Technically, I shouldn’t have been able to travel within the bounds of the palace wards, but here we were. I’d have to let Bas know later that something was up with them.
I could make out the faint sound of people coming from a haze of light in the distance. Still firm and insistent, I rubbed at the pull in my chest. I’d felt something similar before, but this wasn’t easing up.
Glancing at Blair, her expressionless face giving nothing away, and she merely shrugged, walking away and disappearing into the dark.
I didn’t go after her. She’d be fine against whatever she came across. They’d be the ones in trouble.
Winding through the gaps between the trunks, all senses on alert as I followed the pull in my chest, whatever force it was that was calling me forward. I edged closer to the lights and voices, and a familiar clearing soon came into view between the boughs. Completely off any trail, I picked my way carefully through the cramped space, stopping as the sound of celebration reached me.
I didn’t venture on, instead keeping myself hidden in the cover of the trees that I drew around me. Calling on my magik to reshape the leafy branches just a little. The night would help, and my shadows could do the rest. I waited, anger receding into curiosity knowing that whatever reason I had been drawn here would make itself known soon enough.
Fires burned, the scent of jasmine floated in the air, and I realised what this was. I glanced up at what I could see of the sky through the canopy. Sure enough, there was Lune in her crescent phase, her three purple-hued hand-maidens circling her luminescent form. That meant tonight was Meirskjatrist. The voices melded into a hum as I tracked every face, noted every insignia stitched into the uniform that so many were still wearing. I rubbed at that space over my heart, eyes scanning for any reason why I was hiding in the dark instead of where I should be. Back in Elodie’s room.
I wasn’t the only one in these trees. I could feel the magik that trailed through them, some of it coming from those who had snuck away to fuck against the trunk of a tree. Having been part of these parties too many times to count, I knew most didn’t bother to retreat to the privacy of the dark.
No, it wasn’t them; something else lurked with me.
The reason I had been pulled here became crystal clear as Elodie stepped from a trail in the woods just behind Alouette. Power buzzed under my skin as I watched her, the moonlight shining down on the lengths on bone-white hair that swept to the small of her back. My fingers twitched at the memory of it wrapped around them, at the taste of her that still lingered on my tongue.
My cock jerked at the tight black trousers she had obviously been given by Alouette. I knew the perfect body hidden under the too big jumper that hung from her small frame. The body I had feasted on only a few days ago. Ran my hands over, kissed every inch.
From here, I could see the wariness in her eyes, the way they flitted from person to person, never staying on anyone too long. They way her shoulders shifted forward just slightly, ready to withdraw into herself.
The two women spoke for a moment, and the lost look that flooded Elodie’s eyes as Alouette weaved through the other soldiers leaving her alone, wrapped its hand around my heart, squeezing tight. There was no part of me that wasn’t aching to reach for her—to take that uncertainty and smooth it away.
But I couldn’t go to her, not with clothes still damp with someone else’s blood. Blood I had relished spilling, but that had proved underwhelming in what it gained.
It had all been for her, but she couldn’t see me like this; I could never let her see me like this.
This part of my existence, branded into my soul, was something I had come to accept—to enjoy even—but it wasn’t something I could expect her to. So, I watched.
I watched as she picked her way carefully through the crowd, arms held tight around a black jacket I hadn’t seen before and headed towards one of the main fires. Saw her sit on one of the logs that had been placed before it, eyes boring into the embers.
Leaves rustled at my side at the exact moment she swung her head towards me, eyes landing on this hidden spot.
“It’s unlike you to miss out on a party, Prince.” A deep voice carried to me on a whisper of wind as he pushed through the trees, making less noise than should be possible for a Fae of his size. It was then I noticed the tendrils of hair floating around Elodie’s face.
“I thought tonight I’d have a quiet night in.” Marcellus huffed out a single laugh, eyes dragging to my sodden clothes. He couldn’t see the dark stains, but I knew he could smell it, just as any of the beasts that prowled these woods could.
“And how did that quiet night go?” His huge arms crossed over his chest as he turned back to the clearing and the party beyond.
It was shit. I have no answers, yet again.
“It was inconsequential.”
Risking another glance his way, his eyes had hardened into chips of ice, sharp and ready to slice into whatever was unfortunate enough to have garnered his ire. Marcellus’ eyes were focused on a light-haired soldier—one of Alouette’s unit, I was sure—as he handed Elodie a blanket that she gratefully accepted. Draping it around herself and tucking it tight close despite the fire she was so close to.
Fuck, of course she would be freezing out here.
Energy pulsed beside me in a menacing wave that sent alarm bells pinging through my brain, alerting me that danger was near. I’d felt it enough to realise that—thankfully right now—it wasn’t directed at me.
There was something different about Marcellus that I could never quite put my finger on. Like fuck was I going to ask him about it, though.
Instead, I went for, “Why are you here?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“You could, but I asked first.”
Marcellus didn’t reply, his eyes trained on the same spot mine were. They were his soldiers over there after all; maybe he had been on his way to join them and sensed me. But what if he had been pulled here as I had? I didn’t want to think too much into what that would mean.
“I’m here for her.” His voice rumbled over me, and that told me all I needed to know.
With my Fae ears, I could hear the tale the Story Teller was weaving, the makings of our world. How we were blessed with the goddesses that created us all.
Was this a story she had been told before? One that was now just a wisp of a memory trapped behind the block that had been placed on her. Before she had been trapped in another realm with no clue of who she had been born to be.
The memories that had been plaguing my mind recently, as recent as an hour ago , pulled at me, and I began to draw a conclusion that made the shadows in my blood shudder.
I had the answer, a solution. I knew someone who could help her.
I just had to take that step.
Dread clawed at my insides with talons as sharp as the ones that had often been scraped across my body, I rubbed at the unbroken skin on my arms at the memory. I was always put back together, or learned how to put myself back together was more like it. The scars from that time sinking into my bones, my soul, instead of marking my now tattooed skin.
There was little point dwelling on the memories when my eyes were open, since they would torment my sleep just as viciously regardless.
If I went there, I might not come back. I would be the price for the help she needed.
By their own accord, my fingers slipped to the blade of my dagger. Its wicked point a promise I wanted to press into, feel my skin peel apart, but I held back.
Shadows flooded beneath my skin, their presence there intending to soothe, to realign the aching in my soul at the decision I would need to make.
If Marcellus sensed the direction my thoughts had turned, he didn’t let on. Instead, we both stood there, hidden. Our eyes trained on the magik that was Elodie as if neither of us could bear to look away.
And as she stood with Alouette, she turned once again. Not towards us, but to the trail she had emerged from earlier. At words spoken from her friend, those eyes that grew brighter every day she was here, settled of the strain she had been holding onto, and she turned away. Taking a long drink from the flask offered to her, the blanket fell to the ground, and with a stray wind blowing through the waves of her hair, she headed into the crowd of bodies.
I knew then that I would wait, wait until she left because I couldn’t bring myself to pull my eyes from her. Not now. Not knowing that I had a way that could make it all better. But one that meant that each second I had here was precious.
Yes, I would stay until she left.
I would be the shadow that held back the others. The shadow that let her light blaze through the world.
Until I wasn’t.
I would stay. There wasn’t much chance of sleeping now anyway.