Chapter Fifty-Four
Maxian bathes me. He tugs me down until the water hugs my belly button, propping me up on his knee.
I do not protest, do not even make a noise, as he washes away the moment, the soap bar scraping against skin.
I wince as he cleans tender flesh, bruises developing across my chest, my hips.
He must’ve grabbed me roughly, forced the Reign magic to do so, and I did not know until now, when pleasure has been washed out for pain.
He hums. He lathers my back, pulling wet hair onto one shoulder. Then he cradles my skull in one palm and looks down at me. His full lips part, his brow pinched in the smallest hint of concern.
“Do you trust me?” he asks.
“I want to.”
He dips me backward. Seizing up, I scrabble for purchase, and he offers his other hand, which I grasp with both of mine.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m just washing your hair.”
The panic abates, and he is not wrong. Maxian balances me with one arm behind my back, the other stroking my scalp. Still, I sink my nails into that forearm.
The king untangles my hair, and it floats around me, a weight off my neck. He massages my scalp in slow, gentle circles. The water is so warm, the air so thick, and Maxian is reduced to two tender hands, a strong arm keeping me from drowning.
A sigh heaves out of me. Is this what my mother felt like, puffy-eyed, exhausted but relieved, all those nights we returned to my father? Is this why she let him clean up the rooms, wash our clothes, hold her on their shared cot even after the worst of fights? He was the only comfort around.
Forgive me, Mama, I think. I understand now.
I was arrogant enough to criticize how she did the impossible, but she still did it. She left an abusive partner. But I cannot. Not yet. So, like a river flowing downhill, I concede. Maxian dries me and dresses me in the fresh shirt and a pair of his drawers.
In his bedroom, he waves a hand, and the fireplace roars to life. I dry my hair in front of it, kneeling on a lush carpet, using a comb he hands me.
Fern brings in a platter of fruits and vegetables and various cheeses and bread rolls.
I keep my gaze on the fire, refusing to meet her eye.
The king asks for more wine, and some water.
No, just this platter is fine. When the king dismisses her, I feel the smallest graze of her hand on my back. Then she is gone, too.
Maxian finds his seat next to me on the floor, drawing down pillows, materializing a blanket. He sweeps my hair to one side, kissing my exposed shoulder.
I doubt he will allow me to touch him tonight, wind him undone again, as I did before. And yet receiving from him does not feel like taking or having or indulging. It feels hollow.
So there is nothing to lose. My hand trails up his back and lands on his scars.
The king freezes.
I trace the raised skin, the entire patchwork of wrecked flesh—knotted, deep, each scar as wide as my palm. These do not come from an ordinary torture tool. They come from the official weapon of Reign: the Golden Whip.
He swallows. The orange and crimson and gold of the flames dance before us. I turn my head, taking in the paling face of the king.
“I am sorry this happened to you,” I say, and I mean it.
He lets out a shaky breath, gulping his wine, square jaw working. “It was…a lesson well learned.”
Something in my chest cracks. I turn toward him, and we kneel before each other, knees touching like in the training halls and between our lover’s legs and in the library.
“That does not mean it was well deserved,” I say.
Maxian shrugs. “It taught me discipline, obedience.”
“When did it happen?”
“A century ago.”
A century ago. Where have I known that before?
His mother.
His brother.
Maxian glances at the fire, running a hand through his hair. I never got the full picture, could only draw conclusions from a tapestry.
“Do you want to speak of it?” I ask. “I still have the oath. I could never tell anyone.”
“I should kill you for even asking.”
“But you haven’t. Why?”
He looks to me, then away. “Because I still haven’t asked you something yet.”
The world slides away from me. Have I not already given him what he’s asked for? He wanted me to come against my will, to take me until it hurt—how is that not enough?
Still, I breathe until my pulse evens out.
“What…what do you want to ask me?” I rasp.
“It will only make sense once you know more about me.” He pulls back, lying down on the ground.
I decide I can do this—to know, to understand, I will do this.
As he settles on the blanket, among the pillows, I crawl to him, rest my head in the crook of his shoulder.
I let him tuck me into his side, allowing the illusion of our coupling to continue.
“It was over my mother,” Maxian says. “And me.”
I rub my palm over his chest in soothing circles.
“You see…my mother was the queen’s faerie.
Her attendant.” He clears his throat, and I dare not move.
“My grandfather had more bastards than you could count. They were all sent to the mines. I do not know if any have survived. They would be dead by now, anyway. My father was different. My father hadn’t seeded any other bastards before me, and neither had the queen fallen pregnant.
So it wasn’t a problem that I was a halfling, because I was still strong enough to pass for fae.
To continue the royal line. Strong like you. ”
“I am not strong,” I say, bereft.
“There is something unyielding in you. Like those ancient trees in fae tales, with their deep roots and wide, tall trunks that can weather anything.” He tilts his head so we are nose to nose. “You are the strongest faerie I have ever met. Save for one.”
“Your…mother?”
He looks back up at the ceiling. “She and the queen both raised me, and I did not understand why the queen didn’t hate her attendant until the end. But the beginning of the end was Phillip.”
