Chapter 11
MALAKAI
The sound of her laugh all but stops me in my tracks. It echoes down to the very marrow of my bones. Unexpected. Beautiful. Hauntingly familiar. Aveline is everything she ever was, and so much more. And yet, over the course of the day, all I've done is frustrate her more and more.
It's clearer than ever, after listening to her and the other witches discuss what's going to happen, the rest of her coven might despise me.
I do not know how to explain myself to them, nor the fact that Aveline and I have been circling each other in this same dance for centuries upon centuries.
And yet Aveline knows nothing of that, remembers nothing of our past.
I follow my bride up the stairs of the inn, the tingle of magic thicker here than elsewhere in the city.
"It's a waypoint," Hash announces to me, the Seelie following close behind. "You will have to be careful with her," he adds.
"Do not tell me how to treat my bride.” Anger flares at his impudence, and shadows writhe across the floor.
Aveline's laugh falters as she looks over her shoulder at me, and I do my best to smile back at her to ameliorate the fear and uncertainty radiating from her.
Fear, I realized belatedly, that I have caused.
She doesn't remember me. It hurts. It burns, it stings like a lightning bolt straight to my heart.
And for the first time, I put myself into her mud-stained, ripped silken slippers and realized wholeheartedly that I had done grievously wrong by her.
She doesn't remember me. She doesn't remember us.
She doesn't have any experience with witchcraft.
This is the first time she's met her coven, and from the—the way she's looked at the other males, the first time that she's met with anyone who wasn't human either.
My bride has led an incredibly sheltered life and is now being thrust into the thick of it with no preparation other than her own steely determination.
I'll have to make it up to her. I'll have to make this right.
"The plumbing is magically hot," the blonde witch is explaining to my Aveline.
"Do I need to cast a spell on it?" Aveline asks, and the blonde witch gives her a long look. “Some kind of special word, or chant?”
"You really don't have any experience with magic, do you?"
"I really don't," Aveline agrees, and my heart breaks at how defeated she sounds.
I did this to her. I did not prepare her for any of the things that she's now having to cope with, and neither did her parentage, despite the inevitability of this very day.
"There's no spell," the witch tells her kindly.
I decide at once that I like this coven of Aveline's. They are not mean-spirited in the least. She could not—she could have done much worse than these witches.
"I can take care of her," I tell the blonde witch.
She turns to me with an affronted look on her face. "Yes, I can see exactly what your version of taking care of her has led to," she says, waving a hand at Aveline's extremely unkempt state.
Aveline's cheeks heat at the words, and I'm surprised at the emotion I feel welling in my chest. Not anger, no. This is something newer, something I hardly remember the name of—shame.
"I will do better," I say, and my gaze doesn't leave Aveline's as I say it.
"I will do better by you, Aveline. This, I swear.
" I go down on one knee in front of her, my hand at my heart, and I gaze up at her.
"If you will let me, I swear to protect you and to take care of you for as long as we both shall live. "
Aveline regards me not unkindly but carefully, as though she's trying to avoid being trapped the way a deer might when they sense a snare.
"I accept," she finally says. "Now stand up," she snaps. "I'm tired and I want to go to sleep."
A hint of a grin washes along Wren's face as she unlocks the one door at the very end of the hallway.
Inside, there's a well-appointed room, fire already crackling on the hearth.
A large bed—that's not nearly as nice as the one back in my castle, but nice enough that I'm sure Aveline will be comfortable—done in shades of reds and oranges, nearly garish after the solemn blacks and blues that I prefer.
"The bathroom is through there. There's fresh towels, and I'll bring up some clothes that should be about your size, Aveline. They're not as fancy as—"
"I really don't care about fancy," she tells Wren. "I can't thank you enough," she stumbles over the words, "for how kind you've been to me, and I don't understand really what's going on yet, but..."
"It's going to be all right," Wren interrupts her, placing a slim hand on Aveline’s shoulder.
I bristle at Wren touching her.
"We're going to figure this out." She takes a step back as I walk through the door, following Aveline, whose shoulders have drooped with fatigue, and gives me a long, cutting look. "If you touch her tonight, if you even think of touching her tonight..."
"...we'll kill you," Caelan interrupts with a gleeful smile.
