Chapter 63
KAELERON
Iknew the stories of the Sacred Milk. I knew the tales the bards in the taverns wove about wishes that had been granted, wounds that had been healed, and lives that had been taken. But nothing prepared me for seeing my mate—my little wolf—drink the waters.
I had been poised to teleport to her, to snatch her from the water when she had told me of her dream, and a feeling had grown within me as she had spoken, keeping me in place as I listened to her.
I was afraid the waters would take her from me, that the stories I had heard of the seelie who drank it would come true, but in her words I had found strength, as if the Great Mother had reached through them to me.
Everything my little wolf had told me swirled through my mind.
How she felt connected to the nature in this land, how my court felt like her home, and how deeply she loved it and me.
The way her magic was a perfect blend of light and shadow.
How Lucia had reacted to her during the battle, forever changing her.
All of it left me certain she was right.
She had been born to walk between light and shadow.
Uniting them.
Fae.
Not seelie. Not unseelie. Not two halves of the same heart. One heart. United. Fae.
And wolf.
Light glinted behind her as she lifted her cupped hands to her lips. Neve waited there on the side of a mountain, her golden scales shining brilliantly like the rising sun, her presence a reminder I needed to keep me where I was as Saphira drank.
Because Neve’s visions had never been wrong.
If she believed Saphira had to drink the water, if she believed my little wolf had to drift in the dark of the unseelie shadows and find her way back to me, to be transformed by the Sacred Milk into what she could be, into what she had been born to be, then I would believe too.
For Saphira’s sake.
Not so she could become what she believed she had to be so our people would accept her.
But so she could answer that call she had been hearing, that feeling that had been building within her all this time, guiding her towards her destiny.
So she could become all she had been born to be.
I held myself back and let her drink for that reason alone.
Because I wished with all my wretched heart that when she opened her eyes again, she would see the powerful, beautiful female I saw whenever I looked at her. One worthy of being my queen. One beloved by her court. One who had the power to change this world if she willed it.
Lucia had chosen her, changing her markings, showing us that she was aware of Saphira in a way she had never been aware of others, and I clung to the belief that she was with her now, guiding her through the dark, back towards me.
I whispered the words. “May Lucia light your path to guide you through the coming shadows and be there for you in the times I cannot.”
Saphira locked up tight, her hands trembling before her face, and her stricken look shredded my heart as her panicked blue eyes met mine. “Kael?”
That heart shattered as she fell backwards into the water, her hands flying to her throat.
I teleported to her, catching hold of her, pulling her rigid body against mine as she clawed at her throat, her rasping breaths scraping in my ears.
She suddenly went still, her body going limp in my arms as her head lolled backwards.
“Saphi! Saphi!” I jostled her as my heart thundered, fear ripping every fragment of it into another thousand pieces. “Saphira. Please. Wake.”
I tilted her, so she was more upright, but she still did not respond.
Her body too lax to support her head, it rolled towards her chest instead.
I gently tipped her backwards again, letting her body rest in the water, cradling the back of her head as I bent mine towards her, bringing my ear to her mouth.
Goddess, I was not sure she was breathing.
My eyes stung as I held her with one arm and brushed the water from her lips with the other, painting them with iridescent light.
Magic.
The waters were magic.
Fed by magic.
And would give those who drank it what they needed if their will was strong enough.
I waded deeper into the water with her, where the strange glow of it was stronger, stopping only when I was chest-deep in it and she was floating, her entire body suspended by it.
“Listen to her wish,” I said to the water, reaching for that connection I shared with the land, drawing it to me as I held on to her, my gaze not straying from her pale face. “Great Mother, listen to her wish. Grant it for her.”
She still did not stir.
So I pressed my palm to her chest, right over her heart, and summoned my magic. Her heart beat weakly against my palm, a sign of life that I had badly needed but one that did not reassure me. It was too slow. Growing slower.
“Do not leave me, my love.” I poured my magic into her, holding nothing back, willing to drain every last drop of my power if it would bring her back. “Do not leave me.”
