56. The Nightmare Prince
Chapter 56
There was a common knowledge about alver folk—they couldn’t be trusted.
Niklas and Junius were found slinking out of the back courtyard of the elven palace with satchels of fallen white iron blades, silk doublets, and even Eldirard’s circlet.
I snatched it away from his hands. “That is for Skadi.”
Niklas shook his head, as though I were the one in the wrong. “It is like I no longer know you.”
Worse than the smugglers of the Falkyn guild were the damn king and queen.
The recovered circlet in hand, I made my way toward the great hall only to collide with my disheveled mother and father emerging from one of the chambers.
“What the hells are you doing?” Heat boiled in my face when my bleeding father spun around, still adjusting his damn belt. “You couldn’t wait a night, perhaps a day, before defiling the linens?”
“Jonas, really. Emotions run high during a fight. It isn’t all that scandalous.” My mother had the decency to flush as she smoothed her hair.
Daj patted my cheek. Hard. “I expected a quiet reprieve when you all were going to the South. You think I would let something as trivial as battles stop me from claiming that with my wife?”
“I’m never looking at you again. You’re heathens. No regal blood in your veins.”
“Thank you,” both said in the same breath.
“Hopeless.” I shoved into the great hall. “Bleeding hopeless.
The hall was bursting in sea fae, alvers, thieves, and elven. A strange sight, but one I planned to see again and again. Dokkalfar guards were shaken to learn of their fallen king. Elixists handed over strong mesmer-brewed draughts for the nerves while Mediskis tended to the wounded alongside elven healers.
Treetop folk had ventured from their nests and gawked at the towering rafters and spires of the palace. A skittish bunch, but once Raum convinced a few of their elders to taste br?n and Gavyn Seeker encouraged the younger elven to tip back sea fae honey rum, the hall had grown as boisterous as a Black Palace feast.
Skadi was not the same woman I observed at our vows not so long ago.
She’d taken up a seat beside Sander and Von and laughed across a table with Livia and Celine. Bloodsinger kept a possessive arm around Livia, but once or twice, the slightest smirk teased the Ever King’s lip.
“I’ll never forgive you for killing that light bastard,” Erik grumbled. “He was mine to kill.”
Skadi propped her chin onto her palm, grinning at the Ever King. “I suppose you should sail here a little faster next time.”
Laughter followed, and Erik Bloodsinger lifted the horn in a mute acceptance of my wife.
Aleksi spoke with Tait through deep gulps from their drinking horns.
Alver blood smelled like piss, and the hall was rank with it, but no one minded. For a moment, it seemed the collision of worlds was content to sink into peace together.
Even for a night.
Skadi was wild and radiant. Her hair was bloody and tangled, but she held her shoulders straighter than before. Pain was there behind her eyes—pain we could face side by side—but relief and joy burned brighter.
I took my place beside her. The moment I came into her sights she curled her hands around my arm, drawing me as close as possible without sitting atop my lap.
How many turns had I lived fearing this? Someone who cared, and loved, and wanted me. To imagine missing this bond with Skadi because I feared losing it was nauseating to imagine. I held her gaze for a long moment, ignoring the taunts from my friends that I was a lovesick sod.
I was. Skadi promised to watch me burn if I tried to ignite the blaze in her soul, and she kept her word.
From those first moments, she swallowed me whole, and I never wanted to be set free.
The shadow elven did not protest Skadi’s ascension as their queen. I wasn’t certain if it was the glowering clan of alver folk standing at her back, or the silver glisten of the royal brand that flowed over her brow for her people to see, but the Dokkalfar were quick to bend the knee.
We found her lady’s maid hidden in her chamber beneath the bed. Panicked and convinced the alver clans would never allow the woman to live, it took a hefty touch from Lynx and his mind calming before the woman slumped over, relaxed enough she could not keep her eyes open.
“Cara will insist on remaining with me.” Skadi shook her head at the door once the woman was taken to sleep off her fears in another room. “Tending to royals is all she’s done since she was a girl. To tend to a queen has always been her ambition.”
I pressed a kiss to the top of Skadi’s shoulder. “She’s welcome if she accepts propriety and etiquette mean crass words and overstepping personal boundaries amongst the alvers.”
Skadi laughed and wrapped her arms around my waist. “She will be in a constant state of gasping in horror. I think we should introduce her to cook Ylva.”
We crawled into the bed, bodies aching, Skadi unbothered by my fetid blood from the nicks and scrapes I’d earned in the fighting.
We spent clock tolls curled beside each other in her old chambers she’d used as a child, talking of the truths she’d learned before Eldirard was killed.
