Chapter 60
SAPHIRA
Istrode from my rooms, the skirts of my dress shifting around my ankles, brushing my skin as I moved down through the castle and out into the garden, hunting for Kaeleron.
I reached through the land, using that connection that came more easily each day to find him.
He was back in Falkyr. Somewhere. I hadn’t quite mastered the art of narrowing down his location to make the feeling more accurate, but I was sure I would in time.
I liked that I could find him through the land, that bond we shared with Lucia allowing me to sense him at the other end of it.
I inhaled slowly, trying to catch his scent. Needing to find him.
Not only because I absolutely ached for him.
My wolf side completely wild with a need of him.
But also because I wanted to talk to him.
I wanted to tell him about my evolving dream and what I thought it meant.
That blazing light and violent shadow. The beating heart of the Forge.
That sense of divide that was growing within me, as if I was about to break.
Every time my dream changed, we talked about it, and it felt good to discuss it with him.
It felt like progress. Another step closer to unravelling the puzzle.
I also wanted to ask him about the vision Arianell had told him about. Maybe I would find a clue in it. When I had approached Arianell about it, she had told me to ask him.
Clouds gathered to blot out the aurora, and I had the terrible feeling they were my doing this time.
I frowned as I found myself at the enormous arched wooden doors of the great hall and pushed them open, stepping into the quiet space.
The towering columns that lined the aisle on either side, supporting the vaulted ceiling, had seemed imposing once, but now they were a comfort.
No one came here when Kaeleron wasn’t holding court.
I could be alone here. Alone with my thoughts. Frustrating as they were.
When I reached the raised dais and Kaeleron’s black throne, I walked up the steps of the dais and slumped onto his throne.
A heart made whole. United. Drifting. Dreaming. Drinking. Drink the water. Drift in the dark. Embrace all that I was, had been and ever would be.
I growled and slapped my hands down on the arms of the throne, intent on finding the dragon sisters to make them tell me straight what their ridiculous visions of me meant. No more pushing me away and telling me to find Kaeleron to ask him.
The doors at the other end of the aisle opened a crack and a shadowy figure appeared, silhouetted by the light that streamed in from outside.
They closed again as Kaeleron strode towards me, shutting out that light and allowing me to see him.
A flicker of relief crossed his handsome face as he said, “There you are. What are you doing here?”
I looked around at the vast, empty hall and shrugged, saying the only thing that came to me in the moment because I was too afraid to voice my thoughts in case I let them all out in a deluge that swept him away from me when I needed him here, close to me, now more than ever.
“I’m trying on a throne for size.” I stroked the arms of the imposing black throne.
He smiled slowly as he approached me, stalking towards me like a predator, that banked heat in his gaze and wicked edge to his smile thrilling me, together with how delicious he looked in his fitted black tunic jacket and tight pants.
“It looks good on you,” he purred as he canted his head, studying me and making me squirm a little on his throne that did feel good, but it still didn’t feel right.
I shrugged again. “Do you really think so? I’m not so sure.”
He inclined his head. “Oh yes, I really do think so. In fact, you were born to sit on a throne.”
I scowled at him. “Don’t mock me. Don’t tease me. I’m not in the mood for it, Kael. I hate that I’m born of his blood—”
“I did not mean it like that,” he cut me off, darkening as he closed the distance between us, that playful edge to his expression gone in a heartbeat, replaced with a stony sort of seriousness I had come to expect from him whenever he meant business.
And he meant business, even as the sharpness left his voice and his gaze softened.
“Your origins do not matter to me, Saphira. Your blood does not matter to our people. The only thing that matters is that you are here, on this throne—my throne—where you belong.”
I sank further into that throne.
“Well, that’s good, because I can’t really go around changing my blood. If I could, I probably would,” I said, half joking.
I stilled.
But what if I could change it?
What if that dream and everything I had been feeling since my markings had changed—no, since long before that—was pointing me towards a way to fulfil that vision Neve had seen.
A way to heal this divide I felt growing inside my heart.
To become all I ever could be.
