Chapter 63
Derian
Luceron is quiet as he listens to it all, but the sound of his index finger tapping against the desk as I talk is making my skin crawl. I keep getting distracted by it, stumbling over my words every so often when his rhythm changes.
“And that’s when you arrived,” I finish with a heavy exhale.
Luceron stares at me, that finger still tapping. I can’t take the sound of it anymore. I stare at it pointedly until he finally stops.
“I want her brought to me,” he announces, rising from his seat. “Immediately. I need to know who we’re dealing with.”
I'm across the room in an instant, pressing a hand against the center of his chest to stop him. The coldness is instantaneous, freezing my fingers until it stings.
But I don’t move.
“She’s an assassin, Derian,” he reminds me, staring down at that hand.
I speak before I think. “You even think about harming her and I’ll kill you before you leave this room, brother.”
That’s enough to make him pause.
He steps back away from me, inclining his head in surprise as he considers me. “You’d commit treason for her? Kill your own brother?”
Without a second thought.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”
Luceron stares at me, eyes narrowed, and I prepare myself for the very moment I’ve been dreading for weeks. The moment when he makes a move against her and I’m forced to betray my king, my brother.
I used to think there was nothing in this realm or any others that could make me stand against Luceron, but I had been so wrong. There had been something—someone—out there with the power to change everything I thought I knew about myself.
Huntyr chose me over her sister. I will make that same sacrifice if I need to.
Luceron doesn’t make that move, though. He doesn’t order me to bring her again or demand that I eliminate her.
He smiles.
A slow, knowing smile that lingers as he slinks back into his seat at the desk.
“I have to admit, Derian,” he says, reaching into the desk drawer to pull out a decanter of whiskey and two glasses. “I didn’t think this day would ever come.”
“What are you talking about?”
He laughs, pouring two glasses and pushing one towards me. “You’re mated.”
The words he says so casually fall over me like a physical blow. One so forceful that I stumble back a few steps, needing to reach out and grab onto the dusty bookshelf for support.
“No,” I protest. “I’m not.”
Luceron simply rolls his eyes. “Tell me, when did the instincts kick in? You must have noticed the overwhelming possessiveness. The pull to her. The ability to find her even if you can't see her. I’m assuming you’ve slept with her?”
I can’t answer. I can barely think fast enough to process what he’s saying.
“I thought so.” He nods. “And I bet you were in bed for days after that first time. I bet it felt like you couldn’t breathe unless you were inside her.
I’d tell you it gets easier after you claim each other, but truthfully, it takes about a hundred years before the bond settles enough that you don’t feel like you’ll die without her right at your side every moment. ”
My breaths are shallow and rushed.
That can’t be possible.
And yet…
“Claim her?” I ask softly.
Luceron scoffs incredulously. “Did you not pay attention to a single thing we learned in school? Shortly after the bond starts to form, your fangs will come in. The bite will seal the bond.”
I run a tongue over my teeth. They’ve smoothed out in the days since the battle in the Wastelands, but my canines had elongated and sharpened. Sharpened enough to break skin.
“It’s not possible,” I insist again. “She’s half Mortal.”
Luceron is quiet, and I find my way back to my seat, sinking into it heavily and pulling the glass of whiskey to me. I don’t have it in me to savor it, even though I know it’s one of the most expensive bottles I keep in the manor. I down it all in a single gulp.
“That girl is not Mortal,” Luceron finally says, his green eyes unblinking, his expression suddenly serious.
I set the glass down, letting the thud of it on the desk echo around us.
“Think about it, Derian,” he continues. “The power she carries, the light, the ability to kill Velkai with a touch. Fae can’t do that.”
“What are you saying?”
“There’s only one power I know of that does that.”
Silence falls between us.
Fuck.
I really hadn’t paid enough attention in school. Not to the lessons on mating and apparently not to the history lessons either.
“The Gods.” I feel the rightness of my words as they fall out. “You think her parents are Vaereth.”
He nods slowly. “I don’t know how, but if the sister was so closely tied to the Mother, maybe that’s why they were so drawn to each other in the Mortal Realm.”
They were two sides of the same power-filled coin, drawn to the opposition they felt in the other.
“I’m not going to hurt her,” Luceron tells me, pausing for a moment to let the vow settle between us. “Quite the opposite, in fact. Huntyr Lachlan might be the only chance we have to defeat the Mother once and for all.”
The thought is like a punch to the gut.
Because now that I know Huntyr Lachlan is my fucking mate, I can’t stomach the thought of losing her.