Chapter 46 Roots and Res #3
Though it wasn’t entirely a lie. Jakobav had tasted a drop a few times, yes, but he had never fully drunk her blood—not that she was aware of.
Her father had seen Jake take a drop of Caelen’s blood from his blade, and he’d watched him take a drop from Thane to wield his wind magic.
It dawned on her then that when Jake had licked the blood tear from her face as she was losing the battle, it must have looked like nothing more than a final kiss goodbye.
“Good. Do you have any reason to believe he might have taken blood from you to give to his father?”
Her jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “If someone touched me like that, I would know. So no.”
He studied her face, then nodded once. “Did you ever meet the king in private?”
“No.”
“Did anyone else from Dravaryn take your blood for any reason?”
Her stomach churned. “Bryn took a sample for healing, with my permission, but that’s it.”
“Then we must keep our guard high,” her father said. “If the king has gone too long without Fae blood, then someone near him is surely looking for it.”
Ella barked out a scoff. This was unbelievable; her anger started to rise, suspicions climbing along with it. “And you think that someone would use me if they were to find out my lineage?”
“I think power creates need,” he said, “and need breeds ugly choices.” He exhaled. “There’s more I could say—mostly rumors not yet confirmed. When I know the truth, you’ll hear it from me first.”
Ella shoved herself upright. Heat rushed her face and drained just as quickly, leaving her skin cold.
She somehow remained standing and started pacing as she dragged her hands down her face.
Her voice was rough, low. “Why would Bryn help the king and queen of Orchid at all? He’s loyal to Jakobav and his kingdom. I’ve seen it.”
Her father’s eyes narrowed. “Bryn worships survival. He cares for Dravaryn, yes, but he also cared about keeping the mortal realm intact. When we asked him, all those years ago, why he would agree to help us, he said it was the key to keeping the world from breaking. I think both can be true, Ellandria.”
“It sounds like you’re asking me to forgive him. Maybe Bryn didn’t lie directly, considering he almost always speaks in riddles, but there’s some shit he left out.”
“I am asking you to see the board before you move a piece.”
Her gaze dropped to her wrist. She turned it so the inside caught the light, the skin pale around the black rose mark.
“So if all of this was caused by my Claiming…and if I’m to believe that I’m part-Fae, then explain to me why I was marked with this.
” She thrust it toward him. “The Dravaryn rose. Why did the High Vexari grab me during the Rite, and why did she look at it like she wanted to tear my skin off? She went from curious to enraged in a blink. Tell me what that means.”
Her father leaned forward. His eyes fixed on the mark, and his face changed.
“She touched you?” he asked, voice gone hard.
Ella barked out a laugh. “Touched me? She dug her nails in. She was not gentle.”
His shoulders stiffened. “Then she suspects what you are. Or she already knew and wanted proof.”
Ella’s mouth twisted. “So the High Vexari of Dravaryn has a personal interest in my bloodline? Fantastic.”
“You will not be alone with her again,” her father said.
Ella’s head tipped back, a harsh laugh echoing up into the rafters. “No argument from me there. She was godsdamned terrifying.”
Eryndor exhaled slowly, his gaze fixed on her as if he could see the implications of everything he’d just told her settling on her shoulders.
“There is one last thing you need to understand. The moment you first Threadwalked, we felt it here in Orchid. We knew you were alive and moving somewhere in the mortal realm. It was like a flare shot into the dark. From that moment on, there was no doubt. You weren’t just surviving. You were awakening.”
Ella’s stomach twisted. She pressed her nails into her palm until her skin stung. “And no one thought to get a message to me? Give me some sort of heads up about my own bloodline or my own gift stirring beneath my own skin?”
“We wanted to. Gods know we wanted to. But if word had spread that the heir of Orchid was alive and vulnerable in a foreign kingdom, you would have been hunted and unable to follow your fate. The less who knew, the longer you lived. And when word arrived that you had undergone the Claiming in Dravaryn, hand in hand with Jakobav…” His mouth tightened.
