Chapter Forty-Eight Ayleth
Chapter Forty-Eight
Ayleth
“Is that…” Jacquetta starts, “the king?”
She gapes at the mirror, where Callen’s face is scowling out at her.
After what happened with Shade, I’m more than a little relieved that I can summon him at all.
And I debated whether to reveal this last piece of my power.
But what good is keeping it hidden? I’ll need all the help I can get with what waits on the horizon.
“If we’re going to entertain company, can you at least select interesting people?” Callen drawls. Nettle hisses at him.
“I took his heart on the night I broke the Veil,” I explain to Jacquetta.
Though I never anticipated how much trouble it would cause me.
“Spirits,” Jacquetta murmurs. “Selene suspected you had a witch’s mirror, but this…”
She reaches toward the glass.
“Don’t!” Callen snarls. She recoils and he grins. “I bite.”
“He doesn’t,” I say, rolling my eyes. “He can’t hurt you.”
“Directly,” Callen replies, smug. “Now, tell me, Janet, or whatever your name is, do you know how to get me out of here? I’ll make it worth your while.”
The last of Jacquetta’s shock evaporates.
“No,” she says, crossing her arms. “And from what I remember, you’re exactly where you belong.”
Callen huffs. “I should have burned both of you while I had the chance.”
“You—” She starts to lunge at him, but I hold her back.
“Don’t give him the satisfaction. He likes to pretend he’s in control.”
The imprisoned king curls a slow smile. “Oh, I’m not the only one who likes to adopt that particular charade, dear wife.”
It might be my imagination, but I think I see Jacquetta flinch at the word.
“Enough,” I say. “Blodwyn is missing. Gather the crows and search for her. Then patrol the realm. As I’m sure you heard, the meeting with the Heirs ended in an attack. I want to know where the creature is now. And monitor the border, too. Troops might be advancing from both Darryn and Rycinthia.”
Callen clicks his tongue. “My, my, what a mess you’ve made of things.”
“Just go. And be quick about it.”
The imprisoned king deals us one last sneer, but then he vanishes into the glass.
“Is he always like that?” Jacquetta asks when he’s gone.
“That was him behaving,” I reply. Nettle trills her agreement. “It’s something about the mirror’s truth spell. It strips him down to his barest self.”
“And that’s somehow worse than what he was before?”
“Apparently so,” I agree. “I just hope he can find Blodwyn. Much as I hate to admit it, Callen is our best hope after Shade…”
I serve the true queen, my Huntsman’s last words to me echo in my mind.
“What happened with him, Ayleth?” Jacquetta asks, gentler than I’d expect. “Why did he turn against you?”
Because you are unworthy, that voice taunts.
I bristle against it. “Because I broke a promise.”
“Promise?”
I pick up the poker and prod at the dying fire, distracting myself from the ache in my chest.
“Shade came to me shortly after I broke the Veil,” I begin.
“He taught me most of what I know about my power. Vowed to serve me because I agreed to help him root out all of the covens’ magic.
Make this a realm ruled only by Malum. At the time, I considered my actions justified.
Shade and the others deserved such a world after being trapped behind the Veil for centuries. ”
Jacquetta is quiet for a moment. “But you don’t believe that anymore?”
An ember in the fire pops.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “The Veil caused so much pain. I wanted to take that away. Set things right. Even when Shade offered me Della’s heart, I knew that I should take it.
Keep my word to him and the rest of the shadow creatures.
But after what Selene said—that she thought she was the subject of the prophecy—it all suddenly seemed so empty.
Witches endlessly clawing at one another.
And I realized then that I hadn’t torn down the hierarchy of the covens at all. I just created another.”
Jacquetta absorbs this in silence, worrying with the edge of her sleeve.
“So did we,” she says at last. “When Mother and I joined with the Heirs, I told myself that it was different this time. Necessary. But then, at the Sanctum…I think Mother might have actually killed me if it came to it. All for those fucking stones.”
She spits the last words, grief and betrayal plain on her expression. No matter what Jacquetta might have done in the past, I do not wish that pain on her.
“Nerissa was wrong,” I tell her.
Nettle meows, as if to agree.
