29. CHAPTER 29
Sorin
My head was pounding when I first heard the incessant knocking on my door.
I threw an arm over my face to shield my eyes from the sun, hoping and praying to the nine gods that whoever it was would simply go away.
But a little voice in the back of my mind told me it might be Aveline, so I rolled out of bed.
I was sticky with the remnants of the poultice, blood, and sweat, as I traipsed to the door.
Maybe it hadn’t been my head that was pounding at all, but the fists banging against the obsidian doors mercilessly as they shook in the frame.
“I’m coming!” I shouted, padding barefoot across the cool stone floor.
The fire in the grate had gone cold.
The weak memory of Aveline tucking me into bed and removing my shoes hummed in the back of my mind, a small smile lifting my lips. I grasped the brass handle and wrenched the door open.
“What happened to you?” Enora asked, her fist still raised to continue pounding.
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you we needed to speak after the masquerade ball. Do you not remember?” she asked, pushing past me into my chambers.
“Do you have no sense of propriety? You cannot simply waltz into the prince’s rooms on a whim. You need to be announced. Was there no guard patrolling this hall?”
“Was Aveline announced?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest as she studied me, ignoring my question. “Seriously…what happened to you? You look like shit.”
I shook my head, running a frustrated hand down my face. “I am not sure when we became so friendly, or if you simply lack boundaries, but it is none of your business. Now if you wouldn’t mind…I wish to return to bed.”
“We need to talk,” was her only reply.
“And we will. After I have had time to rest properly.”
She shook her head. “I have been thinking about it, and there is something I need to tell you. Something you need to know if she is truly your mate.”
“Enora…” I started in aggravation, right before pounding resumed on the doors to my chambers.
I quirked a brow at her, but she merely shrugged in response.
I padded back toward the door and wrenched it open once more before my head truly did split in two.
“Aveline?”
She pushed past me, an angry flush coloring her cheeks. I thought we had parted on good terms last night, and I was interested in what it might be that had angered her between then and now.
“I have been searching everywhere for you!” she accused.
Her words weren’t directed at me but at Enora, who had plopped down onto the settee. It was placed right beside the chair I had sat in last night…when I had drank Aveline’s blood.
“You found me.” She shrugged, as if finding her in the crown prince’s quarters was entirely normal.
Aveline’s gaze flitted between the two of us, accusation clear in the crease of her brow. I raised my hands in defense as I padded back toward the bed.
“I just woke up. This one was pounding on my door. No sense of propriety or decorum. You would think she was raised in a barn…”
Enora stood. “I…I…”
“Why are you here?” Aveline asked, crossing her own arms over her chest.
The movement drew my eyes to the shift she wore—and I immediately turned away. It was practically see-through, her breasts peaked behind the thin material. I ran a hand through my messy bed head as I tried to think of anything else.
Trolls. Nixies. My teacher from the first year of school with the wart on her nose.
Gods help me this woman was going to be the death of me.
“Why are you here?” Enora asked in rebuttal.
Aveline’s expression was incredulous. “I asked you first.”
Enora opened her mouth to speak, but words escaped her.
She didn’t have a good excuse for coming to the prince’s rooms at dawn.
She didn’t want to tell her that we needed to discuss the mating bond.
She didn’t want her to know about it yet.
Because Aveline was already planning to marry the crown prince of Myros.
Fury rose up the back of my throat at the thought and I collapsed onto the bed, leaning back onto my palms. I was utterly exhausted after last night, the blood just now beginning to run through my system and strengthen me.
The wound at my side was painless, though I couldn’t readily see the state of its healing beneath the smeared poultice from last night that had hardened against it.
“Enora…why are you here?” Aveline pressed, moving toward her.
“I…I can’t tell you,” Enora replied, her gaze falling to the floor.
“Can’t tell me, or won’t?” Aveline snapped angrily.
Enora’s gaze narrowed. “Why are you so cross with me? Because you found me in Sorin’s quarters? I have no interest in the prince…trust me.”
“That isn’t why I’m angry with you.” Aveline took an encroaching step forward.
Enora tilted her head. “So…you are angry with me. Why?”
“What was Noor talking about? In the library last night?” Aveline asked.
My head swiveled between the two of them as they engaged in conversation as if I weren’t here. As if these weren’t my chambers.
“I already told you last night. I don’t know,” Enora said.
“Don’t you?” Aveline accused.
“What are you on about?” Enora asked, her gaze flitting to mine.
I raised my hands in defense once more, all but happy to sit here silently if Aveline’s ire wasn’t directed toward me.
“You have been hiding something from me.” Aveline pointed at her as tears rose to her eyes.
I stood before I had even made the conscious decision to do so. I was crossing the room as if I was being pulled by a thread stronger than my own free will. I did not stop until I stood before Aveline.
