28. Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
The golden lights guttered in the late hour where I was tucked away in the library.
More days passed, and I’d not seen Kaed. He’d not been in the study or any other part of the house on any of the nights. I eventually stopped trying.
“What else do you know about the war?” Being from Hayden as she was, Audrie had to know more than others.
Her eyes snapped up from the book on her lap. “Why?”
“Nothing. I mean, no reason.” I had been deliberating on who to ask.
Gavrin had not seemed pleased with the topic last time, so I’d waited until we were alone.
“Just … you said the books on Aurora were gone and it was before my time. Are they forbidden after the king took them?” Why did I feel the need to obscure Eryk’s involvement? His gift? I felt tangled in my own web.
But Audrie was fully focused on me now.
“They were powerful?” I said it like a question, but I think Audrie took it to be fact.
She nodded.
I had read something in the book Eryk let me borrow; something I had to know about. “Aurorans won the war.”
Audrie’s eyes widened to full moons. She paled as she glanced around her.
So it was true? The floral-scented pages of the book were yellowed with age, the ink paling, but tucked into the margins were fresh ink marks. Notes made by a new scholar. And it turns out they had been telling the truth. Aurora had won the war.
“That information is … guarded,” Audrie said through gritted teeth. She wasn’t defensive; she was nervous.
I waited.
With a long exhale, Audrie closed the book she’d been eyeing and continued, “For the most part, only very few Haydinians are aware of the Auroran victory.” She looked around once more, her eyes darting to the shadows.
“And it was quickly wiped from the histories once the king became the only Crown in the Four Corners.”
Something like floodgates opened inside of me.
The Aurorans had nearly been—had been—victorious.
But Kaed’s family had beaten them back? The roaring of the waves of information in my head crashed into the back of my eyes, and a thunderous headache pulled at my temples.
History books, any of them I’d read, had never included this detail.
“You shouldn’t speak of it.” Audrie pursed her lips.
I cowered under my lashes and diverted her focus. “How do you know about the victory then, if the records are so secret?”
Audrie blushed, and she buried her head low.
I tipped a smile at her.
She hid her grin in response.
“You know more!” I exclaimed a little too loudly.
Audrie brought her finger to her lips in a plea for quiet.
“Tell me,” I whispered.
Excitement glittered in her eyes. She wanted to tell someone this.
She needed to. How long had she sat on this information, not being able to share it?
Audrie was a trove of knowledge, and her enthusiasm for understanding seemed to be only matched by her craving for sweets. I buried a smile at that thought.
Her eyes darted through the silent halls of the library one last time before she poured her words out in front of me.
“There are very, very few records on it. I shouldn’t have been studying them, but the Silent Servants of the castle library had gone.
And the Sage, well, he’d seen me there reading, and he didn’t stop me.
In fact, he came to offer his own insights.
He was there when the war had ended …” Audrie trailed off at her memory.
“Go on,” I urged.
“Hayden—the Northern Crown, Kaedian’s father—had all but lost. King Tir doesn’t appear much in the histories.
After the war started, he became reclusive.
The records, they mostly feature his sons, though not by name.
Only as the Dark Princes of the North.” Audrie lifted her eyes to me.
Even with that, I still felt foolish for not recognising who Kaed was from the off.
You were just too busy fawning over his good looks to care who he was, a snide voice in my mind chided me.
Kaed. Audrie had already said before that he had been part of the war. Of course he had. A prince of the Crown.
“Kaedian didn’t want to fight. Or at least that’s what the Sage recanted.
His brother, though, he …” Audrie kept losing her words to the memories.
I rubbed her hand to bring her back to the present.
“Are you sure you want to hear this?” She paused and I nodded.
With a swallow she continued, her eyes on me still.
“Kaedian and Hart fought in nearly every battle. But even with both of them, the Northern forces were beaten back.”
I couldn’t fathom someone beating magic as powerful as Kaed’s. I had no idea what power Hart wielded, and I shuddered at the thought that there was something stronger out there.
Audrie leaned in a little when she spoke her next words; they were hardly louder than a whisper.
“Fae witches fought for both sides, you know. North and South.” I hadn’t known.
