Chapter 24 #4
My eyes are wide with shock. My heart is beating too fast.
My wings tremor, but I smile.
The Raven King. Our true King.
A quip is on my tongue, but I bite it back.
He truly means it. He’s sincere.
“Thank you.” I reach to take his hands between mine.
“What about me?” Bai whispers.
I force myself to straighten my shoulders, as much as I want to hug him and shield him, as Wren pointed out that I always do.
But this is a harsh world. I can’t protect Bai from it any longer.
“Aren’t you a soldier now?” I drop the Druid’s hands to pull teasingly at Bai’s cadet uniform. “Grown up? I’ll need you in the upcoming plot. Then after that, I have an even more important job for you.”
Bai’s tears slowly dry up, and his expression brightens. “Important?”
I point at Elatha. “Look how sad she is. She will be a bloody wreck when I die. And Wren…?”
Wren raises an unimpressed eyebrow but goes along with it.
I whisper conspiratorially into Bai’s ear. “Wren likes to appear stoic but underneath that grim face of his, he’s secretly in love with me. He composes poems to my arse and everything.”
Bai giggles, and Wren reddens. I have scored on both fronts.
“So, he’ll weep and wail and be a bloody state,” I continue, enjoying the way that Wren looks like he’s regretting getting on his knees for me.
“You’ll need to look after him for me, right?
I need to know that you’ll be here to keep the Frost Clan together.
I need someone to take care of the others and make sure that my Omega is fine too. Can you do that?”
Bai puffs out his chest. “You can trust me.”
I stroke his tumble of hair. “I know I can, Little Bug.”
“Before all that weeping,” Elatha edges closer on the bed, “I’ve been working on a gift for you from the moment that I was given a job here.
I’ve been spending my pay from the dragons on materials to craft you something.
I thought that it was funny that their money should be used to create an item for their enemy. ”
Her excitement is infectious.
I give a dangerous smile. “Sounds like my type of gift. You know me well.”
“It won’t appear until we pass into Unseelie territory.
” Wren shifts on his knees like he’s uncomfortable on the stone, but once he’s made the gesture of kneeling, he’s committing to it.
“I wove my magic through it. It’s a powerful magical object now, which only responds to the Shadow Fae King and his line. ”
“You have me bloody intrigued.” I glance between them. “What is it? A weapon?”
Elatha smirks. “What is it that I always said I would craft for you? That my parents made for yours? What did I make out of my blossoms?”
My heart leaps. “A crown.”
She nods.
Joy surges through me.
“You’re both bloody brilliant.” I don’t have the words to say how much this means to me since my da’s was stolen from me.
Plus, when Lanlin’s was taken and melted in front of me.
Yet I know that if anyone understands, then it is my best friend, and Elatha has been working for months on a new crown for me because she knew that I had been hurt.
Plus, Wren has made certain that no one can rip it from my head again.
“It was painful to me as well that our kingdom’s crown was taken from you,” Elatha says. “Sometimes, we can’t take back what has been done to us. But we can find a new way forward. If we find a way home, then you’ll have a new crown.”
I tighten my hold on Bai. “Then I need to be clear. This scheme that we’re attempting is treason. Everyone expects that from me. But Bai is a cadet, while Ela is a member of the army. You’d be executed. So, I am making an offer to plan this with me as Daire, your friend, and not Daire, your King.”
“It’s the same thing, and it always has been.” Elatha leans forward and rests her head on my shoulder.
Bai looks up at me through his wet eyelashes. “No one is leaving me out of this.”
Wren gives a choked laugh. “I am already involved, and nobody would believe that I wasn’t.”
I arch my brow. “Making friends, huh?”
He blushes.
“More like snarling at every dragon who tries to court him.” Elatha studies Wren fondly. “They have a fascination with fae who hate them, it seems.”
Tell me about it.
“It’s decided then.” I take a ragged breath, staring around at my circle of friends in the dawn light.
“I won’t have my people live and die in a foreign land under the yoke of tyrants.
This will be our only chance to rise up.
With the iron poisoning working through me, this is an all or nothing attempt. ”
Softly, I open my wings.
In answer, they each reach forward, lifting their own wings to touch mine.
My heart is filled with warm hope, as well as a chilling terror.
This is it.
This is bloody it, and there is no turning back.
“We swear by the sun, wind, dew, earth, and frost,” Wren leads the others of the Frost Clan in the solemn oath, as our wings touch, “to follow you in this Fallen Rebellion. If we break this oath, then may cosmic retribution follow. We will rise up and return the Raven King and his people to the Unseelie Kingdom.”