Chapter 2
The Songbird
The fort was abuzz with tailors and seamstresses fitting courtiers and nobles for gowns, fine jackets, and doublets for tomorrow’s masque. Servants and warriors trekked the steps up to the four corner towers to ensure the rulers of every realm were well tended.
While the Night Folk clan tower was quiet and docile, the second tower, belonging to the Eastern realms, always had a great deal more noise heard throughout the fort.
“Is Sander tormenting your people?” I asked Jonas when we crossed through the open great hall.
As beautiful as his brother and equally as sly, Jonas’s twin brother brought out the solemn side of the pair.
Where Jonas reveled, Sander observed. When Jonas fell into bed with a new lover every gathering, Sander remained with us—his friends, his family, his familiars.
Jonas peered toward his family’s tower and laughed. “No, I think someone called my daj ‘Highness’ or some other royal term of endearment; now the hells are breaking loose.”
I laughed, but in reality, it could be true. Like my parents, all the kings and queens of our realms fought wars for their titles. Not all were born into the life of a royal, and the twins’ father much preferred being remembered for his life as a schemer and thief than a king.
“There they are. Looks like Alek is being swarmed. Gods, look at that sod.” Jonas pinched his mouth in disapproval. “He’s returned to us all proper and stiff.”
Outside the open gates, our families were gathered near a caravan of black coaches surrounded by our Rave warriors. Aleksi, dressed in his dark, silver-trimmed Rave uniform, was enveloped in embraces, croons, and praise from the royals of the Night Folk clans.
I chuckled when my cousin offered polite grins but shook out his hands in unease. His soft brown skin was clean-shaven, and his thick chestnut hair was braided down the center of his head. Kohl lined his golden eyes and his lips.
“He’s stiff because you know how he feels being the center of attention.”
Jonas snorted. “You can’t tell me Alek isn’t secretly dreaming of becoming a grand hero. He’s just quiet about it.”
We quickened our pace, carving through the preparations, my gaze on my cousin and family.
Alek’s fae ears were sharper than mine, but only because I was half fae.
I grinned when my mother’s icy, pale braids came into sight when she wrapped her slender arms around Alek’s shoulders, holding him close.
Elise Ferus was a fae queen, but mortal by birth. Her life was extended like the fae folk’s after she underwent a fury spell once she took vows with my father.
Jonas strained his neck. “Dammit. Look at the sky. We’ll hit storms if we don’t get to the cove soon.”
The doors to the wooden gates were tied back, letting in the shimmer of sunlight on the dark water.
I followed his gaze to the jagged edges of the shore.
Angry clouds still rolled over the horizon.
Almost like they were waiting for some catalyst to bring the storm’s rage to our doors.
Fear wanted to take hold, wanted to convince me the dread I felt earlier was some dark premonition of something to come.
Not far from the shore, a dark streak carved over the surface of the sea. A current where the water was different, where the sea frothed like stagnant waves that never crashed onto shore. The Chasm, a barrier between my people and the fae of the sea.
Most folk hardly paid it any mind during the festival, but I could never look away. Almost as though the tension in my chest was simply waiting for the warded barriers of the Chasm to peel back and a rush of sea fae to burst through.
Another poisonous thought left to fester from promises made by a boy in a prison cell.
The Chasm was sealed. Undisturbed as always.
Breathe. Focus. Nothing was different. The fortress was well guarded, with Rave guards trudging the watchtowers and outer gates. Laughter still filled the corridors, be it from a servant or noble. The Chasm was there, a mark of a different world, but one locked away between the tides.
Nothing had changed. It wouldn’t change.
“We have plenty of time to watch you get drunk on the shore. Come on, there are the others.” I led us to a canvas canopy, where the heirs of every realm hid from the morning heat.
Sander Eriksson lifted his dark green eyes from the yellowed pages of a leather-bound book. The same eyes as his brother, but with even more cunning. “Livie. What story did Jonas tell to get you down here?”
“You don’t want to know.” I released Jonas’s arm and went to stand beside Mira, the princess of the Southern Kingdom.
She adjusted the circlet in the shape of spread raven wings braided into her auburn hair and gave me an exasperated look. “Take this beast from me.”
Rorik, my younger brother, kept flinging a wooden sword and catching Mira’s hips or thighs as though a fierce enemy stood in his sights. Only nine, and small for his age, Rorik made graphic battle sounds as invisible invaders died gruesome deaths.
