Chapter 52
“Would you like to go for a walk this evening?” Vaeron murmured after a fourth grueling day of sitting in the crystal chairs and delivering fake visions.
“Please,” I breathed, nearly slumping into him with relief.
The walls pressed in on me from all sides, threatening to swallow me whole, and if I was confined any longer, I was going to scream.
It had been days since I’d visited the healer too, though other than a slight ache after not moving enough, my broken knee was nearly whole again.
Dancing would still take time, but my limp had all but vanished.
We emerged into the same garden as before, where Vaeron had cornered me and said he loved hunting me. That he’d only let me run again if he knew I wanted to be caught.
The end of the summer hung in the air, heavy with humidity. Immediately, sweat dotted my skin. But I didn’t care. Not as I closed my eyes and inhaled something other than sickly sweet smoke.
Decadent orchid notes banished the lingering scent. Birds chirped and sang overhead, their melodies mingling into the sound of the forest.
“Better, little fugitive?” my mate purred, coming behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist.
Yet instead of relaxing into the posture, tension still threaded his muscles, like he expected someone to pounce on us at any moment. We hadn’t spoken much about the trial by light, but the anticipation of it never left his mind.
Or mine.
How was it that I’d gone from loathing Vaeron to now fearing the outcome, the consequences? For no matter which house the Goddess sided with, there was no winning for him. For us.
Danger lurked around every corner, hidden behind courtly smiles and gilded walls.
“So much better.” At least out here, it was open. The bars of my cage didn’t thicken. But I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that the relief was permanent. No, it was merely borrowed time.
Of which we had so little already. My mate fell into bed late into the evening, dark circles growing deeper by the day. We scarcely had a moment to speak to one another from dawn until dusk, both so focused on the tasks before us. Even at night, he only managed a few words before drifting off.
Vaeron rocked me like tides under a ship, and yet my shoulders refused to drop away from my ears.
The Seers had been pressed for more and more each day. The screams were so loud now that I didn’t have to strain my hearing to produce a false prophecy.
Echoes of my friend’s earlier torment reverberated in my mind. The blood that had dripped from her nose by the end of the day stained my vision. Heraphia was frail, shaky, her dresses draping looser every day. Food remained untouched on her plates.
She’d even lost enthusiasm for our plan to figure out a way to end the war.
During our stolen moments of peace, she barely had the energy to convey what she’d Seen of the Koron and Korona.
And we hadn’t discussed more than that, our efforts grinding to a halt when my co-conspirator could scarcely hold herself upright after a session.
What nipped at my nerves went far beyond worry for her.
Heraphia was going to burn out, to die like the other Seers had, if the Korona didn’t relent.
The demands she placed on us were grueling.
Quotas for visions, a secondary power we couldn’t directly control, was cruel, and if we didn’t offer up something, we weren’t allowed to leave.
I wasn’t under any illusion that it wasn’t a punishment directed at me. Vaeron’s absence was penance. Everyone and everything around me was unraveling, thread by thread.
A low hum filled the air, and I opened my eyes, finding a crystalline falcon gliding our way. I squinted, trying to make out Ilae’s distant, blurred form. Only to spot a second ghost gliding just beneath his wing.
The auravane clicked as he swooped down, landing on a perch a short distance away. With a delicate flap of its wings, a smaller one landed beside him. My breath hitched as its silver eyes collided with mine. Not an it—a her. This was Ysolthe, Ilae’s mate.
“Come on,” Vaeron murmured in my ear, taking my hand and leading me toward the legendary birds. I hadn’t seen Ilae since we arrived, nor had my mate spoken of him.
“Hello,” I cooed. He ducked his head, allowing me to reach up and stroke the spot just behind his antlers that Vaeron had shown me. No sharp feathers sliced into the pads of my fingers.
To my shock, Ysolthe did the same. I glanced at my mate, brows dipping.
“Go on,” he encouraged.
Tentatively, I reached out, stroking the back of her head. She clicked, the sound similar to the one Ilae made when he was content.
An image slammed into my mind. One of a clutch of eggs atop a mountain. Of my mate, younger than his current age, hands raised in surrender. Of Ilae, placing himself between his family and the intruder.
With a gasp, I jolted back into myself. Ysolthe picked her head up, eyes unblinking. A series of clicks and hums rumbled out of her, and somehow…I understood what she meant.
