Chapter 52
KAELERON
Pain tore up my side to steal my breath as Oberon eased me down onto a stool, the corners of my vision darkening with it.
I focused on my breathing as sweat dotted my brow, my fingers slipping in the blood that continued to leak from my side.
Saphira hovered close to me, her worry tearing at me as I gritted my teeth and fought to remain conscious.
The pain throbbing through me with every laboured beat of my heart might cloud my mind, but I was still lucid enough to notice what Oberon had done.
He had teleported us not only across a border, but into the unseelie side of Lucia.
That act alone confirmed my suspicions about his parentage.
Only those of the high royal bloodline had such unfettered access to Lucia.
“He will be well,” Oberon said to Saphira.
“I know that,” she snapped, all fangs and ferocity, and beautiful determination as she took in her surroundings, looking for something.
She hurried away from me when she spotted it, returning to me with a stack of dark cloths, and glowered at me.
“Don’t you dare die on me. If you do, I’m going to live a damned long life just to spite you and when I do die, I’m going to stay in my wolf form for the rest of eternity, running from you. ”
“Spiteful little wolf,” I husked, my voice faint and gritty. “It takes more than a mere stab wound to kill me.”
She was not gentle as she undid the buttons on my tunic and tugged it down my arms, forcing me to remove my hand from my side. Her blue eyes swam with worry as she glanced at it, her gaze darting away again almost instantly as she set to work.
“Hold this to it.” She practically growled that command at me.
My little healer. She shoved a wad of cloth into my hand and I dutifully did as she instructed, pressing it to the front of the wound, unwilling to risk her scolding me.
She shuffled to beside me so she could do the same to my back, her scowl and tone scathing.
“You should have been more careful. What were you thinking, taking on that many alone?”
“I was thinking it would be less for you to worry about, and therefore less for me to worry about.” I grimaced as she pressed harder against my back, her lips flattening as she did so.
Punishing me.
“I could have handled more of them,” she bit out.
Oberon moved around behind her, adding pinches of herbs and dried flowers, and other things to a large pot he had placed near the roaring fire.
Was he my brother?
My vision wobbled and I swallowed hard, pitching forwards as my head turned.
“Kael.” Her hand seared my chest as she stopped me from falling, worry dancing across her too-pale face as she looked up at me, her face close to mine. “I’m sorry. I won’t be mad at you. I won’t… just… conserve your strength. Don’t leave me.”
I wanted to banish those tears that glittered on her lashes, but I did not have the strength to lift my hand.
My eyes fell shut.
“Kael!” She gripped my shoulder, her fear clawing at my heart. “Oberon.”
“So overdramatic.” Oberon huffed as he came to stand behind me and ran his fingers down my spine, strange warmth following them as he murmured words beneath his breath, and then he crouched and removed Saphira’s hand from my lower back, just above my hip.
He pressed his hand there, his words growing louder, blurring in my ears as the area beneath his palm tingled and burned.
That heat slowly spread through me, fusing with my bones, strengthening my muscles, and I realised what he was doing.
Giving me his magic.
His strength.
But at the same time, healing me.
Somehow combining the two ancient spells into one, weaving them together with an expert tongue.
“Hold him up,” Oberon said and Saphira pushed against my shoulders, ignoring my growl as pain ripped through me as my body flexed.
“Baby,” she muttered, teasing me. Trying to make light of the situation. But there was so much fear in her eyes as I found the strength to open mine and look at her. So much fear. I never wanted to see her looking that way again.
A smile trembled on my lips as I tried to lift my hand.
She noticed and reached for it, gently closing her fingers around my wrist and lifting it for me, guiding it to her face as she knelt before me, the sole subject of my focus as Oberon worked on the front of my wound.
“I love you,” I whispered.
She blinked away her tears. “I love you too… you bastard.”
“We are finally admitting our feelings then.” Oberon put in.
I growled at him. “You do not get to talk.”
Oberon looked from me to Saphira. “Why is he mad at me? What have I done?”
She subtly shook her head, silently warning the male to hold his tongue. My wise wolf. I needed to conserve my strength as she had ordered, and I was not sure I could do that if Oberon kept dragging my awareness away from her to remind me that he was here too.
The male who had just teleported us across borders. Who had just sowed discord against our enemy.
