Chapter 40 Ariana
ARIANA
Isat on the floor of an empty room with my legs crossed, hands folded in my lap, and eyes shut.
Power thrummed within me. Like oceanic water, it rolled in waves before crashing against my internal control.
Focusing, I pushed it beyond of myself. My eyes slid open.
Waves from within move out in misty sprays.
The entire room filled with a liquid fog that touched everything but me.
My gaze drifted up, and my conjuring followed.
It condensed and shifted, forming a wall.
All of it was done while my fingers were firmly closed into fists.
Clapping came from behind, echoing through the empty space and stealing my concentration. The mist lost its formation, falling into liquid pools before vanishing.
“You’re getting really good at that.” Landin’s voice reverberated through the room.
“Still not good enough.” I rose to my feet, turning to face him after wiping the sweat on my brow with my sleeve.
“Are we prepared for tomorrow?” I asked.
It was the first time we would go through the Lysians’ white night without the protection of the treaty.
A night when they became more instinctual and less predictable.
He nodded. “Of course we are. We are always prepared for the white night.” His smile faltered a touch.
“Any word from your . . . friend.” It was a bit of a culture shock to stop referring to the Lysians as animals when I first returned home.
After all, if we were to be judged by how we cared for our prisoners, the Bavadrins were far less humane.
At least in the days when Fraser ruled. Those days were no more.
We were going to change the way we viewed others.
We were going to change a lot of things.
“No word,” I replied lowly. I wondered who would reach out to whom first. Erik wanted my help, didn’t he?
I expected him to make contact, but he didn’t.
After my escape and my return home three weeks ago, I heard nothing.
It was as if the treaty was never broken, and the boundary between our lands was not to be crossed again.
A part of me longed to go to the border that night. Erik told me that during the white night, he patrolled the edge of his territory. I wondered if that was still true. He probably would think me mad for going there alone on such a night. The thought nearly brought a smile to my lips.
My attention refocused on Landin. He stood stiffly, rubbing the back of his neck.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, closing the distance between us. I was in an abandoned building in the woods just outside of our city’s border. It was a trek to get there. Landin would not have come all that way if he did not have something he needed.
“Well, nothing that I know of,” he said while retrieving something from his pocket, holding it out to me.
“This arrived for you.” He held out a neatly folded piece of paper, sealed with silver wax.
There was no seal imprinted on the wax. It was simply melted onto the paper. My name was written on it.
My pulse spiked.
“The Lysians?” I asked him, taking the letter.
He shrugged, watching me. “I’m not sure. It was brought by bird—” He paused as if he didn’t know how to say whatever was on the tip of his tongue.
“What? Tell me.”
Landin scratched the back of his head again while shifting on his feet uncomfortably. “Well, it got delivered to some kid who said it arrived by a paper bird.”
My brows rose in surprise. “A conjured bird?”
His hand dropped to his side. “Don’t know. I was not present when it arrived. I only have what the child said to go from.”
I frowned, looking at my name written on the paper in neat handwriting.
Flipping it over, I slid a finger beneath the wax, breaking the seal.
Ariana
I have heard such remarkable stories of you and am dying to know whether they are indeed true. And so, I would like to extend an invitation to dinner in the Sidhe territory. Please feel free to bring a handful of Bavadrins with you, as I do not expect a woman such as yourself to travel alone.
No harm will come to you or your companions on this night as long as there will be no aggression from them. This is something that I will swear to you.
I understand it is roughly a three-day trip from your home to mine. Therefore, I will allow for an appropriate time for you to prepare to make such a journey and ask that you arrive ten days after receiving this letter.
I highly look forward to meeting you.
-Clause, King of the Sidhe
The letter held a blood smear to seal the promise he made.
Landin swore under his breath, having read it along with me.
“Where is Edda?” I asked while re-reading the note, as if there may have been something I missed or misread.
“I will find her.” The sense of urgency in his voice was evident. He certainly had questions floating around in his thick skull but was too surprised by the turn of events to ask any.
“Tell her to meet me in my room,” I ordered and ran out of the building with Landin close behind.
Moments later, I was on horseback and riding home. Rain, the horse Erik left behind and the fastest we had on our side of the border, sprinted full speed. Her hooves hit the dirt with powerful grace, sending bits of grass and rock flying. She brought me home in hardly any time.
Running through the building, I hoped that Edda would be there, somewhere. She wasn’t. After a thorough search—I looked into some rooms a few times—I finally retreated to my quarters to wait.
After three minutes, I nearly ran back out to recheck all the rooms again. An uncomfortable nervousness took hold of me. It was torture having such a spike of adrenaline coursing through me without having anything to physically act upon. And all of it stemmed from a single letter.
Clause, the ruler of the Sidhe, was calling me forth to dinner.
It was not something I had ever heard of happening before.
I could not imagine what being in the Sidhe King’s presence would be like. Did he know the Lysians were after him and that I believed there may have been truth to their accusations?
Edda entered my room with no warning, marching straight to me.
She did not ask whether something was wrong, for she could read me like a book.
Silently, I held out the letter. She took it in her hands, her eyes flowing over it.
When she finished, she released a sigh and sat down on the edge of my bed.
“Well, you must go,” she said simply.
