Chapter 36 #2
Nothing I wouldn’t do to make him mine.
No limit to the things I would do to carve out that future I wanted with him.
He was mine.
And if I had to tear down this world to have him, if I had to kill everyone who stood in my path to him, so be it.
The ground trembled, rattling the chandeliers and the windowpanes.
“Saphira?” Meiryn touched my knee over the skirt of my gold and teal dress.
I reared back from her, baring my fangs, instinct at the helm. As soon as I realised what I had done, I sagged into the chair.
“I told you. I just overheard it. It made me think of the bastard who rejected me. I don’t want to talk about it.” I pushed my chair back and went to stand, but she caught my wrist and held it firmly enough that I flashed fangs at it and then glared at her. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I am not your enemy,” she said in a low, gentle voice. “I am not Lorien.”
I froze as she slowly twisted the ring on my middle finger around, revealing the two crescent moons and the round opal.
“I have been watching you since you arrived.” She tightened her grip on my wrist when I jerked it backwards, trying to break free of her.
“Everyone is watching each other, and if you aren’t doing the same, you need to start doing so right this second.
I am not a threat to you, Saphira. I mean that. Sit and listen to me. Please?”
I shook my head, expecting her to force me.
She just nodded, accepting it.
“At first I watched you because I needed to know if you were another threat to me, and then I watched you because I was curious.” She looked just as curious now, her sapphire eyes lifting to meet mine as she held me captive.
“The way you would look at everything in this court with such loathing in your eyes when you thought no one was watching, as if it was tarnished and not golden. The way you withdrew when they removed the Shadow King’s brand from your flesh.
The way your dagger was fashioned… not the style, but the material used to forge it and the length of the grip—a grip that seemed tailored to your smaller hands. ”
My other hand flew to the dagger sheathed at my hip, one I had known it was a mistake to keep, but one I couldn’t bring myself to give up.
The dagger had been too obvious, I knew it now.
Ancient fae script on the cross-guard, and a silver wolf head as a pommel.
I had the sinking feeling Sylvan knew exactly how I had come to have that dagger, just as Meiryn did.
“I cannot help but wonder,” she said, “was the Shadow King ever your enemy? And if he was not… why would you come to this court that has taken so much from him?”
I had never been so tense, my muscles clamped down onto my bones with such ferocity that I trembled, but I somehow managed to push the words out.
“Kaeleron was my enemy.” Not a lie.
Meiryn angled her head, looking from the dagger I gripped to the ring on my finger. “He was, but is he still?”
I refused to answer that.
She lowered her gaze to my hand. “This is not a ring given lightly. I told you my family have books, ones that would make most seelie suspicious of us if they ever saw them. My mother loved to read the more unorthodox works she could find in the markets whenever she travelled. We keep them in a locked cupboard in what passes for our small library. In one of them, there is a smattering of words about something the unseelie call a ‘moon ring’, and an illustration similar to this one, although the design is a touch different.”
I wanted to twist my hand from her grip as I said, “It’s just a ring I picked up in a fae town in—”
“Where is the bearer of the twin of this ring?” She cut me off and cold snaked through me as I realised what she had done.
Because she was touching the ring, the opalescent stone began to shift in response to her demand, swirling from white to sapphire.
Meiryn looked fascinated rather than horrified, and was quick to look up at me, gripping my hand as she hurriedly whispered, “I shall not tell a soul. I swear it, Saphira. I will keep this secret and any others for you, because like you, I do not like this tarnished city nor those who call it home… but I do like you.”
I stared at her, unwilling to trust that she wasn’t just saying what she thought I wanted to hear or playing a game with me, as I was beginning to feel Sylvan was.
I snarled, “If you tell anyone about this, I will rip your head off with my fangs.”
She pressed her free hand to her chest, covering her heart with her palm, and bowed her head. “I swear, I will not.”
“I suppose I’ll have to take your word on that.” I tried to get my hand free, twisting it in her hold.
She refused to release it, her tone grave as she looked up at me. “Sapphire is the colour of this side of Lucia. I read that in the book. I will not tell a soul, but if Lorien sees this and recognises it for what it is, it will be your head, not mine.”
