Chapter 21
Zadriel
Despite Aedlin’s efforts to shake Zadriel awake, sleep clung to him, its soft touch and gentle whispers attempting to lull him back into its arms. He ached to remain on the bed of pine needles he’d made atop the snow.
To find his way back to the meadow, to Arcadia, and exist within the caress of that tantalizing song that kept leading him back to her.
I hate you.
Mora’s voice swam in his ears, her floral scent wrapped in embers clinging to his skin. It was a dream, but he knew those words were true. Wherever the Little Witch was, she hated him. Likely prayed her flames consumed him whole.
It was better that way. Even if Zadriel still bristled at the idea of her belonging to another—Cillian’s infatuation would haunt him for a while yet.
He sighed, turning away from his bed to face Aedlin. “I hope you had good reason to wake me?”
She blew a stray hair away from her face. Long, light brown strands fell past her shoulders, her perfect bun destroyed by the Elementalist—Aoife. A thorn in their sides, if Aedlin had any say in the matter.
“The Forbidden saw flashes of magic in the sky and left for Galdon’s Crossing, hoping to find more of her kind. We need to leave before she returns,” she commanded with regal authority.
Zadriel ran his hand down his face. Mother spare me. “Aedlin...”
“Yes, I know you made your bargain.” Her voice dipped low as she spat the final word, fury glinting in those eyes, the fire within them so much like her daughter’s.
“Then you know I can’t leave her behind,” he said, pressing his hand to his stomach. The sting of Mora’s power flittered across his flesh, and Zadriel found himself grateful she hadn’t inherited her abilities from her mother. At least, if Cillian’s discovery was correct.
Aedlin reached for the cloth wrap she used to carry Darius as they traveled, the off-white fabric wrinkling in her tight grip. “What I know is I am leaving, with or without you.”
Grumbling under his breath, Zadriel stretched his long legs before rising from his spot on the forest floor.
Curled boughs groaned, their braided branches inching upward to make way for Zadriel’s height.
It was hardly enough. He crouched, twigs slipping through his dark hair, the shadow of a grin pulling at his cheeks before he smothered it.
Despite everything, Arcadia did Her best to protect him.
It had been that way since Cillian set his eyes on the crown.
Night after night, Zadriel had slept among the trees near Castle Berwick, their branches and roots curling around him to create a spherical shelter like this one.
A kindness. Though he couldn’t understand why they bothered when he’d destroyed everything.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, running a thumb over a branch. Hoping they knew how much he meant it.
“What exactly are you sorry for?” Aedlin hissed, pacing toward her sleeping son.
Zadriel almost envied him. “Tricking me into traveling with you to some unknown village? Fooling me into making a vow you claim is binding? Or recruiting someone who attacked us, putting us all at greater risk? I can’t sleep next to a stranger who would kill me if she knew who I was. ”
“Then I suggest you keep your identity to yourself.” He cut the distance between them, bending so they were at eye level. “You made a vow not to stray from me, Aedlin. You cannot leave.”
“Fae vows mean nothing to me,” she countered, wrapping the cloth around her body. It was dizzying, watching how she worked the material around her waist and then over her shoulders.
He clicked his tongue, his focus sliding to the narrow opening the trees left them. A howling wind shook the evergreens, their needles plunging to the earth to join the snow, the frozen ground a glittering ivory peppered with splotches of dark green.
“What do you know of the Fae?” he asked, leaning against the woven branches making up their wall. They wiggled beneath his arm, tickling his skin.
Darius blinked up at them, cooing at his mother when she reached for him.
“I know enough,” Aedlin said, positioning her son in the cloth carrier, but never once looking away from Zadriel. Darius made it as difficult as possible, kicking his legs and squirming in her hold. She sighed through her nose. “Had I known what you are, I never would have gone with you.”
Zadriel gritted his teeth. “Would you prefer I left you to the wolves?”
The queen rested her hand on Darius’s soft, brown hair, lips hardening into a thin line. “Fae cannot be trusted.”
“And humans are so worthy of trust? Are your kind the bastions of truth?” Zadriel pinched the bridge of his nose, praying to the Mother for patience. “Have I not saved you? Protected you? Kept you and your child alive?”
“Yes, you have.” She turned away, Darius fastened safely against her front. “What I’m not certain of is your motive, or why you insist on taking me to a village that doesn’t exist.”