Sander slapped his book closed, tucked it into the back of his trousers, then scooped Rorik onto his shoulders. “You want to be a Rave, Ror?”
Rorik grinned. “Hells yes.”
I reached up and flicked the tapered point of his ear. “What did Maj say about language?”
“Don’t be snitchin’, Livie, and she won’t know.”
Jonas barked a laugh and clapped hands with the small prince. “Ror, when did you become a smartass?”
I gave Jonas a strained look when my brother went on to repeat the word “ass” at least three times.
Rorik was small but had a ferocious spirit and idolized the Rave, Aleksi most of all.
My brother had the same dark eyes as our father but lighter hair, as if the paleness of our mother were trying to break through.
“Alek looks like he’s going to toss his insides.” Jonas jabbed his elbow into his brother’s ribs. “Ten gold penge he vomits from whatever trauma the higher ranks put him through in the peaks.”
Sander held Rorik’s legs and mutely assessed my cousin as he approached his commanding warriors. “I’ll take that bet.”
Mira rolled her eyes and muttered, “Always the same with you two.”
I bit my cheek. There could be no stopping the twin princes from scheming and making sly deals. Ploys and tricks were in their blood.
“He’s going to go.” Jonas gripped Sander’s forearm, studying Aleksi without blinking. “There he…dammit.”
Aleksi strode with unmatched confidence as he bid farewell to the commanders in each Rave unit.
Jonas had reason to make the gamble. Regal as he appeared, Alek despised the attention his rank engendered in the courts.
As a prince, now a Rave officer, doubtless he could feel the prickle of every eye as he clasped forearms with his fellow warriors.
Jonas pressed a fist to his mouth when Aleksi turned without a misstep to greet his fathers—my uncles, Sol and Tor.
Sander held out a hand once Aleksi successfully embraced both his fathers without a stumble. Jonas cursed and slammed ten coins into his brother’s palm.
A horn blew from one of the watchtowers.
“Finally,” Jonas muttered.
“Your mother would be heartbroken if she knew how desperately you wanted her gone,” I whispered.
“How dare you,” he said, affronted. “My mother is the light of my heart. But I have plans for this festival, and there are some things a mother should not be privy to when it comes to her son.”
“He’s never been the same since Maj walked in on him with one of his sparring partners a few months ago,” Sander said, voice low.
Jonas blanched. “It was awful. Couldn’t look her in the eye for weeks.”
Rave gathered around the coaches. Sander removed Rorik from his shoulders and joined Jonas as they left us to bid farewell to their family. Mira went to hers. I took my brother’s hand despite his protests and dragged him toward our clan.
Our people—the Night Folk fae—had the gods-gift of controlling the earth, while the Eastern realms with Jonas and Sander used tricky magic of the mind and body.
Mira’s people took the Southern and Western edges, where fae could twist fate, shape-shift, or compel the mind with cantrips and illusions.
My gaze drifted to my mother and father.
The waves of my father’s ink-black hair were tamed, and the sides were braided off his face, revealing the points of his ears. He whispered something to my mother, a contrast to him with her ice-pale hair and crystalline eyes. She covered her mouth to hide a laugh at whatever he had said.
Both were brutal warriors but tender and loving to each other to the point of nausea. If ever I found a love, I’d always secretly prayed it would be like theirs.
“Alek!” Rorik called out even before shouting for our parents.
Aleksi grinned and shoved through the crowd, aimed straight for us.
A little shriek of excitement scraped from my throat when I practically choked my arms around his neck. He caught me around the waist and squeezed tightly.
“You’re not allowed to leave me with Jonas’s short attention span for six months ever again.”
Alek laughed and gestured to his new uniform, complete with a new seax blade. “Well, what do you think?”
I trapped his strong face in my hands. “You look snobbish, pretentious, and dull.”
Aleksi’s laugh rumbled deep in his chest before he smashed me against his side, suffocating my face in the pit of his arm. “What was it you said? Formidable? Incomprehensibly powerful? Cousin, I can’t hear you. What did you say?”
Winter brought my twentieth turn and, with it, Aleksi’s twenty-first. We still managed to bring out the childishness in each other.
“Bleeding hells, Alek!” Rorik’s lips parted. “You’ve got a captain’s blade!”
Aleksi kneeled in front of the boy to show him the new seax. I was half worried my younger brother was going to swoon, and the other half was concerned he might burst into tears, the way he stroked the steel of the blade.