57. Konstantin
57
KONSTANTIN
A s we emerge into a valley, underneath a sky that flashes but no longer slings hail, Colm, Fionn, Isla, and Aodhan shift into their Crows. I start toward one of the males.
Isla’s voice halts me. Where are you going?
I can be flown now.
I know. Thus , my interrogation.
I was about to climb on a Crow. You know…to do that thing that I can now do.
Even though she’s in bird form, I sense her raise an eyebrow at my snark. Here I assumed you would enjoy riding me best, Mr. Korol. Sexual pun, intended.
What wit, Miss Ríhbiadh. I pivot and start back toward her.
She laughs. The sound of her joy is so beguiling that it makes me gaze up in wonder at the majestic beast. No, not beast… beauty . Isla is only beauty, even with talons and a beak that could rip me from one world and pitch me into another.
Are you certain I won’t be too heavy for your back?
Certain. She crouches and stretches out her wings.
I wince as my boots crush her feathers.
I swear it doesn’t hurt. In truth, it feels rather nice. Like a massage. I love massages, by the way.
My grimace transforms into a smile as I swing my leg over her back and knead the feathers at her neck. Noted.
Best grip them for now. If it gets too blustery, lean in and circle my neck with your arms. And to set your mind at ease, it won’t choke me.
To think I’d dreaded getting a mate and had prayed to the Gods not to give me one. How lucky I was that they hadn’t listened. Or rather, how lucky that my prayers reached them after they’d already sealed my fate.
To think she was mine at birth…
Even though I’m a tad irritated with Meriam for having concealed our bond, I’m also greatly relieved not to have crushed on a babe. Or however long it’s been since the Cauldron selected her for me.
Her wings lift and slam low.
My heart ascends in time with our bodies, scaling up the taut walls of my throat. I’m flying.
Flying .
As the ground grows farther away, and the summit of my mountains, nearer, my trepidation is replaced with a thrill that throttles my heart.
I. Am. Flying.
How…extraordinary.
Not too cold? Isla asks me.
I’m too exhilarated to feel much of anything beyond the buzz of riding the wind and stars. Besides, my brother tossed me a fresh, fur-lined coat, so odds are my blood won’t congeal during my trip to Voshna.
If it does, I know a surefire way to warm you up, she says.
I smile. Could it involve riding you in skin?
What a deviant mind you possess, my king. I was thinking of dropping you off at the harbor and letting you run the rest of the way. The uphill climb to the Patchenkovs’ manor is a killer. Though she says this with great aplomb, her tone smacks of wickedness.
I much prefer my solution.
She laughs. I will never tire of hearing that sound.
As I run my fingers through her silken barbs, I gaze around me at my chattering family and cawing friends. I notice two more Crows have grown our little murder—Vance flying atop Imogen, and Elio atop Lachlano. Or at least, I assume that’s who the Serpent and the Faerie are riding. I’m loath to admit that I cannot really tell Crows apart in their beast form.
As the land ribbons beneath us, I’m overtaken by a sense of immense peace. One only disrupted by the presence of Ksenia and the absence of Salom. I glance from the prisoner, caged in Fionn’s talons, to the heavens. My throat burns like an inferno as I whisper an apology to the man I failed.
May the Gods have already shepherded his soul to the overworld and reunited him with my father, whom he served with unwavering loyalty. Be at peace, my friend.
I seal my lids against the sting of bereavement that will only worsen once I lower my friend…my general…my second father into the family crypt. How I dread having to fill his station, to sit through meetings without his insight, to walk through my castle halls and visit my people without his shadow at my side.
The gauzy clouds tear as the Crows rip through them with their bladed talons and sweep them away with their great wings. With each mile, the thundersnow rolls farther south, making the horizon flicker. May it abate by the time Isla’s family reaches our shores, so they aren’t welcomed with hail.
I turn my attention back to the ones around me, my ears clasping every snatch of laughter. Sofiya and Ilya haven’t stopped chatting since we took to the skies. The same way Mestyla and Izolda—who share space on Aodhan’s spine—talk, though their conversation is far less animated and joyous than my brother’s.
