14. Nothing Is Ever Broken That Can’t Be Fixed
14. NOTHING IS EVER brOKEN THAT CAN’T BE FIXED
RUSH
Caught off guard, I let slip a surprised grunt before hurriedly quieting. Though my current bedchamber was a temporary assignment apparently intended to last the duration of the Nuptialis Probatio, there was every chance the queen was spying on me here as much as she did throughout the rest of the palace.
Regardless, I couldn’t help myself as I grinned at the evanescent faces of my brothers that hovered in the middle of the room like apparitions from the Etherlands.
“It is so damn good to see you guys,” I gushed in a whisper, unable to hide my relief. The few days since I’d last seen them had felt like months.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling this alone, like a part of me was missing and I’d never again be whole without it.
“Can you hear me?” I whisper-shouted at them when their faces faded, warbled, then solidified again. I could still see right through them.
West’s lips were moving.
“I can’t hear you,” I said with a too-evident desperation I instantly tamped down. I couldn’t let them realize how bad the last few days had been for me.
They turned toward each other in obvious agitation, presumably debating the workings of this odd magic none of them possessed. After animated gesturing from Ryder to someone outside of my view, their voices finally reached me.
“—can forget payment if it doesn’t work,” Ryder was saying, pointed away from me.
“I can hear you,” I said urgently. “Can you hear me now?”
“We can hear you,” Hiroshi said. With a meaningful arch of his brows: “Loud and clear.”
I inched closer to the mirage, lowered my voice to a mere breath. “How are you doing this?”
Ryder waved a dismissive hand in front of his face. “It’s no big deal. We just owe a favor now.”
Apparently the fae beyond my sight insisted whatever my friends owed was more than a mere favor, and Ryder whirled around to snap at them in sharp, hushed tones. “We’ve got a deal. Now leave and let us talk.”
When Ryder faced me again, the irritation rapidly slid from his features to mimic the concern that was a perfect match to West’s and Hiro’s.
“We’ve been searching for you for days,” West said. “You were well hidden. ”
By magic, I guessed. Probably Braque’s. Anything for his precious queen, the asshole.
Hiro’s brows lowered. “How’ve you been holding up?”
Though my reply caught in my throat, I got it out. “It’s been fine. Nothing for you guys to worry about.”
My tattoos flared. The telltale cool breeze sensation that marked their progress told me they’d swept across my chest and shoulders to creep up my neck and across my cheekbones—so there was no chance my friends would miss them, dammit.
And they surely didn’t. Their lips pursed in identical disapproval. Not at my lie, but the reason they surmised for it.
“Seriously, nothing for you to worry about,” I insisted, though it only led to the tattoos spreading across my forehead as well.
“Tell us,” West ordered around gritted teeth.
I hesitated, debating another lie until West added, “We don’t have much time. And there’s at least a chance we might be able to help, even if we have to find someone else to work with.”
Reluctant, I nodded then exhaled an, “I’ve been the nightly … entertainment for her and her ladies.”
Ry and West grew louder than they should have with their expletives. Storm clouds settled across Hiro’s usually placid face.
“ Entertainment ,” Hiro repeated, his lips puckered as if the word itself were as foul as what it represented .
I swallowed thickly. “Yeah.” The one word came out as a croak.
West was shaking his head and muttering, “I’m gonna ki?—”
Ry slapped a hand to his mouth that no doubt he’d pay for later. But West quieted. Us talking at all was a risk—one I was considering necessary, if for nothing else than my sanity; I truly had never felt so … desolate. But threatening the queen when she might be listening was an unnecessary risk. She needed no additional reason to punish any of us.
Cheeks an angry pink, West bit out, “What did Elowyn do? She must’ve done something.”
“Definitely,” Ry added.
“It would have been as awful for her as it was for you,” Hiro said gently as if cradling my pain in the cupped palms of his hands.
I felt my own brow furrow even as my heartbeat sped up, a sign that more than I’d realized was off kilter.
“What’s…?” My violation was the only term that came to mind, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “What’s any of it have to do with Lady Elowyn?” I rubbed my chin, listening to the scratch of the stubble there. “She was the only one who didn’t seem into it, which was a crazy relief, actually, but why would it hurt her?”