“We knew the seal on your mother would fail. We knew she had days left. We were in shock for days ourselves. And then we prepared for what came next.”
“So everyone else knew my life was fate and tragedy waiting to happen. Everyone but me.”
“You should have been told,” he admitted. “I carry that failure.”
Her voice was flat. “Don’t expect thanks. Don’t expect forgiveness either.”
“I expect you to use it,” he said. “What you carry now is truth. And truth is power.”
Ella shoved her hair back from her face, rough and quick.
“So let me line this up. I am part-Fae. My mother was also part-Fae. She needed to Threadwalk to survive but her power was bound by magic supplied by Bryn. My Claiming woke the bloodline. Dravaryn’s Rite kills mortals for glory.
Their king needs Fae blood to keep breathing.
Jakobav’s bloodline is as tangled in this as mine, and I’ve been the last godsdamned person to know, in every way that matters. ”
“Yes.”
“Fuck every secret that got us here.”
“You’re right to feel that way. And I regret not telling you sooner, Ellandria,” her father replied.
He paused, gathering himself before he continued.
“With the realms open, ignorance is no longer protection—it's a weapon someone could turn against us.
Marisol has been invaluable in gathering information about Fae bloodlines and Blood-Scenting.
We've been piecing together truths that others would rather keep buried.”
“From now on, you tell me everything,” she said quietly, but her voice held. “Hide another truth from me, and I’ll appoint someone else to guide this court. I won’t rule beside anyone who would allow me to lead blindly.”
She was done holding back. It hit her, all of it at once—the devastation, the lies, the not knowing if she’d been betrayed or if Jakobav was as much in the dark as she was.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why today?” Anger poured through every word she screamed at him.
“One of our court seers had a vision that something is stirring within the realms, though she was unable to see the source. Similar reports have come from Thirelle, which means the other kingdoms are aware of it too. We must prepare ourselves and our people. I suspect that’s the reason Jakobav returned to his own in such a hurry. ”
He hesitated for a moment, scanning Ella’s face before continuing on. “And I couldn’t help but notice he didn’t give you details when you asked what had called him away. I’m sorry, Ellandria.” Eryndor looked utterly gutted, as if he was the one who had possibly been betrayed.
Before Ella could press him further, the doors blasted open. Guards stumbled in, pale and sweating, their boots slipping on polished stone.
“Your Majesty,” one gasped, dropping to his knees. “The far coast. The entire continent—”
“Speak,” Ella snapped.
“It is inhabited,” the guard blurted. “All at once. Thousands, maybe more. Lights where there were none, towers where there was mist. The Fae have returned.”
The hall, even empty, seemed to pull back from the words.
Another guard stepped forward with a scroll sealed in obsidian wax, the sigil pressed so deep the stamp had cracked at the edges. No one in this lifetime had seen that seal with their own eyes, and yet every royal knew it from their earliest teachings. Her father snatched it from his hand.
He broke the seal and read in a voice that did not waver:
“To the rulers of the four kingdoms of this mortal realm: You are hereby summoned to a council. We will speak of our return and the balance of the realms. Attend at once. The stability of your world demands it.”
Not a request. A command.
“When did this arrive?” Eryndor asked, holding the summons away from his body as if it were venom.
“Mere minutes ago,” the guard said.
He lowered his voice, as if afraid the word itself might bloom in his mouth. “It arrived by…Rose Magic.”
A murmur rippled through the guards before the chamber stilled. Even her father’s breath seemed to catch, sweat beading on his forehead and upper lip.
The man swallowed and spoke lower, as if afraid a more sinister force of Fae magic might punish him for speaking on it.
“It opened in the council room,” he said.
“From the mosaics. A crack first…then a stem forcing through, green and wet as if it carried its own rain. It climbed fast. Thorns split from it. And then—” He swallowed.
“It flowered. A single rose, large as a fist, right on the table.”
The guard’s hands shook. “The petals shimmered with every color. When we reached for the bloom, it loosened its hold and left the scroll in its place. The moment the parchment lifted free, the stem blackened, and the rose turned to smoke.”
