Chapter 24 – Neve
NEVE
“Vale!” I gasped as I walked through the door of our new quarters. The annex, or so the rebels called it. Whatever this place was, one glance assured me it was far better than those horrible cages.
My mate took me in his arms, and the worry that had filled my chest deflated. It felt so good to touch him again. To smell him and taste him.
“Where in the bleeding skies are we, Vale?” Thantrel asked after allowing us a few precious seconds together.
My mate pulled away from me, kissed my forehead, and then turned to the group, which now included Anna. Since we’d reunited in the corridors, my friend had been crying and saying she’d done all she could to make them believe the truth.
I didn’t blame Anna in the slightest. Fae had a difficult time taking humans seriously, and the rebels were predisposed to dislike us. Though now, they might not?
I studied the interior of the building. It was large but humble, made of wood, unlike the stone castle. A newer portion, though why it wasn’t stone as well was beyond my understanding. Fabrics, I knew. Castle craftsmanship, not so much.
“We’re in Valrun Castle,” Vale answered.
“Valrun!” Duran’s hands went to his mouth.
“Indeed.”
I was missing something. “What’s wrong with Valrun Castle?”
“The place, the entire town around it too, is cursed, Neve,” Clemencia, with her teacher’s heart, was always quick to offer information.
“Oh.” It had appeared rundown, but cursed? “How?”
Anna and Rynni appeared as lost as me. The others looked uncomfortable, but Clemencia didn’t shy away from whatever unsavory thing needed to be said.
“Well, the first horrible event happened at the time of the Unification,” Clemencia said. “Many generations back, Sassa Falk nearly demolished the castle. Some, or maybe most, of the destruction is from her.”
“I see,” I said, chewing at my lower lip. Sassa was a distant ancestor, but an ancestor all the same. It troubled me that she’d do such a thing. “But you said the first event? There are more?”
“Two other historical events occurred here, each worse than the last.” Clemencia held up two fingers, all academic authority. “The second was a dragon flying overhead and torching the castle and the town surrounding it.”
I blinked. “But why?”
“I’d like to know too,” Rynni cocked her head. “Most dragons don’t come here unless they must. Too bleeding cold, this kingdom.”
“It’s said that the dragon’s wife slept with the lord of this castle. He exacted deadly revenge.”
“And the royals at the time did nothing?” Such an attack on the fae of Winter’s Realm should not have gone unnoticed.
“They were preparing to fight the dragon lords when the entire family living at Valrun took ill. They died shortly after, so there was no one to fight for.”
“So, that’s the third event?” My stomach had twisted into knots.
“Oh, no. Something else happened. Save for the blight, I don’t count illnesses as extraordinary events.”
“By the stars,” I breathed.
Anna leaned forward. “What else happened?”
“Valrun is at the edge of a forest, between the trees and the great lake of the midlands,” Clemencia gestured to the trees out the window. I could see no lake but would take her word for it. “We’re also not so far from the King’s Road.”
“A day or two away,” Vale supplied.
“Yes,” Clem continued. “And a good distance from the mountains, though not far enough, it would seem.”
I swallowed.
“Frost giants came down from the mountains and they didn’t stop at Myrr.
The city is too fortified, the Balik host too great.
But Valrun, even in its glory days, was small and susceptible.
The giants appeared, killed, and ate every living soul in the town—the new nobles included.
Thrice this area has seen great hardships, and many believe that it is a bad omen.
That at some point, this place was cursed.
Since the frost giants came down from the Ice Tooth, no one has dared settle in this area again. ”
While I usually found a sense of comfort in Clemencia’s academic detachment, this time, it only made the news more chilling. And brought up a hundred questions, the most serious of which being: Why were we here?
“You’re a historian?” Duran asked Clemencia, breaking the silence.
She blinked, her concentration being pulled from the histories as she turned to the dwarf. “Of a sort.”
“She knows everything,” I boasted for her, happy to change the subject. “You two would have much to talk about.”
Duran’s face lit up. He and Arie were often together, speaking of subjects the rest of us knew little about, but I imagined that, for a scholar, to have more people to talk and debate with, was a magic in itself.
“I’d like that,” Clemencia admitted. “The House of Wisdom has always fascinated me, but my father would never have allowed me to even attempt to attend. You study there, correct?”
“I’m a l?rling,” Duran answered. “Arie is trying to earn his place there too.”
