Chapter Twenty-Five #4
“Enough.” Kadeesha had to work hard not to shout.
She and Yashira routinely bickered, but Yashira would feel a way about Kadeesha crossing a line and yelling at her.
Sometimes Yashira got under Kadeesha’s skin so greatly that she didn’t care and dealt with the fallout.
Today, she didn’t have the mental stamina to go there with her mother.
Or rather, she was feeling too unusually reckless today, too untethered, to get into a bona fide argument with Yashira.
Last night, Malachi had given her a useful outlet to channel her baser volatile temperament.
Lady Keeya and her involvement with the poisoned gown had presented a second constructive target that harmed no one who was innocent.
But now … now she continued to feel those destructive urges simmering beneath the surface.
“Why are you dressed so elaborately?” Kadeesha asked Yashira, changing the subject.
Her mother wore a sapphire gown that clung to the ample curves Kadeesha had inherited from her and flared out at her knees, casting the effect of a merfae’s tail.
The color was perfect against Yashira’s dark bronze hue—another trait Kadeesha had inherited from her mother.
The dress’s color made Yashira glow. And the fitted cut that hugged her body made her appear more stunning. “You look gorgeous,” Kadeesha admitted.
Yashira forgot about their debate, preening at the compliment.
She twirled in a circle, showing off the opulent gown.
“The Queen Mother Nychelle invited me to today’s festivities and gifted me the dress,” she told Kadeesha.
“You’ll look extraordinary too once we get you properly ready.
The pair of us will appear before the Apollyon Court wielding a beauty that rivals the Celestials themselves when we attend Malachi’s challenge.
When we depart this court, if we depart,” she added slyly, “those we leave behind will compose odes to the great Aether beauties they had the privilege of beholding for a time.”
Kadeesha blinked. The woman was nothing if not predictable. “Really, Mother?” she cried. “You talk as if we’re attending a revelry. A challenge is taking place, which will end in an execution. The affair is in no way, shape, or manner festivities.”
Yashira, who treated nothing with the gravitas it deserved, flicked a glance at the cooling corpse. “Really, daughter? Please, do lecture me more on how executions are repugnant affairs.”
Kadeesha stiffened. “I never said they were repugnant. I meant that equating them with festivities, as something to be celebrated, is crass and barbaric. They are a necessary ugliness at times, nothing more, nothing less.”
Her mother smirked. She was rarely one to allow another to one-up her. Proving she bore that trait to a fault, she asked Kadeesha pointedly, “So you didn’t take delight in killing the female that brought a poisoned gown to your door?”
Her question struck too close to the truth of the matter. Regardless of Lady Keeya’s guilt, Kadeesha had taken a cursed sort of delight, which she usually held in check, in interrogating and then killing Lady Keeya for her offenses. “I did what needed to be done,” she maintained.
Yashira’s eyes zeroed in on her Marking like a beacon stone.
“Did you also let Malachi do that because it was what needed to be done? I know you, daughter, so I will not ask if the king wears a matching one. You’d never allow someone to occupy a greater position of strength than you if it is within your power to level the game board. ”
“He does,” Kadeesha said stiffly. She only deigned to give Yashira the information because she would see for herself soon enough.
“It means nothing, however,” she added quickly before Yashira could truly start in about their shared Markings.
“I wasn’t making a power play when it occurred,” she said succinctly.
“I merely lost my head momentarily and allowed an event to happen that should not have.” Such as agreeing to return to Malachi’s private quarters in the first place.
And spending the night in his bed again.
“Malachi is an attractive male who is terrific in bed. I’ve been told I am terrific too.
So, naturally, but still recklessly, we let things get carried away last night.
That is all. I’ll take care that it does not occur again.
” She could admit the lengthy explanation—and the vow—was more for herself than Yashira.
“The Markings that ensued were nothing more than a slip in judgement on both our parts. One that we will not repeat.”
Yashira cast her a dubious look. “I never took you to be willfully delusional, daughter. You know, I’ve had the opportunity to chat with Lady Nychelle quite a few times.