A silence followed that was louder than the scream the messenger seemed to be holding back.
Ella’s skin prickled. The word her tutors had whispered in restricted stacks came back to her.
It was the courier craft of the Fae, roses that could root in dust, in wood, in water, in stone.
A bloom that could appear anywhere, in the middle of a meal or in the center of a bed, each color carrying a meaning no mortal record had preserved.
As he folded the parchment, a smaller slip slid free, tucked beneath the wax. No sigil. Only her name written in a hand that looked alive on the page.
Ellandria.
She didn’t ask for her father to leave, although she probably should have.
Her nightmares were taking shape right before her eyes.
She took the note.
The paper was warm. The ink shifted when she turned it, as if light and shadow disagreed about the letters.
Dearest Ellandria,
Now, I already know what you’re thinking: why would the devastatingly handsome King of Fae want to meet you alone?
Her pulse hammered so hard she thought the guards must hear it. Heat crawled along her throat, shameful and sharp, because part of her recognized the voice on the page as though it were speaking from inside her skull.
She knew without a shadow of a doubt—it was him. The man from her vision, then again in a painting, once more in Jakobav’s room when he had scared her so badly she stumbled onto the bed, and then most recently when she’d Threadwalked straight to him in her sleep.
The Fae man with the pendant, icy green eyes, and wrath disguised as elegant strength.
He was the fucking King of Fae.
Ella’s hands trembled, and she hoped no one noticed. She wanted to crush the paper, burn it, hurl it into the nearest torch, but her focus wouldn’t leave the words. They pulled her on, dread twining with a fascination she couldn’t smother. Her intrigue was disgraceful.
Worst of all, no one else would know what the words on that parchment truly meant. He probably thought himself cunning when he slipped in the words: Now, I already know what you’re thinking. But she knew exactly how deceptively accurate that was.
He had once heard loud and clear what she hadn't said aloud.
Which meant the King of Fae was a fucking Echobinder.
They were undoubtedly and irrevocably fucked.
He’d been inside her head. He’d marked her wrist with his grip. And now he was toying with her.
Shame came crawling up her spine once more. She loathed the part of her that leaned closer, itching to continue reading.
The answer, of course, is because you fascinate me.
I know what you are. I know what you’ve done. And I am not in the habit of waiting.
Attend the council. Smile for your court.
Let Dravaryn’s prince stand too close.
When it ends, you and I will meet.
Privately. I insist.
Until then, think of me.
Yours,
Zavrik
Remember, Ellandria, not all roots are buried.
Her heart stopped.
Her hands were shaking.
A cool, clammy touch pressed against her ankle. She looked down and saw a green snake coiled there, Octavia’s familiar. Its tongue flicking at the air as if tasting the faint sweetness that had bloomed from the letter.
Ella couldn’t believe the serpent was there, in her throne room, summoned by her suffering. “Godsdammit, Octavia. Not now,” she muttered, though her voice trembled.
Its scales pressed cool against her skin, steadying her even as her heart began to race again. As if it was sent to remind her of the two paths predicted by Octavia. As if the snake had been sent solely to gloat.
A flare tightened beneath her ribs, anger rising raw.
She was getting fucking tired of others finding her fate before she did.
Her Orchid sigil burned as she lowered her eyes and saw it glowing violet, the ink threaded with living light, a color her tattoo had never taken before. It pulsed once, twice, then steadied, a promise she didn’t understand, but had a feeling she would soon find out.
She looked back down at the letter, gripping it so tightly her knuckles went white. The scent of jasmine clung to the page, cloying and lush, and it didn’t fade when she closed her fist around it, crushing it beneath her fury.
My father doesn’t get to read this. He can sit on the wrong side of a secret for once.
Deep within her, a whisper began to stir.
It was a promise to uncover every last truth, to set ablaze anyone who would dare stand in the way of the reckoning she would bring. It was time to protect her kingdom, claim the path that had always been hers, and step out of the dark she’d been held in.
Ella vowed she would rise into the light. She would show the world the queen she was—or burn everything to the fucking ground as the Orchid On Fire.