Chapter 2
DAEMON
Iyank the door open so hard it slams against the frame. Outside, Kastian is leaning against the wall waiting for us. He catches my dark gaze and raises his eyebrows in question.
“Don’t,” I mutter, brushing past him. “I don’t want to fucking hear it.”
Alix appears in the doorway behind me, now dressed in simple black trousers and a maroon corseted top. She waves at Kastian over my shoulder. “Hey! Did Dessa ever find you?”
He opens his mouth to answer, then catches my dark expression again and closes it. Smart man.
I’m perfectly happy for Odessa and Kastian—if I could have chosen anyone to bond with my sister, it would have been him—but I hate knowing the details of their relationship.
It’s probably a good thing that they can only live on land for half the year, because I would have lost my mind if I had to hear them across the house every night.
I especially hate it right now, knowing that other people are fucking under my own roof, but I can’t get five minutes alone with Alix.
My fingers twitch at my sides as I march down the hallway. The ghost of Alix’s touch lingers on my neck, my collarbone, places we never got to finish exploring.
Focus on the honeymoon.
Only two more days and no one and nothing is going to keep me from fucking my wife against every surface and in every position I can think of.
“Sorry, mate,” Kastian says again, falling into step beside me.
“We’ve already granted hundreds of wishes,” I grumble. “The entire country has everything they could ever want. What else is there?”
“He didn’t say, it just seemed important.”
I nod shortly. In theory, I don’t actually hate the traditional wish granting.
I’m happy to do anything that will make the citizens of Vernallis’s lives easier, and the ceremonial wishes just make it easier for those in need to ask for help without feeling guilty or ashamed.
Due to this tradition, all the local farmers have new livestock and seeds for next year, the village children got hundreds of new toys, and our soldiers all have new weapons and armor.
We’ve built dozens of homes for the needy, given out money or food to anyone who needed it, and added more stops to our train system.
All of those things are worthwhile projects, and I’m glad to do it…I just don’t want to do it right this fucking second.
“It’s actually a good thing that someone came looking for us,” Alix points out. “We still have two more wishes to grant before tonight.”
The stairs creak beneath our feet as we descend to the first-floor entrance hall.
Our house, the manor I grew up in, is starting to look more like a palace every day, with extra rooms stacked magically on top of each other.
As we pass by a window, I spot the cobblestone side of Aurelia’s tower, which stretches toward the clouds, three stories taller than it was last month.
In the span of two years—and especially in the last six months or so—the small, one-road village of Storia has expanded to three times its original size, and our home has grown to match.
We started by building a barracks for our army.
Originally, it was meant to sleep fifty men, as we’d assumed that the majority of the army would still live in the main palaces to the south and east of Ellender.
That plan failed when we realized that we might not be at war, but being unprepared would put our entire kingdom in danger.
Fox began training the army like a well-oiled machine, and we had to expand the barracks, stables and training grounds to accommodate several hundred soldiers at a time.
The next problem was food. An army that large has to eat, so we expanded the lands of local farmers and brought in more livestock. We had to hire more servants to help cook all that food, clean the barracks and take care of the horses, so we added another wing to the manor to house all of them.
Then, all those farmers and servants brought their families, so we had to build a new school for the sudden influx of local children.
Then, all the new villagers wanted an official way to request audiences with the king and queen, so we built a new throne room where our modest sitting room used to be.
The throne room is enormous, with towering ceilings and high stained glass windows.
At the moment, it’s decorated for Yule with bows of pine and garlands of dried fruit hanging from every rafter.
In just two days, Alix and I will be married in that room, in the same ceremony she’ll be officially crowned the queen of Vernallis.
We reach the bottom of the stairs and stand in the entrance hall. I look around, glowering. “Where’s the man with the wish?”
Kastian frowns. “I don’t know. He was waiting right here. Maybe someone sent him into the throne room already.”
I turn toward the enormous closed doors to our left and push them open. Before I can take another step, I hear my name shouted from somewhere in the direction of the kitchen and freeze. Now fucking what?
The door to the dining room flies open, and my mother barrels toward us, trailed by a hunched, flour-dusted woman I vaguely recognize as the neighborhood baker. Both their faces are grim.
