51. Max
Max
Aelindor was on the platform before the train stopped. The banners of the Zodiac Covenant snapped in the wind.
The capital station was locked down. A company of soldiers under Spartan command held every position that mattered. Through the middle of all that armed ceremony came the Fae prince, the real king of the Zodiac Covenant.
Silver coat, twin gold stripes, House Virgo’s winged maiden bright over his heart. Boots polished to a shine. He was exactly as I remembered him. A swordsman’s build, graceful and lethal, his silver hair loose, his blue eyes fixed on the cabin door.
He’d been waiting for me to come home.
The thread between us sparked to life.
I was at the door before it opened, and the second it slid aside, I leapt.
He caught me out of the air, arms locking around me, and I clamped my legs around his waist. He smelled like winter and sandalwood and powerful male. Layers of fabric between us and I could still feel his heart going.
“You’ve come back to me, love,” he whispered. “I’ve waited. I’ve been one breath from walking out on the kingdom and coming after you.”
“Aelindor.” I pushed a hand into his hair. “You don’t ever have to do that. I’ll always come home to you.”
His eyes shone. Then he kissed me.
Neither of us cared about the security detail. Soldiers, Spartans, ranking officers, all of it was background noise.
He kissed me like a man coming off a long fast. One hand splayed at the back of my skull, the other locked under my thigh, and he took his time about it, opening me up slowly and thoroughly until my fingers curled in his collar.
I kissed him back and let him have all of it. The grief too.
“You’re mine,” I said against his mouth.
Our first public kiss, and both of us knew what it announced. No more rumor. No more court whisper. Let them all watch.
Then the mating bond snapped into place between us like a lit cord, burning from his chest to mine. It shoved the geas out of me, and the smoke-serpent’s head opened in a silent shriek.
Three, two, one, and what was left of the serpent shrank to a muddy bead and boiled off to nothing. Three signatures curled to ash, and the blood magic died with them.
The contract Xander held was wastepaper now. One more dead thing in his collection.
Aelindor and I had mated before Xander ever showed up with his parchment. We didn’t owe the geas a bed, just a public claim, and that kiss did it.
Not that I’d have minded a bed.
I wasn’t anyone’s but theirs. All of theirs.
And now I felt so light. So fucking light.
I threw my head back and laughed in my mate’s arms, in front of an army, on the capital station.
“Three hours,” Nikolai said. “We had three hours left on the clock, and we killed that motherfucking geas.”
He and Caspian had closed in on either side, and I slid down out of Aelindor’s arms. Then the four of us crushed together into one armored, ridiculous, magnificent knot, and we laughed.
Until the grief crept in. Drakken wasn’t here. Our worst enemy had him.
But for a moment, we let ourselves have the win.
Four bonds. Four threads. A constellation behind my eyelids.
Aelindor’s burned silver-blue, winter light off deep ice. Nikolai’s ran crimson, wine and blood and old velvet. Caspian’s glowed forest-green, sunlight through summer leaves.
The fourth, furnace gold, stretched thin and taut, flickering like an ember in the wind.
Drakken.
The weight of it hit all of us.
“He’s alive.” Nikolai said it like he was setting something down.
“They won’t kill him. Not before they have—” Caspian’s mouth shut on the rest of it.
“Me,” I said. “They’ll use him to lure me to the Pallid Court, and I’ll go.” I looked around at my three mates and waited for one of them to tell me no. I had an answer ready. “And they’ll regret taking what’s mine.”
“We don’t leave our brother behind,” Aelindor said. “And we don’t let our mate go alone.” He looked at me. “But right now, we go home.”