Chapter 19
Dark soil flies everywhere, small, sharp stones cutting like arrowheads into the ground around us.
Then comes the silver—shards of it split from the rock that held it—pelting towards the valley like beautiful, deadly rain, sparkling in the sunlight as it falls.
I’m so surprised I misjudge my magic, losing the connection with the silver for a moment. I look up in horror at the splinters of metal and rock barreling towards us as I frantically try to redirect them, but it’s too late.
Then sky disappears. At first I can’t tell why, too wrapped up in a pair of strong arms that bundle me to the ground, Ruskin’s large body shielding me. I adjust my chin to look over his shoulder, seeing thick tree branches twisting to form a roof above us.
A bower. Ruskin has grown one over us in a matter of seconds, just in time to shield us from the debris of the explosion.
I squeeze my eyes shut as the storm of rock and metal hits our shelter, the whistle and thud of sharp objects assaulting the only thing standing between us and fatal wounds. I pray it holds, clinging to Ruskin tight enough that my fingernails snag in the fabric of his jacket.
The din is deafening at first—but eventually, it slows to a clatter as the last few stones thunk against the trees, then roll off them.
I open my eyes. I should feel like a coward and a fool. But I can’t think of anything but Ruskin’s body pressed against mine. His hair tickles the side of my face and I breathe in the scent of him, letting the sweet muskiness fill my nostrils. I feel so safe here. So at home. As we sit there in silence for a moment, him wrapped around me, I realize I feel his heartbeat where I’m lying against his chest, and it’s racing.
I lift my head. It’s shadowy under the bower, which is completely solid on top, but a few strips of light stream through the sides, enough to illuminate his face where it’s positioned inches from mine. My breath hitches.
Then he kisses me.
My brain empties of everything when his lips touch mine. Everything but the way his mouth is at once soft and forceful, pressing into me, compelling access. I angle my head for a better hold as I bury my hand in his hair and allow him to devour me like a starving man. I’m hungry for this too, unable to stifle a moan of pleasure as he runs his tongue along mine. I’ve missed this so badly it’s almost torture to experience it again, to remember what’s been taken from me. Just his kiss sets me aflame, my nerve endings tingling, every inch of my body screaming for more, more, more.
How could I have ever given this up? This wild edge that only he can bring out in me, the one that doesn’t need to ask a thousand questions or seek a thousand answers, the one that can just live in the moment, only feeling, only being here with him. God, I’ve missed this—not just the physical satisfaction of his touch, but the person I am when I only exist in this plane of desire and sensation.
I don’t want to lose her again.
I prop myself up onto my knees, forcing him to sit back so that I’m straddling his lap. He makes a low noise of approval, his hand dropping from my back to my ass, gripping it, using it to guide the V of my legs closer against him, so I can feel his hardness beneath me. I grind against it while teasing his lower lip between mine, and my breathless pant is drowned out by his growl. His free hand expertly unbuckles the back of my leather breast plate, sliding up beneath my shirt and encircling my hardened nipple beneath.
He grins against my mouth, staying my kisses for a moment.
“I knew you just needed a little push,” he says, emphasizing the last word by thrusting up against me, sparking delicious friction.
His tongue meets mine again, but the moan he’s intent on ripping from me dies in my throat.
We just nearly died—or at least, were almost seriously hurt—because of my magic. Because of what he pushed me to do.
I pull back, my thoughts racing.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice low and rough.
“You did that on purpose,” I say. I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious to me before. The harshness of the training wasn’t just Ruskin not knowing how to teach, or even some petty revenge on me, he was baiting me, riling me up because?—
“Why?” I ask. “Why were you trying to make me angry?”
His expression shifts. “Because it’s what you needed. I knew you wouldn’t really test yourself—take yourself to the limits of what you could do—unless I made you.”
I start to disentangle myself from him, shifting across the ground to put as much distance as I can between us in the cramped space of the bower.
“Ella,” he says beseechingly.
“Don’t call me that.” Someone could’ve gotten hurt, but that didn’t matter, because Ruskin thought he knew best. He wanted me to lose control, never once considering what I’d have to say about it—how unsafe it would make me feel.
He sighs. “You did something amazing here today. Don’t you see that? You reached deeper into your magic than you ever have before.”
“You manipulated me,” I snap, feeling around behind me to re-buckle my breastplate.
“I guided you. You needed to be determined if you were going to reach the silver and?—”
“You knew it was there, didn’t you?” I say, with dawning realization. “That’s why you brought us here.”
