Chapter
“THIS IS ALL VERY EXCITING,” Flor said the next morning as Damion reached down and helped her onto Anqa’s back. “I’ve never flown before.”
Magda stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders, attempting to loosen the knots.
“How do you find the armor?” Meer asked.
“It’s fine,” she muttered distractedly.
She watched Hero and Honey mount Anqa. She’d hoped that Hero would return to her, but he’d remained with Honey the whole night and it appeared he was content to stay with her. Magda missed the familiar warmth and weight of him on her shoulder.
“Fine?” Meer repeated. “It took me nearly two hours to mend your horrendous lace-work and then I had to clean—”
Magda dropped to a crouch next to Meer, lowering her voice, as Kaelan and Gur strode towards her. “Why was Kaelan released early? I asked you to keep him tied up.”
Meer’s tiny lips puckered. “Your Shine burned out after two days. The rest of the time, you slept. You were quite exhausted.”
She ignored the archness of the brownie’s last words. “Then you know—”
“I did as I was instructed,” the brownie said, crossing her arms tightly. “Fair winds. We will meet you at the Spire.” Then she popped away.
If Meer had done as Magda had instructed, then why did she still feel this unease? Perhaps it was because every time she closed her eyes, flashes of Endreas intruded. She hadn’t slept even a few minutes the night before.
Kaelan and Gur stopped a few feet from her. Flor laughed, sandwiched between Damion and Honey as Anqa lifted off the ground.
Once they were in the air, Kaelan gripped Gur’s mane and hoisted himself up.
The brownies had done a spectacular job of outfitting him in a Princely fashion: long sleeveless cloak, brown jerkin cinched at the waist over a silvery tunic and fitted trousers, scintillating Pixie-cloth greaves, and tall boots.
But the clothes and his utterly convincing disguise as Caden weren’t as compelling as the way he moved.
As though by donning Caden’s visage, he’d also acquired Caden’s fluidity of grace—so relaxed as to be on the verge of uncontrolled.
Why was it so disturbing for her to think that he’d grown accustomed to living in Cae’s body?
When he looked down at her, she couldn’t see Kaelan under Cae’s face, not even remotely.
“Ready?” he asked.
No.
He held out his hand and she took it.
Nothing. No emotions of any kind. How had she gone from hearing his thoughts to feeling absolutely nothing from him?
“Did you need to wear the armor?” he asked as she attempted to find a comfortable position.
“Yes,” she said. “Until I’m certain Lavana has been dealt with, I’ll be sleeping in it.”
Gur growled at her continued squirming.
Finally, Kaelan wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against him. She stiffened, her fists clutching in Gur’s mane.
“You’re too tense,” he said. “You’re making Gur nervous.”
Gur ywarled in agreement.
“We have a long way to travel,” Kaelan went on. “Are you going to be like this the whole journey?”
She inched from him. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” His fingers touched the back of her neck lightly. The taut muscles cording her spine loosened, her breath came easier, the barbs of worry drew back, and her chest warmed.
He slid closer so her backside fitted snug against him.
“What did you just do?” she asked.
Gur picked up speed across the meadow, stirring fairies and butterflies as his wings flapped.
“Healed you,” he said, “in a way.”
His thumb grazed across the back of her neck before his hand fell, settling high on her thigh.
But his healing felt more like a subduing. The anxious thoughts attempted to push back in but failed, as though repelled by some invisible barrier.
“When did you learn to do that?” she asked.
Gur took flight into the bright and clear morning sky. The chilled air rushed by, numbing her nose and ears.
“Flor taught me,” he said in a vaguely disinterested tone, as though his mind was elsewhere.
“How?”
“She gave me a book,” he said. “It had been Cae’s. It speaks to the nature of Princes.”
“There’s a Prince instruction manual?” She frowned. Why hadn’t there been a Rae how-to book? Then again, she’d had so many people around always telling her what to do and how to be, she wasn’t sure that if there had been a book, she would’ve wanted to read it.
“I guess you could call it that,” he said, the sound of a smile in his voice. “Much of it was a history of great Princes. The rest, a bit of this and that.”
“And it taught you how to . . . do what you just did?”
“No,” he said. “It made me realize that I’d been underutilizing my abilities. That I am capable of much more than I ever imagined.”
“Like what you just did,” she said, refraining from using the word controlling. But that’s what it had felt like, as though her emotions had been taken out of her hands.
“It’s not so different from what I did before,” he said, “when you were afraid.”
Her anger abated. He was right. It really hadn’t been different, except then the anxiety he’d taken from her had been directed elsewhere, not at him. But she supposed that it didn’t do her any good to be anxious around him, especially since she couldn’t pinpoint the source of the tension.
“You seem tired,” he said. “I could help you sleep, if you wanted.”
She chafed again. “You could put me to sleep?”
“I don’t know that I could put you to sleep, but I could make it easier for you to fall asleep.”
“No, thank you,” she said, though the mention of sleep brought a sudden heaviness to her eyes. “Tell me more about this book.”
“Aside from the historical biographies, it spoke to the varying abilities of different Princes. It even spoke of traveling like I do, but not through the Shadow Realms.”
“That’s because you’re an Elf,” she muttered.
“It talked about a Realm of Light that apparently some Princes and a few Raes could pass through.”
“Huh.”
“It also spoke about the Shine, about claiming. It struck me that claiming is not dissimilar to what my kind do with the heart-place. You said an Elf Prince gives away pieces of his heart to make himself stronger, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“When a Rae calls upon her inner light and joins it with that of a Prince, making them one whole . . . it sounds very similar.”