P.V.
Phillip Vandorne.
“A full-blooded, Reign fae child. A miracle. Except that Phillip, you see, was born without a genius.”
The air in the room disappears. No, this isn’t correct. No one is born without a genius.
“Did he become a Molder, your brother?” I ask, blood roaring in my ears. Is this why Eli’s own father invented Ashent? To cure a royal of a faerie disease?
“You cannot lose magic you never had.”
But a creature without a genius would be like a creature with no soul.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” I respond, numb.
“At first, House Healing believed that he was slow to develop, like my cousin Daisy. She did not develop a genius until six years old.”
“What…what happened to her?”
“Born sick, like more and more of the Reign children seem to be. Eventually a fever did take her. Fewer and fewer make it to adulthood, and when they do, their geniuses are weak, but there. Until Phillip. They tested him for years. They could not find his genius. Could not develop it, even as they destroyed the boy in the process.”
“Oh, Maxian” is all I can say, and this pain I do not falsify. What a terrible, brutal existence for a child, to lack the companionship of a genius, to be prodded and experimented on by Healers, to live in isolation of the plane, of plants and people.
“The medicine they developed for him did not work. The other Houses knew that the queen had birthed a sick child, and with this excuse, we kept him out of sight. But it was getting harder and harder to prove that his magic was only just delayed. By his tenth birthday, there was still no sign, not even a trace, of a genius.”
I stare up at the thousands of candles that float above us, as if we are living on a star.
“What happened?” I whisper.
“My father.”
Gregor the Great, Gregor the General, the fae who defeated House of Death during the Dark Rebellion and rebuilt the palace of Versara.
“My father did not want a child without a genius,” Maxian mutters. “On Phillip’s tenth birthday, when the Head of Healing—Eli’s father—declared him magicless, my father took out the whip.”
Goosebumps line my skin, despite the fire and heat of the body next to me. “The—”
“Yes, the Golden Whip.” Maxian’s voice is flat, distant.
“At first, I refused to move, used all the power I had to protect Phillip. The queen did, too, and…and my mother as well. They stood side by side and we battled him, the three of us, with everything we had. I understood it too late: My father was a tragedy that had happened to them both. They fought like sisters. We fought like a family, but his genius was stronger. And he had the Golden Whip.”
I gaze at the king. He squeezes his eyes shut, face taut with memory, tears rolling down his temples.
“I’m so sorry,” I breathe. “How you survived is a miracle. Most faeries die after two lashes.”
My heart pounds. This is the king’s true testament, why Hector and the other nobles call him the Mountain, fear him. He survived the unsurvivable.
“I fainted after the fifth whip,” Maxian says, voice breaking. “It was my first time with the lashings, you see. I wasn’t used to them yet. And when I came to, they all were dead.”
I cover my mouth.
“It took seven lashings to kill the fae queen. And my faerie mother? Eleven,” he rasps. “Eleven. No one can endure that, but she did. My mother did. A mother defending a child that wasn’t even her own.”
“And…and your brother?”
“All my father had to do was kick him hard enough. Like killing a pup.”
He shifts, covering his face with a hand, chest shuddering.
And then the king is crying.
Great, gasping wails like a child, the king is sobbing, and suddenly I am, too.
We lie there, side by side like a couple in a crypt, and we weep.
We weep for what we have done and who we’ve become, for the child who never was and the one I am trying to save.
Most of all, I weep for this world we were born into, this kingdom of killers, and hope, one day, it will be kinder to those who will come after us.
Then Maxian rolls onto his side, drawing me close, turning me into his chest. Even the weight of his arms feels too heavy to squirm out of, and I am so tired of fighting. So I sink farther into the heat of his embrace, my tears across his chest, his weeping in my hair.
“I will never ever do that to my children,” he rasps, a palm cupping the back of my head.
“No matter who my fae wife will be, my children will have great, golden geniuses. No one will ever dare hurt them, for they will be powerful like me. But they will be strong like their mother. They will be strong like you.”
My breath catches.
Large hands stroke my hair, upturn my face to him once more, cradle my skull in his grasp. A curl of bronze hair falls over his forehead, his thick brows, and my entire world becomes those strange violet eyes, that rough square jaw, the power washing us both away.
“Will you have and hold them, in secret and in silence, for the strength of the royal line and for the good of this kingdom?” he asks.
“Max…”
His thumbs brush under my jaw, pressing into my throat, and I inhale for air that doesn’t come.
He rests his forehead against mine, our bodies flush against each other.
I finger the gold ring on my left hand, but to lace away now would undo what I’ve accomplished tonight.
Would make what I gave him in the bath a meaningless sacrifice.
That, I cannot bear. There has to be a reason for violence.
The plane presses down on us like a suffocating blanket and my time is no longer up—it has passed. I have made friends and choices and enemies. I have played the great game and lost. No one is coming to save me. So when his nails dig into my skull, I yield.
“Do you, Avery, accept your new position as mother of my children?” Maxian says.
My lips part. “I do.”
Then the king of Amyria seals our vows with a crushing kiss.