Chapter 4 #2
Did Rydian know that? He must since he’s the one who put me in their carriage.
I looked from him to the others. “You all serve the Midnight Court then?”
Keres’s gaze narrowed a fraction. “We serve our queen and her appointed general.”
“And will I be meeting her?” I asked. “Your queen?”
No one had ever seen the Midnight queen in person.
Not anyone I’d ever met, anyway. Not even Tyrion, the male who had raised me and King of the Summer Court, had ever taken a meeting with her directly.
Her name was Cadira. She’d inherited the throne several years before Heliconia had cursed the Summer Court.
The former queen, Winyra, had been reclusive before she’d been killed, but Cadira was worse.
They said she was nothing more than a shadow when she wanted to be; that was all I knew of her.
All I’d ever cared to know, considering she’d left the rest of the realm to Heliconia’s destruction.
“She knows you’re here,” Keres said evenly. “If she wants to meet you, she’ll send for you.”
“And if I want to meet her?” I challenged.
The three of them exchanged a look, but no one offered an answer.
Amanti reached out and set her fingers lightly on my wrist. “Tell me what happened after I left.”
I tensed, thinking of all that had happened in her absence. And the listening ears here to witness me utter it now. At my pointed look toward Thorne and Daegel, Keres merely said, “You can say it while we’re standing here, or we can pretend to leave and listen from the other room. Your choice.”
I sighed, knowing there was nothing I could do to stop them from listening.
I could refuse to talk, but if I was right, and this was a kidnapping, they might attempt to torture it out of me.
Then again, Daegel, at least, likely knew all this already, thanks to Rydian.
Either way, Amanti deserved to know about her Aine sisters.
I spoke slowly, the words scraping on the way out.
I kept my attention on Amanti, doing my best to shut out the others as I told her almost all of it.
The fraying wards, Lesha’s departure, Sonoma’s decline, her death.
And then Callan’s arrival. My decision to marry him in exchange for his help breaking the curse.
“That brat has never cared about anyone else in his privileged life,” Keres muttered, earning a warning look from Amanti for her interruption.
“Go on,” the Aine said to me, patting my hand.
So, I told her the truth about Duron—how he was draining his own people to feed his land. And his ego. So no one would know that Autumn was weakening. Judging from their lack of surprise, they already knew that part too.
Finally, I told her about the party in Grey Oak that was supposed to be my wedding. The Withered agreeing to attack as a distraction for my escape. Koraz. Duron.
When I reached the part about my furyfire, the air in the room thinned to a thread. Keres didn’t stop her work, folding and stacking the clean bandages, but her movements slowed. Even Thorne seemed to lean in.
There was no point in lying about it, though.
Rydian knew it all—everything I was capable of—and he’d already sold me out.
Besides, the realm would know it too now that I’d used it to murder a king.
Telling them this part would hopefully save me from their attempts to torture it out of me later.
There were plenty of other secrets worth dying over; this wasn’t one of them.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said. “He would have chained me up and drained me dry. He would have—”
“You were cornered,” Amanti said. “You chose the only path out that didn’t end in your death.”
“Or worse,” Keres murmured. “There’s always a worse.”
I swallowed past the ash in my throat, refusing to put my emotions on display for these people. “And that brings us to my kidnapping,” I said pointedly.
“Rescue,” Thorne and Daegel said in unison.
I said nothing, glaring pointedly.
Keres set the folded bandages aside. “If we’d meant you harm, Princess, I wouldn’t have bothered with the tea, which contained a healing tonic to help speed up your recovery, nor the food, which means less resources for us, by the way.”
“Or blankets,” Thorne added. “Or letting you attempt to set fire to our house.”
How did he know I’d tried it?
“Or giving you the nicest guest room with the bathing chamber attached,” Daegel said with what I could have sworn was a pout.
Okay, these were fair points. This entire scenario was so far from what I’d imagined waiting for me on the other side of that carriage. But I couldn’t let my guard down—not yet.
“Why bring me here then? Why not let me take my chances escaping Autumn on my own? Did Rydian pay you? Did you pay him? What kind of secrets do you think I possess?”
“You think Rydian paid us?” Thorne asked, and I could have sworn he looked amused by the idea.
“Unbelievable,” Keres muttered.
Amanti glanced toward the female fae, the firelight catching in the dark sweep of her lashes. “Rydian sent a request to extricate you somewhere Autumn couldn’t reach you,” she said at last. “He was worried what would happen after your wedding to Callan.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. Rydian had come to me. That final night…everything between us had felt like a goodbye. I’d assumed he was giving up on his feelings because I would soon be wed. But now I wondered… had he been saying farewell before sending me away?
What would happen to him now as a servant of his new king? His brother? Would he continue following orders, fighting to protect Autumn from Heliconia’s attacks?
Would I ever see him again?
I shook off the last thought, reminding myself I shouldn’t want to.
Amanti squeezed my hand. “You weren’t taken for punishment or torture, Aurelia. You were taken because Heliconia’s scouts were already hunting you. This was the only way to keep them from finding you.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Our spies in Grey Oak found a trail not long after you arrived at Grey Oak,” Daegel said grimly. “Obsidians entered Sunspire when the ward lines fell—”
“You found their trail back in Sunspire?” I cut him off sharply.
