Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
AERINNE, OF THE PRINCE
By any other name would smell as sweet.
— Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2
H e stares down, deep sapphire strands caressing down his shoulders and chest. I should see anger on his face, an arrogant sneer.
Eyes creased in haughty triumph for bringing the enemy of his House and crown so low.
Even the remote disdain of someone who defines power faced with someone who defines a chasm of less.
Instead I see the stillness of arctic seas, and deep, deep, where creatures more terrifying than sharks and krakens lurk, he contains the anger, the despair, the aching loneliness of ages, the savagery of wanting something that for all his power lies just beyond grasp.
His gaze captures mine and the knowledge behind it pierces my rage. I want to shield my face. I want to weep. I shouldn’t feel this pain, this guilt, this famished need.
This sudden sense that my entire life I’ve been missing a piece of me I hadn’t known existed. That perhaps my years of grief, the keening in the recesses of my soul driving me nearly mad some days isn’t for my mother, my brother, my people.
Under the gaze of the Prince, everything begins to unravel.
His hand latches around my throat and he pulls me to my feet as easily as I would pluck a dandelion from a field, his thumb pressed against the pulse in the hollow of my neck.
Wild resistance against this male rises, clawing, my teeth bared but his gaze sucks me in.
He’s the stronger predator and the moment his fingers touch my skin, the stained-glass maze of my emotions shatters into endless fragments, jagged slivers drawing blood as I frantically try to piece it back together.
I’d thought to see death in his eyes. A merciless death, a brutal death, a painstakingly chronicled in the family book of leave-the-Old-Ones-the-fuck-alone death.
I see death.
But not the cessation of breath and body—at least not mine. No. . .my lifepath in that moment changes irrevocably.
Aerinne dies and rises as Aerinne, of the Prince.
It makes about as much sense as my shattered mind.
“Aerinne.”
That single word, accompanied by the claim of his fingers on my skin.
The barely perceptible caress of the pad of his thumb in the hollow of my throat, as if he’s tasting my trainwrecked pulse.
He shouldn’t be touching me. Why is he touching me.
It isn’t a touch to convey threat, it’s a touch to convey possession, and my thoughts are as scattered as my soul .
“Nyawira.”
He knows the name only my paternal kin use.
He savors my names and the hand around my throat is not a cage but a cradle. A promise of benevolent ownership, of velvet-covered chains and silk sheets, of lounging in his lap while he sits on his throne, and who am I not to sink to my knees in submission?
My skin burns under his touch and I bite back a specific kind of panic, apprehension, because outside of a fight no one has ever touched me against my will.
No one who I would have denied has had the power.
No.
“Prince,” I say again, all the impotent fury and accusation over Maman’s death and Danon’s imprisonment bleeding in my voice.
“You know my face,” he says, and releases me.
How could I not.
Slowly, lingering, his gaze fixes where our skins meet, tasting of yearning as if he has waited, wanted, denies himself even now.
But even as I start to lean into the touch, fingers itching to return the favor but with a little more blood and claw, I stagger back, rejecting everything, clutching my head. An invisible breeze keeps me upright until the ground steadies under my feet.
Then I straighten, unbending my hunched form with the gingerness of an old human woman.
“Lady Aerinne. It seems I have arrived just in time to preserve your life.” The barely perceptible mockery, delivered with no hint of emotion, infuriates me. But I sense. “You are indebted to me.”
“Then collect.” Thunderstorms darken his aura, hair lifting in static breeze, and I brace for a strike. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
The Prince surveys my face, pausing on my bitten lip. “The dead offer limited use or amusement, little halfling.”
“You’ll get none from me, Prince. I’ll tear out my throat before I gift you my screams.”
“Your assumption lacks critical imagination.” Something almost like affection threads through his tone. “Torture is not your fate at my hand. I will collect your life, but not to waste it with your death.”
I suck in a breath at the dark promise beneath his words. My control snaps.
