23. The best possible wingman
THE BEST POSSIBLE WINGMAN
MAKSYM
They were going to kill each other. Maim, at the very least. Maybe even matching eyepatches.
And I hadn’t found it in me to consider interfering.
Neither Enora nor Jasper noticed when I slipped through one of the spectator entrances and took a seat halfway up the stadium. They hadn’t noticed when Eilir materialized beside me either, ranting away about how little thanks they get for all they do to keep the Keep and its residents upright.
I appreciated the little wood sprite more than I usually had words for, truly, but I was too damned entertained to give them much other than a few half-hearted grunts of acknowledgement.
Why Jasper had come here, of all places, I didn’t know, but in the arena, my betrothed and my mage were locked in a sparring match backed by far more than just friendly competition.
Sounded like it too, with the strings of highly targeted profanities that echoed up from the princess.
But far be it from me to judge how the two of them worked through fifteen years of baggage.
The sooner they found some common ground, the better. Things were going to get incredibly complicated if my wife couldn’t be in the same room as my high mage without looking like she wanted to tear him limb from limb.
My wife—fuck. That alone was going to take some time to get used to.
Enora was clearly fighting for her life down there, only further solidifying my fear that her night had been anything but the peaceful opportunity she deserved to grieve, but she was putting up a formidable effort.
Thrice in the time I’d been watching, she’d dealt a blow so well-timed and powerful, she sent Jasper staggering—only for him to lay her out on her ass in the dirt a dozen more times.
I had a feeling I’d eventually have to intervene, but I couldn’t smell any blood. Yet.
“We’re in trouble with the two of them, aren’t we?” Beside me, Eilir let out a hefty sigh.
“Oh, we most certainly are,” I chuckled. “They’re as star-crossed as I’ve ever seen.”
“Star-crossed?” Eilir squeaked before they dropped their voice to a whisper. “Lovers? Max, no. There’s no way.”
I tossed the sprite a knowing glance. “Something like that. I think you must be going blind in your old age, sprite. How can you not see it? Look at them. Really look at them. That’s not just anger driving those blows.”
Eilir fixed me with a displeased scowl before casting their attention back to the arena and the two figures locked in their heated match. The sprite watched on for a long time before they finally looked back at me, conflict written all over their face.
“Well, that…that’s not right! You’re—” Eilir’s small wooden face twisted before they let out an exasperated huff. “Oh, this is a mess, Max.”
What a gross understatement.
The sprite wasn’t even the one who was going to have to figure out how to navigate marrying the childhood love of their best friend without somehow fracturing that relationship.
I still didn’t have the faintest fucking idea how any of it could work without one, or all, of us being wounded in the process—and I was going to have to figure it out while dealing with the bureaucratic nightmare that was the Agōn Ferr. Oh, and a fucking wedding.
I shrugged as a rueful smile tugged at my mouth. “We’ve been through worse, haven’t we, Eilir? I’m sure we’ll figure it all out in time.”
The sprite crossed its branch-like arms and shook its head. “Now I know we’re really screwed if you’re pretending to be the optimistic one.”
Oh, we both knew that was a bald-faced lie.
I may not always have had the sunniest disposition, but I’d never gone bald from worrying or had my bark—or lack thereof—peel off in sheets, all things Eilir had done repeatedly in my life. I was about to volley that back to them, but the sprite’s look of frustration fell, and they sighed.
“You don’t really think something bad is going to happen, do you?” Their head leaves rustled as they glanced between me and the arena. “Her brother, I mean. You said…”
“I said we need to be attentive and diligent, that is all.”
It was the unfortunate truth, given how none of Enora’s situation sat well with me.
Not the attempt on her life, nor how she’d been dumped over our borders, and I had told Eilir as much in the strictest confidence.
It wasn’t anything to do with my doubts about Enora either.
I was positive she’d just been caught in the crosshairs of something, even if I didn’t know what that something was.
All I knew was that I held no trust for her brother and his motives.
More reasonable kings had used less to strike war.
“Not that I think something will happen, but…” I sighed. “I’ve upped bodies at the border posts, and I gave a little extra to the wards, so—” I shrugged.
Eilir gaped at me. “You didn’t.”
