Chapter Twelve
Jarok
Jarok had met Lord Brettly Volesion only once, a few decades before, when he’d attended a week of meetings about shipping and imports held at Winterlands Palace. The summit had been overseen by his father, long before the king became too ill to do such things. Jarok remembered Volesion as a serious, quiet man who kept to himself but, when he did speak up, offered insightful comments. As he glowered beside his daughter and his massive gray stallion, steam puffing from his flared nostrils as he cut hard eyes to every person in their traveling party, Jarok saw the warrior in him, the tension marking his muscles and the whirling in his mind. The prince couldn’t help himself; on instinct, he hovered a hand over his falchion where he’d sheathed the blasted thing, ready to defend if need be.
The man’s large, dark-fur-clad chest heaved up hard and he hissed out a breath before looking back down at his daughter. She gripped his hand tight and held his bronze gaze with hers, her dark-auburn head only reaching his chin. Silence beat by, something without words passing between father and daughter, and he let go of her hand, closing his eyes as if resigned to whatever dark and dangerous course they’d somehow discussed without words.
“We’ll talk more at the house,” Volesion said, voice gruff and nearly choked. He turned on his heels to converse with his men, two of whom pulled off from the group and took off back the way they’d appeared.
Piris walked up, muscles coiled even while her voice sounded unconcerned. “Father will call for horses for us so we can reach Volesion Peak more quickly. There’s a security post only a few miles from here, so it shouldn’t be long.”
“Thank the gods we’re not walking anymore,” Gem said in a rush, her eyes hesitant even if her attitude wasn’t. She surveyed as she teased and stoked, like always. “Come, cousin, let’s have a look at your wound.”
Jarok had forgotten about the scrape of the arrow. It had sliced through his arm, cutting deep enough for blood to seep in a dark circle around his leathers. Cursing the Benders once again, he moved to where Gem sat on a rock away from the group as Piris went to her father. He wanted to go with her, shield her if he could, but thought better of it. The anger pouring out of the lord might clash against his daughter’s stubborn attitude, but he didn’t sense it was a danger to her. To him, very likely, but not to her, so he followed Gem’s fussing command.
He watched Piris and her father from the corner of his eye as Gem grunted and poked at his sliced side, muttering about Borau princes taking arrows all willy-nilly, as she dabbed at him with a clean cloth. “Well, not much for it here. I’m sure once we reach Volesion Peak they’ll have someone who can stitch this up. It’s not deep, so it might not even need stitches, but it does need a good cleaning and a bandage.”
Jarok, not paying the least bit of attention to Gem though his head was bent to hers, was surprised when she smacked the back of his head. “Down, boy,” she huffed out with heat.
“Excuse me?” he replied in his haughtiest, most princely voice.
Gem snorted in his face. “You know exactly what I’m saying, oh mighty prince. Get your shit together, because that man there is ready for a fight, and if you keep tracking them like you are, he might find it in you.”
“Lord Volesion wouldn’t…” He didn’t finish the thought because he himself knew the lord would do whatever he needed to do to protect his daughter. Even if he looked utterly pissed at her. Jarok could relate.
“Don’t lie to yourself. In fact, stop lying to yourself in general, cousin,” she hissed and Jarok finally looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the pinch at the corner of her eyes and the compressed line of her mouth.
“Turn around,” he commanded, needing to see for himself how bad it was. He cursed when her shoulder flinched at his touch. “Are you bleeding?”
She wasn’t injured bad enough for it to seep through her leathers, but then again it would take an awful lot of blood to seep through or out of uncut leather. She’d reopened her wound—that much was certain—and may have even done more damage.
“Cousin,” he said, sorrow and pain and regret dripping in his voice.
She turned on the rock to face him again, slicing a hand in the air to dismiss whatever he would try to say. “Enough of that, Jarok. Look, we have more company.”
He turned back to where Lord Volesion stood with his daughter and his guard and noted the returning men with three additional horses trailing behind them. He and Gem both rose, and Cylian and Darin converged with them, moving as a unit up to the Volesions once the men stopped and spoke with their leader.
“Three horses are all they had prepped for the journey,” the lord relayed to them. “I’ll take my daughter; the rest of you can double up as you see fit.”
For some reason, Jarok stepped up, his hand almost reaching out to Piris, but he stopped himself from such a foolish move. Lord Brettly wouldn’t appreciate him trying to keep his daughter with him. Piris wouldn’t appreciate it either, so he stuffed the instinct down and turned toward Gem. “You first, cousin,” he said, offering her a hand as she mounted the horse they’d handed off to him. The thing was massive, a true Winterlands horse ready to plod through anything. He adjusted the seat with Gem on it, pushing it back enough to give him room in front of it. He jumped up, ignoring the searing pain in his side, and took the reins. Slowly, to make sure his cousin wasn’t pained, he followed Lord Volesion. A few strands of Piris’s auburn hair fluttered behind, freed from her tight bun enough to be a beacon Jarok used to direct him on their journey, a focus for the ride.
