Chapter 9
KAELERON
Wind rattled the windowpanes as I stalked along the second-floor corridor from my office, the storm a fraction less violent than it had been yesterday.
I gazed at the world beyond the arched windows of the vestibule as I followed the sweeping stairs downwards, my steps slowing as I reached the next floor.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was standing before the window, watching as the mist of rain swept across the empty garden that had a sad sort of hollowness about it now.
When before it had been a source of joy and life.
To me.
To my little wolf.
She had brought that place to life for me, transforming it from a place I merely went to stretch my legs at the end of a long day, to one I sought out so I could enjoy it with her.
So I could see how much she loved my castle.
My court.
And dare to hope that she would stay here with me.
But now she was gone, and this place felt like death.
I drew down a breath that stretched my black tunic across my chest and exhaled it, trying to purge that writhing darkness that flowed from the corners of my mind and my heart whenever I let my guard slip and allowed my bleak thoughts to rise to the surface.
Jenavyr had dogged my every step for the last two days, hounding me with her constant presence and watchful gaze as she had waited for me to break again and allow my emotions to get the better of me.
I held them in check, refusing to let them rattle my court and shake my people, but even when I had them under control the storm refused to fully abate.
The clouds remained, the gentler wind driving rain against the castle and the court.
But it was better than it being ravaged by lightning.
The only time my sister had not been a constant presence at my side were the times I grew annoyed with her, tired of her guarding me and waiting for an opportunity to prod me back into line, and teleported to my rooms.
Or my sanctuary beneath the mountain.
She did not dare follow me to my room, and she could not follow me to that cavern in the heart of Noainfir.
This morning, I had found another way to rid myself of her overbearing mothering. I had assigned her new recruits and ordered her to train them with Riordan. She had looked at me as if I was punishing her.
Perhaps I was.
I needed her gone today. No shadow to follow me where I was going.
Something had been bothering me since the darkness had begun to recede, clearing my mind, and I could not stop thinking about it.
A question that plagued my every waking moment and unfurled in sleep to influence my dreams of Saphira.
What if she was one of those rare instances of someone with two fated mates?
One for her wolf blood.
And one for her fae.
Rhyn was proof that an unseelie could have a seelie fated one, and Kali was proof that a fae could have two destined mates.
Could Saphira be my mate?
Since the thought had first entered my mind, I had begun to feel more and more as if she could be.
Every thought of her, every feeling that burned in my soul for her, every dark desire to storm into the Summer Court to take her back, to shield her and feel her in my arms again, strengthened that feeling that she was mine in a way I had never imagined possible.
And by the Great Mother, it worried me.
I feared what Saphira would think if it was more than a feeling—if it was truth—and how it might upset her.
I could not bear the thought she might convince herself that this love I felt for her was purely because the threads of fate might have bound us together too, giving her two fated ones.
I hated the thought she might come to believe I would treat her as abominably as the alpha wolf had.
I worried about how she might take it, so much so that I could not sleep and was in danger of losing control over my emotions again. I could not let that happen. I needed to protect my court and my people, and keep them safe from my wrath.
So I had left my office, leaving all the reports of damage done to my court by my own reckless loss of control, seeking the one who might have answers about Saphira.
I pivoted away from the windows and strode down the steps to the ground floor and out into the courtyard, crossing it in haste to the arched entrance on the other side. My heavy steps echoed off the damp walls as I followed the stone staircase down into the gloom of the dungeon.
Torchlight flickered from the walls, illuminating the cells, casting their warm light over the one I had come to see.
Neve sat on her armchair, her head bent, golden braids hanging forwards to obscure some of her face as her large amber eyes darted over the page of the book that rested in her lap, nestled among the folds of her burgundy dress.
I halted near the bars of her home and she did not look at me. She just flipped a page and continued reading.
At least she was absorbed in that pastime rather than staring at An’sidwain.
The pulsing crimson crystal was shut away in its lacquered wooden box today, set on the shelf among her precious treasure hoard.