A shudder that inexplicably felt like a distant echo slid across my skin. Whatever it was I was missing, it was achingly close. Nearly within my grasp.
“Whaddya mean, man?” West muttered even as Ry and Hiro exchanged a look I’d seen hundreds of times over our years together. It said shit was way worse than I thought.
“Did the…?” West cut himself off with another shake of his head. “Did you have to—?” He stopped to clear his throat despite our supposed hurry. “Did you have sex with her ?” he finally asked in a low, rough grumble.
There was no doubt he meant the queen, not Elowyn. If I’d had any doubt, the dread tugging at his features would have cleared it up.
After a steeling inhale that did nothing to erase the memories of what I’d been forced to do, I nodded, unable to bring myself to utter the affirmative aloud.
West and Ry spat out another round of curses fit for a whole crew of sailors while Hiro simply stared at me with compassion welling in his gentle eyes.
Hurriedly, I glanced away.
But the sight of my brothers was so necessary, I quickly looked back at them.
“So what did Elowyn do?” West grit out like the words cost him in gemstones.
Again, confusion pinched my face. “She was pretty much the only one not to do anything.”
“You mean to tell us…” Ry started, paused apparently to get his anger under control, then finished with, “You had to do it with the other females too?”
By dragonfire, I didn’t think I could say it aloud. Couldn’t admit to my greatest shame.
But they read my response on my face anyway .
While Ry and West reeled some more, Hiro smiled sadly at me and said, “Nothing is ever broken that can’t be fixed.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with him.
“We’ll get through it,” he added. “Together. Always together.”
Unless we’re apart . But I’d already upset them enough, I didn’t want to reveal exactly how difficult it was to endure what I had alone.
“So how’d you keep Elowyn from murdering the whole lot of them?” Ryder asked.
“Yeah,” West added. “Was the pain too great for her to move or something?”
“That’d be the only explanation,” Ryder answered. “No way would she not intervene somehow.”
How did they know I’d found myself unexpectedly reliant on her? That I’d found myself curled around her in the queen’s bed as if she were a raft in the middle of the ocean?
“She asked to join her in the bed … with me.”
When I heard the words outside of myself, they seemed like they must be untrue. Like life wouldn’t ask me to shoulder a burden so awful.
Ry and West looked at each other yet again before Hiro asked, “Rush, why does it sound like you have no idea who Elowyn is to you?”
There it was again. That echo of something lost.
“Because he doesn’t,” Ry said on a stunned exhale.
Once more, a cool breeze unfurled across my skin, tracing the path of the endless vines that cursed me to reveal my emotions whether I wanted to or not.
“What in dragon’s veins did she do to you?” West breathed. She again referred to the queen.
“Rush,” Hiro said. “Elowyn is?—”
“Don’t say it,” Ryder interjected urgently. “Not here.”
Hiro frowned at him. “I wasn’t going to.” His stare returned to mine.
I felt myself lean forward so as to catch every word he was about to say.
“Remember Donovan and Rylea from Leantos? We met them?—”
“At the gathering of clans four years ago,” I finished.
Donovan and Rylea were mates. That rare form of magic that only graced about one fae for every dozen. Donovan and Rylea had scarcely wanted to stand apart from each other, so strong was their bond.
Hiro nodded encouragingly.
“You’re saying,” I started before trailing off. “You’re saying Elowyn and I are … like them?”
Unwavering, Hiro answered. “Yes.”
My jaw locked before I got it to say, “How could I not know?”
Before any of them could inform me, I growled, “Interference. Braque,” I practically spat his name. I’d see the simpering smile ripped from the man’s jowls.
“You’re sure?” I asked my friends even while my own certainty locked into place .
“As much as Ramana and I ever were,” West supplied, his eyes gleaming with their intensity. It was the first instance I’d heard him mention my sister in a long time where he sounded like he recalled the good more than the pain of her loss.
“I don’t remember,” I barely breathed, and this time my low volume wasn’t for the benefit of our possible invisible audience.
“The fucking cunt,” West snarled. “How dare she ?”
