Chapter 53 The Serpent #2
Elise Ferus’s head reached my chin, but when she squared to me, I wanted to take a step back. Until her face softened. “You brought them back to me.”
“I vowed I would.”
“Valen told me everything. He is not easily impressed in battle, but he has admitted more than once that he does not know how you steadied blades on a rocking ship.”
I fought to remain insouciant but failed when a grin spread. “He aided in the killing blow.”
Elise seemed pleased to hear how her people fought. Not only Livia, but the other heirs. To the Night Folk queen, they were as much her children as Livia and Rorik. She asked of the battle but pressed more on the changes in the Ever Kingdom.
Her eyes glazed in a bit of longing. “I wish I could see it someday.”
The Chasm would always be a divide for Livia. She spoke of the Ever like her home, yet her mother would never witness her atop her throne, would never see her daughter seated as a queen in her own court over sea fae.
Elise, surprising me, rested a hand on my arm and squeezed. “I am glad you returned to us, too, Ever King. There are those here who are much better for it.”
The words Valen had spoken to me that day I’d been tossed into the sea rattled in my skull. Turns, war, hate, all of it had happened to bring us to this moment, to make the words truth. I nodded, silent as the queen returned to the crowd.
“That current divides your worlds?”
I startled. Skadi, shadowed by Tait, materialized from a doorway. She was dressed simply. Half her hair was pulled behind her head with a leather strip, and she wore an ashen gray dress that fit her terribly, two sizes too large. She was meant to be a princess, yet did not play the role.
“The elven speaks.” I turned away from her, content to watch my queen smile and laugh until her head fell back, exposing her throat I planned on licking and biting the moment we were alone.
“I speak when there are interesting enough words to say.” Skadi stepped beside me. “I overheard the mortal—”
“She is a queen, elven.”
“And I was going to call her the mortal queen.” For a moment, there was the slightest flicker of annoyance on the woman’s face.
Ah, she could feel.
“This current is too strong, yes? It keeps your queen’s mother out of your world.”
“Yes.” I thrummed in irritation, as though my old resentments toward the earth fae needed someone new to burden.
Trust was a fickle thing, and I’d not given it freely to her yet. Until then, she’d likely receive the sharper edges.
“I could take it away.”
I froze. “What did you say?”
“I could take the current away, leave a calm barrier between your kingdoms.”
“How can you take the Chasm?”
“Much the same as I took your bond.”
“I would not speak so flippantly about the bond you stole.”
The elven shrugged. “All I am saying is the act is the same without the pain. The boundary between realms will remain, but the violence that fractures your two worlds is powered by something Otherworldly. It was obvious when we sailed through.”
What fueled the crushing waters of the Chasm had never been taught to me, simply known to exist. Trade between sea and earth fae had been done before, but it was rare and used spells and summons to see it done.
Sea fae always went to the earth fae. Never—that I knew—had earth fae sailed to the Ever since the Chasm was shaped.
“A sea witch likely created the barrier,” I determined, more to myself than Skadi. If sea folk cast the violence, it would make a bit more sense why earth folk never came to us.
“Perhaps,” she said. “It matters little, but there is a power teeming within, and that is what I can take.”
“The boundary would remain,” I repeated.
“But the violence would be finished.”
No Chasm? A wall between worlds that had been in place for centuries.
“Explain your magic, elven.”
“Affinity,” she corrected. “Like Arion used flame or light to reach for and take objects, I do the same with darkness.”
“He walked through his.”
“A talent I do not possess.” Skadi tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Arion can walk through light, within reason. He cannot step long distances, nor can he go somewhere he has never been before. He must see it in his mind’s eye.”
Gods, I wished that bastard was dead. “Livia said you conjure things from these mists.”
“Not conjure. I take.” Skadi studied the rafters overhead. “When I summon my affinity, I could pull that drinking horn, for example”—she gestured to a far table—“into the mist until it reached my hand.”
That was how she’d robbed Sander of his blade.
“You can’t simply take a current like the Chasm and place it somewhere else.”
“No, the power within it would fade into the mist, die in a way. I can draw matter to me, or I can leave it within the darkness. It is the drearier side, or in your case—helpful.”
“Leave them where?”
“I don’t know exactly. Some say it is in the void of creation.
I think the matter merely turns to dust. It is like closing a door.
I can leave it open until whatever I summon steps through to me, or I can lock it away, out of sight.
” Skadi tilted her head, an eerily vacant look on her face.
“This is why my affinity is better off feared by you. Why it should never belong to a man like Arion.”
“Doesn’t seem any different than what Eldirard said.”
“He didn’t elaborate.” Skadi gave me an empty smile.
“If I wanted, I can steal a life, the physical beat of a heart, the draw of breath in the lungs. I take it, then close it away behind the darkness, and there it goes to die. That is what I will do with whatever power lives in that Chasm of yours.”
Shit. “You kill with this mist?”
“I can. Just as you, simply in a different way.” Skadi shielded a yawn with the back of her hand. “I tire of this revelry. Would you permit your crew to lead me back to the ship to sleep?”
I wasn’t certain I even nodded before she turned away.
“Think on what I said, sea king. I can kill this Chasm, and you will give your queen her folk while keeping you.”
It wasn’t until Sander, Narza, and an Alver from the twins’ home realm confirmed there was merit to Skadi’s claims that it was determined on the morrow, we would kill the final wall between our people.