Chapter 7
MAE
I know something’s wrong when I see the hybrid couple walk down the path before Asmo. He should have come out before them. He should be here by now.
“Let’s go,” Luca says, turning in the direction of the portal location.
I don’t move. “No. We can’t leave him,” I say, my gaze fixed on the door to the castle.
Luca huffs a sigh. “We don’t have time to argue this. If they caught on to him, we need to go. Now.”
I turn and stare at him. “I’m not leaving yet,” I say through clenched teeth.
Ivan places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Luca is right. We have to go. We’re not prepared for a rescue mission. We have no clue if they know who he is or if they’re coming for us next. We can’t risk staying here any longer.”
He’s right.
“Let’s just wait. One more minute. Please.” I hate that I’m asking for permission, that I sound like I’m begging, that the thought of Asmo being taken has my chest constricting this much.
Luca draws his mouth into a straight line and casts another sidelong glance at the castle doors.
I count to sixty in my head, but the doors remain shut.
Fuck. Without another word, I swallow my fear and the way my brain is screaming at me to stay put.
Luca and Ivan flank my sides as I head back toward the portal location.
The walk back is swift but silent, tension radiating from Ivan and Luca as we walk.
The fear of Marik’s guards coming to grab us before we can make it back is palpable.
The knot in my chest doesn’t abate when we’re back at the cabin.
It only strengthens with the knowledge that Asmo is no longer with us. That he’s now with the enemy.
Holly’s confusion is evident the moment she opens the door, her features twisted and brow furrowed. “What—where’s…who’s missing?” she asks, frantically looking behind us for any sign of the final member of our group.
Luca slashes the sigil. “Asmo,” he says, his voice back to normal.
I stalk past Holly and into the cabin. Ivan calls my name, but I ignore it. I don’t think I could speak if I tried. My thoughts are spinning and my jaw is locked, too many thoughts and screams threatening to spill.
I shut myself in the tiny bathroom and sit on the stone floor, the cool surface welcome against skin that feels hot and tingly.
I lay down and curl into a ball, hugging my knees to my chest and trying to control my breathing.
But it’s coming too fast, and my lungs feel too small, and my skin feels like it’s buzzing in the wrong way.
My hands ball into fists as the tears come.
There is too much against us, and not enough of us. With Asmo, it felt like we had a chance of figuring this out, but without him…It’s just too much.
My breathing slows as I focus on the feel of the floor beneath me—a trick Willa once taught me to lessen my anxiety. I refuse to think of her as Cora, to taint whatever positive memories are left.
Focusing too much on what went wrong won’t help me.
At least, not right now. The urge to self-harm is overwhelming, but I shove the thought away, focusing again on the feel of the stones beneath me.
When my breathing is regulated and I no longer feel like crawling out of my skin, I push myself to my feet.
I nearly scream when I look in the mirror and see the unfamiliar face looking back at me.
I need to get out of this body. I grab Ivan’s razor blade from the pedestal and yank my pants down, exposing the dark mark.
Before I can think too much about how good it would feel to draw the blade further than necessary, I mar the sigil and toss it back onto the counter.
The blood evaporates in a shimmer of black before disappearing into the air.
I feel lighter with the sigil gone, the dark magic no longer etched into my skin.
But then I remember that Asmo didn’t come back with us.
A heavy knock pounds on the door. “Mae. We need to talk.” Ivan.
I yank open the door and slink past him. He looks like himself again. Holly sits on the sofa, wringing her fingers.
“We have to go back,” I demand.
Luca shakes his head in one firm motion. “Absolutely not.”
“He would go back for any of us,” I fire back.
“It doesn’t matter. We need to give it a couple of days and see what happens. We can’t go barging in there. Have you forgotten it’s just us?” Ivan says softly. “We don’t have an army of people to back us up.”
My shoulders slump. Ivan is right. It doesn’t matter that I’m still the High Queen. It’s only the four of us. There’s nothing we can do right now.