“You aren’t afraid of what may happen if I do?” I couldn’t keep the surprise from my face, for she had decided so quickly.
Her lips pinched, as they often did when she considered how much she wanted to tell me.
Were there things she knew of him? “He swore with blood. The letter is sealed with it. The Sidhe King will not break his promise as long as you do not break it either. You should probably prick your finger and mark this too, for good measure.” Concern shadowed her features.
Edda’s gaze flowed over the letter for a second time.
“And you think that will work?” I asked. She spoke as if she knew him, though that was impossible. Did she see him in visions of the future? If she had, she never shared that with me.
Edda shrugged. “Blood oaths worked to keep the lands here separated from the Lysians and Sidhe for millennia until that one Lysian King made sure the treaty broke.”
That logic was faulty, for if the Sidhe had been stealing Lysian and Bavadrin citizens, then the treaty was broken long ago. We just had not been wise enough to realize it.
“But Fraser was not killed due to its breaking,” I stated. There was still a price to be paid for the breaking of the treaty. The Spirit indicated that I was the curse. Though I did not understand how.
“Was he not?” Edda raised an eyebrow.
“Things could have happened the way they did without such a treaty,” I stated. Without Fraser’s willingness to even hear others out, his own actions alone sealed his fate, treaty or not.
She shifted the conversation away from the treaty and onto the matter at hand.
“You will not always understand. There may be things that turn out not as you expect, but they will be the way they should. I am certain that the person who wrote this letter will not bring you harm, at least not while within the rules of this agreement. Clause is dangerous, but he is also a man of his word.”
Edda had always been my protector. However, a strange rift grew between us ever since the Lysians entered our lives.
She created distance but without actually leaving my side.
Edda was family to me. It was a bond that I thought would never be broken.
However, those were childish thoughts, for there were no bonds that could never be broken.
Everything breaks with the right amount of pressure.
Still, I trusted her. If she believed it was safe to go, then I would.
I nodded, agreeing to the dinner. Intrigue partially overrode my fear. What would the Sidhe territory be like, what Clause would be like? Would one dinner help me learn whether he took Bavadrins or Lysians?
“But, as soon as the meal is over, leave,” Edda warned, looking from the letter back to me. “This says nothing of protection or safety if you spent the night there. Do not linger.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t spend the night.” That was something she did not have to worry about. “Will you accompany me?”
Edda hesitated. It was the first time I had ever in my life seen her waver about anything. In all the years I had known her, certainty always guided her. She had eternally known what she wanted to do or what she believed should be done. Her gut was steadfast and fearless in its guidance.
“Yes. For you, I will go,” she finally said, placing the letter on the bed and stood.
She walked across the room and paused at the door. “Are you planning on seeing your friend tonight?”
I could never in my life get one over on her.
“Yes,” I told her. There was no use in hiding it. If before I was just contemplating going to the border, then now, I was certain. Erik needed to know what was going on. We needed to stop avoiding one another.
“Good,” she said, surprising me yet again. “Make contact, but do not tell the Lysian King of that letter, not on a night like tonight. It isn’t safe. Set up a different time to meet with him.”
“You think he will try to hurt me?”
“The Spirit releases the Lysians tonight. News that will disturb should be given when he has better control of himself. Trust me on this.” Her onyx gaze observed me. “Be careful.”
“Is that why you never taught me to conjure without my hands?” The question had been gnawing at the edges of my mind every day since my return.
Edda arched a brow, a faint, knowing smile curving her lips. “Clever,” she said simply, offering no further explanation. But that single word—her subtle acknowledgment—nearly floored me.
I watched her in silence, my thoughts tangled. How had we ended up here? Then again, I realized, this was how it had always been. She led, and I followed, unquestioningly. “You always knew the Lysians would come.”
“No,” she replied, her tone turning sharp.
“I knew it was a possibility, one thread in a web of futures. But I also knew this—if you ever found yourself at the mercy of the Lysian King, your survival would hinge on him believing himself superior. His kind thrive on control and power.” Her mouth twisted into a cruel smile.
“Don’t look so horrified. If you had kept your distance and forced them to their knees, all would have been well.
I gave you options—more chances of survival, depending on the choices you made. ”
“Why not tell me any of this?” I demanded, the hurt in my voice cutting through the space between us. “Do you not trust me?”
“It’s not about trust,” she snorted out a cruel laugh. “It’s about the danger of tampering with fate. You would have tried to change it, and that is far more perilous than you realize.”
“And what is my fate?” I pressed.
“You know enough of it already,” she said, her words final, a quiet weight settling in the air between us.
“And the Sidhe King?” I asked after a beat.
“What of him?” Her expression remained unreadable.
“If you know things, then tell me.” The rumors of his immortality rang in my ears, a constant hum of mystery surrounding the man.
Edda exhaled, her lips curling into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“The Sidhe King cannot be contained, and you cannot hope to control him. He does not share the simple, brutish mind of a Lysian, nor does he rely solely on physical strength. He is far more dangerous than that. Let him too close, and he will destroy you. Do not try to understand his motives for anything. You may think you want to know, but you do not.”
She turned as if the conversation were over.
“Did you know he was taking our citizens?” I called after her.
Her steps slowed, but she didn’t face me. “Do you know for certain that he is?”
And then she was gone, leaving me alone.