Chapter Seventeen
Pikquarrys
No matter how fast I will my aching joints to carry me, I’m no match for a ventus’serpentaur’s wings.
I dash inside the throne room, hooves clattering on the skyrite floor, but I’m too late. Princess Loreleivnna walks toward me, her arm outstretched to clasp the scheming serpent’s hand. Behind them, King Vyrion stands slack-jawed on the dais in their wake.
Drenched in the acrid scent of enchantments and satisfaction, the envoy peers down his nose to smirk at me as they pass.
I growl and raise my fists, ready to knock the cocky petalfucker’s jaw so hard his decapitated head flies into next season.
“Pikqaurrys.” The King’s harsh voice commands my attention. Reluctantly, I lower my guard and dip into an obedient bow. “Spirit-spire office, immediately.”
Fuck.
King Vyrion sounds like his predecessor, and for a moment, I’m twenty-three again, head bowed, sending frantic glances at my father’s hooves in front of me as he pleads forgiveness for whatever trouble I got the princeling into this time.
I dare not risk my father’s position by mentioning the princeling was the one who suggested we ring the cranky palace apothecary’s feybells and run away before they answered.
At the back of the throne room, the vines that conceal the spirit-spire office peel away, reforming with alarming speed the moment my back hooves are inside.
My friend doesn’t use the office as often as kings of the past. His rule has been blessedly free of war, and the portals have been quiet since the Battle of the Unseen, thanks to my years of tireless work forging enchanted weapons and safeguards.
Vyrion takes all audiences in the throne room, preferring to rule with transparency through open mediations.
Thus, the once vital office lies mostly untouched.
Thick, winding vines packed with earth surround the modest office, which is about four Aevumoon Iris trunks wide. Shelves line the walls, stuffed with tomes of strategy and handwritten accounts of royalty past. The desk is carved from a mound of earth, topped with a slab of stone that lies bare.
In the center of the room, a spire of twining roots twists toward the ceiling, coming to a point. Crystals of every color glitter from crevices in the roots, some speared deep, others secured with vines.
I fume silently, replaying the smug ventus’serpentaur’s smirk in my mind. Princess Loreleivnna is not safe with him. I have no proof, but I feel it in my marrow: I must save her.
King Vyrion approaches the spirit-spire. His whole being vibrates with a fury that mirrors my own as he draws back, then slams his fist into a flat sky-opal embedded there. The air shifts, engulfing the border of the room in a soundproof bubble.
With his back toward me, my closest friend asks in a deep, foreboding rumble, “How could you?”
My breath catches like a lump of molten metal in my throat.
If he would’ve asked me the same question a few hours ago, I would’ve assumed he’d discovered my illicit actions with Princess Loreleivnna.
I would’ve lain my neck bare over my own anvil, offering my head for thinking of his precious daughter in the filthy ways that plague my imagination.
That isn’t an option now. My head must stay affixed to my shoulders if I’m to find a way out of this, though our friendship may die in my place. “I’ll fix this, Your Majesty.”
“How?” he thunders, whirling to face me.
“She accepted his proposal within minutes of meeting him. All of my groveling to the council to allow her the final say over her first mate, blown in the wind! A Svitaeryl princess, marrying the Isles of Aethereusum stars-forsaken cloud-striker. An Oranther, Pikr! Cloud-strikers as lethal to the environment as they are rich. The council will wither with greed.”
I stare silently, my mind reeling to catch up with all of the revelations that’d poured from his mouth after the word proposal.
Mated? To that slimy serpent?
“He tricked her,” I fumble with my words. “Enchantments.”
“Possibly, but she’s young. The heart of a petal is easily opened by light masquerading as the sun.”
“No.” The word slips from my lips.
King Vyrion’s gaze narrows on me.
I cannot challenge his knowledge of his own daughter, but the princess I’ve come to know is strong-willed, stubborn, and keen.
Much like the peridot gems formed under extreme conditions that I’ve used many times to enhance enchantments to ward off darkness, her eyes glitter with wisdom beyond her years, thinly veiling the complexities within her.