The only silent one—besides me—is the sister who watches the kingdom she tried to steal. I, too, watch this land draped in indigo, tracing its star-silvered edges and moon-bleached hollows.
My beautiful land.
Mine and Isla’s.
Once our dead are buried and peace is fully restored, marry me, I murmur into the bond.
Her head turns, her amethyst eyes holding the glow of a thousand constellations. I suppose I might as well now that we’re mates. It isn’t as though I can marry anyone else.
My lips curl. Do bench your enthusiasm, mate.
She laughs, but then she sobers. Izolda already started planning our nuptials, though I doubt she’ll have the heart for it in the coming weeks. What have you decided to do about Ksenia?
I haven’t decided.
I drift into my mind, only returning to the present moment when the dense forest thins, giving way to pinpricks of lights that resemble fallen stars. I stare my fill as we approach Dimitri’s cliffside property, which is so vast that all the Crows are able to land in perfect synchronicity.
“How’s your back?” I ask Isla once she’s shimmered to skin.
“I will require much manual stimulation—I mean, kneading , to feel restored.”
With a snort, I splay my palms on the base of her spine and pull her into me. “I will see to it once we’re alone.”
She rolls onto her toes and stamps a kiss on my curved mouth. I deepen it, only pulling away once gasped wails and clacking doors rend the night.
Sofiya’s parents stumble forward, arrowing straight for their daughter. They alternately cradle her face and kiss her cheeks as if to confirm she isn’t a wraith bidding her last farewell. The uprising has done a number on them, crosshatching their faces and hollowing their cheeks.
Even Milana seems to have aged a century as she clasps Ilya and Izolda in a bone-crushing hug and sobs against their shoulders. When she pulls away, she’s shaking. With fury. It ignites her reddened eyes like the rotund moon ignites the scarred property and scattering of combatants.
She marches toward her iron-chained daughter. When her palm flies into Ksenia’s cheek, even I feel the crack of her ire.
My sister teeters but doesn’t fall. Then again, she’s already fallen.
“You are a disgrace. A stain upon our family tree!” Milana’s wrecked timbre makes me glad that my mother was spared the misery of abhorring her own flesh and blood. “I am ashamed to have given birth to you!” Lashes fluttering wildly, she whirls, yelling that she never again wants to lay eyes on Ksenia.
Ilya hurries after his mother, gripping her quivering elbow before leaning in and planting a kiss on her temple and murmuring something that only increases the echo of her sorrow.
I catch Izolda’s stare. Like Milana, tears have dyed the whites of her eyes scarlet.
“Come inside, sweetheart,” Radka Patchenkov says, holding tight to Sofiya’s arm. “Your mother needs you.”
After receiving another kiss from her grandfather, Izolda trails her aunt and grandmother into the lit manor, but then she comes to a brusque stop. I think she’s about to return to yell at Ksenia or inform me of her wishes concerning her traitorous twin’s future, but I’m wrong on all accounts. She retraces her steps to offer Mestyla her hand. Which is so much more than a hand. It’s a family.
That’s what Izolda is giving our niece.
A safe place to land.
Mestyla turns toward Vance, who clutches his mate’s waist in a rare show of intimacy. How tangled my family tree has become. Once he nods, she plaits her fingers with Izolda’s.
“Will you take her back to Luce with you, Vance?” I ask as they vanish into the house.
A sigh jostles the apple in his throat. “I’ll need to keep her close to train her.”
So, that’s a yes. My niece will be leaving. I feel a twinge of sadness at having to entrust her to this new father.
“Though I can keep her close here, if you’ll allow us to stay on. There’s little my mate and I like better than justice, and there’s much justice to be doled out.”
“By justice, we mean revenge,” Imogen clarifies.
The Serpent tows his Crow mate infinitesimally closer. “I think he twigged that, ah’khar .”
“Do we have permission to hunt down the antimorphs, Vizosh?” she asks, one-track minded.
