40. The Mist Thief
Chapter 40
Cara would not stop fussing over my choice of travel attire, insisting it would be quite impressive to my in-laws should I arrive looking more regal, and not like a passenger off a barge.
I mused to myself, my mother and father-in-law would be more impressed if I found a way to win a pouch of coin off Nightseer without him realizing he’d been duped.
“Cara.” I sealed one of the laces on my satchel and faced the woman. “I do hope you’ll try to come see me in alver lands. Perhaps then, you might understand what life is like in the Black Palace.”
She tightened her mouth as she always did, but buried beneath it all was the slightest hint of a grin. The woman knew she was a little ridiculous, but I thought the week with Jonas, his affection toward me, his questions about her life, her folk, her interests, had begun to soften her rigid heart.
A knock came to the door. Cara nearly swatted my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks before I dared answer the door first.
Gods, it would be welcome to return to days where folk did not take note of every damn step I took.
“Hello, Skadinia.”
My heart froze.
I could not draw in a deep enough breath. Slow, like my heels were rusted hinges on a weathered door, I faced the doorway.
Arion.
His face was handsome and sharp in his features. Crimson stubble coated his chin more than it had when he’d overtaken the palace months ago, when he forced me to use my affinity for his benefit, when he threatened to kill my grandfather when he knew the battle was lost to the fae.
His presence was made worse when Cian appeared at his back and closed the door behind them.
Cara kept quiet, occasionally casting me stern looks, mute commands for me to keep my manners. All I wanted to do was run.
“Nothing to say?” Arion approached and reached out one hand, like he might tuck a lock of hair behind my ear.
I jerked my head away.
His grin faltered. “It shouldn’t be this way between us. We’ve known each other so long, chridhe.”
I winced. Gods, how I hated his endearment, spoken as though I mattered. It added ice to my veins, so different than the way Fire sent my heart spinning when spoken from Jonas’s lips.
“You should’ve thought of how I might view you when you kept me as your prisoner here and forced me into the dark.”
Cian clucked, circling around the prince until he managed to crowd me from behind before I could move away. His hands went to my shoulders, holding me still between him and Arion.
Beneath his touch my skin prickled like hundreds of creeping legs crawled under my flesh.
“Did you learn nothing from all our lessons, Princess?” Cian tilted his head closer. “If you did not control your darkness, then the blame falls to you. It shows what you are in the core of your soul.”
I squeezed my eyes, trembling, and shook him away. “Do not touch me.”
Cara took hold of my arm, drawing me nearer, and stared at Cian with her sharp disapproval. “It is indecent.” She faced Arion. “My Lord, perhaps you would be better suited to speak to My Lady with her husband present.”
“Yes, please do. Perhaps he will cut out your tongue so I do not get blood on my dress!”
“Skadinia,” Cara chided under her breath.
Arion returned a look of annoyance. “Be reasonable. It has been long enough, and it is time for bygones to be bygones.”
The door creaked. “I would be careful what demands you give my wife, you son of a bitch.”
My heart jumped. Jonas, eyes dark as fear, leaned one shoulder against the frame of the door.
His breaths were coming too swiftly, his skin too flushed. No. No. I tried to get him to break his darkened stare and look to me. His mesmer was growing too strong.
Arion sniffed, holding Jonas’s gaze. “You made a poor move by interloping on a long-held betrothal, alver.”
“Oh, I made a perfect move.” Jonas stepped in front of Arion, nearly a full head taller than the Ljosalfar prince. “Best move I’ve ever taken. The way I see it, little one”—Jonas chuckled at his own name for the prince—“you are the one who destroyed everything when you thought you could threaten the fae folk and my wife.”
Arion puffed his chest. “Enjoy calling her yours. I imagine you’ve just come from the council of kings and have learned it is only a matter of time before she’s nothing but a memory.”
What the hells did that mean? I looked over Arion’s shoulder, holding Jonas’s mesmer-filled gaze.
“Leave us.” Jonas said, voice a dark threat.
“I wasn’t finished speaking to Skadinia.”
“You are. You’ve bothered my wife and I don’t take kindly to that.”
“You can’t touch me.” Arion butted his chest against Jonas.
Jonas lowered his voice, grinning. “Would you like to see the damage I can do without touching you?”
For the first time Arion hesitated.
“My Lady’s husband has asked for their privacy.” Cara waved her hands, as though shooing the prince and Cian away.
Arion tugged on his blue doublet, mouth tight. “We’re not finished with this, Skadinia.”
“You are.” Jonas stepped between us. “You look like you want to run me through. Go ahead and try. I might not touch you, but there is nothing stating Skadi can’t. In fact, she deserves to swallow you up.”
Something had gone horribly wrong. Jonas was not a man to shy away from following through on a threat. He was not a man who would merely take an attack against him.
There was a reason he had not drawn his blade.
