Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Before the Storm, One Week Earlier
“You can’t marry him, Aerona,” Cariad pleaded, grabbing the items from her sister’s hands and putting them back into the closet.
The sun hadn’t even risen when Cariad had heard her sister dragging a trunk around on the other side of the shared wall.
She had gotten dressed hastily when a scheme formed in the back of her head.
If Aerona was going to pack her life away under the cover of night, then Cariad was going to try one more time to stop her. So far, it wasn’t working.
“I don’t have a choice,” Aerona sighed, grabbing the clothes and shoving them back into the trunk.
It had been like this for the last few minutes but Cariad refused to accept defeat.
Aerona folded the clothes and placed them into the trunk, Cariad would take them back out and hang them up.
It was pointless but it made Cariad feel like she had the tiniest bit of control over the situation.
The longer she kept up the charade, she figured, the more time she got to spend with her sister and convince her to change her mind.
“But you do. We all do. And this one is so easy. Stay.” Cariad had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. In a few short hours, she was going to lose her sister for good.
Aerona stopped packing and ran a hand over her face. Frustration lined the corners of her eyes and Cariad almost felt guilty for what she was doing.
Almost.
“Easy? We’ve gone over this. You would have me doom us all to early deaths trying to change the course of fate? This is not your burden to bear, Cariad. It is mine.” Aerona got the clothes back out from the closet again and threw them into the trunk, sighing.
“Stop with your ‘I see the future’ nonsense for once and just think logically. Nothing good can come of this union. Achill is as power-hungry as his father, but far more desperate. You won’t be able to change him.
Achill is too eager to please that wannabe tyrant.
” Cariad sat down heavily on the edge of Aerona’s bed.
She looked around at the room she had spent most of her youth in.
It was unfathomable to her that her sister would throw away what they had here for some stupid fated mate nonsense.
As children, they had both giggled about the impossibility of fated mates and how horrid the whole deal felt.
As fae, they went through their magical rite of passage and, if there was a mate who had also gone through their rites, a bond would snap into place.
A bond that, if not recognized by both parties, meant certain death.
“In other words, a trap,” she had always said and Aerona had agreed.
How could you be tied down to someone else for eternity? What if you didn’t like them? What if they were evil?
When Cariad was forced by her parents to go through her rites a decade ago at twenty-five, nothing had happened with her mating bond.
In that moment, she was certain she had escaped a death sentence.
She was relieved, at first, but each day afterward felt like the noose tightened.
Should her mate suddenly appear, it would get in the way of all they had planned for their lives.
Aerona, then in her early twenties, had emphatically declared that she would never go through her rites.
They had too much to do, too much fun to have, too many places to explore for either of them to have mates.
They were inseparable, attached at the hip, bosom buddies, and blood sisters. Nothing would come between them.
Until Aerona announced at dinner last month that she wanted to do the ceremony.
Cariad felt like she had been slapped across the face at the betrayal.
Aerona hadn’t even mentioned her desire to do it beforehand.
Perhaps she knew that Cariad would object, would convince her otherwise, would try to change her mind in some way.
And she would have been right. But all Cariad could do that night was sit there, fight the tears, and bite her lip so hard it bled.
Later that night, when they went back to their rooms, Cariad’s voice was hoarse with desperation and anger. “How could you do this? Why?”
But Aerona didn’t answer. She just shook her head sadly. They didn’t speak for almost a week. It practically killed Cariad. And now, as she watched her sister pack away the smallest part of her life, she felt a piece of herself dying all over again.
“If I don’t mate with him, rejecting the bond means that I die.
If I do mate with him…Well, my fate has been foretold.
There is no avoiding what the Goddess has in store for me.
But, I would rather take what precious time I have left and use it to try and influence him in the best way I can.
Save as many lives as I can.” Aerona continued to pack, refusing to look at Cariad.
“I know that I can at least secure peace for future generations this way.”
Aerona’s magic was strong enough without having passed through her rites that she could almost get away with pushing off her rites for as long as she did.