That night, I toss and turn and beg for sleep, thinking about Asmo in Marik’s and Cora’s hands. Whenever I close my eyes, images of Asmo writhing on the ground in black flames fill my mind. I swallow a scream and wrench back the covers.
Ivan is already sitting outside on one of the dining chairs that we dragged onto our sad excuse of a front porch. I settle into the other chair and he tosses me a thick blanket. I wrap it around and cocoon myself in it.
“Have I ever told you how I came to be in your father’s service?” he asks me, foregoing any kind of greeting.
I shake my head, still not trusting myself to speak. Still not trusting that a scream won’t come out instead.
“Your father and I knew each other as boys. He lived in the castle with your grandparents. I lived in one of the nearby villages, and I stumbled across him one day in the woods on the edge of the grounds.”
He pauses, a warm smile spreading across his face. He sits back in his chair, the wood creaking as his weight shifts. I swear it creaks a little less every night.
“He was stuck in a damned tree,” he says with a quiet chuckle.
“He saw me and started calling out for me to help him. Now, I was a snot-nosed kid back in those days. I walked right up to the tree and said, ‘What idiot in the Deer Court would try to climb a tree?’ His face turned red as a tomato and he said—and I’ll never forget this—‘I’m Prince Silas, I’ll have you know. Help me down at once!’”
One corner of my mouth tilts upward at the image of Ivan speaking back to a High Prince. To my father.
He freezes when he sees my smile, but thankfully, continues with the story.
“I stared up at him and I said, ‘And how am I supposed to help you?’ The next thing I know, your father jumps from the tree and starts screaming. He had broken his damned ankle.” His chuckle is warm and quiet, the kind that comes with a memory of a time long gone. “We became fast friends after that.”
He turns his head to stare at the dark tree line, his smile fading. “One night, many years later, we were out at a tavern. Your father was rowdy then. He lost his sense of pretense when he was High King, but as High Prince? He was kind, yes, but let’s just say he knew exactly who he was.
“Back then, there was tension between the Fae Court and the High Houses. I don’t know what your father did, but he ended up pissing off some High Fae males. They followed us out of the tavern, yelling horrible things our way.
“They didn’t pick the fight with your father, though. They picked it with me. Your father knew the basics of combat, but he was no warrior. He put up as much of a fight as he could to defend me, but there wasn’t much we could do against two fully grown High Fae.”
He takes a long sip of water, still staring at the forest. The moon has begun its slow descent.
“They took a blade and sawed my antlers from my head.”
I close my eyes and hiss a deep breath, the winter air like shards of ice against my lungs. The pain…Bile rises, but I force it back down.
His breath is shaky as he continues. “Thankfully, I passed out. I don’t remember it happening.
Your father never forgave himself. After that, we started training together, promising each other that it would never happen again.
We would never be weak again. He offered me the position of his second-in-command the day he took his oath. ”
“Ivan—” I start, but he holds up a hand.
“It was a long time ago,” he says. His voice is tired in a way I’ve never heard from him before. I wonder how much strength it takes to smile after something like that. “In a way, it made me better. I haven’t felt weak like that in a long time. But right now, I feel powerless.”
I nod. I know exactly what he means. I wish I didn’t.
Two days pass, then three. Three days of pacing and staring out the windows, looking for any sign of Asmo walking toward the cabin. The second night he’s gone, I ended up falling asleep outside wrapped in two blankets, Ivan watching over me under the starlit night.
Now, I toss the newspaper back onto the coffee table, sending a lone pen skittering over the edge.
The newspapers have been utterly useless.
I had foolishly been hoping that there would be something about the prisoners Marik took during the tithe.
As if he would allow something like that to be printed.
“What if we reach out to the other courts?” I ask to the remaining members of my court. “Maybe they know something.”
Luca massages his temples. “We don’t know if they’re in league with Marik. I would highly advise against that plan.” His tone is dry and laced with annoyance.
Ivan gives me a pitiful smile. “He’s right, Mae. Plus, it would give up the only advantage we have—that Marik and Cora don’t know we’re alive.”