The library door opened and I jolted towards it, a gasp lodging in my throat.
Lorien strode into the room, his fine gold tunic jacket opened to halfway down his chest and his pale hair damp, swept back from his face, as if he had just bathed.
“You two seem thick as thieves these days,” he drawled as he strode towards us, eyeing me more than Meiryn. “Yet, you have not been training recently.”
Meiryn covered the ring with her hand and placed a book in my hand, acting as if she was handing it to me as she snapped at Lorien, “You know why. You went too far with that punishment.”
He chuckled as he walked past us. “I did not go far enough.”
My hackles rose as he moved past me and I turned my back to the table, refusing to leave it open to him.
He plucked a book from a small cream marble table and didn’t stop walking until he had reached the great arched window, where he turned his back to the world and rested his rear against the sill, crossing his legs at the ankle as he leafed through the book.
All very casual.
“What do you want?” Meiryn bit out, sounding about as convinced as I was by his charade.
He lifted his rich blue eyes from the page, his expression indifferent and tone as casual as his pose. “The same thing you want—the same thing we all want—the throne.”
She scoffed and stood, passing me to stop a few feet closer to him.
She planted her hands on her hips over her corset, jutting her elbows out in a way that partially blocked his path to me, and I realised what she was doing.
She was subtly protecting me. Turning herself into a barrier he would have to get through to reach me.
“We are nothing alike.” She gained his attention with that.
His eyes narrowed. “I admit, I admire your subtle play for the throne. Worming your way closer to Saphira, gaining her trust while gauging her abilities under the pretence of training her. Very clever.”
She curled a lip at him. “I have never felt even a momentary aspiration towards the throne.”
I touched her arm. “Ignore him. He’s just provoking you. Let’s try these other books.”
Meiryn didn’t move.
She stared at Lorien, darker than I had ever seen her.
“Meiryn?” I murmured.
Her gaze snapped to me, gold fire blazing in the centre of her irises, and then she huffed and shook off whatever emotions had seized control of her and sat down in her seat again, dragging one of the books towards her.
I joined her, sidling closer to her and peering at the page as she began pointing out words and telling me their meaning.
I had written down three words before Lorien strolled over to us and snatched my notebook, leaping beyond my reach as I lunged for it.
He chuckled at the page.
“Learning ancient fae?” His grin mocked me almost as much as his tone. “Why does a lowly beast like you need to learn such a beautiful language?”
I stood, pivoting to face him at the same time, and stormed over to him and seized hold of the book he lifted above his head, grabbing it before he could raise it above my reach. I growled as I yanked it out of his grimy fingers and backed off a step.
“It takes a lowly beast to know one.” I hurled the words at him with the same venom I had been tempted to hurl the notebook as I faced him. “I’m trying to be the best queen for this court; to be everything it needs me to be. What are you doing? Loafing about with your fanboys?”
The mulish twist to his lips and that glint of darkness in his eyes said he didn’t have a clue what a fanboy was and I revelled in it.
“I know what this court needs,” he barked, “and it is a king who already speaks ancient fae. A king who understands its traditions and knows everything about it. It does not need some half-breed bitch who spread her legs for an unseelie and probably begged him to fuck her.”
He squared up to me, looming over me, radiating heat and rage.
I snorted. “Funny… I heard that was how you came into the world. A courtesan spreading her legs for a king and begging for his cock. Did she really think he would fall in love with her?”
His cheeks mottled and I knew I had gone too far, pushing that button too hard, taunting him with what I had read in one of Sylas’s journals about his mother when I knew he was obsessed with the purity of his bloodline and desperately wanted to be seen as legitimate, a true heir to the Summer Court throne.
“Did you?” He sneered, flashing teeth that were sharper, deadlier, his canines and the incisors next to them vicious fangs.
It hit too close to the mark, and suddenly I was done with this game.
I backed towards Meiryn, hugging my notebook to my chest, glaring at him.
He laughed right in my face. “I thought so.”
He strode away from us, heading for the exit, leaving me with parting words that made me glad Meiryn had twisted the ring on my finger again so it looked like a plain band.
“One day, you are going to slip up, and when you do, I will be there to tear you down.”