A little while ago, I hadn’t even known they had been real.
“And both sides suffered losses.” Audrie slowed her words.
“But even when the Southern Crown had lost most of their witches, their power somehow kept growing; their ranks kept swelling and crushing the North. Some put it down to the faebane they’d managed to hoard.
The weapons their witches made for them. ”
I recalled what Kaed had said, that fae witch magic was ancient and was used to temper the barren air.
“Hayden’s forces were losing. The sands of the Southern Corner were red with fae, witch and human blood,” Audrie continued.
“Kaedian … his brother. All of the Northern forces were preparing for defeat.” My chest tightened.
“The witches were all but gone. Lost. But …” Audrie’s voice was like a ghost. “There was a great orb of light, brighter than any star or moon. And as hot as the sun herself. The world was painted white, and for minutes afterwards, no one saw anything, their eyes seared from the blinding flash that swept the lands.” She paused to look up at me.
“And the city had vanished,” she finished.
I swallowed. Stories of the Light had even spread to Shadowfall. Some thought it had been a figurative interpretation of the metaphorical light of a war ending, a story that had grown and changed as it was told. The vanished city. The Auroran’s who lost the war, gone.
I didn’t realise my mouth had fallen wide, but I was gaping at Audrie as she recounted the story. “I wish I could have seen it.” My voice was dream-like in the still night of the library. It felt so paltry, so selfish to think that when so many others would see nothing ever again.
Audrie shrugged. “I know. Me too. I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes pinched.
My heart felt like a lead drum in my chest. I was still struggling with the near victory the Aurorans had had within their grasp.
The knowledge that Kaed had been at the battles that shaped our Corners.
Maybe that’s why he had been locked in the Cage.
Some sort of historic vendetta against him.
It occurred to me just how little I knew about the male I had shackled myself to with our new bargain.
“What’s … Tir—” The question lodged in my throat.
Audrie hesitated as she was walking from our little nest of books, hers clutched close to her chest. “I’ve—I’ve never met him. The king. I don’t …”
“I understand,” I said, too quickly. She was more afraid of the king than I had thought. I could have, should have, guessed at that.
After that, Audrie left me alone, offering me some space as she bowed out of the library and the night wore on.
Though probably best placed to answer my questions, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Kaed right now. And besides, he didn’t want to entertain our meetings anymore.
I tried to draw my eyes back to the texts we had been poring over all day.
Nothing on faebane. Not even a tiny hint.
Nothing to tell Kaed. If he even wanted to hear it.
I huffed and smacked the book closed.
If he didn’t want to see me and learn about any of our progress, that was fine by me.
I didn’t want to see him. No part of me needed to be pinned under his stare or between his arms. I didn’t need his chest right in front of me …
shirt falling open, fabric spilling to show off the smooth skin beneath—
I grabbed a book, flicked open a page, and tried to bury the burning blush that pushed to the tips of my ears. I cleared my throat in the silence around me. I flicked to another page. And to the next. And the next.
The Four-Hundred-and-Fifty-Seven Magical Flora of the Four Corners: A Compendium was not a late-night read. And yet, here I was.
The more distance I got from Kaed, the more time I spent in the air that wasn’t permeated with his perfumed aroma of citrus and amber, the more I could think straight. Even if my thoughts strayed back to him, my senses managed to stay on course. Mostly.
Musty books had a way of making the mind wander on occasion, though.
The tapers of my candles had all but burned to saucers at my desk. The fae lights around the library had been dimmed to a soothing gold, which didn’t help with the tiredness that was seeping through my bones now.
The strange light played with the dark recesses and hollows of the cavernous place.
More than once, I thought I saw someone weaving through the stacks.
Maybe Eryk was here late? Or maybe it was Kaed being overprotective.
The orbs of fae light were a brighter yellow in the far stacks, but it was impossible to make anything out.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head. It was just the flickering flames playing tricks.
I stifled a yawn and turned another page. At this point, I would be well on my way to becoming a magical botanist with everything I had read. But there were only so many times one could read “another fascinating shrub is …” before it all became one mass of leaves and earth, piling into mulch.