Realising that she would not acknowledge me unless I gave her reason to, I said, “Did you know of her blood?”
She stopped reading but said nothing.
It was answer enough for me.
“Why did you not tell me?” My mood threatened to slip its leash as I wondered how long the dragon shifter had known about Saphira’s lineage, and the reasons she might have kept it from me.
Cold stole through my veins as I awaited an answer.
She looked at me now, lifting those bright amber eyes flecked with gold to my face, and scrutinised me, a twist to her lips before she muttered, “If I had, would you have fallen in love with her?”
I considered that, the answer as sharp as a blade and immediate.
“No.” It was not hard to admit that, but it did plunge that blade deep into my heart and I only twisted it as I confessed, “I would have slaughtered her on sight, too blinded by my grief and prejudice to see that her blood does not define her.”
The dragon gave me a look that said she had known that, and had done what she could to spare Saphira and keep the future she had seen for me—for us—in place.
My eyes slipped closed as I considered how I might have responded if Neve had told me, as I thought about my behaviour and the things I had said during the time I had known Saphira. Things I had said to her.
I thought about my hatred of the seelie, a hatred that burned within me still, an eternal flame I was not sure would ever be snuffed out.
But goddess, the things I had said to her before I had known she was part fae.
Pain and grief had made me view all seelie as the same as those who had murdered my parents and taken my brother, and those feelings had festered inside me, until that hatred was so ingrained in me that I was not sure it was possible to cleanse myself of it.
Part of me would always despise them, just as Saphira would always despise the wolves who had taken so much from her.
Perhaps we could move past that, together. Perhaps in time we would both heal.
It was not my hatred of the seelie that rattled me as I reached out to grip the bars of Neve’s cell for support though.
It was my confession.
It was the revelation that I had allowed my hatred to burn so brightly, to run so deeply, that had I known Saphira carried the blood of the Summer King when I had first met her, I might have despised her on principle.
I might never have fallen for her.
I might never have discovered what a warm, beautiful and loving soul she was.
I cracked my eyes open, shaken by the revelation, left cold by it.
Neve almost smiled. “It was right of me not to tell you.”
Her look was pointed, expectant.
I huffed and admitted, “It was right of you not to tell me.”
I was sure I would not find sleep tonight either.
The words I had growled to Saphira so many times about the seelie, not hiding my feelings towards them, would haunt me and keep me awake, staring at that canopy and fearing Saphira would remember them too, that she was far beyond my reach believing I now despised her.
That my love for her was fickle enough that her bloodline could make it burn out and die.
I was reaching for her through the bond before I could stop myself, needing to feel her on the other side to comfort myself and hoping that it would comfort her too. I could not tell her that I loved her. I should have told her that I loved her.
I would tell her that I loved her.
I would tell her that this changed nothing, that my love for her burned eternal and there was not a force in this world that could extinguish it. I would carry it to my grave.
She was the only one for me.
No matter what happened.
The bond between us warmed as she reached back to me, and goddess, I clung to it, a desperate fool ruled by his emotions, afraid of letting go of her because I feared I would lose her if I did. My eyes burned and Neve’s expression grew thoughtful, soft almost as she watched me crumbling.
A king who had always ruled with an iron fist, always demanded obedience and ordered rather than asked, reduced to tears by nothing more than the absence of a little wolf.
Ravaged by fear.
Perhaps it was more than her absence and not knowing how she was doing, not knowing that she believed my love constant and unbreakable, that constantly chipped away at my strength and my sanity though.
Perhaps it was something else, a thorny vine that had been snaking through my soul from the moment she had left me, quiet and insidious, spreading poison I had not noticed until today in my office.
When a thought had struck me.
Making my pen fall from my hand to splatter ink across one of the reports I had been reading.
What if Saphira somehow gave me vengeance and the high king expected me to wed his daughter?
It had not been that question that had rattled me though. It had been the inconceivable one that had followed.
What if my vengeance was Saphira?