Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
THE COURTS CLOSING IN
T he Prince's odd not-quite-healing power—is it a Skill?—enables us to once more save those who might have died from blood loss.
As packed with wool as my brain feels, I keep rubbing my chest to make sure my heart’s still pumping in my chest. I've experienced blood loss before, even critical blood loss, but never this lethargic wooziness, this walking-through-mud in a waking dream difficulty in thinking.
So I stop trying to think and help gather our fallen when we realize that though the Prince cut through the battle, he struck to disable, not kill.
I don't know what it means, or if it changes how I think of him, even a little. It seems my doubts deepen daily.
“We’re all too young,” Juliette says, circles under her eyes. “We need Danon back. I’m sorry, Rinne,” she adds, though I didn’t flinch. The words don’t hit the way they normally would. I feel. . .nothing .
Except vague worry that I feel nothing. It’s certain nothing is not what I should be feeling right now.
A cloaked male arrives, demands access to me, and heals my injuries before leaving—though I hadn’t flinched at those, either.
“My orders are to heal Aerinne Kuthliele, no one else,” the healer said, curt but not hostile when I asked.
I’m uncertain whether this is a petty slight by the Prince, but mostly I'm concerned at the level of interest required to send his personal healer. But. . .I’m his former sister’s daughter. I don't know yet how much that's worth.
Being his chosen sister hadn't saved her.
Outside, the pre-battle rain scented sky has morphed into roiling storm clouds, and the whip of an electric breeze.
I step onto my balcony and look up, lungs expanding to draw in air as I still, instincts rising to challenge whatever it is I sense in the storm. With each breath my mind clears a little—but not as much as I need.
My jaw aches where he hit me twice, every part of my body bruised from the methodical beating he’d doled out.
I’m on my back, looking up at the sky awash in flames as the Prince looms over me, no longer afraid because what is the point once the monster has you in its jaws.
Close my eyes, let the pain ripple through, embrace the peace of deep darkness.
But he’d dragged me screaming back into fractured light. He wouldn’t let me surrender.
My breathing quickens as I retreat from his image, closing my eyes to let the damp night breeze replace heat with coolness.
Even I need rest on occasion. I’ll be better in a day, or two .
Go inside, Darkan says, an edge to his even tone. Stay out of this storm.
Why?
Do as I say, Aerinne.
Why my alter-ego manifested as an autocratic male . . .I almost lash out at him but he’s going to stonewall me, so I go back in and hold my questions.
Dressed down to loose pants and tunic, I join the survivors gathered in Faronne's dining war room almost sixteen hours after the battle began, scanning the room for Juliette, Lela, and my aunts before I can relax—feeling a pang at the absence of Juliette’s older sister, lost to us for now.
Our guests include a pale Manuelle Wyvenne, and Louvenia Ramonne.
We’ve been working nonstop, and this is the first break.
I haven't forgotten I owe my former ally, Sivenne, a friendly visit.
Perhaps I should wring concessions out of them at the negotiating table first and then proceed with the chop off their head part.
Baba would agree with the negotiating, and Maman would agree with the executing.
I really am the daughter of both my parents. But one problem at a time.
Baba rises and comes to me immediately, his hug tight enough to take my breath.
“I need to breathe, Baba,” I wheeze. His hug strangles me like I’d strangled?—
He leads me to the chair at his right directly across from Manuelle, Louvenia on my left, and begins to pile a plate with food. He won’t be able to speak until he’s certain I’m alive, and not a ghost.
I eye the table. This is a full meal, almost a banquet, and many of our favorite Kikuyu dishes. The kind that take hours to prepare. Either she’s been stress cooking, or she deluded herself into believing we would win. Probably both.
“I appreciate your optimism, Tata Fatma.”
“Hush, you,” she says from Baba’s left. “Eat everything on that plate. Give her more irio, father of Nyawira, you’re not feeding a warbler.”
My father dutifully piles the mash onto my plate as I scoop up garlic and cumin rich githeri using a thin chapati.
Baba eats enough of his sister’s mukimo to avoid her wrath since Tata Fatma sits at his right, watching his plate as well as mine. As if I would disobey an aunt.
Manuelle heaps a local grilled fish alongside stewed greens over a bed of rice in his bowl, mashing it all together.
He ignores Louvenia, who stares at him, and accepts the chapati Lela offers—giving my cousin a long, simmering once over I’m almost tempted to intercept with a glove on the ground, but the whole point of today was we’re not supposed to behave like that anymore.
