Chapter 50
KAELERON
The comforting touch of shadows slowly returned to me as I rested with my back against the craggy stone wall of the small cave, Saphira’s side pressed against mine to warm and comfort me further, the constant awareness of her reassuring me and soothing my ragged nerves.
She shifted beside me, paper rustling as she wrapped our meagre rations and tucked them into her satchel, and then pulled out several books.
“You’ll want to read these.” She paused as she looked at them.
“What is it?” I tore my gaze from the narrow strip of forest I could see, relinquishing my vigil so I could see what had made her fall silent.
Her fingers brushed several strips of torn paper that protruded from the pages of the book.
“Meiryn must have marked them.” Her tone was soft, laced with a hint of gratitude, and I knew why.
She valued her friendship with the seelie female, and had believed she had betrayed her, something she abhorred since the prick of an alpha had rejected her, and was relieved that she had merely been playing Sylvan to save her.
Protecting her.
I still hated and found it impossible to trust seelie, but for Saphira’s sake, and because of Meiryn’s actions, I could make an exception for her half-sister.
“It is good to have a strong alliance with another court.” I took one of the books from the pile on her lap.
“Even when that court is a seelie one?” She stared at me. Hard. As if that alone could divulge the truth.
“Even if it is a seelie one.” I opened the book, scanning the first page.
A record of court activity dated not around the time my parents had been murdered but later, just over a century ago.
When she did not stop staring at me, I glanced at her.
“I mean it. Meiryn will make a good queen once the obstacles to her ascension are removed, most likely by us, and there was a time, many centuries ago, when trade took place between unseelie and seelie courts that were close to one another. It is not so incredible that such a thing might occur again between your fair breed and my darker one. We are not all monsters, little lamb.”
“Wolf,” she corrected and leaned towards me, the press of her warm softness against my arm a deep comfort to me that had me leaning towards her too, lowering my head to nuzzle her cheek as she flipped the pages in the book.
I breathed her in, that scent of nature she wore loosening a tight knot in my chest, together with the other scent she carried now.
One that marked her as my mate.
“When we are home, and all this is done,” I kissed a path down her throat, “we shall mate again, you and I, and I will make it beautiful… perfect for you.”
She turned her head towards me. “It was beautiful.”
The way her eyes glittered at me told me she meant that, and part of me had found it beautiful too.
The one thing I had thought I would never have was right before me, mine forever, and I meant to keep her.
I meant to spend an eternity loving her, worshipping her daily to show her that love, taking care of her every need.
Whether it was in the bedroom.
Or on the battlefield.
“Do you think we’re really fated?” She lowered her gaze to the page and frowned at it. “I feel… different. I feel… well, I don’t really know what it feels like to be mated… but I feel closer to you. But that could just be the post-sex hormones.”
I chuckled and curled an arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer. “I feel different too. Your scent smells different to me… but maybe that is simply the mingling of our scents because of the sex. I suppose we cannot be sure.”
“I heard that female wolves, when they’re fertile, and they mate with their…
uh… mate that both parties can pass out from it.
” She looked at everything but me as her cheeks coloured.
“We didn’t pass out when you helped me with my first heat, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t mates.
My mother once told me that it can take a few heats before a female becomes fertile.
Something to do with age and maturing. I went through my first heat before one hundred, so I was a little early. ”
I lifted my right hand and cupped one of those rosy cheeks, angling her head up towards me, making her meet my gaze as I grinned wickedly.
“Then I shall look forward to your next heat, little wolf, when you are ravenous for me and beg for me, and I shall make you pass out… but possibly from overexertion. I intend to ravish you fully when you are wild with your heat, whether it is the next one or the one a thousand years from now.”
“A thousand years,” she whispered, a crease forming between her silver eyebrows, a sombre edge to her voice rather than a happy one.
“Fae live a long time.”
She looked up at me again. “Wolves don’t.”
That look tore at my heart, part sorrow and part hope, but all a sort of melancholy I wanted to banish from her soul.
