18. Wilder
Wilder
My palm flattens on the cool marble grieving pillar. The sides are carved with the intricacy of lightning. Weaving through the stone like light cracks against an inky-black sky.
The design is reminiscent of my sister’s magic. As volatile as it is captivating.
Selia Riven was a force to be reckoned with. Like her power, feeding the realm with rain one moment and decimating it with her storms the next. Selia spent her years as unpredictable as any cloud. And when she passed to Sarrow, the storms dulled with her crossing.
My eyes close as the forest hums around me.
Selia isn’t beneath the ground here, of course.
She was burned at Starlight Reach on a cloudy day as she would have wanted.
It was as if the clouds cast a soft gray blanket over Quietus just for her, parting only when the last of her ashes blew out to sea.
The sky cleared, and then there were only stars left to mock me.
Selia was gone.
Elorie was out of reach.
There I was, alone with the outcome of my mistakes.
My mother and I often had differing opinions when it came to war, but as I stood at that cliff, I saw a glimpse of what carved her merciless heart. To fight for a kingdom requires sacrifice.
Blood.
Loss.
My sister paid the dues of our Crown with her body and soul.
Gave her life for our people, who now hate her for the manner in which she went about protecting them.
They will only ever see her clinging to Malachi, without understanding that she had no other choice.
Not when their queen put her in that position.
After Selia’s death, my people spat at my sister’s memory. If only they knew that she did it for them.
For me.
For the vision my mother swore was the key to saving our realm.
Now I’m left to see it through. A male who should have Cleaved protecting his queen but didn’t. A male who the fates spared, but I don’t know why. A male who barely managed to save his mate on multiple occasions. Yet they expect me to save this realm.
Elorie’s scent fills the courtyard before she steps through the trees, coming into view.
My hand slips from the stone, my magic with it. Aether slithers along the ground, reaching for my mate without thought or restraint. It surges with this need to taste her.
A forced smile plays on her lips. “Atlas told me you were out here. I hope you don’t mind if I join you.”
“Of course not.”
She grips the bundle of white lilies in her hands. “I brought these for Selia. Back home, we used white flowers to honor those we’ve lost.”
Elorie rests the flowers on my sister’s pillar.
Selia was less than kind to Elorie in the Ley Court, leaving Elorie with no reason to sympathize with my sister’s sacrifice.
But here she stands, pausing at the marble column and bowing her head.
Paying her respects as she did on the island.
Whether they be human or Fae—villager or prisoner—Elorie saw no difference.
I’d sit in the darkness of my cell and listen to the prayers she offered them all, regardless of who they were or what they’d done.
If heart was stronger than steel in battle, we’d have no trouble winning this war with hers.
Elorie’s mouth moves silently, and I leave her to her private thoughts rather than slip along the thread. I don’t need to read what she’s thinking for my chest to tighten at this gesture. My kingdom hates my sister, but Elorie stands here, respecting her sacrifice.
When Elorie lifts her gaze, her freckles shine brighter against her pale cheeks.
“I didn’t think there were graveyards outside of the human realm.” She glances around at the marble pillars. “We were told it was a human custom to mark the remains of the dead.”
“It is.” I tuck my hands in my pockets. “We adopted it from them. My mother admired how the humans paid their respects.”
“Clearly that sentiment wasn’t shared by the Ley Court.” Her tone is as bitter as her thoughts as she glances around the graves. “You’d think with so much death, we’d be immune to the pain after a while.”
“Once you are, you’re no longer living.” I take a breath, soaking in the aether in the air. “Death is the only constant.”
“That and the fates.” Elorie touches the rune on her chest, but I feel it through my own. A caress on her skin has mine prickling.
I wonder what she thinks of the fact that we had no choice in our souls being bound. Does she resent our mating bond because of it?
“No.” She glances up, answering my internal fears.
“I see you’re getting better at reading my thoughts.”
“Only when you push them through to me.” She shrugs, the most beautiful light shining in her silver eyes.
One glance and she nearly brings me to my knees. I can hardly resist reaching out to her. But for her sake, I stay put. Sunlight breaks through the canopy overhead, bathing her in light. The blue in her hair is richer than it was in the Ley Court. Bright with magic.
“What about you?” Her eyebrows pinch, and a slight crack in her voice snaps me from my thoughts.
“What about me?”
“It’s not like you had a choice in the matter either. The fates do as they wish. Do you resent our bond?”
“Not for a second.” My magic reaches for her now, no longer able to resist as I cup her face in my hands. “Do you know what I was before you?”
“A prisoner?” A smile plays at the corner of her mouth. The tease is a greater relief than any kiss because it’s a hint of the fire inside her. A spark that’s been dimming lately.
“I was nothing.” My thumb brushes over her freckles.
“Living centuries with this emptiness inside me, desperate to be filled by anything—anyone. I spent centuries wondering why I continued to bother when all the fates bring is pain and suffering. I was nothing before you, Starfire. How could I ever resent the life you brought to my heart? Is that what’s been bothering you? Thinking I don’t want this?”
“No. Not exactly.” She gnaws at the inside of her cheek.
“I’ve seen the way Aurora looks at you. She watches you when you aren’t paying attention.
It made me wonder if maybe I came between something that started before you were locked in the prison.