I turned away from the trio that were now gravitating to one another and looked up at Vale. “What did they ask you about?”
He swallowed, and his voice dropped so that only I could hear his reply. “I’ll tell you later. When we’re alone. For now, let me show you our new home.”
I nodded, somewhat surprised he was not open about the experience, though there had to be a reason.
“What do you think this is for?” I gestured to the structure built off the main castle. “It looks newish.”
“I believe they kept the older parts of the castle for themselves. The walls might still retain some protective enchantment. The guard who showed me here says it’s for refugees, and they rarely stay too long.” Vale’s lips turned down as he spoke.
“Refugees from what?”
“That, I don’t know. But there are plenty of rooms, indicating that, perhaps, many families from the same town or village—or even a city—stayed here?”
Vale showed me to a space where the rebels had set baskets of bread and cheese for us to snack on before the official mealtime gathering in the dining hall.
As we’d been fed while in cages and had expended little energy, I wasn’t hungry, so we moved on.
He showed me the first three rooms, all with two beds.
The fourth was the smallest, with one single bed and a rickety wooden altar to the dead gods in the corner.
Rynni had slipped into it before us and claimed that room. Solitary as ever.
The fifth and last room had only one bed, one much smaller than Vale and I were used to sleeping in, but after days of sleeping in ice shelters, it looked blissful.
Though I had little reason to trust the rebels, I also did not think they’d put us in this place if they wished to harm us. For now, we were safe.
“This is ours.” I spun in the bare room. “Do you think they’ll bring our things?”
I was missing my sword and my mother’s jewels. If they didn’t offer to return both, I’d be having words with the rebels.
“I think they will. No doubt they were examining our items.”
“Well, having a proper place to sleep—together, at that, is some progress. To be honest, it surprises me that they’d keep us all together, guards at the door or no.”
“Don’t be surprised. They used a whisperer on me.”
I sucked in a breath. The reason he’d not spoken before the others emerged. “Oh.”
“There’s no reason for them to doubt me. What the whisperer read in my mind lined up with what Anna said.”
“What about your mother and brother?”
“She knows about that. She’ll tell no one.”
My eyebrows knitted together. “You’re sure?”
“She has a valid reason not to and said she wouldn’t, so I’m choosing to trust her. I have no other options.”
True. When we fled Frostveil in the dead of night, neither of us had possessed the clarity of mind to snatch up flasks of the Mind Rond potion that protected fae from most whisperers.
Even if we had, we would have run out by now.
If Vale was confident with this whisperer knowing his secrets, then I would trust his judgment.
“That makes us a pair,” I said. “My secrets are also known to all now.”
He extended his arms and wrapped them around me. His hands slithered to my arse and pulled me close, his intent as clear as the hungry gleam that sparked in his eyes. Vale was done with catching up. He wanted to feel me after being apart for days. “Surely not all your secrets.”
“You’re right,” I spoke offhandedly, as if my heart had not begun to race at our closeness. “Some are not even known to you.”
“Is that a challenge, my mate?”
I tilted my chin up. “You know what? I think it might be.”
“Challenge accepted.” He scooped me up, and my toes curled in my boots as he strode to the bed and placed me there, lovingly, tenderly.
“Now,” Vale pulled back and took his time as he examined me, his warm brown eyes lingering over my every curve and valley. “Where might I begin to find these secrets?”
My hand drifted to my breasts, grazed across them. Though I wore traveling clothes and not the gowns with plunging necklines that I’d become used to at court, one would never guess that Vale preferred one style over the other.
He looked like a male desperate to drink, to indulge, to ravage. And I was more than happy to oblige his every whim.
“A favored spot,” he stepped closer, began untying the top of my tunic, then easing me upward, he shimmied it off.
The band I wore around my breasts followed quickly, leaving only the ribbon of spider silk wrappings around my waistline.
The ribbons were enchanted onto our bodies, so I did not try to remove them.
“Fates, Neve. If I go to the afterworld on this night, I’ll have gone out happy.” And with that, he bent and took one nipple between his lips, his deft hand teasing the other. Tugging. Twisting. Flicking.
My eyes fluttered closed as pleasure washed over me, and my hands lodged themselves in Vale’s long, dark hair, sometimes gravitating toward the shaved under portion that had grown out slightly during our travels.