37. Chapter 37
37
Zara
B efore I was ready, Cas pulled away, his hands sliding down my ribcage to rest on my hips.
“My father returns in a little less than one hour. I’ve planned for this moment since he left, but…” His hands tightened. “My plan no longer supplies what I want.”
I swallowed. “Which is what?”
Instead of answering, his hands fell away. He scratched absently at a scar buried beneath the black lines creeping up his neck. If death awaited us both tonight, I could see no reason to hold back. I lifted a hand and traced the scar with one finger.
He leaned into my hand and kissed my wrist. “You can see them. My scars. Where the curse travels, my glamour disappears.”
“You don’t have to hide them from me.” I traced the line of the scar, and he angled his chin away so I could follow the raised skin to where it ended just below his collar. “Who did this?”
“My father.”
I pulled my hand back.
Cas let out a dry chuckle. “His dagger was what first showed me I could learn to resist iron. So, in the end, his cruelty saved me tonight, and it saved you.” At my raised brows, he added, “I was detained briefly tonight by iron shackles. No one knew I could resist iron.”
“I knew that,” I said, poking him where I'd stabbed him.
He smirked. “Yes, you did. But, come, I need to get you to a safe place. We’re out of time.”
Cas took my hand and led me through the palace halls. I’d never felt so high on adrenaline, joy, and fear at the same time. I’d finally found what I’d been looking for my entire life, but I stood to lose it in less than an hour.
We wove our way up a flight of stairs and around two corners, passing servants and fae alike running down the halls, all heading in the opposite direction from us. The servants paid us no mind, but the fae threw us quizzical looks, some nuanced with hate and others with surprise. He paused in front of a carved doorway that depicted an evergreen forest and tall mountains beyond.
“Alba took Ivy and, I assume, the others through this door. I sense that her magic has already passed through here, but I can’t tell who was with her when she left.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “Now, it’s your turn. When you’re through, I’ll destroy the door so no one can follow you. You’ll be far from Avencia, but you’ll be safe. With Alba with you, the bargain shouldn’t bind you again, at least not until my father realizes Alba isn’t coming back. But by then, I hope… well, Alba can help you find your way home when all of this is over.” He pulled something from his pants’ pocket and grabbed my hand. “Here.”
An uncut gemstone rested in my palm.
“I meant to give you this sooner.” The stone was yellow and about the size of a robin’s egg. It would be worth a fortune in Avencia. “And now if the dragons come for you, you’ll also be safe.”
He didn’t look at me as he spoke, so I reached up and pulled his chin toward me. His dark eyes blazed with apparent restraint.
“Cas,” I breathed.
He choked back a laugh. “My carefully laid plan is going up in flames.”
“What do you mean?”
He offered me a half smile. “The antidote I’ve been working on, a magical recipe begun centuries ago by a sister I never met, provides us heirs with an increasing ability to resist Father’s curse. Each of us who tweaked and perfected the recipe over the years fully believed that at some point, the antidote would be powerful enough to break the curse. But I realized it could never break the curse for someone who already had it. The antidote was never meant to keep me alive tonight.” His hand, still stained red with my blood, pinched the brow of his nose, then slammed in a fist against the wall. “It was meant to keep Alba alive. I was only taking it to test it.”
“You were going to give it to her?”
“I already did,” he said as he smeared a hand against his eyes. “As soon as I heard Father was returning, I slipped it into her tea and watched her drink it.”
My stomach sank. “So you don’t have it anymore.”
He shook his head.
A beat of silence passed as we stood and stared at the doorway that now glowed a faint blue.
If I walked through this door, I would never see Cas again. He wouldn’t survive tonight. He’d never intended to. It had always been his sister’s life he was bargaining for.
My hand slid quietly into his, our fingers lacing.
“You can’t stay, Zara.”
“I don’t have to leave, either.”
His fingers tightened around mine. “I need to know you are safe when he arrives.”
I leaned into his arm, still so shocked at how easy it was to be this close to him, how right it felt. “Would it help you more if I stayed here and fought by your side?”
He kissed the top of my head. “You are good with a blade, little spark, but against a three-thousand-year-old fae king, a blade would do little good.”
“True,” I mumbled against his shoulder. Then my head snapped up. “Wait.”
Cas eyed me narrowly. “What is it?”
“You gave me an idea.” My heart thundered madly, but I couldn’t just walk away from him. Not now that he’d held me like this, summoning a fire in my very bones. Before he could retort, I poked him in the chest again. “At least hear me out.”
Ariana helped me into my ballgown, the most exquisite one the wardrobe had yet provided. Tonight’s dress was a bright red, the preferred shade of flamenco dancers and my favorite color. Under the stacks of ruffles was orange fabric. When I turned a quick spin in front of the mirror, the dress imitated a flickering fire. I nodded at the roaring lion’s mouth atop the wardrobe. It was perfect.
Fingers shaking in her haste, Ariana quickly helped me dress and style my hair. The king’s welcome ball would begin in minutes. The king apparently preferred for the parties to be in full swing when he arrived, like the noblemen who arrived late to cause a scene.
Tonight, I wanted to simply be me, my wild hair unrestrained. Ariana brushed out my curls until they reached almost as wide as my shoulders. In the wardrobe, we discovered a sparkling hairpin the shape of an orange flame, and she used it to pin my hair off my face.
“You look amazing,” she told me, offering me a quick hug. She tucked her hair behind her ears. “And I’m sorry. For thinking—for saying what I did.”
I pulled her into another hug. “All is forgiven. Now, we have a ball to attend.”
Drawn by the magic of the king that bound them to serve the Shadow Court, the servants all made their way through the halls toward the ball hastily thrown together at the king’s command. I wished Ariana and all the others could wait this out in the lower levels of Nightsong, but it could not be so.
