Chapter 27
KAELERON
Shadows curled around my limbs, shifting as I clenched my trembling hands into fists. The tiny cut across the front of my throat stung, a constant reminder of Saphira together with her scent that filled my lungs.
“She looked well,” Vyr said as she hurried along behind me as I crossed the gardens of Falkyr Castle, my boots loud on the pale flagstones, ringing out with every determined stride that carried me towards the side of the castle where Saphira’s pack waited.
I did not really hear what my sister said.
I was too focused on how Saphira had looked at me, how she had felt pressed close to me, and how that relief that had shone in her eyes when I had desperately tried to show her that her blood meant nothing to me and that I still loved her had felt like a punch in my chest.
I idly rubbed the spot over my heart, the metal of my armour cold and hard against my fingertips.
Goddess.
I had thought I missed Saphira, but how wrong I had been.
Miss was too weak a word for how I had felt as I looked back at the dark days that had trickled by in her absence.
An absence that felt like a wound, festering and rotting me from the inside, hollowing out my chest every minute I was away from her.
I had not missed her. I had been wrecked. Utterly destroyed. Distraught. A thousand other things that could not quite capture how I had suffered without her.
“Brother?” Jenavyr quickened her pace to catch up with me and fell into step beside me, her concerned gaze searing the side of my face.
I waved her away, because if I could not find adequate words to describe how deeply I had yearned for Saphira in her absence, I definitely could not be expected to choose ones that would convey how I had felt upon seeing her again.
Wild. Feral. Desperate. Aching with a powerful and consuming need to take her back. A need that I had barely managed to leash, her words to me nowhere near powerful enough to make me do her bidding and let her go.
For a beautiful moment, she had built me up, banishing the darkness with her light, filling my soul with warmth.
Now, the world was crumbling around me again, turning grey and decaying before my eyes as all the light and life bled from me, withering and disintegrating to nothing.
“Brother!” Vyr snared my arm and yanked on it, pulling me around to face her.
Her hands framed my face.
Her very wet hands.
I frowned as rain pelted me, cold droplets slithering through my hair and down my neck. Rain I had not noticed. A storm that was my doing.
Thunder rumbled ominously in the mountains.
Several people rushed past, heading for shelter, and the sounds of people in the city doing the same reached my ears.
I tilted my head back and blinked against the rain, savouring the soothing cold of it that stole some of the fire from my veins, letting it wash it all away until I was calm again and the storm eased.
The dark clouds broke apart, revealing glimpses of the aurora. Aurora my little wolf loved so much.
“Better?” I grumbled, keeping my eyes on the aurora as it wove and danced.
My sister’s hands fell from my face. “I know you miss her—”
“I have concluded that word is too weak for what I feel.” I turned from her and continued towards the forest that stretched down from the mountains to the edge of the garden.
“Fine.” She sighed and I sensed her irritation. “I know you miss her—or whatever word you would use for it—but is it not a relief to see that she is well?”
“It is,” I admitted and reached for the buckle on my dented pauldron. I would need to ask Fierel to mend it. “It is also torment. Torture I am not sure I should endure when she is right there for me to take back.”
“You cannot just waltz into the Summer Court to take her back.” She huffed at me now. “Besides, she told you to let her go, and you have told her where to meet Malachi. Do not think I did not notice your little love messages.”
I frowned at her, silencing her on the matter. Love messages? I had merely been giving her instructions.
We reached the end of the castle and I banked left, crossing the courtyard to the wolf pack, my gaze already scanning the faces for the two males I needed to see.
“Her hair was shorter.”
Those words escaped me before I could leash them.
My sister was quick to say, “She might have decided to cut it. It was rather long.”
“Or someone might have cut it for her,” I snarled.
The rain returned.
She sighed again. “If you will not control your temper, I shall banish you to the Wastes.”
I really frowned at her now. “Remember who rules this court, sister.”
“You could rule it just as well from the Wastes.” She pulled a face as she pushed her sodden black hair back, clearing her eyes.
I could not really argue when she made a good point, so I changed the subject. “She teleported to me.”
Vyr halted. “She teleported?”
I looked over my shoulder at her. “Right to me. Right into my arms. Her landing could use some improvement but I could not fault her otherwise. Her technique is strong. Her use of the power intriguing.”