When it did nothing, I twisted her in my arms, so her back was to my front and pressed my right palm to her chest and the left to mine. I buried my face in her wet hair, breathing in her scent as I reached for her through our bond.
“Take it all, my little wolf. Whatever you need.” I willed her to find her strength through me, to draw all of it into her. “Come back to me.”
I focused on my heart, on every beat of it, and on the magic in my veins and flowing into me through my connection to the land.
I whispered the ancient words, letting them fall from my lips to make the water around us tremble and darken.
My right hand burned and I hissed as I withdrew it from her chest, glaring at it as shadows swirled around it. The markings tracking down the underside of my fingers from the black tips glittered.
And shifted.
New words appeared, ones I knew to be mine, that I always used when strengthening my connection to this land and the goddess. Smaller words chased in a circle upon my palm, surrounding a single glyph.
King.
I was a king. It was the essence of me. Who I had been born to be. It was the force that drove me, that beat in my heart with every decision I made, every path I chose to take.
It was the instinct that made me capable of placing others before myself, that made me willing to sacrifice myself if it meant saving one person of my court, if it meant protecting those I loved.
It was that courage and need to protect that the goddess had recognised in me that had me pressing my right hand back to Saphira’s chest.
I poured all I had into her, offering her all my strength, all my magic.
All of me.
I would give it all to bring her back.
I did not care if it took me in the process.
I would gladly exchange my life for hers.
I growled when the connection between us severed, cutting off as my vision blurred and the corners of it darkened, and my heart laboured.
“No,” I snarled and turned Saphira in my arms so I could see her. “Do not deny me!”
I was not sure if it was her or the goddess who had shut down that fragile thread that had tethered us, stopping me from being able to give all I had to her.
I listened to her heart again, tears cutting down my cheeks as it continued to slow, and shook my head. “No, Saphira. You cannot leave me. I will not allow it.”
I looked around me, searching for a way to save her.
And stilled with my gaze on the water.
She was not the only one who could make a wish.
I frantically scooped the water into my mouth, spilling half of it down my chin, and it tingled against my tongue, warming as it trickled down my throat, the magic in it twining with my own to restore some of my strength.
That was not what I wanted from it.
I closed my eyes and made my wish.
Asking Lucia to give me back my heart.
I bent my head over Saphira’s and brought my mouth to hers, and opened my lips, letting the water spill from them and into hers, tipping her chin up so she would swallow enough of it. Hoping that the strength it had given me would transfer to her.
And then I pulled her to me, holding her against my chest, my hand against the back of her head, and looked at the Forge through the tears blurring my vision.
“Please, give me back my heart. Take mine in exchange. I willingly sacrifice myself for her sake, as she has sacrificed herself for mine.”
My other hand blazed, my markings shimmering with iridescent light beneath the water, and I watched as they shifted, new words appearing, together with a central symbol.
Unseelie.
Not fae.
Not like Saphira’s had told her.
Because her blood was seelie and this water was the birthplace of my kind—the missing part of her fae heart—and the goddess had known she would choose to drink it and in doing so she would become whole, the perfect blend of both her children?
I clung to that hope as I rested my cheek on Saphira’s forehead, closing my eyes as I clutched her to me and husked, “If you do not return her, I will drink the Starlight to join her, and we shall become stars in your sky. Forever as one. We shall be together for eternity.”
The water around us began to move, and I opened my eyes, lifting my head as it swirled and glittered, dancing around us both as it had moved playfully around Saphira before.
It shone like starlight.
I felt the magic in it as it brushed against me, as it threaded around my limbs and then around Saphira.
Comforting.
Tender.
That hollow space behind my ribs warmed and filled with light, the bond that had gone cold when she had drunk the waters unfurling slowly like a fern awakening in spring.
Ribbons of water chased around us, weaving us together as aurora lit the sky above us, more brilliant than I had ever seen it.
The threads of water took on its colours, dancing in shades of purple, green and red before some became like shadow—like night—while others became like the blazing light—like the sun.
They twined around my hand where it tightly gripped Saphira’s, joining them, and I could not believe my eyes as the markings on our linked hands transformed.
