17. Rae
RAE
I could feel the truth in this stranger’s words. This massive man with tattoos that I would’ve likely thought made him look scary had I seen him walking down the street opposite me. But I wasn’t scared.
Instead, a warmth spread through my limbs and swirled around my heart. He wasn’t a stranger at all. Feeling his hand in mine was the most comforting sensation I’d ever known.
“Stop touching her, Kian,” Rhys growled.
The sound of his name rumbled out, the vibrations swirling around us.
Kian.
It fit him. I wasn’t sure why, but it did. And somehow, getting that piece of him—a name—made him feel even less like a stranger.
Kian’s violet gaze flicked to Rhys, but he didn’t let me go. “You don’t have any right to say who I touch, child stealer.”
Child stealer? What in the world was he talking about?
Rhys’s broad chest rose and fell in ragged pants. “I will rip your arms from your body and feast on your blood if you do not remove yourself from her.”
Panic flared again. Something about the two of them fighting set me on edge. There was a wrongness to it that I couldn’t explain.
“Stop. Please,” I whispered. “Don’t fight.”
Two gazes snapped to me. Violet and gold.
Neither man moved, as if they weren’t sure what to do.
The woman they’d addressed as “Queen” let out a huff. “Enough with the theatrics. The girl is ours, and you will return her to us, or there will be war.”
A low rumble sounded. Thunder, maybe?
Ayden scoffed. “You’re welcome to her, as far as I’m concerned.”
Rhys let out a snarl, snapping his teeth at his brother in an animalistic move that had me jolting backward.
Kian caught me just before I fell, tugging me upward.
I collided with his broad chest. He wore what looked like a linen shirt, but it was so thin that I could feel every plane and ridge beneath it.
He smelled like juniper and the freshest mountain air, and it felt as if breathing him in could cleanse every problem.
My body started to buzz, and I felt a little dizzy.
“Kian,” Rhys growled in warning.
I stepped back, creating a little space. I tried calming breaths, but I wanted more of that juniper and those mountains.
“Rae!” The voice that called out was young and feminine.
A flash of movement caught my eye as a girl who looked to be in her early teens dashed forward.
“Kyrie, stop!” The man who’d called out had dark hair and hard eyes, his voice only doubling down on that hardness.
The girl seemed unaffected, and I watched in admiration as she darted around the warriors on the Luminary lands and into the burned-out barrier between the territories like some sort of elfin gymnast.
But as she neared the land I stood upon, panic struck. The soldiers braced, some even reaching for weapons.
“Do not touch her,” Rhys bellowed. His voice rang out with such authority that the warriors had no choice but to listen.
The girl slipped between two of them, running straight for me. She hit me full force, making me stumble back a step. “I missed you,” she breathed into my shoulder.
My arms came around her on instinct, but I didn’t know her. I tried to scrounge up any recollection I might have but came up empty.
The girl tipped her head back, her golden eyes sparkling. “I’m your sister. I’m Kyrie.”
“M-m-my sister?” It was all I could say. I had nothing else to give.
Her mouth curved as she kept holding on to me. “We haven’t met. Mom had me after you…left. But I see your portrait every day. Your eyes are the same. And your freckles.”
She reached up, ghosting a finger over my nose and cheek.
“My sister,” I said again, as if that was all I could manage. I had a sister. My eyes burned. I’d always wanted a sibling. I’d wondered if it would make me feel less lonely.
Standing here now, I knew it would. Because I felt less alone already, not even really knowing this girl at all.
“Do we…?” I swallowed. “Do we have other siblings? Parents?”
Kyrie bobbed her head in a nod, making her dark hair shift around her shoulders. “We have an older sister. Izzy.” She inclined her head toward the Luminaries.
A young woman who could’ve only been a year or two older than me sat atop a horse next to my so-called betrothed.
She was stunningly beautiful. A match for his gold features in every way except her expression.
That was carefully blank, her pursed lips and cool eyes the only giveaways to her emotions.
And nothing about her expression said she was happy that I’d returned.
My stomach sank.
“Mother and Father are there.” Kyrie lifted a hand to point at a man and a woman. The man was the one who’d called after her, and the hardness hadn’t left his face. It matched the tension in my older sister yet seemed to be turned up a notch or two.
The woman, on the other hand, didn’t hide her emotions. Tears welled in her blue eyes as she wrung her hands. She had just a hint of silver woven through the blond hair at her temples.
Then, an older woman stepped forward. Only the hint of wrinkles around her eyes and her purely silver hair gave her age away because she moved as if she were no more than twenty. She beamed at me. “And I’m Olympia, your grandmother.”
“As charming as this reunion is, it’s time to end this,” the Queen barked. “Rae, Kyrie. Return.”
Rhys stepped in front of us. “Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged,” Kian snarled.
I braced, wrapping a protective arm around the girl who might be my sister.
Olympia held up a hand. “Cease your fighting.” The two men stood and stiffened. “I’m afraid there is a greater purpose for my granddaughter. I invoke the Council of the Fates.”
The sky above us swirled in a sea of light and dark, and thunder rolled as lightning pierced the clouds.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I muttered.
The Queen stiffened on her mount. “What is the meaning of this, Olympia?”
My grandmother smiled, running her hands over a dress simpler than the others—one that was streaked with dirt, as though she’d been gardening. “I had a vision. Soraya is one of the fated.”
There was silence for one beat, then another. And then, everything erupted.