Zadriel dragged a hand through his hair, a grimace pulling at his lips. “I will explain when the time is right.”
“You can’t berate me for not trusting your kind in one breath, then deny me the truth in another.
” She shrugged on her fur-lined cloak, positioning the garment so it covered all but Darius’s head, a white coif now covering his hair and protecting his ears from the cold.
“I’m grateful for your help, but I believe our time together has come to an end. ”
With a sigh, Zadriel pushed away from the wall, his foot landing on the strap of her bag before she could grab it. “I’m afraid the magic binding us won’t care about your feelings.”
“Excuse me?” Aedlin straightened, crossing her arms as best she could around the babbling babe.
“Remember what you felt when you made your vow? Those aren’t simply words when spoken to the Fae.”
“I’m not Fae,” she seethed. “Your rules mean nothing to me.”
“They bind you all the same.” Zadriel’s face hardened as he reached for Aedlin’s knapsack, his fingers closing around its smooth leather strap.
A plan formed in his mind. One he hated.
It made him a bigger ass than he wished to be, but what other choice did he have?
“You can try to leave if you’d like. It will feel wrong, but maybe you can push past that for now.
Eventually, however, the vow will force you to return because that is what you promised.
” He grabbed his own bag before he straightened.
“It may be easy to ignore at first. A minor annoyance, like an itch you can’t scratch or a ceaseless thought you can never shake.
Give it time, though, and it will become your sole focus.
A pain in your body and mind. One that may drive you to madness if you don’t give in. ”
A frown pulled on Aedlin’s lips. “Is that why you’re here? Did you vow to Dother you’d protect his son?”
Zadriel’s dark gaze slid to the child, a muscle in his jaw feathering.
“I’m bound to protect him.” There was a venom in his deep voice that had Aedlin cocking her head, her brows furrowing.
He hadn’t meant to reveal so much with so few words.
The way the queen watched him, an almost knowing look in her eyes, was too much—before she could say anything, he pushed past her toward the exit.
“Wait here. I’ll go gather supplies and fetch Aoife. ”
Looking over Zadriel’s shoulder to the woods, Aedlin’s cold stare narrowed.
Sunlight trickled through the trees, dancing along the glittering waves of snow as the boughs swayed, while chimney smoke rose over their spindly tops—they weren’t far from Galdon’s Crossing, though it would still be a long walk.
She scowled. “If you want me to stay, the Forbidden won’t remain with us. I cannot trust someone who would attack so easily.”
Zadriel paused at the arch of braided branches leading outside. “I remember when news of you taking the throne found Eden,” he said, his voice quiet. Distant.
He traced the cracks in the bark, picking at bits of frost while his mind wandered elsewhere. To Cillian’s excited face, the rustle of the breeze slipping through long strands of grass, and Zadriel’s oak cradling him in her roots... His brother had been so full of hope.
“Do you think things could get better?” he’d asked, sitting by Zadriel’s side.
“No. They’ll be different, but never better,” a young Zadriel had answered, his head resting against the tree’s mighty trunk.
“What are you getting at?”
At the sound of Aedlin’s voice, Zadriel blinked, the memory fading. “Some of the Halflings wondered if things would improve. If you’d be a better queen.”
Aedlin went rigid. “I overturned the Laws.”
“And then you did nothing!” Zadriel’s voice rose with each word, until the babe cried.
Shit. Shutting his mouth, he took a calming breath through his nose, then tried again.
Gentler this time. “Your parents decided these people deserved to live as prisoners. That they be under constant guard. They created the system that killed those who fought back and Indentured the strongest among them to noble houses as if they were cattle.” His hand curled around the wood, twigs snapping in his grip.
“You overturned those Laws, but to what end? Halflings, or Forbidden as you’ve decided to call them, were left homeless, trapped on an island whose people fear and despise them, while the richest among them covet their power. ”
Stepping back until she stood on his bed of pine needles, she stared at the roots poking through the ground. “I did my best,” she whispered, resting her hand on Darius’s crown.
The babe’s screams were nearly as loud as Zadriel’s thundering heart.
If only her best had served them all.
If only Berwick had welcomed the Halflings.
If only his mother hadn’t banished them from Arcadia.
If only they hadn’t killed his father.
Things could have been different.
Yet this was the life the Fates had woven... for them all.