They reached Volesion Peak after thirty minutes of hard riding. Jarok followed close behind the lord and his daughter, surveying their surroundings. The house itself was surrounded by a dense fir forest until they reached the outer limits of the yard and a lane, lined with meticulously trimmed hedges, which led to a massive black front door the height of the entire house. The building itself was two very tall dark stories, a sturdy block of stone with triangular peaks outlining each window. The footprint was large yet squat, a big square of rock with glass peppering the facade, the rush of the river becoming clearer and clearer as they moved closer to it. It sat right on the edge of a cliff, overlooking the small port where Lord Volesion commanded his fleet of merchant ships.
At the wide, squat steps up to the grand house, framed in the black of the massive open door, was who Jarok assumed to be Lady Mimi Volesion. She stood perfectly still, the air of a woman trained in the manners of the Fae nobility from birth. The lessons marked every line of her body, from the hard clasp of her hands in front of her to the perfect crossing lines of her straightened back and shoulders. There was no sign of the fighter’s look or stance her daughter wore so well. Still, Jarok knew from much experience with the nobility of the Winterlands, her poise was its own form of protection, perfect for the arenas where a person like Lady Volesion would battle. Given who her daughter was, the secret the family had held for decades and the lies they’d told to cover it, he imagined she did much fighting in ballrooms and sitting rooms in her time.
Lord Volesion did not make his way to the stables, instead riding hard up to the stairs, Lady Volesion’s stillness cracking when she finally caught sight of her daughter behind her husband. She lifted the soft faun-colored skirts of her refined but simple day dress to run toward Piris. The dark auburn of her hair flowed, the top part pinned back to show her broad smile and gorgeous broad face. Seeing the lady and lord together, Jarok saw the fit of the pieces that made the striking, strong beauty of Piris, the amalgamation making her who she was, physically at least. A twang in his heart, a feeling he’d known all his life as an adopted son, made his breath hitch a step, but he corrected himself quickly, long before he came to a stop at the same stairs and dismounted.
Lady Volesion hugged Piris tight, who’d herself bent down to bury her face in the hair hanging at her mother’s shoulders. A different pang ripped across his chest, a wish he couldn’t quite express, but he slipped his charming-prince mask on. His control was slipping more and more with each day of this journey, damn it.
He was bent to bow, an honor from a prince of the Winterlands, when Lord Brettly whispered something to his family that had Lady Mimi snapping upright with surprising speed. “Inside,” he gruffly called before entering the dark hole at the front of his home, his wife and daughter following in his wake. Piris looked back, beckoning her traveling party to follow as her pale body cut through the darkness in front of them.
The entrance mimicked a dark cavern, but the inside of Volesion Peak was nothing like the outside. A softness created through luscious rugs, gorgeous wall tapestries, artwork with muted colors, and furniture with rounded lines opposite the sharp peaks of the outside made for a welcoming home. Jarok had little time to think on it as he followed along, stepping farther and farther into the house at a steady pace until they came to a small study.
When everyone from the party had entered, Lord Volesion looked up from behind a large wing-backed tufted leather reading chair, his hands gripping the edges so his knuckles became stark white against the dark, supple material. “You. Close the door.”
Jarok stiffened at his tone, even though the command was for Darin, who didn’t question it. He simply did as the lord asked, though the sneer that had been off his face for days came back in full force.
Lord Volesion ignored it, which made Jarok question his intelligence for the first time. No one should ignore the assassin of the Springlands. Then again, he may not know who exactly he was commanding in his home. Or he was too preoccupied to care. As soon as the door clicked shut behind Marco, he whirled on his wife and burst out with a wave of rage. “They know. The royals, and all here with her, know of Piris’s magic.”
Lady Volesion went deathly pale, a shaking hand reaching up to cover her gaping mouth, tears glistening in her eyes. Instantly, regret flashed across Lord Volesion as he took his wife in his arms, burying her face in his chest.
Jarok wished to do the same with Piris, who stood hugging her own chest and swaying side to side. He didn’t, of course, but by gods he wanted to, so he chose to step closer to her and touch her with a quick, gentle tap of the finger on her shoulder to let her know he was there at her side. As if the warrior in her would allow him to ever sneak up on her in such a confined space.
After a few minutes of murmured grief between mother and father at what could be, Lord Volesion let go of his wife to square his chest at the others in the room. “You two in the back. Who exactly are you?”
“Gem Aurora, lord,” his cousin said with a small nod of acknowledgment, which she didn’t have to give him as a member of a warrior clan. No clan members were forced to adhere to the niceties of Fae nobility, so her gesture was a sign of respect Jarok took in, even if the lord did not.