At least Ivy was safe. And Samuel and Eudoria and Alba.
We climbed several flights of stairs, my dancing shoes clacking with each step. We had less than a half hour until the arrival of the fae king.
Ariana sighed as we crested yet another flight of stairs, this one narrower than the widely used ones in the lower palace. “Why did the location of the ball change at the last minute?” she mused aloud.
My lips curled at the edges.
Cas had liked my idea.
One of the other servants ascending the stairs behind us said, “At least some of the fae stepped in and moved everything with their magic.” He scoffed. “They could do that all the time, but they prefer to watch us run around like rats.”
“Perhaps not the ones who helped you tonight,” I offered.
The man inclined his head but didn’t reply.
“Where are we going?” Ariana asked, her breaths coming slower by the sixth flight.
I hesitated before answering. “The old castle on top of the mountain.”
The chilly air in the hallways helped to cool my burning cheeks as we hurried through the palace. Fae in their shadow forms blasted past us, their wings occasionally smacking my arms and shoulders. We finally reached a stairwell that lifted from the heart of the mountain to the sky above. I could smell the outside air, see the bright lights spilling down the stone steps as if they led to a celestial castle rather than the ruins of a once great court.
“Aquí estamos,” the man behind us said in perfect Avencian. Then he turned to Ariana. “Here we are.” When I turned a close-lipped smile at him, he nodded once and slipped past us.
The final flight of steps rose from the walls cut directly through the mountain into a vaulted atrium so tall I couldn’t make out the faces painted onto the ceiling high above. I heard voices and what sounded like a loud party before I reached the top. The air instantly felt fresher, even warmer somehow, as we stepped aboveground.
An archway radiating with golden light spanned the atrium ahead, leading to the ballroom beyond. In the grand room, rows of round tables stretched across a long room buttressed with impressive stone columns on either side. My breath caught at the amount of dripping golden light cascading down from above like glittering rain that stopped before it ever touched our heads. Mounds of night-blooming flowers, moss, and tall white mushrooms were piled on every table, and for the first time, it struck me that these fae might actually have power over living nature, the way the stories portrayed them, and not just the dead stone all around us.
Ariana hurried me toward the archway, but as we were about to cross from the atrium into the twinkling ballroom, I glanced behind me, certain I’d seen a shadow flash in the flickering light. My eyes hunted the corners, hoping to see Cas, but there was no one. He said he would meet me here, that he had to destroy the doorway to ensure no one could go after Alba.
As soon as I passed under the golden archway, an awed breath quietly slipped from my mouth. The lights that hung from the ceiling looked like stars against the inky darkness. Candles bobbed in the air above every table, and instead of cages full of angry creatures, this room held a host of magnificent animals. In the nearest cage, an enormous silver cat sat, its paws the size of dinner plates and a tail as long as a dragon’s. I’d never seen such a beautiful creature in all my life. There was a white tiger, a pale giraffe with faint spots instead of the usual dark brown, and other animals I couldn’t name. All were light in color and exquisite. Several people stood near the cages, peering in. The cages appeared to be made of ice, their frosted bars not entirely reassuring.
In one cage at the far end of the room, a white dragon perched on his hind legs, chest lifted pridefully, wings tucked at his sides. My breath hitched.
In the center of the wide room fae couples already danced, dresses spinning as if made of falling snow or whirling ash. It appeared that the evening’s attire was meant to entertain as much as the décor or the animals. One dress appeared to be made of water itself, rippling like a current as the woman spun. I realized my jaw was hanging open when Ariana snorted, trying to cover up a giggle. I clamped my jaw shut.
“It’s stunning, isn’t it?” she said.
My attention traveled to the windows, which had no glass in them. They stretched almost to the heavens and were wide enough for a full-grown dragon to dart through—wings folded, of course—but no wintry breeze ruffled the sleeves of gowns or the perfectly groomed hair of any of the guests. The room itself was a comfortable temperature, not freezing like I’d come to expect in the halls of Nightsong. And the night outside was brilliant with stars.
Craning my neck to see over the crowd, I scanned the room for Cas. Between the elaborate headpieces some of the fae wore and the tall ice cages, it was impossible to see in every corner. He’d be here. I took a deep breath.
Every dark-haired man with his back to me drew my eye, but after a circuit of the entire room, it became clear that the heir wasn’t here.
What if his father had already arrived?
What if our time was over?
I tore my gaze away from the dancing couples, hearing the voice of my father in my head. After I’d first told him I believed love would break the bargain, he’d warned me not to let a man matter so much that I would risk losing everything to keep him. Yet he had risked everything to have me. All my life I’d thought his advice was rubbish, as I’d chased after someone who could matter enough to make my father’s money and his defense lessons and his snobbery shrink away in comparison. I’d wanted to find a love worth dying for.
Cas and I had been looking for the same thing. For each other.
My heart beat madly against my ribs as I wove through the tables of seated fae. No meals were being eaten here. Piles of small items or stacks of round coins littered the center of each table, and everyone held cards. As we edged around one table, I peeked at a woman’s hand, and noticed that the cards were exactly the same as the cards I’d grown up playing. In the center of the table were piles of cut stones. They were gambling.
As I resumed my scan of the crowd, a shining black suit caught my eye as it passed beneath the glittering golden archway leading from the ballroom. I sucked in a breath—it was Cas.
He paused inside the crowded room, his height an advantage as his gaze slowly raked over his courtiers. Tonight, he wore solid black, a striking change that made my heart flutter. His hair was slicked back and his pointed ears twinkled with golden caps. He looked every bit a fae prince tonight.
From amid a small group of fae, Felipe’s deep voice announced, “The heir has arrived.”