Oberon moved away and returned with a warm compress that smelled like the tea he often liked to brew for me, and pressed it against my wound.
A hiss ripped from me.
“Hold this here,” he said to Saphira and then applied another to my back, “and this here.”
She did as instructed, relinquishing her hold on me and moving back to my side.
Oberon wrapped a long strip of cloth around my waist several times with Saphira’s help, and when he stopped right before me to tie it in place, I could not hold my tongue any longer.
“Taeo—”
“Do not call me that.” Oberon cut me off with a wry smile. “That has not been my name in a very long time, and it is not a name I am deserving of owning again. Not yet. There is too much bloodshed between where I stand and where I can reclaim such a name.”
Saphira had gone very still beside me, but her hand came to rest on my thigh, as if she wanted to remind me that she was there and I was not alone.
“I always felt Oberon was an assumed name, to conceal your identity. I just never expected the identity it was concealing to be that of my brother.” I looked at him, trying to see any trace of the male I had known when we had been boys in Belkarthen, but unable to find him in the male before me.
Oberon’s smile tightened. “I thought it was fitting. A king of the fairies.”
“A liar,” I countered.
His smile fell, his silver eyes gaining a sombre look. “I do not expect you to understand. I know… I know what I did… it was cruel in a way.”
“Jenavyr believes you are dead. I thought you were… I thought you were in the Summer Court all this time, being tortured and… or maybe dead. I have spent centuries trying to save you… and you… you have been right in front of me all this time. You have been lying to me all this time!” I tried to stand, too filled with anger to keep still, but Saphira’s hand gripped my shoulder and thigh, keeping me in place, and the scowl she cast at me told me to obey her or face her wrath.
I turned on Oberon again, snarling, “Vyr thinks you are dead.”
“It is probably a good thing.” Oberon shoved to his feet and paced away from me, as I had wanted to, his fingers flexing into fists as he blew out a sigh and pivoted back towards me.
“I wish you thought the same as she does. I wish you believed me dead so I could be that way… so there was never any danger of you becoming involved in this. I wanted to keep you both safe.”
“Safe?” I barked. “By letting us mourn you? By letting us believe we had lost you too? You were everything to us.”
He raked a trembling hand through his hair before it fell to his side, his shoulders slumping. “It was safer, Kael.”
“Do not call me that,” I snarled and tried to stand again.
Saphira shoved me back down and snapped at Oberon, “Will you sit down! You’re making him restless.”
Oberon wisely obeyed her, sinking onto an armchair opposite me.
“What Kael really wants to ask is… what happened to you?” The softness of her tone swept around me to ease me as she asked that question that burned inside me, deep beneath the layers of anger and hurt, and betrayal that snarled and snapped and made me want to lash out at him.
Oberon leaned forwards to rest his elbows on his knees, a sigh shifting his shoulders as he looked at me in silence for long minutes.
“I saw Mother hide you before they came for her. I tried to fight them to get to her, but there were too many. I thought I could beat them and reach you, but when she fell… I was too shocked… I could not…” He loosed another sigh as his eyes misted.
“Before I knew what was happening, before I came to my senses, I was being dragged away from you by four males, carted between them as they gripped my arms and legs. I tried to fight them, Kael. I was not strong enough.”
I said nothing as that night washed over me, filled with his panicked screams.
He lowered his gaze to his hands as he clasped them in front of him.
“They teleported me away with them as soon as they were past the barriers, and used bespelled shackles to hold me. I was not sure why they did not kill me. They… I expected to be taken to the Summer Court but they made camp at an old mineshaft in the Black Pass. They… they…”
He swallowed and pushed to his feet, heading for the metal kettle. His hands shook and his shoulders trembled as he kept his back to us, filling it with a concoction of herbs, flowers and spices, and his cheeks were damp as he turned towards the fire.
His voice hoarse.
“They took turns in entertaining themselves with me. Their leader… he did not care what they did to me. He let them… do as they wanted with me.” He stared at the flames. “They were not kind. They laughed whenever… whenever I cried when they—”
He fell silent.
Rage turned my blood to ice and had my shadows sharpening.
It matched the account I had read, and I would make the seelie pay for what they had done to him, even when it was not my vengeance to take. It was his.