That mates were sacred. That they protected their own. That they stayed through difficult moments.
I tilted my head to look at Vaeron. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
“That Ysolthe chose to bond with you?”
I nodded, unable to voice the words.
“Aye. I wanted you to have her, to have them, in case something should happen to me.” He looked away, jaw tense.
My body went cold. “Do you truly think you won’t be able to throw the trial?”
Vaeron lifted his gaze skyward. “The Goddess decides whose actions were true.”
I inhaled, fighting the tremble that wanted to roll down my spine. “You have your own will.”
Finally, he lowered his head so he peered down at me. Agony etched his expression. “No, little fugitive, I do not.”
Vaeron wasn’t the monster I’d painted him to be. These tender moments, this hidden side of him, they wove together to make me believe. To make me trust.
“Will they follow us as we walk?” I asked the birds more than my mate.
“Follow,” he told Ilae. The auravane ruffled his feathers.
Ysolthe spread her wings. In one mighty beat, she was airborne.
Ilae hovered with her as we picked our way down a path lined with massive palms, the cups of the leaves cradling pools of water.
Smaller birds bathed in their depths, chirping and flitting away once they noticed the hunters circling overhead.
Tall trees interspersed the space around us, trunks massive and encircled in staircases.
“Where do those go?” I asked Vaeron.
“Hmm?” he replied, blinking away his distant distraction. I pointed to the trees. “Depends. Some go to platforms, others to barracks. Thalvireth is protected from all sides and all angles since the Demons too possess the ability to fly.”
“I’d like to see Sivy, sometime,” I told him.
The bit I’d been able to glimpse upon our approach had seemed magical, with Angels walking along rope bridges among the canopies.
Houses built into the forest we called home, both high and low.
A heavy sigh escaped me, posture deflating.
“But I know I am not allowed out of the palace.”
I hoped Vaeron would take my bait.
The slightest intake of breath and the sliver of guilt through our connection told me he had. “I know, Sylaira. I know. But things will change soon.”
I stopped in the middle of a thick brush that concealed us from any prying stares. “What do you mean?”
He picked up my hands and placed them on his broad chest. The steady thrum of his heart soothed me further. His knuckles brushed across my cheek, and he tucked my silvery hair behind my ear. “I can’t tell you yet, but I have plans in motion for after the trial.”
“What kind of plans?” I pressed, hope taking flight in my chest.
“A way to get you out of here,” he murmured. “I need you to trust me until the time is right. Can you do that?”
There was that word again.
Trust.
Every time I reached for it, it seemed to cut me. But since revealing our mating bond to the whole court, Vaeron had demonstrated why I should believe that his duty to me was now positioned above his duty to his sister and to the realm.
But I’d told him once before that I would rely on him when he was withholding information, and that had led to the unexpected reveal that he was betrothed to another.
He searched my face, his expression pleading. He didn’t barb me with a reminder that I’d agreed before and chosen not to after once already.
And that had to mean something, didn’t it? That we’d been able to progress past much of our animosity. That we’d been able to unite as one now that we shared a common enemy. Teeth raking my bottom lip, I nodded. “Okay.”
He wrapped his arms around me, holding me close again. I inhaled his scent—stormwood and smoke. Let it anchor me. Let it offer me harbor amid the storm.
“But I can’t leave Heraphia. Not while she’s like this.”
Vaeron was probably tired of hearing my worries for her. Instead, he shocked me with, “She is coming too.”
A gasp slipped past my lips. I tipped my head up, chin resting on his muscular chest. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
Relief broke the vine around my ribs.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine in a tender, loving kiss. Then, he rested his forehead against mine. “I told you one day that you wouldn’t think the worst of me at every turn. I am trying to earn that, Sylaira. I will protect you by whatever means necessary.”
Emotion thickened my throat. If he truly meant it, then maybe now was time to toss out hints of my own plan, as I’d promised Heraphia I would do. “What about ending the war?”
“That is exactly what I’m trying to do, little fugitive.” His gaze was steady, unwavering. The devotion in his expression made me want to melt further into his embrace. “You want peace? There will be peace.”
“But how? How can you possibly achieve that alone?” I managed to choke out.
He curled further down so his mouth brushed against my ear. “I am not alone.”