“So were the Heirs,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “And Cassandra. I’m sorry. For the part I played in that.”
I don’t have to ask to know what she means: the last time I saw her at Stonehaven. The last time she walked away from me. Just like in the carriage, my first instinct is to shy away from the topic. We each made our choice that day and there’s no use in pretending otherwise. And yet…
“Earlier,” I start, feeling as though I’m stepping out onto thin ice, “you said you should have stayed. Did you mean that?”
It takes her a long time to answer.
“Yes,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
That ancient part of my heart pulses. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I’m a fool,” she says, attempting a smile. Then, “Because…I was afraid of you.”
“Afraid? Because of Malum? But you said you couldn’t sense it.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Because of the way you made me feel. Like I could be my own person, away from my mother and the rest.”
“You’ve always been your own person,” I argue wryly. “That’s one of the reasons Mother hated you so much.”
“I haven’t been,” she insists. “And if I’m being perfectly honest, when I learned that you were here and what you’d done, I was…jealous.”
Even Nettle trills at that.
“Jealous? What for?”
“Because you accomplished all this,” she says, indicating my chamber. “Alone. You didn’t bow to your mother or the Heirs, or to anyone. You stayed. It’s not a cowardly thing, Ayleth. You’re the strong one. You always have been.”
I hardly know what to do with that.
“I don’t feel so strong now,” I admit. “In fact, maybe I should have listened to you. Gone off and led some other life.”
“Listened to me?” She laughs, but it’s hollow. “Look at everything that’s happened. I ruin everything I touch.”
“Everything?” I ask. “Including me?”
She holds my gaze for what seems an eternity. Then, so soft I almost miss it, “No.”
That connection—that thread—tightens between us. Pulling us together. That abandoned chamber of my heart pulses and I can’t help but notice how her own breathing quickens. The elegant line of her collarbones. Places I have touched. Craved.
Do not, that voice warns. You know what will happen.
Maybe. But perhaps I do not care anymore.
I close the distance between us in two strides, earning a startled meow from Nettle as she leaps away.
My hands tangle in Jacquetta’s hair as my mouth crashes onto hers.
Jacquetta kisses me back, both of us holding on to each other like we might slip away at any moment.
Our kiss deepens, and I forgot how she tasted—like roses and something that is inexplicably her.
Like home. But not a home I ever thought I’d find my way back to.
My frantic hands yank at the laces of her dress, ripping her sleeves off, then her bodice, unable to get to her skin fast enough.
My lips find hers again, rough and bruising.
I feel the same pressure in Jacquetta’s touch—her fingers roving in places that make me ache with desire.
Jacquetta yanks her shift over her head and then there is nothing clothing her but firelight.
I linger over every detail: the dip of her waist and the ridges of her shoulders and the curve of her hips.
And it’s only now that I realize how much I’ve missed her. Needed her.
My heart beats impossibly faster as, never taking her gaze from mine, Jacquetta drops to one knee and then the other.
I let my fingertips travel the column of her throat to settle on the rabbit-quick pulse between her collarbones.
A moan escapes me as Jacquetta kisses my legs, her lips working their way up the inside of my thigh, gentle and possessive at once.
I gasp, reaching for the bedpost as her mouth finds the soft place between my legs. Sparks dance through my blood as her tongue works, tantalizingly slow at first. Then faster and faster, until the feeling crests, leaving me spent and trembling.
Jacquetta rises, her mouth meeting mine again.
We tumble onto the bed. It is not a gentle coupling—not tender and cautious as we have been in the past. This is like lightning in a storm, each of us claiming the other.
It’s only when I pin her beneath me that I slow.
With one hand, I hold her wrists above her head.
With the other, I let my fingertips explore the length of her, skimming over her breasts, her stomach.
“Ayleth,” she breathes, her hips moving against mine. “Please.”
At long last, I settle on the velvet softness between her legs.
She gasps, her back arching as I tease her there, slipping my fingers inside her.
I increase my tempo, harder and faster, until Jacquetta cries out.
She relaxes onto the bed and I sink down next to her, my face resting against the curve of her neck.
We lie like that together for a long time, drinking each other in. And I know in that moment that, no matter what path we take, we would always find our way back here—where we were supposed to be all along.