Obviously a rhetorical question. We knew all too well the queen’s awfulness had no limits.
“No wonder…” I uttered as I recalled how Elowyn had cried out when the queen had taken me to her bed. Watching one’s mate have sex with another was rumored to feel worse than imminent death.
“I still found my way to her, to Elowyn,” I admitted. “While … in her bed.”
“Makes sense,” Hiro answered gently. “The magic … is strong.”
My heart pounded in my chest as if I’d been sprinting. “She’s gone.”
Not the queen, Elowyn , my panic said.
“What do you mean, gone ?” Ryder asked.
“In the first test. Went through a doorway and never came back. The queen sent Azariah to find her, with Ivar,” I added grimly. “He has orders to kill her on sight.”
“Where?” West barked. “Where’d she go? I will not let you suffer what I have, dammit.”
“Somewhere within a few days’ travel. That’s all Azariah knew. Still within Embermere’s borders.”
My heart pounded more furiously. I didn’t remember the events that led to Elowyn being my mate or my forgetting that vital fact, but I suddenly understood she was what I had been missing. The amputated limb.
“Find her,” I commanded the three fae I trusted most in this entire cursed Mirror World.
“Love to,” Ryder said. “You know for you we’ll do anything. But you gotta give us more to go on than that.”
“There is no more.” Panic swelled in my throat, making my voice hoarse. “Track her down. Or Ivar will kill her.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” West said. “She can fend for herself surprisingly well.”
“This is Ivar though,” Ryder argued.
West rubbed his chin. “Right.”
“No female has any chance against Ivar,” I said.
Hiro’s worried stare skimmed my face. “You really have forgotten everything about her, haven’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
“She left her dragonling with me,” Hiro continued.
My brows leapt. “Her what ?”
“She had you forget the dragons too?” West was asking, but Ry glanced over his shoulder, at once jumpy.
“No time,” he whipped out. “We have minutes, maybe seconds. How can we help you ? ”
“Help her,” I said urgently.
“We’ll do our best but?—”
“ Help her .”
“What about the … entertainment?” West asked. “Is it ongoing?”
“No,” I lied. “Besides, I still have more of the olvidian.” I didn’t.
I needed all their focus on Elowyn, not on how the queen insisted I come to her chambers every night. At least each occasion since the first, she’d had me dance for them, undressing as I went, until I was completely naked. They touched me with their gross, grabby hands, but at least I hadn’t had to have sex with them again. It was humiliating and horrible enough to give me flashbacks that made me shiver in the privacy of my room, but at least it was far better than the alternative.
I doubted this turn of events would last long, however, not with the way the queen’s ladies looked at me with so much hunger, the queen with equal parts blood thirst and lust.
“Just find Elowyn,” I repeated. “Everything else will be over soon enough.”
Another lie, of course. I could scarcely bear even the thought of being summoned to the queen’s chambers again tonight. I’d barely been able to keep down food since that first night.
“Go,” I implored. “We’ll talk again later…”
Without warning, the faces of my friends had vanished as suddenly as they’d appeared.
Even so, I didn’t feel as alone as I had before .
My brothers were fighting for me.
And for Elowyn.
I could scarcely believe it. I had a mate . A mate. I turned the notion around in my mind, examining it from different angles.
I’d never allowed myself to imagine I might be blessed with the fortune of dragons. Mates were a gift of such magnitude I’d never allowed myself to so much as hope for one.
Not when life had been one disappointment after another. In the queen’s Mirror World, it was far easier not to want.
Only now I wanted. Oh, how I wanted.
If Elowyn was mine, then I’d find a way to get her back.
Even if I had no clue how, or how my brothers would begin to find her.
Now I had three things to fight for: Larissa, Elowyn, and the rest of faekind.
Lighter than I’d felt in days, though with scant reason, I silently slipped out the door of my chambers.
It was early morning. The second event of the Nuptialis Probatio was scheduled to begin after a luncheon. The queen and her ladies likely still slept after the entertainment of the previous night. While courtiers slept to recover from the revelries, I usually joined my brothers in training. Besides, the peace of sleep eluded me lately. The queen’s face and taunts had stalked me into my dreams.