She is intrepid, and will peel apart the layers of an old centaur at a tavern she’s not supposed to visit.
Her chin stays high after rejection, and though her heart is worn on her sleeve, she protects it fiercely, not swayed by sweet-talking noble creatures whose attention is fleeting.
I’m confident Loreleivnna–Princess Loreleivnna–wouldn’t sign her life away to a stranger.
“He reeks of enchantments,” I explain. “After her date with the zephyr girl, Princess Loreleivnna ran through the streets. I lost her trail at the bathhouse, and found her with the envoy at Voyeur’s Perch. Within moments, they were in the air.”
King Vyrion’s features are all hard lines, his shoulders drawn so close to his ears I worry he hasn’t breathed since we entered this office.
Another seed of his words sprouts in my thoughts. My hooves shift restlessly. “The council allowed her final say over her first mate?”
With a sigh, tension leaves my friend’s muscles, and he deflates like a worn leather bellows.
He drags himself to the desk and collapses into the chair, looking older than his years.
I notice a few lavendering hairs on his head, and guilt fills me for leaving my friend alone for so many years, running a kingdom with a gluttonous council and a diminishing wife.
I should have been here to help ease his burden.
“Not that it matters.” He scrubs a hand over his forehead. “This pairing will have their blessing, enchantments or not.”
My brow furrows as a plan forms. It’s archaic, and a direct betrayal of her wishes in more ways than one, but still, my hooves dance excitedly.
“I can fix this,” I say with more conviction this time. Vyrion peers at me through his fingers. “I’ll challenge Halor for her hand by way of Ordinance X.”
It’s a dirty trick. Before the council seized the final rights to a noble’s choice in first mate, there was a process in place that allowed anyone with objections to the first mate a chance to challenge the pairing’s fruition.
It’s no longer practiced, but was never struck from the official ordinances.
The winner’s prize was marriage. The loser’s was often death.
My tail swishes. I’ve done so much to harm Princess Loreleivnna. I’ll save her from the ventus’serpentaur at the cost of her free will, sacrificing any trust she still harbors in me.
“It’s the only way,” I say out loud, trying to assuage my bleeding heart.
“Yes.” The King Vyrion rises, hope returning to his sage green eyes. “Well sown, my friend. The council will be forced to agree.”
I nod, but my chest aches. I’ve learned too much information during this meeting.
All this time, I could have won her heart the right way, no gimmicks, no unkind words as I greedily coaxed her orgasm to coat my pelt.
I could have kissed her in that forest and told her that my brittle heart belonged to her, if she desired to rescue it from the scrap heap.
Vyrion circles his desk. He slaps my forearm and gives a firm shake, grinning as though I’ve already won his daughter’s hand in marriage.
I thought I was protecting him by rejecting her advances, but here he is, smiling like I’ve brought him a newborn foal heir.
Perhaps, if the Wise Ones grant me a miracle, she will forgive me and allow me to prove my worthiness as a mate, and I won’t have to sacrifice my dearest friendship along the way.
“This is why you are my most trusted fopweed,” he teases, unaware of how many times I’ve betrayed that trust. “Your existence nurtures me, Brother. Win the challenge.”
“I will. I vow it.”
“Win, but do not slay him. We cannot cull an ally.”
I sneer, but give a solemn nod. “Understood.”
“Rosy. Then,” His smile grows into something more malicious. “Once the petal-fucking, manure-sucking cloud vermin departs, you’ll relinquish your claim, and Loreleivnna can choose someone suitable.”
I swallow the broken whinny that threatens my composure as my world takes another heart-shattering blow of the sledgehammer.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Vyrion glares up at me. With a forced chuckle, I amend, “Yes, Vyrion, my brother. I will return your daughter to you safely and free of that scheming slug.”
For the briefest moment, I’d glimpsed a version of my life with the fierce and bright Princess Loreleivnna by my side, with my best friend’s blessing. A fantasy sweeter than moondrop herb and aevum honey tea, but never meant to be.