“What are you talking about?” I asked her softly. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out.”
My gaze dropped to the bite mark that marred the skin where her neck met her shoulder. Heat pulsed through me, my blood flooding with desire at the thought of what had happened in these rooms last night.
Her gaze searched mine before falling to my bare torso. She dropped the hand she had been pointing at Enora, deflating. “Did you know?”
“Did I know what?” I asked, voice soft.
My hand itched to reach out to her, but thought better of it. Things had irreparably changed between us last night, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still in love with my enemy. It didn’t change the fact that she didn’t know about our fated bond yet.
She remained silent.
“I assure you; I have no idea what you two are talking about,” I said softly.
“I had a dream. My mother was speaking with Enora’s mother about the tinctures. How I had to take them to hide my true lineage. That it was the only way to suppress who I truly am.”
Enora opened her mouth to speak, but I put up a hand to stop her before she could utter a single word. “Before you deny it, I know all about the poisons, Enora.”
“You know she carries poisons with her. But did you know she takes the poisons herself?” Enora asked skeptically.
My head snapped to Aveline. “What is she talking about? Why would you be poisoning yourself?”
“Why would you?” Aveline accused back, crossing her arms once more over the thin shift. “The ixia would have killed you if you hadn’t built up a tolerance to it on your own.”
Enora tsked, turning toward the arched glass windows on the far wall of the bedroom. “So many, many secrets,” she muttered under her breath.
Aveline turned toward Enora. “You’re one to talk about secrets. You have been keeping a secret from me my entire life!”
“I assure you—I don’t know of what you speak,” she replied, mouth thin.
Aveline’s head fell back, a frustrated hand running through her raven hair and pulling it.
“I know about the poison! My mother told yours that she had to poison me to keep my magic at bay. That if anyone found out what I was…they would use me. That you needed to know the truth in order to protect me properly. To be my guardian.”
I became deathly still as her words registered.
Aveline had magic.
She wasn’t a human after all. But then…what was she? And that didn’t explain or justify why she needed to poison herself.
“Enora!” Aveline shouted, hands falling against her sides in frustration. “You are my closest friend! How could you keep this from me?”
Enora’s face crumpled in shame. “I was only trying to protect you.”
The words were soft beneath the roaring that filled my ears. Enora’s gaze flitted to mine with a question in her gaze, as if she heard it too.
What was that? It sounded like…
“Enough!” Aveline’s voice rang out so sharply I fell back a step, only to be immediately thrown to the ground as the arched glass windows on the far wall burst open in a shower of water and glass.
“Aveline!”
I cried out to her, but the tide of water swept my feet out from under me.
Glass cut against my skin as I was thrown against the wall, the wind knocked out of my lungs, my head cracking against stone. My vision swam black as the room filled with lake water.
For an unending moment I held my breath, hoping and praying the tide of water would retreat. My lungs felt like they might burst by the time the swell swept back out of the room through the now obliterated windows.
It did not take the destruction it had wrought with it.
Aveline was on her hands and knees, soaked from head to toe amid a sea of glass and brackish debris.
Minnows fluttered against the wooden floorboards.
Reeds and algae were scattered across the room.
Enora had been thrust against the back wall beneath the force of the tide too, retching up water as she pushed her ivory hair out of her eyes.
In a heartbeat my wings were at my back. I flew to Aveline’s side, pulling her up as the glass bit into her palms, leaving fresh trails of her blood in its wake.
What the fuck just happened?
Aveline fell against me, a sob tearing free from her throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” She turned to search for Enora as her words broke off, finding her wide eyed in the corner, her wet dress plastered against her frame.
I grasped Aveline by the shoulders and pulled her away from my chest only enough to meet her gaze. “Are you all right?”
She nodded; her cheeks devoid of the angry pink flush that had painted her skin mere moments ago. She was pale and shivering in my grasp.
“Was that…was that you?” I asked, scanning the room.
There wasn’t a single thing left untouched by the swell. The water had been pulled from Blackwater Lake. Aveline met my gaze and a long beat of silence fell between us before she tentatively nodded her head, confirming what I already suspected.
When I had first touched Aveline’s skin, my own magic had magnified back at me. I had felt fire and brimstone. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but that sensation had changed when we arrived in Stormgaard.
Then, I felt the exact opposite.
Cool water and soft mist as if I stood on the shore.
It was her magic.
The tinctures and poisons she had been dosing herself with suppressed her own power and allowed magic to be thrown back like a mirror. Without them, her true power had begun to bleed through.
Aveline wasn’t human at all.
The gods didn’t see fit to bond me for an eternity to a human. No…Aveline had the magic of the tides.
But as I gazed down at her, drenched in water from the consequences of her own brimming anger, one thought permeated everything.
What did that make her?