Chapter 41 #2
“That sounds lovely,” Honey said, putting out her arm. Hero scurried up its length and settled on her shoulder. Flor and Honey departed towards the house.
“Two days?” Magda said in a hush to Damion.
“How much longer did you expect them to keep me tied up?” Kaelan asked, turning towards her finally, transforming back into his true self. Green eyes lit.
“You’re not supposed to change—” Damion started.
“It was for your own good,” she said to Kaelan.
A sharp smile edged his lips. “Is that so?”
“I think I’ll just . . .” Damion tromped away, leaving Magda and Kaelan glaring at each other. She’d expected him to be angry, but she hadn’t expected a hot flare to be licking up her own spine.
He tossed his wooden swords lazily into the sand. “It would’ve been nice to have a little warning that I was about to be imprisoned.”
“It should’ve been six,” she said hotly. “You don’t know what it’s like when a Rae is in her Shine. I did it to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“From doing something we’d both regret.”
His gaze pushed away. Every lean muscle on his sand-encrusted torso flexed.
For as angry as he appeared, she kept expecting his emotions to reach out and impact her. Yet they remained elusive.
She took a step closer. “Look, I am sorry. I can’t imagine that being tied up for two days was a particularly pleasant experience, but—”
“Forget it,” he said, returning to Cae’s dark haired, silver-eyed facade.
He brushed the sand from his arms, slightly thicker than his real arms, as was his chest, though he was also a bit shorter.
“It’s not important.” He flashed a careless smile, one that was so Cae her pulse tripped at the sight of it.
“We have bigger problems, wouldn’t you say? ”
Yes, like how his shift from anger to apparent indifference, and from himself to Cae, was tangling her up inside.
“I’m going to clean up,” he said, cutting a slantwise path wide of her.
“Kaelan,” she said, sidestepping to intercept him.
“Cae,” he corrected, gazing down at her with silvery-flashing eyes. “That’s what you can call me today.”
The smirking grin was very Princely, but not particularly Kaelan. It made her teeth clench.
She shifted back from him. “What’s happened to you?”
He crossed his arms. “You mean besides you sending your cousin and a brownie to tie me up with gorgon rope?”
“Please try to understand . . .”
“I understand,” he said with another flash of anger that burned out as quickly as it had appeared. His eyes cooled, turning hard and flinty. “We need to talk about what’s going to happen after.”
“After . . . I vie for Radiant?”
“What happens if you succeed and what happens if you fail,” he said.
“What happens to us, you mean?”
He gazed down at her dully, as if it were obvious.
“Well,” she said, tone hardening to match his, “if I have to fight Lavana and I fail, I’ll be dead so . . .”
His stony exterior cracked. “You didn’t die the last time.”
“Only almost,” she said. “Since I was underage, Alanna was allowed to send me into exile. I was only even allowed to vie because my mother had been Radiant.”
“But you might not have to fight,” he said.
“That’s one possibility. The Crown could name Lavana Radiant. In that case, I’ll probably also be dead, or at least hunted. I’ll probably have to return to exile. It’s very difficult to challenge for Radiant, fail, and survive.”
“And if you don’t fail?”
“If I become Radiant, then . . . Lavana will be the one who dies. And in that case . . . I’ll keep my word. You’ll be free to return to your forest, your family, with Honey, just like we talked about.”
“And what if I don’t want to go back?”
“You can go wherever you want.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
Her throat tightened. “Meaning what? You’d rather stay at the Spire, as a Pixie?” She shook her head. “Eris’s gift might be enough to change your appearance, but I’m not sure it’s enough to change you from being a Prince. There was a reason I had Damion tie you up, Kaelan—”
“Cae—”
“You’re a Prince, Kaelan. There are many more Raes in the Lands than there are Princes. Unless you’re claimed, you won’t be able to keep yourself from them . . . and they won’t be able to keep themselves from you, I promise.”
His gaze combed over her face. “And what would you do, a Princeless Radiant?”
She heard the unasked question under his words, the same implication Damion had pressed against her. Always the same.
“If I become Radiant, then I’ll take a Prince,” she said. “I’ll kill Lavana and claim Riker.”
He blinked. Obviously that hadn’t been the answer he’d expected.
“She’s already claimed him,” he said.
“He’ll be free again once she’s dead,” she said.
“But what about—?”
“What about what?” she challenged.
He leaned over her. “My brother will come for you.”
“And?”
He sneered. “Don’t pretend—”
“If I’m Radiant, and if he attempts to harm my claimed Prince, then I will defend my Prince to the death. I told you, I’m attracted to your brother, but I don’t trust him—”
“You are not as heartless as you pretend,” he said.
“Of course not, I have a piece of yours.”
The clouds tracking over his face darkened. “That was a mistake,” he said softly.
For some reason, his words stung.
“Whatever I choose to do in the end,” she said, throat burning with the venom she was holding back, “I’ll keep my word. You can leave now if you wish. Be whoever you want. Go wherever you want. I’m not forcing you to help me.”
“You’re just so eager to see the back of me,” he said.
“I’m eager for you to be safe,” she said, “and to be as far from all of this madness as possible. Isn’t that what you want?
You don’t really intend to join the Resistance do you?
Eventually, they’ll want you to reveal your true identity.
The King will start hunting you again. You didn’t see what happened to Froenz’s hall.
The Resistance couldn’t even protect themselves. ”
“Once you’re finished with me where else am I supposed to go? Do you really think I could go back to the forest?”
“Why not?” she asked.
“What about all the roving, lascivious Raes?”
Her head began to throb. “What do you want, Kaelan?”
He looked away, shaking his head. “I don’t know what I want. I thought I did but . . .”
“But what?”
“I keep wondering,” he said, as if thinking aloud, “what it would’ve been like to be him.
To have been born first. To be the one who was kept.
Would I be like him? A warrior, a true Prince?
Would he be the one standing here, hiding behind a dead man’s face?
I wonder how it was I escaped. Who was the sylph?
And about my mother . . . Do you know anything about her? ”
She sighed. “No, I’m sorry.”
He leaned in. “Maybe you can ask Endreas the next time you see him. That is, if you spend any time talking.”
Her back stiffened. “What do you—?”
“I’m not really surprised that you’re attracted to him, Magda. After all, he’s a real Prince,”—he stepped back, holding out his arms—“I’m just an imp pretending to be one.”
He couldn’t have known about Endreas, could he? How? Had Meer told him?
“You didn’t . . . while I was . . .” she stammered, trying to come up with a way to ask without arousing suspicion. “After they untied you, you didn’t try to come into my room, did you?”
Everything had been such a blur. She had no idea how long Endreas had been with her or when he had left. Could Kaelan have entered her room and seen something? If he hadn’t been tied up the entire time, he could’ve used the Shadow Realms . . .
Her heart leapt into a gallop.
He folded his arms and cocked his head, gazing down at her with flat silver eyes. “You look worried,” he said. “Do you really think you’re so irresistible?”
“I was in my Shine—” she said through her teeth.
“Oh,” he said. “And if I had come into your room during your Shine, then what? You wouldn’t remember?”
She chewed her lip. Was she unnerved by his hard attitude? Or was it because she feared he might find out she’d been with Endreas?
“Kaelan—”
“It’s Cae,” he said sharply. “Caden. I am a Pixie Prince, and I have been in exile for the last fourteen years, waiting, for you. And since I went through all that trouble, you can do me a favor and forget about the imp and the Elf. You need me and I’m here. Try to remember that, puppy.”