“You deserved more, Fire.” I kissed the tip of her nose. “But I am pleased he saw his mistakes in the end.”
“I do not know how to feel.” She laid her cheek to my chest. “I hate him for the role he played in the death of my parents, in keeping me fearful of my own affinity, but he was good to me in many ways. He gave me a home.”
“It will be his regret that he did not love you as you deserved, but you can hold to the love he did offer and hate the rest.”
Skadi was silent for a moment, long enough I thought she might have fallen asleep until she whispered, “I am heartbroken over Dorsan.”
“He will be honored by our folk.”
Skadi kissed the flame on my skin and tucked her head under my chin.
“What do you plan to do now?” I asked. “You are queen here. Do you wish to put a wall down the center of your bedchamber and move me into the other side?”
“I plan for all of us to settle in our home, Nightmare.”
In truth, I wasn’t entirely certain what she meant, but when her eyes fluttered closed, heavy with sleep, I held her close until I followed.
Before dawn filtered through the trees of Natthaven, Skadi was placed in front of a snobbish looking council of advisors for the Dokkalfar clan.
Beneath the table, she tangled her fingers with mine, eyes heavy with a need for sleep. I was damn close to demanding she receive it, or stabbing another one of these sods if they droned on any more about the succession of her bloodline.
Sander and Von tried to remain steady and watchful, but both had long ago drifted off from sheer boredom. Von’s head drooped, but Sander had toppled to one side on a fur lined bench, softly snoring in the corner.
“What will you have us do with Grynstad?” A wizened man with long, white hair to his waist leaned forward. “Their king and heir have been lost to the battle.”
“But Gerard had a queen,” Skadi said. “The way I see it, Grynstad and the light elven fall to Valdis’s word now.”
The man arched a brow. “Yes, the queen, but King Gerard did not often give her a voice?—”
“Much like the shadow elven.” Skadi’s mouth pinched.
Gods, there was something to be said when she locked a man in her stare. It was terrifying and intoxicating in the same breath, and I planned to make my sentiments known the moment these bastards released us from this cramped, stuffy room.
The advisor cleared his throat. “Would you care to arrange a neutral meet with the light elves?”
“I would. We are all elven, and I have grown wretchedly tired of behaving as though we are not.”
I squeezed her fingers.
“We have one more matter to discuss.” Skadi took the time to meet the gaze of each advisor. “I do not want Natthaven to float aimlessly in the far seas. I do not wish it to fade ever again. I want our land to be known, to be truly aligned with the fae realms.” She smiled at me. “That was the purpose of the alliance, was it not?”
“You want Natthaven to become part of Klockglas?” I asked.
“There is a responsibility to the Dokkalfar.” Skadi glanced to her council. “But the alver clans are my home. I wish our folk to be united there.”
I want us all to settle in our home. She wanted to bring her people . . . home.
This meet needed to end. Too long had my mouth been away from my wife’s skin.
When the council tentatively agreed, clearly uncertain how it would be to live permanently beside a fae realm, we opened the doors, and I made quick work of dragging Skadi into the corridor.
“My Lord, a moment.” A mousy palace steward dipped his chin when I looked his way. “I wish to inform you, the second throne will be fashioned by the next full moon, I assure you.”
“For what?”
The elven blinked his bright cerulean eyes until I considered he might be trying to signal me wordlessly. “Well, for you, sire. You are now. . . the king. By the decree of the alliance, since our queen was not the blood of the royal house, these lands belong to you.”
Well, shit. “Fine, as my first act as king, I declare my wife as the blood heir, and the voice of this isle. I will sit beside her, but for gawking purposes and to pique curiosity only.”
Skadi pinched my side when he scurried away, more unsettled than before. “You are my king, Nightmare. I want to do this with you.”
I chuckled and pressed a kiss on the curve of her neck. “I will be honored to be your king, and should you need my voice, or my thoughts, or a shoulder to lean upon, I will be that for you. But you have never had a voice here, and I think it is long overdue for it to be heard.”
Skadi pressed a palm to my cheek. “I would vow with you again and again, Jonas Eriksson. I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“I told you hearts were not part of the alliance, but mine will always be yours.”
“Seems we failed at our indifferent vows.”
“We’re terrible at them.”
“What a shame.”
“A tragedy.”
Skadi pinched her lips and arched her body into mine. “Just once?”
I laughed, cupping her face in my hands, and claiming her mouth. Skadi’s skin was flushed and her heavy breaths tangled with mine by the time I pulled away with a soft, “Never.”