“It’s been three days of nothing,” I groan, my head in my hands. “We can’t just sit here.”
“We have no other choice,” Luca snaps. I don’t blame him; we’ve had the same conversation nearly a dozen times. Me, wanting to take action, although I have no idea what that would look like. Luca and Ivan, shutting the idea down instantly. Holly, sitting and watching both sides silently.
Until now.
“Mae,” she says softly. “Have you considered that maybe Asmo told Marik it was really him? And that they’ve been working together?”
I turn to her, and the fire in the old stone hearth sputters out. “Would you like to rethink that question?”
She momentarily drops her gaze at the cold fury in my voice. “I’m sorry, but Marik is a skilled liar and manipulator. Asmo is his brother, his twin brother. You don’t think that maybe they were working together this whole time?”
Luca and Ivan share a look. As if they’ve had this conversation before. As if I’m not the only one who’s questioned Asmo’s trustworthiness.
“Asmo wouldn’t betray us,” I say through gritted teeth, looking around the room at each of them.
“How do you know that?” Holly asks.
I will myself to take a deep breath and I feel the temperature in the room return to normal.
“I know it here,” I say, holding my fisted hand to my chest. “He wouldn’t do that to us.
” I can’t explain how, but I know it in the very matter of my bones.
Despite my earlier anxieties about Asmo, I find every word to be true.
I just know. I refuse to believe that the way he held me in the dark was a lie.
But Holly has a point—one that has niggled at me in the last few weeks. I was so easily fooled by Marik and Cora. I had no idea the games they were playing. Asmo is Marik’s brother.
Have I been a fool this whole time to trust Asmo? To let him into the Herd? Should I have just cast him aside the moment I woke up from whatever hell I had been floating in?
“We can’t stay here any longer,” Luca says.
My stomach sinks. “But what if he comes back?”
“Yeah, what if he comes back with Marik?” Luca hisses. “Don’t be stupid. We can’t stay here.”
I glare at him and he straightens. He draws a breath and holds it before releasing it slowly. “Forgive me, Your Highness.”
I clench my teeth, then force myself to unclench them in a monumental effort. “It’s fine. You’re right. We can’t risk it.”
I stand slowly and head to my room to pack my belongings.
My body feels heavy. My heart feels heavy. My brain feels heavy.
Elle is gone.
Asmo is gone.
My entire life is gone.
I have no idea where Cally is, if she’s even safe. The male that feels like another part of me might have betrayed me.
I stuff my clothes into the duffel bag that now serves as my wardrobe. Three shirts, three pairs of pants, three pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks, three sleeping shirts. I’m lucky. The others have even less.
I cross the hall to Asmo’s room. The door pushes open, revealing the tidy primary bedroom. The full-sized bed is made, sheets tucked neatly under the mattress, pillows perfectly centered against the headboard.
An empty glass sits on the side table. I imagine Asmo setting it down quietly in the middle of the night. I could never hear him in here. He was always so careful to avoid disrupting us. He never said it, but I know he felt out of place amongst us.
The side table drawer is empty. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to find. Maybe some confession of his guilt or innocence, but there’s nothing.
The dresser drawers are filled with clothing, some of Asmo’s and some of the former owner’s. We kept the spare clothing just in case we needed them.
His sock drawer is meticulous, each one matched together in neat rolls. I can instantly tell his socks apart from the previous owner’s. Asmo’s are black and made of expensive wool, while the previous owner’s are worn and made of once-white cotton that has since faded to gray.
I hold a pair of Asmo’s socks in my hands, startling when I feel something hard lodged inside. I hastily unroll the pair. A wine cork comes tumbling out.
I let loose a giggle of relief. I can’t explain why, but I bundle the socks back up, tuck the wine cork back inside, and stuff them into my bag.
Holly, Luca, and Ivan are waiting in the living room, their bags slung over their shoulders. “Ready?” Holly asks.
I nod. “Where—”
BANG. BANG. BANG.