“Intriguing how?”
“She did it to protect me, under the guise of attacking me of course, but also to reveal it to me, I think.” I glared at the ground as I replayed what had happened, and how she had caught me off guard by suddenly appearing right before me and falling into me.
“I think she was trying to show me proof of what she is.”
Just as she had relayed her feelings about the absence of my brand with that subtle press of her fingers against the left side of her chest. Great Mother, I hated that it was gone, and now I knew she did too. I would kill Sylvan for taking it from her.
For taking it from me.
“Well, given the number of seelie that were present, I will have to thank her when I next see her. What possessed you to attack so many alone?” The bite in her words had me frowning at her again.
“I vowed I would take her back. I told her that if anyone took her from me, I would take her back. That is what I was thinking.” I shrugged and started walking again. “That and I wanted to choke the life from that bastard steward with my shadows.”
“Do you feel better for seeing her?” Vyr tagged along beside me.
“Yes. No.” A sigh escaped me as I gazed at the aurora again, finding comfort in it today. “It is a relief to see she is alive, but I cannot say she looked well. She looked tired, and thinner, a little gaunt even, and her hair was shorter.”
I kept coming back to that.
Someone had done it to her. I was sure of it. It had been sliced straight across, as if someone had taken a blade to her braid. Someone had attacked my love and I had not been there to protect her.
I was not there to protect her.
I would be soon. Soon we would be together again and this realm would tremble in fear.
“Summon the council,” I muttered and quickened my pace, leaving Jenavyr behind.
I sensed her turn away to do as I bid, and focused on the wolf pack ahead of me, finally singling out the blond alpha where he sat on a section of log, peeling vegetables as if he was one of the lower ranking members of his pack.
“Did you find out anything about Saphira?” Chase pushed to his feet when he noticed me, abandoning the blade-like tool he had been using on the carrots.
“I went one better. I saw her.”
The way his pale blue eyes lit up when I said that had me reminding myself that he was her cousin, not an admirer to cut down with my claws.
The darkness within me was too close to the surface today, dragged up by seeing her again, stirred into a frenzy by it.
I inhaled slowly to calm it, to rein it in and regain control over my emotions, separating them out and boxing them away so I could focus on what I needed to do.
There was information to relay, and then my council to test, and then punishment to mete out to any who stepped out of line.
The darkness purred at that and I indulged it this time, feeding it with the thought of unleashing all my pent-up anger and frustration at my inability to protect Saphira on those unwitting fools who were about to seal their fates.
“You saw her?” Chase shook his head, his golden eyebrows meeting and then relaxing, as if he could not decide how he felt about that. “Was she okay? Was she alone?”
“She seemed… as well as can be expected, and she was not alone.” I picked up the tool Chase had been using and turned it in my fingers, inspecting it. Curved silver metal with a slender slit along it. I tested it with my thumb and found it to be sharp. “I wonder if this could peel skin?”
Chase paled and swallowed as he reached for the tool. “Maybe we don’t think about that right now… unless you’re feeling like peeling the skin off the guy who took her.”
“Oh,” I grinned, “I am very much feeling like peeling the skin off the male who took my little wolf from me.”
The wolf pressed it back into my palm. “Go ahead. I have another one.”
I dipped my head and summoned my magic, using it to shift the small blade from my hand to my quarters. “Saphira relayed a message to me. One you will be interested in hearing.”
“I saw you give him the peeler. Why did you give him the peeler?” Morden stormed over to us, his grey eyes bright with his wolf side as aggression rippled off him in tangible waves. He glowered at me. “Don’t even think about using that on me.”
I turned my grin on him and purred, “Oh, but it would be so very fun to peel the skin from your traitorous body.”
Chase just sighed and stepped forwards to form a barrier between us, pressing one hand to my chest and the other to Morden’s. As if that would stop me if I wanted to strike him down.
“The message?” His gaze swung my way.
“Danica is safe.” I had thought I would relish how Morden reacted to that declaration, yet I found no satisfaction in how he fell to his knees, a vacant look on his wretched face.
I felt no satisfaction because I had done the same when I had discovered my sister was safe, untouched by the seelie who had deceived me and had stolen Saphira from me.