“Darin Marco,” the assassin said, his sneer wrapping around his name as he lifted his deep hood enough for the Fae man to see the hard set of his eyes. Jarok took in the fact he didn’t add his own title, which he never did, for some reason. The more pressing matter was Lord Brettly had obviously annoyed the assassin, and as Jarok suspected, the man hadn’t even known who he was, or at least the sharp breath he drew signaled as much.
With a shaking hand, he clasped one of his wife’s and asked, “How many know?”
Piris, dropping her grip on herself, stepped closer to her family. “The royals of the Winterlands Palace. A very small handful of trusted guards. And the people in this room. Darin being the last.”
Lord Volesion narrowed his eyes at those last words. “Did you just now, in my own earshot, reveal your power to Hooded Death?”
By the gods, he’d forgotten about Marco’s whispered name—a name he doubted many used to his face outside of the Springlands, where the nobility acted with a little too much abandon at times. The assassin didn’t flinch at it, didn’t move, but stood, still and deadly in front of the door.
“Darin Marco,” Piris spit out, stepping closer to her father, the flame of anger sparking in her eyes at her father’s rudeness to one of their party, “has protected my life more than once, Father. He deserves some respect.”
“I don’t care about respect,” the man spit, dropping his wife’s hand and moving toward his daughter, his eyes mimicking hers, the heat of each feeding off one another to grow hotter, quicker.
“Obviously, as you didn’t even welcome a prince into our home properly. King Frit might take offense.” She added a chiding, condescending tsk sound, folding her arms and cocking her hip. It was enough to almost make Jarok laugh, as he’d seen the same from her so often, though it was usually directed his way. The tension in the air, the crackle of what could happen at any moment, and how serious it could become held the laugh back.
Lady Mimi, possibly having a similar train of thought to the prince, stepped up and laid a hand on her husband’s tensed forearm. “Brettly. Please. A moment.”
His eyes closed, his nostrils flared, and he took a step back, breathing in the measured, conscious way he’d sometimes noticed Piris did. A form of control she’d learned from him, it seemed.
While her husband settled, the lady stepped into the breach. “Please, Prince, Lord Cylian of the Autumnlands, Darin Marco, and Gem Aurora. Welcome to our home. We are… unsettled at the moment, so I do apologize for your first impression of our family.”
Cylian, always the diplomat, spoke. “Lady Volesion, we are all truly sorry for the stress our appearance, and the news it carries, has brought into your home. However, we have spent a great deal of time with your daughter, and I must say, she is enough credit to the Volesion family to have already solidified a favorable impression.”
A tear slipped from Lady Volesion, and Piris, who’d stayed at attention, deflated in front of his eyes. “Mother,” she whispered, reaching for her.
“How?” the lady asked. “How could this happen? We were so careful for so long.”
“I did it for Strella. To help save Prince Ghel,” Piris said, an ache echoing in her words. “I wish, for you, I’d had a different choice, but I didn’t. And because of that, I can’t wish I hadn’t done it.”
Tears flowed then, tracks across the lady’s sweet face from her stark brown eyes. She lifted a hand to cradle her daughter’s cheek as Piris shook with a deep sigh. “You love so fiercely, Piris. I hate what happened, for you. I cannot hate how deeply you feel for those you care about.” Her chest heaving, she slipped a daintily embroidered handkerchief from somewhere Jarok could not see, and she wiped the tears from her face.
“Lady Strella and Prince Ghel—” Lord Brettly bit out, venom in his words despite his attempts at calm.
Jarok had had enough. “Princess Strella and Prince Ghel. Soon to be King Ghel,” he barked. The lord of the Winterlands fell into silence at the words, at the movement of the prince to his side, and Jarok’s hand hovering, despite his own attempts at calm, over the blade in his belt. “You may disparage me, lord, but I shall not have you say something in anger to smear my brother and sister, my future king and queen.”
Tension built again, different, more deadly, as Lord Volesion turned to face Jarok full on, his nose pinched in a look of disgust somehow familiar to Jarok.
“No,” Piris said, stepping between the two men. “No. Enough of this male posturing. Father, what is done is done. We can discuss ways to soothe your concerns as rational Fae should, or we will leave, immediately.”
“And you, Prince,” Piris said, whirling on him but laying a gentle hand on his forearm so close to his blade. “Calm yourself. My father is understandably angry, but his anger will pass. He means no ill will, especially toward Princess Strella, who at any other time in his life, he’s loved like his own daughter.” She looked back at him with a glare and said, “In time, he will remember that and feel his own shame.”
Lord Volesion jerked his head as if hit and rocked back a step, his wife catching his retreat with a hand at his back. She continued where her daughter had left off. “I think, Piris, it may be best you take the others to the green sitting room, yes? Order tea. Rest. We will join you soon.”
Piris nodded and herded the party from the room, but not before Jarok gave the lord one last warning look.