Anticipating guards outside my chamber but finding none, I slunk down the hall toward the Great Salon of Delicacies. It was only exiting the Nuptialis Probatio wing that was magically forbidden to me, not moving around within it. I’d discovered my limits the first day sequestered here, smacking into solid invisible walls whenever I sought to roam.
The doors to the great salon were pulled shut. I eased beyond them and slipped inside the Silver Salon of Rarities and Curiosities—where my breath left me all over again.
The parvnits remained pinned to the walls by their gossamer wings. When I’d first seen them, their wings had been iridescent, like those of dragonflies, though large as a hummingbird’s. Now their wings were a dull, ashen gray. Only a few of them even bothered to raise their heads to look at me when I entered.
As the queen’s escort to the exhibit, I’d learned that pinned as they were, the choice whether or not to reveal themselves to onlookers had been taken from them.
I rushed toward the nearest one. Once a cheery yellow, her waist-long hair was bleached of color, hanging limply along her diminutive shoulders. Her cheeks were drawn, her skin wan as she considered me. She sagged against the effort it took to hold up her head.
“Free us,” she pled in a gasping wheeze.
Studying her wings, I understood why. Four pins supported her weight. One through each wing, shredding the delicate tissue. Her weight had dragged the wings through the pins until she hung from their top rims, leaving gaping tears through them. Another pin pierced flesh beneath each shoulder. A bloody, gruesome rip separated the muscles, revealing the drag of her weight there too.
Too aware of the consequences of my actions, I replied anyway: “Of course I will.”
When the queen discovered her little exhibit sabotaged, who knew what she’d do? But I couldn’t walk away from them. I’d already had to leave them here for days before I could sneak away to their aid. Every time I’d tried, guards had been stationed outside my room.
I drew so close to the parvnit with the formerly yellow hair that I could make out the wispy eyelashes framing her eyes. Once, the lashes had been a matching, vivid yellow. At present, they were pale as spider webs.
“How do I get you down with the least pain?” I asked gently. Pain was guaranteed however I did it.
The small fairy shook her head; the effort seemed to drain what little energy she had left. “Just end us. End us all.”
Several groans erupted from around the room, which was perhaps twenty by forty feet, seeming to say, Yes. Kill us all. Mercy, please.
“You don’t want that,” I answered right away. “You can recover from this.”
“No, we can’t,” the yellow parvnit said, sorrow riding each of her words .
“You can,” I insisted fiercely. “You must. She can’t win.”
“She already has.”
“She only wins if we let her break us.”
“Can’t you see? We’re broken already.”
“No, you aren’t,” I said in an insistent hush unlikely to draw attention outside this salon. “Your kind is fierce. Strong. Ferocious. I’ve heard the rumors. You’re more fearsome than fairies ten times your size.”
The yellow fairy didn’t reply for several long moments before uttering a begrudging, “That’s true…”
“Then let me free you. I’ll free you all.” No response, so I added, “Yes, it will take time. And yes, it won’t be fun. But you’ll eventually heal and become stronger. This experience will turn you into something brighter, even fiercer than before.”
The yellow parvnit’s head held steady as she stared at me so intently I doubted she saw me at all. An entire minute must have passed before she said, “And then we’ll pin the queen herself to the fucking wall.”
“That’s the spirit.” I studied the pins, thick as nails, some more. “Now, guide me through this. There are a lot of you, and I don’t know how long I’ll be undisturbed.”
“There are sixty-three of us here,” squeaked a small, breathy voice from my left.
“No time to waste, then,” I said, injecting real urgency into my tone.
The yellow parvnit’s eyes gleamed, her voice hardened, as she said, “Hold my body around the waist, but don’t be getting fresh with me, you hear?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” And I smiled despite the horror of the scene. There was real fire in that tiny voice now.
Between thumb and forefinger, I clasped her gingerly around the waist—and yanked on the first pin.
Breathing heavily, the little parvnit swallowed her scream so the sixty-two others would also have a chance at their freedom.
Brave as if she were ten times her size as well as fierce.
I clutched the second pin, held my breath, and tugged.