“My permission and my blessing. Especially now that my army has been decimated and my general…” The pit in my throat is so ragged that I think I just may choke on my grief.
Not here.
Not now.
Isla presses her cheek to the hollow place I’m trying to armor. I love you.
I bury my mouth in her hair and absorb her wind-swept essence and her tender warmth until the current of emotions begins to recede.
“Find the king!” The sound leaps from inside Imogen’s jacket, from what I assume is a listening sigil. She slides her zipper down, releasing a puff of sky-blue that pants, “Save the king!”
“Did you drool all over me, Sprite?” Imogen wipes her pale skin while Borat whirls and blinks bloodshot eyes at her.
And then he prods his square jaw that is shiny with saliva. “Um… Uh…”
“Hope you enjoyed your restorative nap between my mate’s breasts,” Vance says, “because it was your one and only.”
“No need for jealousy.” Imogen tsks . “His body was frozen stiff.”
As Borat gives the shifter pair another hard blink, air flows around the lump in my throat, coiling out in a rasped, “It’s good to see you, my friend.”
“Sire!” Borat whirls, wings beating so briskly that they become one with the ambient night. “You’re alive!”
“Yes.” I swallow deep.
He buzzes nearer as though to check it’s truly me. When he whirls on himself with a squint, I realize who he must be seeking out.
Sure enough, he asks, “Where’s Salom?”
I can neither shape the answer nor breathe out his fate.
“He didn’t make it,” Imogen says—softly. “I’m sorry. I know you were close.”
Borat’s mouth becomes a stroke of chalk on his brown face. And then he begins to bob, racked by soft sobs that impale the organ in my chest further onto my ribs. When he dips, Imogen slides her palm beneath him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save him,” she murmurs as he lands. Crumples. He drags his legs into his chest and buries his face against his knees.
“His murderer—Bohdan Zaslofsky—is dead,” she says, which makes him peek at her. “But I believe a few of his coconspirators got away. Though I’ve committed most of their faces to memory, I’d love your help hunting them down.” When his tear-bright gaze slices to me, she adds, “Your king has granted us permission to seek revenge.”
Borat gapes at her, then at Vance, then at me. He sniffles, then presses his brown locks back and tips up his chin. “All right, but just so we’re clear, I’m not a pet.”
Imogen snorts. “I called you Sprite not Pet. But I like the ring of it. Pet .”
“You call me Pet, and I call you Big Bird.”
The corners of Imogen’s mouth reel. “As long as you call my mate, Big Serpent, you have yourself a deal.”
Isla huffs out a laugh that she unsuccessfully tries to smother against my chest.
“Big Bird,” she gasps in between two peals of laughter.
And then she’s tossing her head back and pouring the magnificent melody into the crisp night. Into my crackled soul.
When Borat smiles, I find myself returning it.
Suddenly, Isla stills. My heart clatters, until I notice shadows and wings stirring the indigo. Her family lands like hail pellets, pounding into Patchenkov’s property.
Isla spins away from me and skips toward her father, pitching herself inside his already open arms. Her relieved sob splinters me anew. I suddenly hate that the Cauldron entangled her in a battle that was never hers to wage.
If only it had never shown her family the prophecy.
If only Behati had kept it a secret…
I didn’t come here because of the Mestyla-prophecy. I came here because of the mate-one. I came here because Behati told me that if I didn’t cross paths with my mate at the Jubilee, then he would die. I didn’t want to lose him, she tells me as she peels herself from her father to hug her hulking grandfather. I didn’t want to lose you .
Justus, who flew in with the Crows, is the first to come toward me. “How are you holding up, son?”
At first, I think he’s addressing Vance, but his son and Imogen have stepped away to greet the others.
Heat cripples my lids while a chill gnaws at my spine. I gape at Justus, his visage transmuting into another’s—one with blond hair and brilliant amber irises. The last to call me son .
By a thread, I think. That’s how I’m holding up.
