Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
ALLERIA
I wake up drowning. The water is in my throat, my lungs, freezing and black. I claw at my neck, desperate to find air. My body bows. My mouth is open.
I’m dying. I’m dying.
“Easy.”
Hands close over mine, warm and solid. They peel my fingers away from my throat.
“You’re not underwater. Breathe, Aethryn.”
I know that voice. I know it with every fiber of my being.
But my body doesn’t believe it. My body is still under the sea.
“Breathe,” he says again. “Breathe with me.”
I do as he says. The first breath burns. The second is easier. By the third, my chest loosens, and the air stops tasting of salt. My pulse is still wild, but I’m breathing.
I force my eyes to open.
For a moment nothing makes sense, then Cairn is there, leaning over me, his golden gaze locked on mine the way it was in the throne room. His grip is tight on my hands.
I draw in another shaky breath, and the question that comes out is not the one clawing at the back of my mind. “Did you kill anyone?”
A startled laugh escapes him. “I managed to control my homicidal urges.”
“Good. That’s good.” I sag back against the pillows, and the room comes into focus around me. “Where are we?”
“Still in the palace. These are my quarters.”
I glance down at the deep blue sheets beneath me, then toward the arched windows, where I can see the ocean pressing against the glass.
We’re still under the sea, then. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I try to push myself up against the headboard, my arms shaking.
“What happened?” The water shattering is the last clear memory I have. After that there are only fragments—the floor under my hands, Cairn’s face. “The glamour broke, and then?”
“You collapsed.” He lifts a hand and strokes along the edge of my jaw. “As soon as you broke the glamour, the Challenge released its hold.”
“And Lysaena?”
“Will never touch you again.”
The contained fury in his voice makes my breath catch. “You said you didn’t kill anyone.”
“Oh, she’s still alive. We came to an … understanding.”
“What kind of understanding?”
“I reminded her that I could end the Sea Court in an afternoon if I chose to.”
I blink. “You threatened a queen?”
“She’s not the queen.” One corner of his mouth lifts. “She needs me and the Guard for that. And before I lift a finger to help her, she will stand before the entire court and apologize for what she did to you.”
I should feel something about that. But the way he’s looking at me now has changed. The dangerous, arrogant amusement fades, replaced by an intense focus that makes my stomach tighten.
“Alleria.” His voice turns careful. “How did you break the glamour?”
“I … I don’t know what you mean.”
“That glamour was a working of the deep. Sea Court magic. Fae born with power have drowned inside glamours like that, convinced to their last breath that the water was real. Mortals don’t break them. They can’t. And yet, you shattered it. So I need you to tell me how.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Tell me what happened before the glamour shattered.”
I close my eyes, forcing myself to go back into that moment. The memory sends a violent shiver through me.
“I was drowning. I was so sure I was drowning. My lungs were burning. I could feel the water pressing against my mouth, trying to force its way down my throat. I thought I was going to die and … I don’t know.
Maybe I accepted it, because when I looked …
really looked … the water wasn’t solid anymore.
It went thin, and underneath it I could see the floor. I could see you.”
I open my eyes to find him watching me.
“What else did you see?” His voice drops lower.
“Everything.” The word comes out unsteady.
“The walls were singing. The throne was screaming. Everyone in the room had … had light coming off them, threads of it, different colors, pouring into the air.” I force myself to meet his eyes.
“Just before I passed out, I looked at Lysaena.” The image surfaces, stark and vivid against the backdrop of her throne.
“There was something above her head. It looked like the crown she wore but it was wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Broken, fractured.” I rub my arms, a chill creeping over my skin. “It was bleeding magic. It dripped around her like blood.”
Cairn lets out a slow breath.
“You spoke, just before you collapsed. Do you remember that?”
“No. What did I say?”
“The crown bleeds. The blood still runs. The darkness hungers.”
The chill returns, raising goosebumps on my skin. “I don’t remember that. What does it mean?”
“I believe the first part explains what you saw. The crown bleeds because Lysaena is Queen-in-Waiting only. Her connection to the Sea Court’s magic is incomplete. She needs the Guard's Witnessing to make it whole. Until that happens, the magic won’t recognize her as Queen.”
His gaze holds mine.
“That broken thing you saw bleeding around her head is exactly what she is. A sovereign who was never crowned.”
I look down at my hands, turning them over. A week ago I couldn’t see magic. I didn’t have magic. Now I’m seeing walls sing and crowns bleed, and saying gods know what to a room full of fae.
“Cairn.” My voice comes out small. “What’s happening to me?”
Something flickers across his face. “I don’t know. But you’re not losing your mind, if that’s what you’re afraid of. What you saw was real. You saw true.”
His words aren’t comforting.
“What about the rest?” I make myself ask. “The blood still runs. The darkness hungers.”
He hesitates, and there’s something in the careful way he’s watching me that tells me whatever is coming next is something I’m not going to like.
“Just tell me.”