Easy for them to pass judgement. The ward stones of Grimmoria were a necessary burden for whoever wore its crown.
Built deep beneath the Keep—even deeper than the underbelly we called Jasper’s crypt—they were imbued pieces of azurite set directly into confluences of aether few knew any precise details about, and even fewer knew how to access.
I, of course, had first been brought to see them when I was a child, during a brief span of my life when my father actually took an interest in preparing me to succeed him.
The room the core stones were housed in fascinated younger me, with its endless glyphs inscribed on every visible surface and the green-blue glow of aether that reflected up through the stones.
I found them far less fascinating now, when my only time with them involved an annual visit to replenish the magic that left me bedridden for days, all in the name of protecting my people through a barrier that was thousands of years old.
Across our kingdom, smaller pieces of azurite were buried, from our mountainous border with the high fae lands to the plateaus that separated us from the Wastes.
There was even a mighty obelisk hundreds of feet beyond our border gate.
When the large ward stones were properly imbued, they acted as an aetherical net cast across the kingdom, a blessing from a bargain an old and desperate king made with Mina herself.
With no additional influence, the wards prevented beings without dark fae blood from passing through the boundaries unless they were bound by a blood bargain—like Enora now was to me—or brought through by someone of dark fae descent and well-documented.
Though the latter was a little tedious to manage, it was necessary for prosperous trade.
Out of an abundance of caution, I’d taken a trip down to the ward stones a few days earlier, just to ensure they were one less thing I’d need to worry about in the coming months.
Half a year had barely passed since I last let them draw all the power they needed, so the pull was nowhere near its usual severity, but I’d still felt like shit the entire next day. And for my dinner with Enora—something I’d apologize for one day.
The utterly displeased and equally concerned look Eilir was giving me was exactly why I hadn’t bothered to tell the sprite or Jasper.
Despite being usual sticklers for their traditions, most denizens of the woods felt the wards should be left to lapse, that it was a practice long past its expiration.
My mage had adopted a similar opinion, though he was adamant it had nothing to do with how he fussed worse than my mother would when I’d take ill.
Unfortunately for the sprites and my mage, in the tumultuous few years since I’d taken my throne, I’d already made a lengthy list of changes to my home.
Too many changes, many liked to argue loudly, but they were ones of absolute necessity.
Laws, rights, freedoms. Conversations about the barrier could come in another year or ten.
“I did,” I replied to Eilir with a half-hearted shrug. “Peace of mind never hurts, you know. If her brother had the gall to try anything, the scouts would see them across the Wastes anyway. The wards just help me rest a little easier.”
Eilir gave me a look that said they did not believe an ounce of what I said.
“Peace. Of. Mind.” Sometimes, you had to repeat yourself until you were blue in the face with Eilir. “Scouts will see them. Barrier will—”
“Enora, wait a second! That’s not what I—fuck!”
Jasper’s shout echoed up from the arena, and my attention snapped back down just as the princess threw her quarterstaff to the side and charged towards my mage.
He dropped his own weapon just as hastily and threw his hands up as she cocked her left arm back and swung at him.
Clearly, his mind was anywhere but on his magic, because Jasper only managed to just block her hit before her right fist came swinging in and she punched him square in the nose.
My entire body tensed.
“Oh no,” Eilir whispered as Jasper staggered back, a hand clasped over his face, and the faint metallic tang of blood hit the air.
Oh no, indeed.
But what came next was far, far worse.
Enora took two determined steps forward and sent her knee directly into his groin with a slew of words that sounded awfully unpleasant. Jasper sank to the ground with a pained groan that traveled up through the stadium, and I cupped myself with a commiserating curse.
That poor, poor man.
“Maybe you should…?” Eilir was speaking to me but had their eyes fixed below with a grimace baring all their jagged teeth.
“Yeah, yeah,” I droned, heaving myself out of my seat. “King. Peacekeeper. What the fuck else am I?”
Eilir didn’t have long enough to muster up a snarky answer to that before I was vaulting myself over the rows of seating as fast as I could reasonably manage.
The last thing any of us needed was for me to go ass over tits down the steep incline of stone, and I was not ready to have the wings demonstration or conversation with Enora yet.