But upon seeing Aerona leave the stone circle clutching her chest, Cariad knew that something had shifted.
The world as she had known it for decades had fallen away, a new one rewriting before her eyes.
She tried her best to be happy for her sister but she knew that nothing was ever going to be the same.
“Your gift is a curse,” Cariad said quietly. “I will never forgive the Goddess for giving you such strong magic.”
“You have it, too,” Aerona mumbled. “You just haven’t tried.”
Cariad rolled her eyes. “Maybe because I never wanted to.”
“Or maybe you’re just afraid.” Aerona grabbed a cloak from the closet, shaking it out and folding it to fit inside the solitary trunk.
Afraid? But that similar pang of fear gripped Cariad’s chest and she rubbed her palm against her sternum. Maybe she was afraid, but it wasn’t of her magic.
“Your brow is furrowed,” Aerona said, waggling her finger at Cariad’s head. “You can’t think yourself out of this one. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“Since when have you ever gone with logic?” Cariad snorted, rolling her eyes. But then she met Aerona’s pained expression and her heart softened. “I just don’t understand how you’re so ready to give up. There has to be a way…Something we haven’t thought of yet.”
It had always been like this with them. Cariad was logical.
Precise and stubborn. Sometimes, she was prone to overthinking.
Her latest project about the magic and mystery of the stone circles consumed her thoughts.
She liked the documentation of it, the ability to test her theories, the way her magic either waned or increased within the different monoliths.
She liked cataloguing her discoveries, deciphering the wards.
Where her mind was analytical, Aerona filled in the gaps with her sense of wonder.
Aerona, the head-in-the-clouds, heart-on-her-sleeve of the two, would guide them to the next stone circle based on instinct.
She always believed in the best of everyone, and was moved by her emotions like the current of the ocean.
She was the forever optimist, despite her gift of divination, always choosing to find the good in any outcome.
“I know I can reason with him,” Aerona said, her voice confident.
“There is no reasoning with madness or greed,” Cariad mumbled. Bitterness coated her tongue and she scratched it against her teeth to rid herself of the taste.
“Cariad,” Aerona said, hanging her head over the open trunk.
It looked as if Aerona was about to tumble into the trunk from exhaustion.
Cariad reached out her hand but then snapped it back as soon as Aerona lifted her head.
“You and I both know that there is no escaping fate. Just as my path is toward Achill, your path is toward something much greater.”
“Yeah, and you refuse to tell me what path I’m supposed to take,” Cariad scoffed.
It was so unfair of Aerona to feel like the burden of the world was on her shoulders.
Didn’t she know that Cariad would do anything for her?
That Cariad could carry the world with her?
They were a team, after all. Above all else, she hated it when her sister went dark with her predictions.
On the one hand, it made her feel like she still had free will.
But on the other, if there was something she was meant to be doing, she would like to know exactly what it was she could or couldn’t do.
It would make for a much less anxious kind of life, she thought.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?” Cariad scoffed and pushed off the bed. She hated when Aerona could see through her so easily. No one else held that power. And when Aerona left to go live with her fated mate, the son of the Mad King, she was sure no one else would ever be able to again.
“That pouty thing you do.” Aerona waved her hand around Cariad’s face dismissively. “You’re the stubborn one in this family. Do you really think knowing what I’ve seen in my visions would change your mind that much?”
Cariad scoffed. Again. It was her trademark response, according to their mother. “Most likely no, but then again, how do I know what I’ll do if you don’t tell me what to expect?”
Aerona threw one last item into the trunk and slams the lid. “Oh for the love of—,”
“It’s fine.” Cariad said, cutting her off. Her eyes welled with tears. She couldn’t believe that this was really goodbye. “Tomorrow is a new day and you’ll be off and getting married and I really hate this.”
Before Aerona said another word, Cariad rushed out of the room, closing the door behind her.
She grabbed her satchel off the floor by the bookshelf in their shared sitting room and ran down the stairs.
There was one place Cariad felt she could go where she knew she’d always feel the presence of her sister - and that was exactly where she headed.