My eyelids were heavy, and the thrum of my heart slowed to a sluggish beat in the silence around me. The edges of the pages I was staring at felt soft, and black pulled at the corners of my vision.
“Here all alone, peach?” His timbre was rough as it broke through the darkness around me, and he emerged from the shadows as though he owned them.
My eyes snapped from the books to take in the sight of Kaed before me, his shirt half open until it showed the carved and hard lines of his chest.
“I—” I swallowed against the dryness that had gripped my throat at the sight of him. “I was just …” But words failed me as I stood and tried to gather the books I’d been reading. I couldn’t stare at him like that.
As soon as my back was to him, I felt him press into me, his lips at my ear, his hands staying my own as they fumbled for the books.
“You were just what?” His breath was hot as it brushed the curve of my ear. His hands landed on my hips, and I felt the heat of him where his grip tightened on me.
But I couldn’t answer him. My words were lost to the molten warmth where his hands touched, where the exposed skin of his chest pressed into my back. Where his hips met mine. And then I felt the length of him pressing into me.
I gasped at the sensation of him hard against me, but I didn’t pull away. I couldn’t. Not with the tugging deep in my core answering his question. I was just thinking of your arms around me in the Cage.
Kaed dipped his chin until his lips found the delicate skin on my neck.
A deep rumble sounded in his chest, and he hummed his approval as he inhaled my scent.
Kaed nuzzled along my neck, tracing a line to my ear.
Teeth nipped at my lobe and I felt tiny pinpricks of heat pierce my skin where his bite teased me.
“What are you …” My breath failed as he nipped my ear again and then my neck. Tiny bites followed by deep kisses. But he didn’t stop.
“Kaed …” I breathed as his hands moved from my hips to my stomach and rushed up to my chest.
“Yes, peach?” he whispered in between tasting new parts of me. His hands never stopped moving, gripping, exploring. My own hands moved to feel that hard length behind me, but I was instantly stopped.
“I’m the one with you at my mercy tonight, Lady Imogen,” he purred in my ear as he gripped both my wrists behind my back, my fingertips just out of reach of the mound laced beneath his pants.
My lungs forgot how to breathe properly as I writhed under him, tugging at the iron hold he had on my wrists. And then no breath at all came as his free hand came to rest on my neck, his grip a gentle collar encircling me.
“Are you going to behave for me?” His words were softer than a whisper, but they ignited a furnace in my core.
His hand closed a little on my throat, coaxing.
I managed a nod, and my hands strained again to pull from his and find what was pressing into me.
“Good girl,” he cooed as his grip fell from my neck and tugged at the fabric around my hips.
I arched into the touch and eventually his hands released mine, but I didn’t get a chance to touch what I wanted as Kaed’s hips slammed into mine and my hands crashed to the table.
My body was now bent low over the piles of books, pages spilling around me.
Some distant part of my mind worried someone might see, but I forgot about that when Kaed flipped me so my back rested on a bed of vellum and ink.
“Imogen …” My name thrummed in the air like a bell tolling. “Imogen …” His hands came away from my hips and began opening the remainder of his shirt. “Imogen …”
My eyes snapped open to the flickering light of the lonely flame on the table, struggling against the gloom. A bell rang out through the city, heralding the new hour.
I was alone, books piled all around me. I wiped the heat from my cheeks as I sat up.
Damn fae bastard invading my dreams. And not even finishing what he started in them. There was a deep throb aching between my legs, and I couldn’t even deny that the sight of Kaed above me was something my body wanted.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been asleep for, but the shards of light beaming from the mirrors in the central terrarium shaft were beginning to brighten the library a little.
I cursed internally at that as I gathered up a few books and hurried from the stalls, the ache in my centre momentarily distracting me as I moved.
The lanterns that hung on the walls of the Alabaster Palace were still glowing with fae lantern light as the dawn burned away the last vestiges of night.
No lights were glimmering through the windows. Relieved, I slipped through the door and shut it behind me, my back sliding against its ornate metal filigree.
The foyer was in total darkness, not a whisper of light to be seen.
“Perhaps you need reminding of the rules of our bargain.” A dark resonance echoed through the halls.
And Kaed stepped out right in front of me like he’d been conjured from darkness.