Three golden bands encircled each ashy tip of my fingers, thinnest near the tips and thickest near my palm, and matching black bands appeared around her golden fingertips.
I shifted my hand away from hers, opening them enough to see our palms as the light and shadow swept between them and sank into our fingers.
Into the ancient fae that tracked down them towards our palms.
Where mine blazed brilliant gold, hers burned darkest black.
“Saphi,” I whispered and lifted her, bringing her closer to me. “You must wake. You must see this, my love. Wake for me now. Wake for me, my little wolf.”
As I said that, golden light danced over her chest and mine, and I looked down at what I could see of my chest to find arcs and swirls of purest gold forming around the black markings there.
I looked at our joined hands.
At our beautiful markings.
Ones that were a blend of seelie and unseelie.
One heart, split into two.
I looked at Saphira, feeling as if our heart, our soul, was one made two, and now we had been made one again.
Whole.
Complete.
And that she had been right and this was what Lucia had desired all along.
For the seelie and the unseelie to balance each other, to complement and complete one another, and in the process become whole again.
I was sure we were the first seelie and unseelie to do this—to risk everything like this. Whether any others could follow the path we had walked, I did not know.
The bond that bloomed within me, no longer muted and quiet, but roaring to life and clamouring in my veins, robbed me of breath as I watched my mate, feeling the life flowing in her veins and the strength of her beating in my heart.
I had found the other piece of my heart in her, and she had found it in me.
I glanced at the markings on her chest, visible through her damp cream blouse and above the low sweeping collar, and they were not only seelie. There were some among them that were specifically unseelie, although the seelie ones remained most pronounced.
But it was the other markings I knew she would love the most.
Wolves.
Small and beautiful, dancing and leaping among the ancient fae, and at her collarbones two wolves faced each other, the points of their tails becoming ancient fae that spoke of her wolven heart and courage.
Tears spilled down my cheeks as I held her. My little wolf. My heart. My mate.
The waters settled, only glittering starlight skating across the surface remaining, and she stirred at last.
My heart lifted, almost bursting with the joy and relief that flooded it to steal me of my strength, and the profound gratitude that filled my soul as her eyelids fluttered.
“Thank the Great Mother,” I murmured as I pulled her to me, pressing my cheek to hers.
“I saw her,” she whispered against my cheek, her voice a little broken and rough, her words startling me. “I met Lucia.”
A fool would believe her mad or perhaps that it had been another dream, but I felt it in my heart.
She had seen the goddess, and the goddess had seen her.
She had seen us. Our love that transcended the boundaries between her children.
Love so deep we had been willing to die for the other, so we could be together, so nothing would stand between us and our destiny.
I angled my head and pressed a kiss to her brow. “Welcome back, my love.”
She smiled sleepily up at me as I pulled back to see her and slipped her fingers between mine, linking our hands. I lifted them to my lips and kissed them too, and she frowned at them.
At the markings.
She looked at me for an explanation.
I smiled for her, that smile that always got a reaction, that always put heat in her eyes. “I might have made a wish of my own. I also think we might really be mated.”
She smiled slightly. “We are mated.”
“Did Lucia tell you that?” I tried to sound teasing as she struggled to keep her eyes open, wanting to keep her with me, afraid that if she closed them again I might lose her.
“No. My wolf,” she said and lifted one arm from between us, wrapping it around my neck and showing me without words that she was stronger than I had thought, in no danger of slipping back into the darkness.
She pulled her fingers from between mine and toyed with the tips of them.
“But this… the goddess told me this means mated too.”
I looked at our fingers as she circled one of mine.
Stroking the rings that had appeared around them.
Black on hers. Gold on mine.
“We are mated then.” It felt good to say that and I could not hold back my smile as I looked at her, my heart swelling at the sight of my beautiful little mate.
I pursed my lips. “This exchange of rings is rather delicious, and I have every intention of showing them off to everyone so all in this realm knows that I am yours and you are mine, but… I feel you are still missing something.”
She frowned at me, her brow crinkling. “I am?”
I grinned and swooped on her lips, and before I kissed her, I whispered against them.
“A crown, nyr ill’aeth vel’aerhys.”