“Maybe,” she said, shaking away the fatigue. The warmth radiating off of him and the rocking motion of Gur’s flying weren’t helping. “Except a Rae doesn’t go mad or kill herself if her Prince dies.”
“Maybe not, but the histories all ended very similarly. One died and then the other died soon after. Some of them killed themselves in grief.”
“I’m sure those were the more interesting stories,” she said. “The ones worth repeating. But I’ve known plenty of Princes and Raes who’ve gone on to live quite long, healthy lives after the other dies.”
Her mother for one.
Of course, she suspected her mother was guilty of having her Prince murdered. Perhaps in doing so, she had severed whatever connection they’d shared.
Vaguely, Magda wondered if she could free herself from Kaelan by murdering him.
Not that she had any desire to do so. In fact, she deeply wished that she could repair whatever had gone wrong between them.
She wasn’t sure if her desire to reconnect with him stemmed from the heart-place he’d mistakenly given her, or if she simply missed the ease of the friendship they’d had.
Or maybe she just missed feeling him, the ever-present surf of his emotions breaking upon her.
No longer knowing what he felt at any given moment left an emptiness inside of her.
A distant cousin to the feeling she’d experienced when he’d died.
“Kaelan—”
“Cae.”
“Do you still love Honey?”
He was quiet for a breath.
“No.”
“Does that make you less sure that you know what love is?”
“I know what it is, Magda. I may not understand it, but I know it.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I am.”
“I’m sorry about what happened to her.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m a Rae. I’m supposed to protect the Lands, my people—”
“Honey isn’t one of your people.”
“If I can’t protect an innocent nymph in my company, then who can I protect? I’m not even sure—”
“What?”
“I’m not sure I can protect myself,” she finished, sagging. “If I fight Lavana, there’s a very good chance I’ll lose.”
His grip tightened on her thigh. “Mag—”
“If I do, please help Damion and Honey escape the Spire. And Hero, watch out for him, all right?”
“You’re not going to die,” he said, breath hot on her ear. “Why are we talking about this?”
“Because I need to say it. Because I might not be here to say it later.”
“No wonder you’re so anxious,” he said. “Have you no confidence—?”
“It’s not about confidence,” she said. “I have the Enneahedron, I have you; therefore, I have a good chance. But I have no control over the judgment of the Crown or the rest of the family. There’s also a real possibility I could be dead before the week is out.
” Her energy ebbed away. “And to be honest, I won’t risk speaking freely to you or anyone so long as we are in the city.
You’re not the only one who will have to put on a different face for the court. ”
“And what face will that be?”
“One that will make no one doubt my confidence,” she said. “The face of a Rae. There’s one more thing,” she said, holding up her left hand and the ironwood sheath. “If I die, find a way to return this to my mother’s tomb.”
“What is it?”
She lowered her hand, fingers curling in the coarse fur of Gur’s mane. “Something I hope not to have to use.”
“Why are you telling me this? Why not Damion?”
“I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but . . . I trust you to take my words to heart, or at least give them some thought. Damion will only try to get himself killed if I die. Just as he did for Alanna. He won’t think about anything.”
The silence that followed left her drifting, fending off the pull of sleep.
“Magda,” he said softly.
“Hm?”
“I need to tell you something . . .”
She roused, squinting against the fierce blue span of sky and the wind that tore tears from her eyes. “Yes?”
More silence.
“What is it?”
“I asked Damion to train me . . .”
“I know.”
“So I can kill my father . . . and my brother.”
Her heart sank. “Kaelan . . .”
“I know you love him—”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “Why don’t you believe me?”
“I can’t stop you from feeling whatever you feel. But you can’t stop me either.”
“Kaelan, please, don’t.”
“If I don’t, I will always live in fear of being discovered.”
Pain wrenched through her. “Vengeance won’t bring you peace.”
“I didn’t start this—”
“That’s right. As of now you’re innocent.
They’re the guilty ones. Endreas has shown who he really is by doing nothing to help you, to protect you, his own brother.
Maybe the Rae I was before wouldn’t have cared.
But I do. I don’t want to be that heartless noble again, the one who puts her own advancement above her friends, above what’s right. ”
“The prophecy—”
She twisted to glare at him. “Fuck the prophecy.”
His brow arched. “That’s not how you used that word before.”
“It’s a very versatile word,” she said. “Damn it, Kaelan. Don’t do this. Please, I am begging you.”
His gaze remained fixed on the horizon. “I’ve made my decision. After you’ve vied for Radiant, I’ll join Python and the Resistance.”
She turned her back to him again.
“This is why I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I knew you’d be angry.”
“I’m not angry. I’m disappointed. You have no idea what you’re getting into.”
“I’ve been meeting with Kirk.”
She twisted again. “What? When?”
“They have greater resources than you realize,” he said. “I’ll be safe with them, until the time comes.”
“You didn’t tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
Her face burned. “And here I thought I could trust you.” She turned again, wishing he had let her fall asleep earlier. Now her ears were ringing and her head pounding and her teeth grinding.
“You can help me, help the Resistance,” he said. “They want you too. They’ll support you if you vie for the Crown.”
“Right. So there can be war with the King.” She shook her head. “I won’t be Python’s puppet, or Endreas’s. Is this why you’re helping me? You want me to succeed because you think I’ll help you start your war?”
“No,” he said. “I decided to help you long before any of this. But this is something I have to do, with or without you.”
“Then it will be without me.”
After that, neither of them spoke.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the furious barrage of tears attempting to break through. The chill that had fled her returned, seeping deeper, down into her chest.
Though Kaelan was right behind her, she felt as though she had lost him all over again.