For once he doesn’t argue or deflect. His hand moves, sliding around to cup the back of my neck. His thumb strokes against my nape, a gentler rhythm that contrasts with the tension in his eyes.
“The Witnessing is done by the Nightwild Guard.” He pauses. “Which means you.”
I shiver again. “I have to be there?”
“It must be done in open court, in front of all Sea Court fae who live in the Palace of the Ninth Tide. I would spare you, if I could, Aethryn. But the entire Guard must be present to legitimize the claim.”
Everything inside me recoils at the thought of standing in that hall again, of facing Lysaena. My stomach turns over. I want to say no. But I remember the look on his face when he was forced to watch me drown.
“I understand.” I reach up and rest my palm flat against his chest. “I can do it.”
He doesn’t answer straight away. He looks at me, his hand still cradling the back of my neck, and under my palm his heart is beating too hard and fast for someone sitting so still.
Then the bond shifts.
His fingers tighten on the back of my neck at my words, and the careful control he’s held onto since I opened my eyes cracks straight down the middle. The bond floods open all at once, and raw, barely-leashed fear pours across to me.
“Cairn?”
“You stopped breathing.” His voice is rough. “On that floor. In front of me. You turned white, and the bond went dark.” He stops, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “There was nothing there, and I thought—”
I press my palm harder against his chest, and under it his heart is hammering, no longer the steady, controlled fae warrior I know.
He makes a sound low in his throat and pulls me against him.
A shudder runs through him, and he presses his face into the curve of my neck, his lips against my pulse, and he breathes me in.
“I had to stand there.” The words come apart at the edges. “I had to watch you drown and I couldn’t move. I would have torn that hall down to its foundations if I could. But I had to sit in my saddle and do nothing while you fought to live in front of me.”
I turn my face into his hair, my arms coming up to wrap around his waist. “You gave me the strength to fight. I saw your face, and that’s what I held onto. You. The whole time. It was you.”
He pulls back, just far enough to look at me, and my breath stills at the look on his face. There’s nothing of the fae warrior who captured me, or the Eldráfn of the Nightwild Guard.
Just him, looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters.
His forehead drops to mine.
“Breathe for me.” It’s the closest thing to a plea I’ve ever heard from him. “Just ... stay here and let me feel you breathe.”
So I do. I breathe, slow and deep, my forehead against his, and his hand resting over my heart, where he can feel it beating.
Tilting my head, I press my lips to his cheek.
“Cairn Vaedráfn.”
A kiss to his jaw. “Prince of the Sea Court.”
My mouth finds the pulse beating at the base of his throat. “Second Scion of Lirael Thalor.”
A kiss to his other cheek. “Lord of Cor-Resyn.”
“First Sword of the Ninth Tide.” My mouth hovers over his. “You have a lot of titles.”
“They mean nothing. They belong to a life that existed before the Guard.”
“Eldráfn of the Nightwild Guard.”
Dráfn—the same ending the herald used in that hall. The one Cairn threw back in Lysaena’s face.
Vaedráfn. Eldráfn.
They are too similar to be coincidence. Vaedráfn must be a title, not a name. One he gave up. The other he kept.
I bring my mouth closer to his. “Luchairn.”
His mouth takes mine, one hand fisting into my hair, and the other pressing against my spine to bring me flush against him. I open to him, and the sound he makes against my mouth is low and wrecked.
The bond catches fire between us.
Every feeling doubles back on itself, his and mine tangled until I can’t tell whose need is whose.
His relief becomes my relief. His desperation pours into me and finds my own waiting there.
When his palm splays across my ribs, over the beat of my heart, I feel how badly he needs it there—the warmth of me, the proof of me, alive beneath his hand.
His lips move down the line of my jaw, my throat, lingering at the pulse he was counting moments ago. His mouth brushes my skin and I arch into him. His hands move over me, each touch bringing me further out of fear and back into my body.
I reach up and pull him down to me.
He stops, breathing hard against my mouth, golden eyes fever-bright as they track over my face. “Alleria.”
I know the question he’s asking in the way he holds himself still.
“I don’t want to wait,” I whisper. “I need you now.”
Our clothes are gone between one heartbeat and the next.
He pushes into me slowly, and the world narrows to the place where our bodies join. To the stretch and the heat and the helpless sound that breaks out of me. He catches it with his mouth on mine, and for a moment he holds still, both of us trembling, the bond wide open and singing between us.
Then he moves.
It’s slow and deep, and each drag of him sends heat curling through me.
The bond makes me feel it twice over. My pleasure spills into him, his rolls back into me, building on itself until there is no line left between us.
His name falls out of me again and again.
His hands hold me like I’m the only solid thing in the world, and with every movement he breathes me in and whispers my name into my skin.
The pressure builds, ricocheting back and forth through the bond. He feels it through me, chases it, the rhythm of his hips faltering.
“Let go.” His voice is ragged against my mouth. “Let go for me.”
It breaks over both of us at once, doubled and shared, crashing through the bond, and he follows me with my name on his lips.