Chapter 33
The Songbird
Deep bites. Long swipes.” Sewell demonstrated a brutal strike with one of the cutlass blades used on the Ever Ship.
I was more accustomed to knives and battle-axes, but I’d sweated from the early-morning hours to the lavender light of the dusk in the days since the claiming. I saw little of Erik, but he’d insisted on seeing to it I could hold my own with a blade.
I tightened my grip on the hilt of the sparring sword. Sewell struggled with his words, but his body moved like a warrior, one that knew how to strike from the shadows. Swift, deliberate, and unseen.
The edge of his blade came down on mine.
My shoulders throbbed from the pressure, but I spun out, dislodging his blade.
Sewell struck again. I parried. He jabbed.
I sliced. When he ducked, I attempted to knock him off-balance.
With his elbow, he slammed me between the shoulders, and I fell with a roll back to my feet as he’d shown me.
From the side of the hall, Celine shouted her opinions on my form, mostly criticisms, but occasionally she groaned at Sewell.
“Come on, you taught me better than that, old man.” She shook her head.
Sewell pointed his blade at her, grinning. “Back your talk, Thunder Fish.”
Celine blew out her lips. “I stand by my word that I could flatten you.”
Sewell huffed and tossed Celine a blade. Forgotten, and given a moment’s rest, I observed their fight for a few breaths before the cool steel of a blade leveled against my neck.
I froze.
“Don’t let down your guard, love. Not in the Ever.”
Erik lowered his blade but kept close to me. His fingers brushed over the back of my neck when he leaned his mouth against my ear. “Fight me.”
Each word dripped through me like liquid fire. I swallowed and rammed my elbow into Erik’s ribs. He didn’t let out the slightest grunt, simply laughed and spun a gold-hilted cutlass in his grip.
I kept low, circling the king. Guards lined the hall. More courtiers gathered to watch. Even Celine and Sewell paused their match.
“Show me you can defend yourself,” he said in a sharp tone, but beneath it all, there seemed to be a strange plea to his voice.
Doubtless, I imagined it.
Erik didn’t wait for me to catch my breath before he lunged. Like Sewell, the king moved with a captivating finesse. His strikes came before I caught up to the previous move. I fought to gain the offensive, but kept backstepping, blocking every strike in a frenzy.
I managed to spin out and get behind him, but an off-center strike to his back ended with Erik finding the leverage to curl one of his legs around my ankle and knock my feet out from under me. I landed flat on my back with a grunt.
Erik made a cage with his arms and legs, pinning me to the ground. The red of his eyes was like a soft flame. Dark hair pinned to his brow from a thin layer of sweat. His body was hard and strong and too close to mine. The bastard only made it worse when he leaned his mouth over my lips.
“I think of you like this too often,” he whispered. “The fire in your eyes, the sweat on your brow.”
“It will only be in your head, Bloodsinger.”
He chuckled. “Ah, but I’ve had a taste already, Songbird.”
“I was feeling generous.”
His lips brushed mine and I bit down on my tongue to keep in a moan. “You often rob me of words, but I want you to hear me when I say this.” Erik pulled back, waiting until I looked at him before going on. “You have horrific footwork.”
I rammed a fist into his shoulder. “Get off me.”
He laughed and pulled away but held out a hand to help me up. I took it, almost on instinct, as if our dance kept us touching but also too uneasy—perhaps too reluctant—to cross those lines again.
The king didn’t say anything before he turned away.
“Where are you going now?” Gods, I sounded like a child about to pout, but there was a growing side of me that didn’t like watching the back of Bloodsinger’s head walk away.
“Kingly business, love.” Erik offered his horrid, beautiful grin. “Miss me often?”
“Never.” I spun in the opposite direction, ignoring the way Sewell and Celine grinned like they knew something.
They knew nothing.
By the gods, I wasn’t certain I knew how to explain what happened to me whenever the damn Ever King came near either.
The king spoke true. He was absent enough sometimes I thought I might miss him. A bond from the claiming, no doubt. There must’ve been some kind of magic that tethered me to Bloodsinger, and it was aggravating when he wasn’t close.
Erik would slip into his chambers, take a moment to wash, dress, then leave again. For days he hardly said a word beyond a mere “Songbird” greeting.
