5. Delphine
We were nearly whole.
Barely a day had passed since we last saw the Sea Prince, but he’d changed.
He moved like a fae possessed, a new power emanating from him that I’d felt only once before—that day we found him on the beach. It was one like no other, all-consuming, overwhelming, simply beholding it was enough to make the very air quiver in his presence.
The very foundations of the court shook as he approached, his eyes fixed on his brother and nothing else. Nereus remained in place, unable to move, frozen on the throne that he’d been placed in charge of. The Sea Prince had been powerful in his own right before, but this was something else entirely. This was something greater than this realm or the next.
“You call yourself my brother, and yet you betray me, too?” Tethys growled, salt and sand grating in his voice, as if gravel churned inside him like the water still roiling at his back.
His brother tried to speak, Nereus’ mouth moving soundlessly as no words managed to form. I thought I’d seen fear on Armene’s face, but it was nothing compared to the look that had settled on Nereus’ features. He knew his fate even as his brother crossed the space between them, never looking away, never stopping until he stood a hair’s breadth away from the man that had claimed to hold dear all that Tethys did. He was a traitor caught in the act, and he trembled at the consequences he knew he was about to face.
Time stood still as Tethys towered before him. The air was filled with the scent of the sea, not that salty brine of the shore, but something deeper. Something ancient. Something both sweet and rotten. His presence made the very material that made me up quake, my very being rumble from somewhere within.
And I was not the object of his fury.
Nereus looked as if he was on the brink of being torn apart, as if that same matter that I felt quake within me was on the verge of shattering into so many pieces that there would be nothing—not even the memory of him—left.
Tethys raised his hand, and I expected him to strike his brother down, so great was that rage that rolled off of him like the waves I could now hear beating so violently on the cliff walls outside the castle. But instead, he reached out a hand and laid it on his brother’s forehead, his fingers curling over the top of his regent’s head so gently, so tenderly, it felt like an intrusion to watch. For a second, both brothers bowed their heads slightly, the only sound between them the heavy, matching sigh of their breaths.
When Tethys took his hand away, the same power remained, but Nereus no longer shook. He no longer looked afraid. When he looked up at the Sea Prince, his face was painted instead with a mask of shame.
“What have you done?” Tethys asked, his voice softer now, but no less dangerous. “Tell me, Nereus, what you were thinking.”
Nereus looked up at Tethys in silence for too long.
“Tell me!”
I’d never seen Tethys like this. He was not just angry. He was not just cloaked in rage. He was fury itself.
His voice shook the throne room until gold inlaid portraits fell from the walls and cracks raced along the empty stone left in its place. A chandelier fell from the ceiling, crashing in a heap of tangled metal and shattered crystal that skittered across the floor. But no guards came running. Even the most loyal of warriors felt the danger of his power more than the shaking of the walls.
Nereus’ lip trembled, but in the silence that fell he finally answered.
“I’m a coward,” he whispered. “I heard that Mordrigal marched on the Sand Court, and I was afraid. I knew he would march on us next, once he was finished with them. We’re the last court yet, and we don’t even have our proper prince on the throne.”
“The last court? The last prince?” Tethys asked, standing over him. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew the way his golden eyes must be shining brighter than the gold that had once adorned the braids now flowing freely over his shoulders. He was no longer adorned with the golden trappings of the prince I’d come to know, but prince still he was.
And more.
“What do you see now, standing before you?” Tethys asked. He spread his arms wide, waiting as Nereus looked first at him, and then behind him.
At Caldamir.
At Armene.
At Nyx.
At me.
When his eyes wandered back to his brother, there was shame in them.
“All four princes of faerie remain,” Tethys spoke again. “What courts are missing? What princes are gone? We have at our side a high king, a second realm, and still, you stoop out of fear for the future? Fear of what may come to pass instead of what lies right before your very eyes?”
He shook his head.
“Never in my life did I think I’d call you a coward, but here I am.”
Tethys might as well have struck his brother across the face. Though Nereus had called himself the same, only moments before, hearing it from Tethys’ lips made even my own stomach twist. The regent lowered his head for just a moment, his own shame too much to bear.
“You’ve not just betrayed me, Nereus,” Tethys continued. “You’ve betrayed your own people. You’ve betrayed your own realm.”
Nereus forced himself to look back up at the Sea Prince, this time in agony.
“Just kill me, now, Tethys, and be done with it.”
Tethys stood over his brother, chest heaving, and I held my breath. I’d never seen a fae die, not like this. I’d seen my father’s last breath, but only in a kind of vision. He’d gone from the human realm in peace, never knowing what it was he’d truly lost. What it was he could have gained.
The same could not be said for Nereus.
Tethys’ fingers twitched at his side, and though no sword hung on his sea-drenched belt, I knew he needed none to end the life that sat before him. Even without this new power at his bidding, he was a faerie prince in his own court. He could have ended his brother easily once; he could do it a hundred times over now.
Even knowing that, knowing Nereus had planned to betray us, my heart still ached for what Tethys had to do.
Only, he didn’t.
Tethys’ shoulders lifted once as he drew in what was sure to be the final breath Nereus ever saw him draw, but then he let it out with a sigh.
“No good will come from shedding your blood. Act as I would act, truly, my brother, my regent. Do not disappoint me again.”