Wild, ancient darkness, a rush of teeth and defiance. Challenge unleashed to meet a worthy foe. I hiss in the broken Ninephene I know.
“Imra anfa thalar ni malar'qeth, Malir, ni kethran anfa'lesh thal'esh sovva eld'fin.”? 1
On the heels of my words the magic of the Adalessikai tightens around my body like a vice, then releases.
As soon as the Vow left my mouth my heart dropped; I hadn’t been aware enough to claw it back.
There is a wild creature inside me. She shoves me aside and leaves chaos in her wake then abandons me where I’ll lie, gasping in the aftermath.
I gasp now, bending over, then force myself to stand though my spine wants to bow under the pressure. What did I do. No, oh no. I’ve. . .writ my own death, if he doesn’t claim it first.
If he doesn’t kill me, and I live but do not fulfill my Vow, I will pay a terrible price. The universal laws that rule us loathe Vow breakers.
The wild creature betrayed me again. I stare at him; take in his silence, he observing mine. It’s a Vow I must keep. I will die, or die trying. He isn’t at all disturbed. Why should he be? I’m no threat to him.
Then he blinks, a slow flutter of lashes as if he’s forgotten how to match facial expressions to emotions. If he has emotions.
“That,” he says, “was foolish.”
I tilt my head, jaw tight and lifted.
“Is war with me what you want, Lady?”
My hands flex with the need to sink a blade into his body. I can almost taste the blood on his lips.
I reply, voice as quiet as his. “What I want is your death. If I can’t have it, I implore you kill me quickly.”
If I attack, I can make him kill me quickly, but with a stroke of foresight I know a quick, clean death will not be my fate.
Renaud’s beautiful face remains empty as he studies me.
My threat means nothing to him, my anger, hatred, and disrespect insignificant.
He’d struck us all down without a gesture, a blink.
In his presence, late spring morphs to early winter, and the birds do not dare protest. The forest understands not to anger its god .
“I don’t think you know what you want, Muriel’s child.”
“Don’t say her name. Don’t ever say her name.” A single step closer, a single tear, my arm twitching as if about to strike him of its own volition.
He turns his head, watching a Montague warrior come forward. A lieutenant, from the edging on the molded blue-and-silver leathers.
“My Prince, shall I bind the halfling wench and drag her to the palace? Lord Baroun refused to give the order for her capture but we knew you would wish to see her dragged before you upon your return, my Prince.”
“Oh, you knew, did you,” I murmur. Interesting. Faronne isn’t the only one who needs to do a little Housekeeping.
The fool unsheathes his blade. “Or I can end her here. You need not trouble yourself.”
What an ass-kissing bore. “Such a helpful puppy you are. Be a good boy, and your master will give you a treat.”
The lieutenant glares and steps forward. I lift a brow, then give him a thin smile.
Sure. Come closer.
Prince Renaud stares at him. “Leave.”
“Highness?”
“Was I unclear?” Darkness unfurls in his voice.
I shake my head, blinking rapidly, but a shadowy hint of great wings and. . .an eye manifests. A single slitted pupil opening an inch. Not on the physical plane, of course, but the same internal place where my avatar manifests. Unseen by anyone else.
A strangled sound leaves my throat. I’m traumatized, not crazy. This is the first time I’ve glimpsed another Fae with an avatar. I don’t even know what it is, and named the entity myself, but instinct over the years has crushed my throat whenever I’ve tried to ask.
My avatar blinks into sight and hides behind my ankle, a kitten staring with wide, starry eyes at the. . .Dragon.
She isn’t at all frightened—she looks like she wants to play. Just like a damn cat.
“This is Aerinne of Faronne,” the lieutenant says, drawing my attention again. “A cur and a criminal responsible for?—”
I curl my upper lip, gums pulsing. “No one cares. Why are you still here?” Mystifying.
His brows draw down with the scowl he throws me before he starts to speak again.
“No, really,” I say. “That was not a rhetorical question. Get lost. Your betters are speaking.”