Did she think—was she supposed to be your queen—but then our mating bond changed that?
I need to know what I’m dealing with here, Wilder.
And I know it makes me sound insecure and jealous—”
“It makes you my mate.” I cup her face, daring to get close enough to breathe in her torturous scent. “Do you think I haven’t wanted to carve the eyes from every male who’s looked your way since that first gathering at the palace? Slice off any hand that’s touched you in your entire life?”
“You do?” Her eyebrows pinch.
“Gods yes. You make me a jealous wreck.”
“I’ve never been like this. Never been with anyone longer than a night or two. Never cared about anything other than surviving. But with us…” She trails off, her gaze falling so I lift her chin.
“It scares me too.”
Without reading her thoughts, I know that’s what she’s thinking because the sight of her terrifies me. Knowing there is no end to what I’d do for Elorie could mean the destruction of all we know, and I wouldn’t care.
“It’s so sudden,” she says, blinking up at me. “But it’s also… not. It’s like I’ve always known you, beyond when we spoke on the island. It’s like I knew you were a part of me before I knew you existed. It’s like my soul understands something, but my mind is catching up.”
“Then let it. Take all the time you need.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “I’ve waited nearly six hundred years for you. What’s a few more days?”
The smile that cracks in the corner of her mouth is a beautiful sight. My lips ache to kiss her. My body burns with the need to be near her. How I manage to hold myself back is a pure iron willpower.
“And Aurora?” Worry pinches her face.
“Aurora has been part of the court for many centuries. Since before the Collision. My mother took her in after a… difficult upbringing. She fed her promises of more, and with nothing else to cling to, Aurora clung to that. To me.”
“Were you and she ever more than just friends?”
“We tried.” I hate the bitterness that shoots through the thread, but I promised I wouldn’t lie to Elorie. “We tried for the Crown. For the kingdom. For my mother’s sake. But that was long before the realms collided. Long before you. It was brief, and it was nothing.”
“She doesn’t seem over it for something that happened so long ago.”
“Time is strange for the Fae. It’s relative to what we are.
Aurora and I have been friends for centuries now, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t grieve what we could have been should things have been different.
She clings to the kingdom. The Crown. She clings to the idea my mother promised her, even if she and I have long since had a different understanding of what that is.
” I step closer, relieved when Elorie doesn’t step back.
“You didn’t come between anything, I promise.
There was nothing meaningful before you. I was nothing before you.”
Elorie places her hand over my heart, and I swear my pulse reaches for her. “There was nothing before you either, Wilder. I think that’s why I wasn’t ready for this. But I’m trying.”
“I know, Starfire.” I kiss the back of her hand, and she smiles, less hesitant.
Elorie glances at Selia’s grieving pillar, slowly gazing around the graveyard.
“We can have one added for your father if you wish. A pillar so you have someplace to visit and remember him.” I know from her thoughts that it bothers her that she wasn’t there for his burning.
“I remember him in here.” She places her hand over her heart, closing her eyes for a moment before looking up at me. “But I suppose, maybe when all this is done, that might be nice.”
When all this is done.
I can only hope there will be a time beyond this. When my mate will know peace at the other end of battle.
“Where are the pillars for your parents?” She looks around again, noting my sister’s sitting alone on this side of the clearing.
“The royal line is marked with pillars at the foot of the mountain so the people can come pay their respects.”
“Your sister is part of the royal line.”
I brush my thumb over the corner of Elorie’s mouth when she frowns. “That is argued by some because of the choices she made. I don’t agree, but I understand. Our mother and her father argued about her impulsivity. It was always bound to cause friction, though I never saw it coming to what it did.”
“Her father?” Elorie’s eyebrows furrow. “You mean the king? Your father.”
“The king was not my father,” I admit, fortifying the shell of magic around us so that no one might overhear our conversation.
“I didn’t know that.”
“No one does. My mother married King Redson the moment she found out I was conceived to hide my father’s true identity. Since she was queen, the crown would be mine regardless of my paternal bloodline, so she saw no reason to speak of it and allow rumors to spread through the kingdom.”
“But she told you the truth.”
I drag my hand through my hair. “She told me as a warning. The strength of our magic is often relative to those in our bloodline. Apparently, my father’s magic was strong enough that she feared if I channeled too deeply into mine, I would put myself at risk.”
“Like when you nearly Cleaved trying to save her?” Elorie’s eyebrow ticks, and I nod. “How powerful is your father?”
I tuck her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know. The truth of his identity died with my mother.”
“You never asked her?”
“The queen kept many secrets, especially from her children. I asked once, and she simply walked away.” I grip Elorie with my magic when worry fills her expression.
But when I open my mouth to say more, another thread sparks with a message from Atlas.
“Is something wrong?” Elorie asks, noticing my pause.
“My court needs me.” It’s one thing after another lately, and I’m beginning to get a picture of what my mother dealt with while I was away in Andare, training and galivanting from one manor to the next. “Let me walk you back to the palace.”
I could press my palm to the air and slip us from one place to another, but I’m in no rush. Not now, when Elorie is speaking to me. Not now, when I hold out my hand, and she takes it.
Elorie’s fingers lace through mine as we leave the courtyard, and for the first time in days, we take a step forward.