I straightened my shoulders, summoning the icy damp across my palms.
Arion’s eyes widened when the mists coiled between my fingers like diaphanous ribbons. The mists followed my hand when I slid my palm over Jonas’s shoulder and tucked close into his side.
Disdain flashed in Arion’s eyes, a bit of his true character, and in a flurry he turned and strode from the corridor.
When Cian strode past, he leaned in, the heat of his breath against my ear at a sly angle I wasn’t even certain Jonas realized drew him so near. “You smell as perfect as I remember.”
Jonas turned and yanked me behind his back. “I will offer one final warning—speak to my wife, touch my wife, come near my wife, and you will not wake the next morning. No contract will stop me.”
Cian sneered. “Ah. With a husband like you, I expect to see our princess returned soon enough.”
The end of a spear clapped on the floorboards. “Cian. Tend to your royal charge and step back from mine.” Dorsan’s knuckles stretched white when he tightened his grip on his spear.
“I was just leaving.” Cian sauntered down the hall, utterly at ease, and I didn’t know why.
Without another word, Jonas demanded Cara leave and Dorsan remain in the corridor, then slammed the door behind us. In the next instant, he clutched me against his chest, his arms choking the breath from my lungs in his embrace.
My fingernails dug into his back, like he might be torn from my arms any moment. “What’s happened?”
Jonas tucked his face against my neck, breathing me in. “They’ll try to take you from me, Skadi. I won’t let them.”
“Jonas, look at me.” I took hold of his face, forcing him to lift his head. The inky black of his eyes hadn’t faded. Truth be told, it seemed to swallow any hint of light in the room. His skin was flushed, heated, and I could not tell if he was going to collapse or attack. “Your mesmer is taking you.”
I hurried him into the small wash suite connected to the bedchamber and sat him on the edge of a smaller stone basin than we had in the Black Palace. I made quick work of soaking a linen in cool water in a wooden bowl and placing the cloth on the back of his neck.
He hunched over his knees, but his fingers took hold of the skirt of my dress, like he needed to ensure he had a hold on me.
I lowered to my knees, nudging my way between his thighs, and hugged his head to my shoulder. “What happened?”
It took a moment for him to speak. “We’ve been played. I pride myself on being able to spot a scheme, but I didn’t spot this. None of us did. I failed you, put you at risk, and I can’t bleeding think straight. Why is it so damn hot in here?”
He wasn’t making sense.
I dabbed another cloth over his brow. “Tell me what my grandfather said.”
By the time Jonas’s slow, raspy words retold the whole of the interaction, I wished I never asked.
Betrayal was a blade between the ribs, a burning ache I could feel to my bones. My grandfather agreed to Jonas’s request while still allowing the light elven to play their games against us.
“This is my fear,” Jonas said weakly. His forehead still rested on my shoulder. “A vision of you being taken from me, and I cannot reach you, I can’t stop it.”
“No.” I took hold of his face, urging him to look at me. The green of his eyes was more like slate gray as mesmer faded. “I don’t care what they say, do you hear me? Damn a contract, damn the alliance, you are mine, Jonas Eriksson, and I will fight to keep you.”
His mouth twitched in a smile that looked more like a wince. “When she is the woman you want beside you on a battlefield, you’ll know.”
I tilted my head. “What does that mean?”
“The last bit of advice I was given before our vows. You are the woman I want fighting beside me. I suppose that means I know.”
My knuckles brushed over his stubbled cheek. “Know what?”
“I’m in love with you.” Jonas pressed his forehead to mine. “I do not hold you on the surface of my heart, you are in the deepest pieces where I keep my worst fears. To lose you would mean facing pain so wretched it would destroy me. I would not survive it. Even if I was still breathing, I would no longer be me, and instead would become a cruel, violent, hopeless shell of the man I was.”
Tears burned behind my eyes. I kissed him tenderly, slowly, patiently. My lips were wet and cheeks salty by the time I pulled away. “You promised to unravel me, but you’ve woven yourself into every strand of my soul. I will never love anyone the way I love you. I am yours and that is an honor I will always fight to keep.”
Jonas blinked, clearing away the last surge of his magic. “What do we do, Skadi?”
I slipped my arms around his waist, holding him tightly. “We carry on. Our vows are not something they can take away, and we will not give them a reason.”
“My folk will want to retaliate. They don’t take well to being played.”
A bit of beautiful violence dug into my heart. “Then let them when a turn is spent. When we are still vowed at this time next turn, no one can touch us, and I will look forward to the grandest scheme the Kryv can dream up.”
Finally, Jonas laughed. It was soft, a little empty, but there all the same. “Look out, Wife. I think we’ve gone and corrupted you.”
“I expect more of your kind of corruption.”
I kissed him until he kissed me back, until his fears were put to rest, and his familiar, beautiful viciousness returned to the gleam of his eyes.