Nereus was shaking again, but this time not from the power that once threatened to tear him apart, but from an emotion that left tears glinting in the inner corners of his eyes. In a sudden, swift movement, he fell forward out of the throne and onto his knees, his hands pressing to the cool, wet floor at his brother’s feet.
“Never again will I betray you.”
“It’s not me you must not betray,” Tethys said, turning at long last so that his back was to his brother. “It’s her, your high king, that you must obey, now. For she is the final thread that holds these realms together.”
All eyes were on me now.
The walls no longer screamed to crumble, and the floor no longer shook, but I did.
The final thread that holds these realms together.
The weight of his words was what made me shake as Tethys turned his back on his brother once and for all and came, instead, to take me in his arms instead. He cared not that his brother watched, that his fellow princes stood close enough for me to hear their every breath. He took me in his arms and pulled me to him, pressed his salt-stained lips to mine, and kissed me with all the passion only he could kiss me with himself.
His hands tightened around my back before slipping slowly to my waist, tracing every curve of me through my gown. He deepened the kiss even as his fingertips dug harder into my flesh, pulling me to his body, pulling me tighter and tighter as if he could pull me all the way into himself.
I felt something break inside me the moment he drew his lips back from mine, as if I’d lost him all over again. From the look in his eyes, as soft now as they had been dark and demanding when they’d landed on his brother, I knew he felt the same way.
“My dearest Delphie,” he whispered. “What I would give to spend an eternity in your arms. One day, some years from now, I hope to do just that.”
Before I could respond, Tethys was taking my hand and pulling me back towards that empty chasm. Without asking questions, the rest of the princes followed.
I knew why, too.
That power rolling off of Tethys was undeniable. Whatever it was he had in store for us was whatever we were meant to do.
Together, we crossed through into the chasm, and together we went in.
Tethys held me tight as we sank into the water, his eyes never leaving mine. Caldamir, Nyx, and Armene were close behind, following us into that inky blackness.
The water did not swallow me as I thought it would.
No sooner had my head sunk below the surface than it was rising again. I blinked salt from my eyes as we emerged among the crashing waves of a foreign coast. I knew from the very first breath that I drew in that we were no longer in Avarath. The sea, the salt air, it tasted different. It felt different.
We were not even in Alderia. There was no sea in the human realm where I was born, but I knew in my bones that the human realm was where Tethys had taken us.
Together, the five of us rose from this distant sea, our clothes weighing heavy on our backs and shoulders as we stepped up onto the rocky shore. Before us, steep cliff walls rose high to meet a castle at the top of the hill. The sun set low on its other side, bathing us in the shadow of the cliffs even as it illuminated the white castle walls in a bright line of light.
I felt a lightness for just a moment.
We’d made it. We’d made it to the human realm, we’d bought our time, turned our hours into days. We’d avoided spies and betrayal and made it.
But this was just the very beginning. Choices had to be made, but more than that, preparations. Because there was a fight coming, one way or another. At least now we had a chance to get ahead. To plan.
Tethys’ face was set. There was something he knew, something wasn’t telling us—or couldn’t tell us. I didn’t dare ask what it was, not when I barely even dared to believe that he was actually here with us. I took his hand in mine before he could pull away, before he could disappear on me again.
My lips trembled now as I lifted up a hand to cup the side of his face.
“How?” It was my turn to whisper. “How are you here? How did you know? I thought … I thought …”
I wasn’t able to finish my words, but it didn’t matter. Tethys knew. We all knew.
Tethys leaned into my touch, his eyes closing as if in ecstasy for a moment. When they opened again, I saw a flicker of the old Tethys. I saw the glitter of laughing gold in his eyes before they darkened into something more like bronze. He cast one last look at the darkening sea before he turned back to me.
“For some reason, the gods have a vested interest in this fight.”
“As do I.”
The voice that broke Tethys and I apart at last belonged to the only fae who would ever dare do so.
The only fae left before I was, at last, whole again.
Seren.
Seren stood before us, gleaming in his silver robes. He stepped up onto the shore, too, no longer high king, but the picture of a king still. I had no idea where he came from, saw only that his clothes were dry, even if my eyes weren’t the moment I spotted those dark pools of his irises that matched mine.
I should have been happy to see him. Overjoyed.
We were together, at last, all of us.
Instead, something more like dread settled over me.
Something about all of us here, together, was more ominous than anything. It foretold of a greater struggle ahead than I knew how to face.
Seren.
Caldamir.
Armene.
Tethys.
Nyx.
And me.
Here we were, all together for the first time since Nyx betrayed me in the Starlight Court—and for the first time, ever, on the same side.
It seemed I knew even less about these old gods than I imagined. But if the gods deigned to intervene, then whatever lay ahead was grave indeed.
I had one thing I had to cling to. One thing I had to hope in.
Fate. It was always fate.
Fate had driven us here. It had brought us together.
I should have felt grateful, but just as it had before, I felt a tightening deep within me as the glamour wrapped itself ever deeper into me.
I didn’t know how I knew it. Perhaps this quickening I felt inside of me was the burden of the high king. Perhaps it was what had driven Seren, perhaps it was what guided Mordrigal and Deimos too, spurred their actions like nothing else. I didn’t know how or why I felt it, I only knew that I did.
As all six of us strode towards that white-walled castle glinting on the edge of this strange land’s Eastern Sea, I knew that though fate had brought us together, in the end, it was only going to drive us further apart.