“What are you thinking to make you look like that?” Kaeleron’s tone was calm, but cautious, laced with a hint of curiosity that didn’t match the wary look on his face as I lifted my eyes back to his, deeply aware he wouldn’t like the answer to that question.
“My dream evolved again. I saw blazing light and violent shadow clashing beneath my feet, and I saw the ley lines that course through this land and that they weren’t divided.
They were at first, but they sort of kept switching…
shadow into light. Light into shadow. Arianell…
when she showed me what I thought was a tree—the ley lines—she said that to me.
They flow, shadow into light. Light into shadow.
I think she was saying the land isn’t divided. Only the people.”
His lips pursed and his brows lowered. “She spoke the truth. Like I once told you, the magic the goddess gifts us with does not distinguish between us. It does not care if we are unseelie in seelie lands. It does not recognise the borders we have imposed upon the land.”
“So it’s united. But the fae are divided.”
He nodded.
“What did Arianell tell you about her vision… other than the part where I might hurt you?”
He was quick to shake his head, his gaze softening slightly as he looked down at me. “Not you, my love. I do not think she meant you will hurt me. I think… I think perhaps the choice you make might hurt me, but that does not mean it is the wrong choice.”
“Any choice that will hurt you is the wrong one. I don’t want to hurt you.” I held my hand out to him and he took it, lifting it to his lips to press them against it.
“Then we shall find a way that does not hurt me.” He made it sound so easy.
So simple. “But if you must know what Arianell saw, she told me that she saw me at the shore of the lake you see in your dreams. A lake nestled among towering peaks. Bathed by fire. She saw my pain. She tasted my fear. Agony wrenching stars from the sky. Fracturing the very foundations of the shadows. And then she saw a union. A heart made whole. A benevolent queen of shadows.”
“Drifting. Drinking. Dreaming. A wolf on the water. A fae beneath.” I finished for him, and then shook my head as I frowned at him. “But what do you think it means?”
I knew my mate. He was clever, quick witted, and he always wanted to protect me. He would have figured out what Arianell’s vision had meant, would have made it his mission for my sake. To help me. To keep me safe.
He heaved a long sigh that shifted his shoulders as he stepped away from me, a crease forming between the dark slashes of his eyebrows as he looked at anything but me.
“You can tell me. I’m not afraid,” I said.
“I am,” he whispered and swallowed, his gaze bleak as it drifted to me. He shook his head, that look tearing at me, making me feel like a bitch for asking, for putting him through the pain caused by just thinking about what the dragon’s vision might mean.
He tried to smile, but it faltered.
He wasn’t going to tell me. He was going to keep it to himself, trying to protect me from whatever it was Arianell had seen me doing. Trying to stop me.
But then he said, “You are the heart made whole. I know that much. The union? It could be for both of us. The heart could too, since we are seelie and unseelie—two halves of the same heart—but… I feel it is for you. Benevolent queen of shadows. The seelie are benevolent. The shadows she spoke of are not this court but this side of Lucia. So she spoke of the seelie and unseelie. My pain that will fracture this side of the realm. Pain that deep… Saphira—”
He reached for me and I took his hand, feeling wretched as it trembled. Death. It would take my death to make him lose control to that degree.
No wonder he didn’t want to talk about the visions and was reluctant to discuss my dreams sometimes. No wonder I sometimes caught him looking at me as if I was a ghost and he was already grieving losing me.
“I won’t die. I’m not going to die, Kael.” I brought his hand to my cheek and pressed it against his palm, breathing in his scent to banish the fear that curled sharp talons around my heart.
“I won’t let you,” he growled but then his deep voice softened again as he added, “The lake bathed by fire, in the mountains. The fire is the Forge. The lake is the Sacred Milk. The birthplace of the unseelie.”
“I saw that… in my dream today. I saw the Stygian Isles. I saw the Forge and I felt my heartbeat in it. It called me towards it.” I sat up straight again and brushed my thumb over the back of his hand, savouring the connection between us as that dream began to feel as if it was leading me towards my doom.
“Why would the Great Mother want me to go there?”
It didn’t really make any sense, but maybe I was wrong about that. I frowned up at him, my fingers tightening around his hand as something he had said stood out to me.