She believes you and Malachizrien would make a formidable pairing, just as I do, if you two can manage to get on the same page and find a way to not be enemies. ”
Kadeesha nearly choked on her tongue. She was flabbergasted … and yet not. “When did you have the time to manipulate your way into gaining Nychelle’s ear?”
The cunning, charming, and silver-tongued Elder fae who was her mother waved Kadeesha’s question off as if it was silly. “I am stuck in a foreign court without any of my usual amusements on hand. I’ve got all the time in the realm.”
“Submerging yourself into the thickest part of court politics is your chief hobby,” she reminded her mother.
“Then why ask such ridiculous questions if you know the answers?”
Once more Kadeesha checked her temper over everything that was her mother: the flippant response, the even more casual acknowledgment that Yashira seemed to be scheming to sell off her daughter again, the dismissal that this was in any way out of the ordinary.
Taking a slow breath, Kadeesha said, “You must’ve misunderstood whatever Lady Nychelle had to say about me.
” Because there was no way Nychelle thought positively about an enemy royal becoming her precious court’s queen or marrying her beloved nephew.
“Besides,” she added, “Malachi would never consent to that himself. I am certain he’d turn utterly feral at the mere suggestion that he marry me—the daughter of one of the monarchs who supported the murder of his parents.
Fucking me in lust and plying me with supposed gifts so I lower my guard and become easier to neutralize is one thing, Mother.
Marrying me, binding himself and his eternal existence and his entire court to me, is something altogether different.
I hate to crush your dreams of grandeur and a staggering rise in stature, but Malachi is as likely to marry me as Rishaud.
He loathes all southern fae with equal malice. ”
Instead of responding right away, Yashira turned from Kadeesha and placed the diadem she held back on the bed beside the poisoned gown.
Then, she waved her right hand over them both.
Aether flames swathed the objects in a soft purple glow.
Kadeesha rolled her eyes because she knew what her mother was doing.
When the flames vanished after having burned all traces of the Deathbane away, Yashira informed Kadeesha, “Malachizrien’s lovely gifts are safe to wear. ”
“I’m overjoyed,” Kadeesha said dryly.
Yashira clucked her tongue and picked up the gown.
“You need to hurry and dress or you’ll miss the start of his challenge.
” Yashira’s tone was that of an order, as if Kadeesha remained a little girl that she could still boss around.
It raised Kadeesha’s hackles, but once more she let it go.
Regardless of how she felt about her mother’s maddening persistent attempts to marry her off to the most eligible, all-powerful, and available king, she didn’t want to miss the challenge.
They may have been conspiring to betray him as well, but Cassius was colluding with the folks who’d injured Samira.
She wanted to see him pay. She wanted to see the bastard bleed.
She was, she admitted, ready for some festivities.
She also understood that appearances meant everything in any fae court.
Further, the power one claimed or became stripped of during formal court affairs had as much to do with the air you projected as the actual level of power—be it raw magic, wealth, influence, or stature—that you commanded.
And Kadeesha wanted to show up at the challenge and look upon the gathered lord primes whose schemes had hurt her sister and have them know, feel, that they’d pissed off the wrong monarch.
She wanted the Stone Warden, Lord Prime Tareek, and whoever else had a hand in the blast to gaze upon her and understand that their deaths were coming, not by way of Malachi but her, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do to avoid their fates.
That aim was the singular reason Kadeesha allowed her mother to stay and help her dress when she insisted on it.
Kadeesha hadn’t let her mother treat her as her personal doll since she was a stripling, but today she granted Yashira the indulgence.
She even consented to Yashira painting her face.
ONCE HER MOTHER’S work was done—Yashira went about it efficiently, but with a painstaking eye toward every minute detail—she directed Kadeesha to gaze upon her masterpiece in the mirror that hung inside the wardrobe in a corner of the room.
It was another indulgence Kadeesha granted Yashira—if only because she wanted to glimpse herself and make sure she’d emphasize the desired statement at the challenge, she told herself.