“What’s wrong?” I ask before my mother can speak.
“There’s a storm coming,” she announces, hands on her hips.
“Nobody’s going to be able to travel for days once it hits, which means that all the guests from other kingdoms might not get here in time.
” She gestures to the baker, who looks ready to faint from equal parts terror and social anxiety.
“Also, there’s an issue with your cake.”
Alix groans. “What happened?”
“One problem at a time,” I cut in. “Tell us about the storm.”
“It’s winter, which means snow,” my mother says somewhat frantically. “I knew you should have waited to get married in the spring.”
“Last year there was no winter,” Alix moans. “After the curse, the weather was sunny and beautiful all year. How were we supposed to know that wouldn’t last?”
My mother turns to Alix, her expression morphing immediately from one of stress to sympathy. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix it.”
“You’ll fix the weather?” I ask dubiously.
“Yes! Well, no, Aurelia will. Don’t even worry about it for another moment, I’ll take care of it.”
I grimace. Aurelia has a lot of magic, but changing the weather is a nearly impossible task.
She tried it once before, and Fox was insistent she stop.
He never gets worked up about anything, so we all took that seriously.
I’m tempted to remind my mother of that fact, but Alix looks so relieved that I keep my mouth shut.
“What’s wrong with the cake?” I ask, turning to the baker.
The woman wrings her hands. “I’m so sorry, Your Majesty! I was working on the cake at home. I ran out of sugar and left for a few hours to get more in the village, then came back to find the cake destroyed.”
“Destroyed how?” Alix asks.
“Someone threw a rock through my window and smashed it. The cake was knocked onto the floor. I’m so sorry.”
“Can’t you make another one?” I ask. “There’s still a few days until the wedding.”
The baker looks embarrassed. “I can, but the ingredients were all so expensive. I can’t afford to replace everything myself.”
I wave her off. “Money isn’t important. We’ll pay for another cake if you can bake it in time. Mother, can you—”
“Yes, of course,” my mother trills. She reaches for the baker’s arm and pulls her back toward the kitchen. “Come along, I’ll find you the money so you can get started right away.”
“Someone threw a rock through the baker’s window to destroy our cake?” Alix echoes the moment the baker has left. “Who would do that?”
I put a hand on her back. “Don’t worry about it, Peaches. Come on, we have one more wish to grant.”
We turn back to the throne room and push the doors open. Inside, standing in the center aisle with the golden thrones towering over them, are two men. One is a stooped, elderly Fae man with graying hair. The other one is a pain in my ass.
“Connell!” I snap, my voice echoing around the room. “What are you doing here?”
The elderly man jumps at the sound of my voice, but Connell only turns toward us and grins. “Morning!” he says brightly.
It’s not morning—at best, it’s mid-afternoon, but that’s just Connell. I’m not sure he knows what color the sky is half the time.
Somewhere between houseguest and prisoner, Connell’s existence is only one of the many problems to come out of Odessa and Kastian’s trip to Hydratta earlier this year—the other problems being that there is now a new queen of questionable morals running our closest neighboring country, and both my best friend and my sister are magically bound to spend six months out of every year on their cursed ship.
The former captain of The Sea Witch, James Connell, is human. At least, he was.
Since coming to live here, we’ve learned that he was born in Alix’s world somewhere in the late 1800s.
He was twenty-three when he accidentally found his way into Ellender, stowed away aboard a British merchant ship that was lost in a storm and subsequently became the captain of the ship that Kastian and Odessa are now bound to.
After turning over his captaincy to Kastian, Connell lost his immortality—or so we think.
Since the curse that once affected him has been transferred to Kastian, we need to understand as much about it as possible.
Connell is living here in Vernallis, both because he has nowhere else to go, and because we’ve decided it’s best to keep an eye on him to see if he starts aging or shows any other signs that the curse affected him.
“I was just entertaining your guest,” Connell says brightly. “Poor hospitality to leave him waiting so long, don’t you think? Not very royal of you.”
Beside me, Kastian grinds his teeth. “Where’s Jett?”
Connell shrugs. “Don’t know. Don’t care. You can’t expect me to always know where our wayward assassin is at any given moment.”