I keep the reply at bay, for if Salom taught me anything, it was not to show the chinks in one’s armor. Not even to one’s allies.
Isla’s gaze presses against my puckered brow.
I don’t want your pity, Little Witch. Only your laughter and your love. I straighten my neck, roll my shoulders back, thin my lips. Never your pity.
I hear her sigh as I thank Justus for coming, before stalking past him to greet my father-in-law. As I approach, I hunt his gaze for dissatisfaction. And hunt… Oddly enough, though, I find only reluctant acceptance and strategic empathy as he nods toward Ksenia.
“There’s no worse pain than the betrayal of someone you would’ve succored from the fires of the underworld,” he says, crossing his arms, which makes his leather sleeves creak from the strain. “Luckily for me, I only had to live through it once, and luckily for the world, I had five centuries of imposed meditation to cool off.”
“Cool off, you say?” Isla quips, squeezing in between us and collecting my hand.
A smile twitches at the corners of Lorcan’s mouth. “It gave me perspective .”
What I wouldn’t give for a little perspective of my own…
“Isla mentioned you haven’t decided what to do with the traitress,” Cathal says, parking his mammoth frame beside me.
“What would you do?” I ask.
“What would she hate the most?” Lorcan asks.
Without hesitation, I answer: “Living.”
“In a cell, right?” Isla asks.
“Yes,” I reassure her. “A heavily guarded and warded one.”
“Daya has boarded a ship with Fallon and Arin. Once they arrive, she’ll help you ward your prison,” Cathal says.
“They’re coming here?” The eagerness sparkling in Isla’s voice warms my chilled blood.
“Do you really think they could’ve stayed away?” Lorcan murmurs.
As she frets about whether traveling is safe for her mother, her grandfather mutters, “Careful about false repentance, Korol. We had some unpleasant surprises in Shabbe.”
I stare steadily at Ksenia, who stares steadily ahead of her, at no one and nothing. “I don’t care for her repentance.”
“But what will you do if she offers it to you?” he challenges me.
I will grant her wish to fade from this world… I’m so ashamed of my thought that I cut my eyes to the star-riddled sound stretching toward the capital and toss it far.
Drown it.
Isla squeezes our palms together.
I suddenly hate that she can see into my mind…that she can touch the cruel fabric of my soul. I try to pry my fingers from hers and put a little distance between us until the noble king prevails over the monstrous one, but her grip tightens.
And then she’s pivoting to face me. Never walk away from me, Konstantin Korol, for I have wings.
Her threat to leave gives my self-loathing and embarrassment pause.
Oh, I wasn’t threatening to fly away. I was reminding you that I’d hunt you down and carry you back to sanity. Or just dangle you above a few hungry orcas until you stopped pining after oblivion. You don’t belong in the abyss. You belong above it. Between land and sky. With me.
Lorcan snorts as though he can hear his daughter scolding me. I suddenly wonder if he can. Or worse, can he read my thoughts now?
No, she says. Dádhi cannot read your thoughts or participate in our asides. He’s just very familiar with my brand of stubbornness.
Sure enough, Isla’s tenacity sinks it claws into my soul and reels it out of its wallowing.
“Where are our manners, Cathal? We didn’t even go say hello to the prisoner.” Lorcan’s voice glides through the night like a sharpened dagger.
“According to Daya, I have no manners,” Cathal grunts.
Isla snort-laughs, then pats his big arm and reassures him that he is loved just the way he is.
Before trekking toward Ksenia, the male says, “Good luck, Korol. And I don’t mean ruling your kingdom.”
“He means being ruled by my daughter,” Lorcan elucidates, as though I could’ve arrived at another conclusion.
Isla rolls her eyes as the two terrifying males stalk toward my sister.
Though their pitches were flat, I didn’t miss either’s barely-veiled glee that the Cauldron has matched me —the Ice King—to a girl that embodies fire.
No, not fire…
The very sun.
Isla tilts her chin higher. Woman, not girl.
I bow my head lower. Did I say girl? I circle her waist. I meant, wife.