Second Night #5
I looked up sharply. He’d sounded casual enough, but it wasn’t at all a casual consequence. Fae lose a portion of their power if they break an oath. How much power would an oath of marriage be worth? A lot, I’d bet.
He shrugged. “The oath was necessary. I was very young when I took the throne. They needed to believe they could control me.”
His profile cut against the lightening sky, antlers sharp as knives.
The softness he’d shown earlier was stripped away, leaving something cold as starlight and harder than the castle stones.
I shivered. It was a warning not to forget what he was.
Tāwhiri might lay claim to a single human ancestor, but you might as well claim a giant eagle has a drop of robin in it.
It was nearly dawn, I realised with sudden alarm. We’d talked the night away.
I hurried to my feet. “I need to go. I’ve already stayed too long.”
Tāwhiri held out a hand, an offer.
I hesitated. “Shouldn’t you return to your ball? Won’t they be offended if you don’t?”
He shook his head, a smile playing at his lips. The primal sharpness of him had folded away again, leaving the soft-eyed man from earlier in the evening. “Offense has already been taken, and I do not wish to be thought a feeble lover, unable to last the night.”
I choked.
His eyes danced, and he offered his hand again.
“Well, if it’s to save your reputation,” I said solemnly and took it.
I could feel the dawn pulling at me as we flew together back to the manor, the warning twinges that it was drawing near. Birds were waking in the forest, filling the chill air with the haunting songs of tūī mingled with the trills of blackbirds and thrushes.
We touched down just outside the boundaries of Bloodthorn Manor with only a few minutes to spare. I slid out of Tāwhiri’s arms, the heat of him a blazing contrast to the cold.
He looked down at me, in that intense, solemn way that both thrilled and worried me.
It made me almost wish he couldn’t see through the illusion, so that I could take refuge behind it again.
It made me want to protest that I was only an ordinary human and what was he doing looking at me like that, when he could go and look instead at some dozen or so fae lords and ladies, each more dazzling than the last?
Most of all, it made something in me lift my chin and look back, unbowed.
“If you will marry me, come to the ball tonight and I will announce it,” he said finally.
I tried to make light of it. “I don’t think you need doubt me. I’d rather be bound to you than the manor, and the trappings of royalty are a nice incentive too. Think of the number of hats I might purchase, as queen. I’m hardly going to turn my nose up at that.”
His expression remained serious. He searched my face, as if he were weighing something up.
“Ella …” he began and trailed off. We were standing very close.
“Yes?” I prompted when he said nothing more. I felt dawn calling to me, the crest of a wave, but I didn’t move to cross the boundary.
“Your true name might break the binding,” he said all in a rush. “If you claim it with the dawn.”
I stared at him as the dawn-curse hummed to life, sunlight breaking over the manor wall. Pain struck.
I bent double as fire burned up my nerve endings, the compulsion to reach the manor strong enough that I shook from resisting it.
All the years of being caged, of never quite being good enough, of being always held at a distance, rose up in me and set me alight like a match to dry tinder.
“I am Ella,” I gasped at the manor. “I am Ella Dufrene of the Bloodthorns, and I belong to no one!”
The curse pulsed, white-hot. Tāwhiri caught me as my knees gave out, but it was done, burned out of my chest. I stood outside the bounds at dawn without pain for the first time in more than a decade.
“I’m free,” I said in wonder, swiftly followed by a sharply illogical hurt, because I ought to be glad about it, oughtn’t I?
Except that starlit towers and midnight-dark eyes had confused things.
Tāwhiri had given up the bargaining chip he held over me.
“Why did you tell me that just now? Have you changed your mind?”
His hands still rested lightly beneath my arms. “No,” he said softly. “My choice remains the same: I wish to marry you. I meant to tell you to test the spell against your name as an engagement gift. I should have waited to do so, for now I have nothing to bargain with. But I … couldn’t.”
I stared at him. A fae king confessing he’d done something against his own interests for me. Why? And was he blushing? The brown of his cheeks had taken on a distinctly reddish hue.
But the flash of uncharacteristic embarrassment settled, his usual calm intensity returning.
He held me steady and said fiercely: “You are every bit as deserving as any other scion of the twelve houses, Ella. You are not somehow less, or lacking, and I would have you choose me not because I represent the only way out of a trap, but because you want what I am offering.”
I couldn’t speak.
He let out a long breath and released me. “If you will marry me, come to the ball. If not, then, I suppose … farewell.” He touched a finger to my cheek, and with a rush of wings, he was gone.