I tried to ask Celine where the king spent his days. She’d tell me I shouldn’t pester him about his time, and insist I was aggravating. But after the feast, she rarely left my side. I didn’t think it was only on the order of the king.
Celine spent the days showing me the palace, introducing me to the wide-eyed servants, who rarely spoke with me, and testing me on the numerous stairwells that led to the uneven levels of the palace.
“Well?” I asked a week after Erik claimed me as his. “What do you think?”
Alistair, the old steward, tilted his head, full lips pouted as he squinted at the window. “What is it?”
I balked. “What is it?” The paintbrush was still in my fingers as I opened my arms wide to the glossy window. “It’s Jormungandr! The great sea serpent. Who else would it be?”
Alistair sniffed and took another breath to study the black body wrapped around wild blue waves. “I appreciate the artistic liberties; however, that is no Jormungandr I’ve ever seen.”
Celine snickered behind her hand. I puffed a strand of hair out of my face and glared at the steward as I packed the paint basket again. “Well, Alistair, I’m afraid I have terrible news.”
“What is that, Lady Livia?”
“You have no damn taste in art.”
Again, the man sniffed, but his folded skin lifted on his cheeks with a rare grin as he turned on his heel. “There are windows aplenty to practice upon, My Lady. Don’t lose heart just yet.”
Two weeks after the claiming, Erik slipped into his chamber when the moon was highest. I pretended to sleep, grateful he’d left me in peace all day—perhaps a little frustrated he seemed content to avoid me.
He rustled through his wardrobe. After I’d listened to the sounds of him shedding his clothes for clean ones, after I’d imagined the way his body looked with nothing on it, he stepped beside the bed.
My heart stilled when he gently eased the quilts higher on my shoulders, then the soft touch of his fingertips brushed away a lock of hair from my brow, a touch there and gone like the kiss of a breeze.
Then he left me alone.
Again.
“We call it the great hall,” Celine said, grinning as she turned around the throne room, where the return feast had been served more than two weeks before. “It’s what you call yours too, right?”
I’d started to take note of the subtle ways Celine tried to find similarities between our worlds. Styles of hair, the way soil grew vibrant plants, even the shape of our ears.
“Yes,” I said. “We eat and revel in the great halls back home.” I dragged my fingertips over the filigreed throne, made of black wood and engraved with crashing waves and sea plants across the back and armrests.
I gave Celine a wink and started to sit.
“Shall we see what it’s like to be Bloodsinger? ”
“No!” She wrenched my arm back with such force I nearly fell over. “No, only the king can sit atop the throne.”
“Why?”
Celine licked her lips. “To sit on a throne would mean you are the equal of the king. There is no equal to an Ever King. It would lessen Erik’s status and power.”
“Gods, it’s that symbolic, or is it some kind of spell?”
“It’s the way of things. If the Ever King is powerless, then he has nothing.”
I stared at the empty throne; a bite of sympathy took hold for Bloodsinger. He was forced to bear the weight of his kingdom alone and fight to keep his back from bending in the sight of others.
He was practically forbidden from having…anyone.
There are no Ever queens. I thought of my parents and how they confided in each other, depended on each other. They ruled together. When one bent under the weight of their crown, the other would take it for them both.
Erik could have bedmates, he could make another heir to pass on the burden of an entire world, but could he give his heart to anyone? His fears? His troubles? The more I learned of the treatment of the king, the more I hated it.
Celine kept me from the throne room after that and showed me the balconies, the numerous corridors, the unkempt gardens.
The gardens were terraced into four levels.
Some levels were covered with bowers and blossoming nettles.
Others with herbs and spiked fruits. The top level outside Erik’s chamber was surrounded by stone walls, a single gate leading to the lower terraces, and filled with shrubs and strange willowlike trees with blue-veined leaves that seemed to glow beneath the moonlight.
I found particular comfort in the lowest garden near the king’s private cove.
The slow, gentle roll of the waves called to me and added a touch of peace as I strolled through strange ferns that smelled of mint and between trees growing odd plums with yellow skin.
Celine walked nearly twenty paces in front of me before she realized I’d stopped and lowered to my knees in front of a wild bush with satin black leaves.
“You do like soil, don’t you?” She chuckled.
“I thought everything in the Ever was underwater. It’s always a surprise to see so much…land.”
“My daj always explained the different fae realms to me as two sides of a coin. Either side can be flipped to the top.”