Louvenia eats exactly what I eat—serving herself portions from the places I take my own. I’m not insulted; it’s probably a habit, and I approve the survival instincts of a sister-predator. But I wonder who tried to poison her before, how many times, and if they were allies. Or family.
We dine in relative silence, a comfortable one, allowing the adrenaline of battle to fade. No one cares that it’s closer to breakfast time, though the sun hasn’t quite started to rise .
But then, unlike most mortals, Fae have little sweet tooth other than for fruit and chocolate, tending to eat savory morning meals.
Which pleases Tata Fatma, who heats up dinner leftovers and lets everyone serve themselves as we go to and arrive from early morning tasks. It helps stretch the budget too, or it would, if Fae didn’t eat twice a day with elephant sized stomachs. Not that Lela or M?r?ngar? eat much less.
The feast is a statement. A subtle, savvy, pointed political statement which proves the fierce pride of the human half of House Faronne.
She tells the Houses that Faronne’s victory was never in doubt.
Our victory and our social position—as poor and young as we are—as second only to Montague.
We gather here, after all, not in Ramonne or Wyvenne House.
Faronne is alive. Not unscathed, but we are alive and well enough that I can think such idle thoughts. The juxtaposition between food and politics.
“This looks like a wedding feast.” I tease Tata Fatma to give myself something to focus on so my relief doesn't turn into grown female’s tears. It will set the males off; they're all still too close to the edge. “Are you getting married, mother of M?r?ngar?? No one came to ask my permission.”
She sniffs. “It is not me with an eager groom, girl.” Lela chokes and we share a hunted look of solidarity as sisters with the same male problems. “Now mind your own and eat.”
“But but, mother of M?r?ngar?, wait. What do you mean by that?”
Tata Fatma ignores me.
Silence shatters. Faronne doesn't do quiet well anyway. A few of my other cousins pick up on the conversation and divide their ribald teasing between us before M?r?ngar? comes to our defense.
I wasn't completely joking, though. With her witch blood, Tata Fatma has the same near ageless beauty of a Fae female, and a number of my maternal cousins would marry her as a way into the House inner circle. If she was stupid, that is. No one sane is going to try and wed me.
“That,” Louvenia drawls amidst the din of cursing, laughter, and third helpings, “was a successful failure. We lived.” She sips on water.
Tereille, lips flat with weariness for once, only now enters and drops into the empty chair next to his mate, rousing enough to make a face as if Louvenia’s comment is too much positivity even for him.
“You may want to pawn the family jewels, pick a fast wyvern, and leave town for a century,” I tell Manuelle, who is nursing his third mug of honey beer. Everyone has eaten their fill, so now it’s time for the post mortem.
He glances at me, brow raised. “Oh?”
“The Prince indicated a desire to speak with you regarding your—I directly quote—decision-making process. I survived a detailed demonstration in how such a discussion might go, and even so I believe he was merely trying to tire me out so I could be put to bed on time.” My faint smile is dark.
I've had some time to think about Prince Renaud’s behavior. “A very fast wyvern.”
“We’re fucked,” Juliette mutters, “if today was an Old One’s idea of humoring the toddlers.”
We contemplate that unfortunate truth .
“I doubt I would warrant the tender mercy of Ishaan after,” Manuelle says. He shrugs, but his studied attention is keen.
My lips twitch, though it's not funny. But recalling the words and the undertone in which they were spoken, the Prince almost reminds me of Darkan and his acerbic, often overly verbose, criticism.
Darkan’s been quiet since the battle. Unlike after Embry though, his faint presence lurks in the recesses of my mind as if he understands this isn’t the time to cut me off, so I leave him be for now, settled in the knowledge he will come if I call.
He’s never failed me. Not when it mattered.
I push my plate aside. “I'll write him. I'll inform him the command was mine. I should've said so at the time.”
Fatigue, anger, injury, fear. . .none of that is an excuse. You don't throw your soldiers in front of a carriage for following orders. The General's head should be the first to roll.
Manuelle’s eyes erupt in flame, his shoulders shifting to indicate masculine displeasure, otherwise known as ego. “The day I allow a halfling adolescent answer for my actions is the day I walk into wyvern flame.”
I ignore “adolescent.” He's old enough he probably can't help himself. “The field was mine.”