I can’t taunt the Prince and get away with it, but this male is open season and I have a surfeit of venom to spew.
. . .curious the Prince hasn’t contradicted me. I wait; let us see how he’ll respond.
The warrior snarls and steps toward me, lifting blade. I still, hands loose at my side. I’m not going to be the idiot to go for a weapon; I went cold long moments ago, my anger deadened, and the Prince twice gave the order to cease.
“This mongrel insurgent bitch ?—”
The Prince pivots to face the warrior.
“—responsible for?—”
He tilts his head, the barest angle, expressionless.
My instincts have yet to fail me; I brace. One moment the fool is babbling, the next he collapses to his knees, choking .
It takes several, longer than necessary minutes for him to die. I am intimate with death and this one is drawn out.
The Prince watches, cruelty in his lack of emotion. He did not even lift a finger. He wrapped his hand around my throat with more energy than he used to kill this male.
I don’t know what to make of that.
“Why?” I ask after the male is dead. Because he dared interrupt you? Because he disobeyed a command? Somehow, I don’t think so. He insulted me. He lifted a blade in my direction. Only then did you move.
“You are Aerinne Kuthliele.”
I know what I am. I know what that means to me. What I wonder now, Prince, is what it means to you.
He starts to turn then stops. “Lady.”
“Prince.”
“I am here now.”
Those words should sound like a threat. A declaration. They sound like neither. I can’t quite pinpoint the inflection in his inflectionless voice.
While I’m trying to figure out what he means, he turns and walks away.
He makes no gesture, but his people follow his abrupt departure, some pausing to bend down and shoulder the bodies of their fallen.
I blink a blur of darkness out of my eyes, almost like a hint of a shadow trailing the Prince.
. .I shake my head. Now I am seeing things.
Soon, the field is clear of everyone except for Faronne.
I trudge to the nearest tree and lean against it, restlessness combating weariness.
Whatever the Prince did. . .it gave me enough to function a few more hours.
Myself and everyone else. Whatever power he’d expended, it must have been significant to force the Prince to leave precipitously—to conceal his weakness.
My body isn’t suffering the effects of my wounds as it tries to heal.
Interesting. I do owe him, and that stokes my hatred even more.
He probably did it on purpose to send a message. You are so insignificant, I will heal you because killing you would exert more energy.
Numair and Juliette approach. I push away from the tree and meet them halfway, grabbing their shoulders. Alive. They are alive.
“What the fuck just happened?” Juliette asks.
I shake my head. We need to get home before trying to answer that question. I scan the field, steeling myself as I count those still not moving, feeling a pinch of shame at my particular relief when I see Tereille rising to run toward édouard, who sits up.
At least six dead.
Six.
There will be time to honor the sacrifice of our dead later. Time to live . . .a desire that too often fails me.
édouard strides forward, steps heavy, he and his mate bracing each other. “We need to talk, Aerinne.”
I’ve failed my rule today, and it claws at me. Six of my people dead, and my ultimate enemy even now walks away from the field under his own power. I close my eyes, then open them and start to tend to the wounded. It isn’t until much later that realization hits me.
How many times after returning from a strike have I heard one of my warriors speak those words or a variation to a lover, a child, a close friend ?
Many times. And many times the warrior hadn’t returned to speak.
I am here now.
He’d said the words I want to hear from Danon, in the way one would to a beloved who’d been waiting for one’s return.
1 ? “If you don't kill me now, Prince, I Vow your state will be death.”
Please. Aerinne’s grasp of Ninephene is deplorably basic and instinctive.
A mewling toddler communicates with more competence.
There are several variations of the words ‘state’ and ‘death’ and she, of course, selected the most ineffective ones.
We are annoyed, both by her ignorance, and her astonishing luck.
It is, however, an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson in why we do not make rash Vows in languages we do not fluently speak.
One might reasonably think this a given, but with Faronne, nothing ever is.