“They followed us back to Grey Oak,” he went on, eyes glittering with a regret that made me wonder if he felt responsible somehow.
“The attack in the Emerald Forest,” I murmured.
He nodded. “A few got away. They likely reported back to her. And then a couple of weeks after you arrived in Grey Oak, they infiltrated the city. Got inside the castle walls, in fact.”
“Duron blamed Callan for it,” I remembered. The black eye he’d brandished when he’d come to my room that night. Drunk, no less. And wanting me to comfort him. To forgive him everything that had happened between us like it was nothing at all.
“How do you know they were looking for me?” I asked. “Maybe they were trying to get to the king.”
“You mean besides the fact that they kept hissing your name?” Thorne asked pointedly.
Daegel slid a small oilskin packet from his vest and set it on the table. “Because we took this off one of them.”
I flipped the flap with two fingers and eased out a square of vellum, edges singed. A charcoal likeness stared up at me—my face, hastily but unmistakably sketched. A braid over one shoulder. The small moon-and-stars tattoo inked on my neck.
Beneath the sketch, symbols had been etched with dark ink.
“What does this say?” I asked, frowning. That made twice I’d seen a language in the old tongue in the past hour.
Thorne translated. “Alive if possible. If not, return the heart.”
The room went silent.
Keres took the vellum and slid it back into its case. “You should know that we intercepted a royal emissary from Grey Oak headed for the Spring Court on our way here. He carried news of Autumn’s recent coronation,” she added, mouth flattening, “and a bounty.”
Thorne’s gaze flicked to me, steady. “It names you the late king’s assassin and a traitor to the Autumn crown. The bounty is impressively high. Dead or alive.”
Amanti swore softly.
My pulse thudded in my throat, too fast, too loud. “So, I have the Autumn Court on one side,” I said, voice strangely unruffled, “and Heliconia on the other.”
“And us in the middle,” Thorne said.
“Lucky us,” Keres said.
“Does that mean…” I swallowed the emotion that wanted to rise. “Will Rydian be ordered to look for me? As the king’s soldier, won’t he be tasked with retrieving the bounty—”
“Rydian will not return to this place,” Thorne said, and the finality in his words suggested something more than just an assurance I wouldn’t be hunted down for my crime.
Daegel’s tone gentled. “There’s more.” He tipped his chin toward my hands. “Autumn’s proclamation named the weapon that killed Duron as your furyfire. The realm knows what you are now. And where your gifts come from.”
A laugh scraped out of me, ugly and small. “Great. I’m sure I’ll be welcomed anywhere I go now that all of Menryth knows I’m Hel’s Chosen One.”
So much for torturing me for secrets. It seemed they were all out in the open now, thanks to my recklessness.
Keres stepped closer. Not coddling. Braced. “So, embrace it. Become what they fear.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said in a hard voice.
This female, whom Amanti seemed so fond of, had been less than welcoming since the moment she’d walked in.
I wasn’t in the mood for any more of her snarky comments.
“You don’t have the weight of the realm on your shoulders.
Nor are you being hunted by an entire army made from the dark queen’s stolen power. ”
“No, instead, we’re risking our own necks by offering you refuge. If you’re caught, we’ll be targeted now too.”
I scowled. “No one asked you to do that.”
“Rydian asked,” she snapped. The way she’d said his name—like she knew him well, maybe even intimately—grated on parts of me I didn’t want to admit. “Apparently, he cares about you. Maybe more than you care about yourself. Or the realm you were chosen to protect.”
“How dare you?” I said. “You don’t know anything about me or what I care about. And despite what Rydian says, I can take care of myself.”
“Prove it,” she said, smirking in a way that had me wanting to rip the expression off her pretty, scarred face.
“Don’t tempt me,” I snarled.
“Keres,” Thorne said with a sigh. “This isn’t the time.”
“I’m serious,” Keres said. She nodded toward the front door. “You want to be free of us? This is how. Train. Learn to wield your magic. Control it. When you don’t need our protection anymore, we’ll go our separate ways.”
“Keres,” Daegel warned, but a look from her cut him off.
“She has to stand on her own,” Keres said, pinning me with a measuring look.
Daegel hesitated but then nodded.
“What do you say?” Amanti asked quietly. “Will you stay and train with us?”
No one said anything, all of them waiting for my response.
Part of me wanted to refuse. They’d taken me against my will—kidnapped, not rescued, I didn’t care what they tried to call it—and drugged me for days.
Keres obviously hated me and, in this moment, the feeling was mutual.
But I couldn’t walk away from Amanti. Not after losing Lesha and Sonoma.
For better or worse, she was the only family I had left.
Besides, the entire realm knew I wielded the power of the Furiosities. Where could I go that was safe now?
“I’ll stay,” I said at last, the words rough as gravel. “For you, Amanti. Not for your queen.” I didn’t even let myself look at Keres as I added, “Not for any of them. For you, I’ll stay. For now.”
Daegel breathed an audible sigh.
Thorne slapped Daegel’s shoulder and said, “See, Keres? And you thought we’d have to tie her up.”