“You are part fae,” I reminded her, “and if we are fated, by mating with me you would have tied your life to mine. The goddess gifts the mates of her children with lifespans that match theirs.”
A tiny flicker of relief danced in her eyes, but the melancholy lingered.
This was not about her lifespan. Not anymore.
I stroked my thumb over her cheek, hoping to soothe her, to draw her thoughts away from what might come and make her focus on what was happening now, instead.
It was all we could do. Time and fate would reveal whether our love story, as she had called it, had a happy ending now.
But we were strong enough to face whatever came at us.
Together.
“If it will improve your mood, I could ravish you now?” I swept my fingers down to the curve of her jaw, tilting her head up further, bringing her lips towards mine. “I find I am open to the idea.”
As expected, she rolled her eyes and redirected my attention to the books. “Later. I want you to read this.”
She slipped from my hold, bending over the books until she found what she was looking for, and set two journals on top of the one she had already given me.
I opened them and began reading every place that had been marked.
“I think Sylas had heirs in secret because he was afraid that if he did so publicly that they would face the same fate as his queen and heir who were murdered.” She peered at the page I was reading.
“Something in there mentioned you—the Wrathful. He thought you would come for his children, but I think the real threat to him was from within his own court. I think Sylvan was the one who killed him.”
I read what she had, a desperate sort of account from a desperate sort of male.
One who had truly believed I would come for his children in their cots should I learn of them.
What poison had someone dripped into his ear to make him believe I would do such a thing?
I curled a lip as I read on, darkness stirring within me to disturb my returning shadows.
Sylas truly had believed me to be a monster.
“I attacked his court several times, but nothing I did warranted his belief that I would murder sleeping babes.” I closed the book, not wanting to read more.
“How fitting it was someone within his own beautiful people who murdered him and who had no doubt murdered his family before him. He deserved it.”
Her look chastised me but I refused to repent.
“The seelie had deserved what he had gotten if he had been unable to see the truth that was before him—that the threat to him had come from within his own court—from within his own family. Having witnessed Sylvan’s behaviour and heard your accounts of him, and Arianell’s dealings with him, I am as sure as you are.
He killed the queen and firstborn heir and blamed it on the Shadow Court.
What I want to know is why.” I reached for another book.
“Arianell said Sylvan was angry when Sylas revealed his hidden heirs and tried to force her to lie and say she had seen none in her visions, so he would ascend the throne. He must have been the one to kill the queen and heir, and blamed it on the Shadow Court for some reason… hoping to incite war between the courts? Or because someone had told him to aim the Summer King at my court—at my family?”
She worked her way down the stack of books, checking each one, and when she went very still beside me, I looked at her.
She held the book in both hands, staring at the leather cover, her voice quiet as she said, “Sylas didn’t order the attack. I found a page… an entry… here. I could only read some of it, but it was enough to confirm my suspicions.”
I read the book she offered me, going back a few pages and reading several beyond the ones she had marked, my mood darkening with each pass.
Sylvan had been the one to suggest the attack on Belkarthen to Sylas. Sylvan had been the one who had carried everything out. Who had infiltrated my court. Who had murdered my parents and taken my brother from me.
He had convinced his cousin to retaliate against the Shadow Court by killing their queen and eldest son. My mother and brother.
Only my father had been at home too, not at Wraith Wood as he should have been according to the reports cited.
“I think… it says something about the seelie high king… um… in this one.” She found a page in another journal, this one bound in darker leather, and held it out to me.
“I’m not sure why the seelie high king would order an attack on Belkarthen though.
It was before the accord. Unless he felt that Sylas wouldn’t retaliate and wanted to make sure the unseelie received a message, a warning about what would happen to anyone who targeted the seelie royals? ”
I stilled as I stared at the page, gaze locked on the handwriting rather than the words.
A chill snaked down my spine and along my limbs.
“Kael?” she whispered, concern crinkling her brow as she kept holding the book out to me.