“You’re angry because I planned ahead?” he says, somehow sounding bewildered and mocking at the same time.
“I’m angry because, as per usual, you kept me in the dark. You knew what was going to happen—that’s why you were so ready, right? Ready for me to lose control and for all hell to break loose, so you could step in and save the day.”
I kick at a section of wood in the side of the bower, opening up a big enough hole for me to crawl through. When I straighten up and turn around, I see the extent of the damage: the shelter Ruskin created looks like a pin cushion, impaled on every inch with sparkling splinters. I shudder at the violence of it, the power needed to create this chaos. Power that came from me.
The branches of the bower unfold and Ruskin emerges from it much more gracefully than I did. He levels a serious look at me.
“It wouldn’t have worked if you’d known that I was deliberately provoking you,” he says. “You needed to let go, to be more angry than afraid.”
“Well, mission accomplished,” I say, seething. I’m so tired of him pulling at my strings, thinking he can steer me in whatever direction he likes without once bothering to explain our destination. If I let him, he’d assume complete control, and I’d be left feeling I never deserved an explanation or opinion.
“I’m done with you treating me more like some animal to be trained than a partner,” I say, marching back towards where we left the horses—thankfully more than a safe distance from where we’d been sparring. I grab my sword from the grass on the way.
“And what about training?” he says, striding after me. “What about the progress you made here today? You can’t just ignore that it worked,Eleanor.”
He’s not wrong. Before the silver I was accessing my magic more quickly than before, forced to adapt because of Ruskin’s relentlessness. But there are still some boundaries, some lines that shouldn’t be crossed, no matter how good he thinks his reasons are.
“And that’s the problem, Ruskin,” I say, somehow having managed to scramble up onto my horse unassisted. “As long as it gets you what you want, you don’t care about the fallout. I understand you’ve always done what you had to for your court.” I stare down at him. “But I am not your court. So just know that with me, that attitude doesn’t work. With me, it will cost you.”
I coax my horse into moving, leaving Ruskin behind and not looking back as I set off across the valley, now strewn with silver.
I haven’t seen Ruskin in the two days since the valley. I don’t know if he’s as angry with me as I am with him, or if he’s simply off somewhere licking his wounds. I tell myself I don’t care. If he’s not ready to change, to accept that he needs to be open with me—when it comes to the training if nothing else—then I can work on solving the Seelie Court’s problems on my own.
I drop another mask onto the heap beside my work table with a satisfying clunk. I’ve been in my workshop day and night making equipment for the miners. Destan’s come to visit me a few times, but he was put off by the fumes and my focus, claiming I was being boring.
Now it’s Halima’s turn to drop by. I nod at her as she comes in, but she just eyes the growing pile of lead armor with a neutral expression.
“Do you have something to say?” I ask eventually. I can hear that I’m being a little curt, but I’m still annoyed about Destan’s dismissal of what I’m trying to do. After Ruskin telling me I shouldn’t waste time with this project too, it feels like no one’s on my side.
Halima picks up one of the masks, turning it over in her hands.
“The eye gap should be bigger. It will maximize visibility.”
I blink at the sincere suggestion.
“I considered that,” I say. “But I was worried about exposing too much of the face and canceling out the mask’s benefit.”
Halima nods, thinking. “Make the slits wider at each end, then put a strip down the center like a nasal guard on a helm. You’ll protect more of the face, but the eyes won’t notice the additional strip, so you’ll maintain a wider sight line as well.”
“Really?”
“Think about it; you don’t walk around seeing your nose all the time, do you? Your mind hides it for you.”
“Thanks,” I say, giving her a genuine smile.
“But this isn’t the job Dawnsong gave you,” she says, setting the mask down. Surprisingly, there isn’t judgment in her voice. Instead, I think I detect a hint of curiosity, as if she simply can’t understand why I’m not following orders.
“No, but this will help people quicker. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.”
“Not just people, the Low Fae,” Halima corrects.
“Yes,” I say, not sure what she’s getting at. “Is that a problem?”
“Most wouldn’t bother,” she says.
“Maybe you’re used to being around people who wouldn’t care, but there’s plenty of folk who value compassion, who don’t like to see other people in pain, whether they think they’re better than them or not,” I say. “Look at you—you help the Low Fae. I saw you in the first iron attack, making sure the servants got out of the hall.”
“You know why I notice the Low Fae when others don’t,” Halima says stiffly. I hadn’t wanted to bring it up—didn’t know if she’d want me to—but I nod now.
“Because of your blood? Destan said you had some Low Fae ancestry.”