"I would never hurt her," I tell them both.
With that, I slam the door in their faces and turn the lock.
When I turn back around, Aveline is face down on the bed, feet hanging off it.
Several toes peek out of the thin excuse for shoes she was wearing, and I stare at her for a long moment, trying to figure out where to go from here, how to apologize for the way I've behaved, how to make her understand that I would never hurt her, that that is the last thing that I want, that her happiness is all that has mattered to me.
The problem is I don't know how to say that because I don't remember what it's like to even have a shape.
"Aveline," I say, desperate to give it a go, to at least say something. "I just... I shouldn't have..." I pause, pacing back and forth.
Aveline stays quiet where she lays on the bed, and I consider that to be a good thing—her sharp tongue temporarily dulled by her fatigue or perhaps compassion for my plight.
"I have been a fool," I tell her gravely. "I have let you down, and in so doing, I've let myself down and the entirety of the Wild Oak Woods, the Elder Forest, and the Elder Gods. And I should have been much more clear about everything, and I didn't know how to do that."
A small sound interrupts me and I whip towards where Aveline lays.
She's asleep. She's not listening at all.
She's snoring. Her foot twitches and my gaze draws downwards to that poor, torn-up slipper.
It's not just dirty, I realize, fresh anger rising in me.
Her blood has soaked through several parts of the silk during her flight from the castle.
They told me not to hurt her, not to touch her, but they can't stop me from taking care of her.
I—I force myself to stop looking at her, to stop wallowing in the knowledge that I have caused her pain and force myself to action instead.
Before long, she's divested of her torn and bloodied slippers, and I've done the best I can possibly do to wash her feet and cleanse her wounds, and I'm sure she is as comfortable as she can be.
"I will watch over you," I tell her, a cat-like snore coming from her mouth as she rolls over.
I cast my gaze around, looking for something to cover her with since she is simply laying on top of the bed.
She shivers in her sleep, and I have half a mind to go downstairs and request more blankets from the Fae innkeeper and his witch.
But when she whimpers in her sleep, I decide that I don't need blankets at all, and I wrap my shadows around her until she stills, her breathing evening out.
I stay like that the entire night, watching her, making sure she's sleeping, comforting her when she whimpers.
And I loathe that I am the reason her sleep is anything but restful.
The weak autumn dawn finally cracks through the windowpanes of the inn, but the velvet shadows I wove around Aveline’s sleeping form are entirely stubborn, purring in protest as I try to call them back to my skin.
She rolls over beneath the heavy quilt, letting out a soft, adorable snore that vibrates straight to the marrow of my bones.
The physical obsession is a literal fire beneath my ribs, a sharp, grinding friction that tightens with every single breath I take.
For three hundred years, my existence was nothing but a relentless grey.
I bided my time in a colorless void, entirely numb to the passage of centuries.
But spending eight hours in the dark watching her sleep—tracking the frantic, shallow flutter of her pulse against the thin silk of her gown, watching the way her pale blonde hair tangles across the pillow—has completely dismantled me.
I want her. My shadow-magic is a boiling, predatory tide screaming to tear through the mattress, pin her beneath my weight, and mark every single inch of her pale skin until the world itself bends to my possession.
But the memory of her panic attack in the corridor… the image of her shaking while she pressed that pathetic brass letter opener against my bare chest; it keeps me entirely restrained.
Carefully, so as not to disturb the fragile peace of her rest, I slip out of the chamber and turn the iron lock silently behind me.
I need to clear my head. I stalk down the creaking wooden stairs of the inn, my dark aura inadvertently causing the dust motes in the stairwell to scatter in a panic.
The common room below smells beautifully of woodsmoke, chicory, and the savory, heavy grease of pork fat sizzling in the back kitchen—a dome of domestic comfort that feels entirely foreign to my domain.
At the counter, Caelen is methodically polishing a glass goblet, his purple skin gleaming under the morning light, while Ga’Rek sits heavily on a reinforced stool, a mug of steaming brew swallowed entirely by his massive green fist. Nearby, that ridiculous, overweight, bug-eyed mutt Boner is snoring loudly under a bench, trailing a slow puddle of drool onto the floorboards.