She snorts, which is so unlike Halima it startles me. “As if that wasn’t obvious from just looking at me.”
I shrug. Halima doesn’t look as human as the other High Fae. Her skin and hair, dappled and textured like a tree, give away that she has more in common with the fae servants of the palace than Ruskin and Destan do.
“Does it make a difference?” I ask.
“It shouldn’t,” she says. “I am the best fighter in this court, my parents are war heroes, and yet when I swore my sword to Dawnsong, there were whispers about what kind of prince would accept someone lesser in his inner circle.” Her hand is on the pommel of her sword, a gesture I notice she makes when she’s unsettled.
“Maybe this doesn’t mean much coming from a human, who we all know is considered the lowest of the low in these parts, but I think they’re all idiots. All the stuff they value—blood, status and power—doesn’t exactly seem to have left this court in a better place. You have, though.”
Halima looks faintly moved. She gives me a curt nod.
“And you, Eleanor Thorn.”
I smile at her, my gaze falling on the pile of lead equipment.
“I hope to find a way to make a difference, but this is my best bet until we have some breakthrough elsewhere. What we need is something to stop the iron, instead of just reducing its impact.”
“That is partly why I’m here,” Halima says. “Dawnsong has decided that Queen Evanthe is now ready to be reinstated.”
I lift my eyebrows in surprise. “He has?”
“I believe he feels the sooner it happens, the better. He thinks we will be more…protected, with her officially on the throne once more.”
“And you?” I ask, noticing her hesitation.
“I will just be glad when we are no longer deceiving the court about its true leader. The people are dissatisfied as it is.”
I wonder what it’s like to be Halima, having to be always on the front line, trying to keep constant watch for the slightest threat against Ruskin—trying to predict them before they even rear their heads.
“So what does Evanthe’s coronation have to do with me?” I ask.
“Dawnsong has requested your presence.”
I blink. “Mine? Why?”
“He didn’t go into details.”
Of course he didn’t. Ruskin doesn’t explain anything he doesn’t have to.
“And he sent you to fetch me?” I say, unimpressed.
“I believe he was under the impression you might not come otherwise,” she says, looking wholly uninterested in why that might be.
“I bet he was.” I cross my arms. “Well, I’m afraid I’m not going to come running when he calls me. If he wants me there, he can ask me himself.”
“He’s already waiting to take you there,” she says.
“What do you mean? Take me where?”
“The queen will be reinstated using the founding stone. No one besides the monarch and their bloodline even know where it is.”
I drop my arms, confused. “Then why would Ruskin want me there?”
“I believe he needs your skills.”
“Oh.”
That changes things. I’d thought Ruskin’s invitation was just him trying to smooth things over by pretending that we hadn’t had a fight, but if there’s a practical reason I have to be at the ceremony, it makes sense he’d send Halima. It would be petty to refuse him now, when there are so many more important things at stake.
”Um…do I have time to clean up?” I ask. Metalworking is sweaty business, and I’m in need of a wash and a change of clothes.
“No.”
I grimace, then nod. “All right.” I untie my apron and smooth down my hair. It’ll have to do. “Lead the way.”
Halima drops me off at a corridor that runs along the edge of Ruskin’s quarters, which also border the High Monarch’s rooms.
“Go to the end,” she says. I wait expectantly, but she doesn’t say anything else, so I shrug and follow her directions.
The corridor is long, and I notice it slopes down very slightly, ending at a wide stone door with a solid brass wheel embedded in it. It looks old, like it was here long before all the plants that have grown up around it, and I guess that the wheel is part of a locking mechanism. I stop, checking over my shoulder, but there’s nowhere else I could go in this corridor, so this must be in the right place. I wrap my hands around the edge of the wheel and pull on it, hard.
It doesn’t budge. I tighten my grip and try again.
This time the wheel creaks into slow motion, turning beneath my fingers, too easily for it to have anything to do with me. I let go as the door grinds open and I see Ruskin on the other side.
“Good. I’ve been waiting for you,” he says.
“Why am I here, Ruskin?” I don’t understand why explanations always have to come so slowly with him. There must be some of that in my tone, because he answers very directly.
“The iron. It’s spread down here too. We need to move it before the ritual.”
“And you don’t want to invite a team of miners here to do it for you,” I say, understanding now.
“We can’t,” he says. “The founding stone’s location has to remain secret. It’s too risky otherwise.”
Of course, we’re only talking about the magical artifact that helps decide the ruler of the kingdom. I can see why that might pose some security concerns.
Ruskin steps aside, revealing a sharply descending passageway. “This way.”