Chapter 21
MAE
At some point, Asmo and I become disconnected in the middle of the night, but I still cling to him like a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean. His arms are wrapped around me, one thumb lazily stroking the small of my back.
I pull my cheek from the dried puddle of drool on his chest and glance up. He watches me with a smirk on his face. Early morning light filters into the room and onto the bed, rays of sunshine landing on his messy locks of hair.
“How do you still manage to look that good with drool on your face?” he asks, voice rough and low.
I laugh into his chest, then lift my head and wipe it away. “Asmo.”
“Princess.” His voice is soft, and it threatens to undo me again.
His words from last night echo in my mind, his vulnerability something fresh and new.
Something that I’m not sure how to deal with.
I’m not used to this version of him. I’m used to him being predictably prickly and pissed off, not…
sweet. Our usual script is gone, erased by his speech, waiting to be rewritten.
But we don’t have the time to delve into this. We have a kingdom to win back, Elle to rescue, an entire people to protect from his brother. From my husband.
“We have to go,” I say lamely.
One corner of his mouth quirks up. “I’ve just been waiting on you.”
“You could have woken me up,” I retort.
“Who am I to wake a High Queen?”
I roll my eyes and push myself up, but Asmo pulls me back down and wraps his arms around me.
“Wh—” The question dies on my lips as he shifts underneath me, then rolls us both over, pinning me beneath him. My body arches into him without a thought, but then he’s gone and I swallow the protest as he stands before me, all of him on display.
All thoughts go out the window as I devour every inch of him. And I mean…every. Inch.
“If you keep looking at me like that, princess…”
I shake my head, forcing my gaze from his sculpted body. We dress quickly, my mind reeling as I mull over the news that we have to share with the remnants of my court—that Ursidae’s support comes with conditions that I’m not sure I can meet.
We carve the sigils into our stomachs and toss the key onto the bar on the way out. The town is nearly empty as we walk back to the portal location in silence, neither of us daring to attract any attention to ourselves.
Ivan wrenches the front door open the moment we step through the barrier. His eyes are wild with panic as they rove over me, then Asmo.
“What happened?” Ivan orders, the question directed at Asmo.
But I answer it. “We’re so sorry, Ivan. We’re fine. We left the Bear Court and went to grab a drink. By the time we went to leave, we couldn’t because of some curfew in place, so we had to stay overnight in an inn.”
Ivan’s expression goes from panicked to irritated, a scowl darkening his features. “You couldn’t just break the curfew? Mother, what if something had happened?”
“It wasn’t exactly that simple.” I explain the protections put in place—the wards that prevented travel, the guards roaming the streets.
He huffs a breath. “Well, probably smart of you not to test it. Last thing we need is you getting hauled into a prison cell. Been there, done that, as the kids say. Anyways.” He gestures us inside. “Come on, then.”
We step inside, and I’m fully prepared for everyone to be waiting for us, but the living room is empty. “Where’s everyone else?”
“Holly and Luca are out looking for you. Cally is asleep,” Ivan answers. He takes a seat on the sofa and stares up at us expectantly. “Well? What happened with Ursidae?”
I sigh as I settle into the armchair across from him. “Shouldn’t we wait for the others?” I ask, pointedly, looking around the empty room.
“They won’t be back for hours. Just tell me.”
“Torben refused,” Asmo says gruffly as he plops onto the couch beside Ivan.
“Well, not technically,” I object, giving Asmo a side-eye. “He promised to help us if we can get Panthera and Canis to promise their support.”
Ivan leans forward and steeples his hands together. “Tell me everything.”
I recount the entire visit, Asmo grunting in disapproval when we get to Artis’s ultimatum.
“What do we do, Ivan?” I ask. It comes out desperate. Defeated. We thought Torben would be what we needed to get back to the throne. But with his conditions, it feels like we were in a carriage—albeit, a very shoddily assembled carriage—and one of the front wheels just went flying off.
“You’re sure Canis will help?” Ivan asks.
I nod eagerly, despite the creeping doubt I have. My answer is based solely on August’s promise. Ivan runs his hand along his jaw, thumb rubbing the short stubble that’s begun to grow. “I don’t see another option,” I say. “We’ll have to visit Panthera next and hope they’ll agree to help.”
Panthera, who’s more aligned with House Serpent than any other court. The thought does not sit well with me. But we don’t have another option. We need their help if we want Ursidae’s. If we have any chance of winning this war.
Ivan and Asmo begin to discuss the logistics of our trip to Panthera, and I find myself drifting off. The surge of emotions from our visit has left me drained. My hope flared when Torben said they’d help, then was doused by the morning. Then, Asmo’s speech and everything that followed…
My heart feels wrung out.
I try to slip away, but I feel Asmo’s eyes on me as I leave. Just like the first day we met, when I felt him watching me as I left the terrace.
Cally’s bedroom door is cracked open, and a soft light from within pulls me closer. I nearly drop to the floor when I peer inside.
She’s awake, propped up on the bed against a stack of pillows. The sickly pallor is gone, replaced by healthy, rosy cheeks. Her hair is no longer matted, damp curls now resting on her shoulders. Her cheekbones are still too sharp, her frame entirely too small.
But she is alive. And awake.
I push the door open. She grins when she sees me, and my knees nearly buckle with relief. I was so scared I’d never see her smile again.
“Hey,” I whisper, terrified that speaking any louder will somehow shatter her.
Her smile turns soft and her eyes turn glassy. “Hey.” The first word I’ve heard her speak in over a month. I swallow the thick lump that’s formed in my throat. Tears well, and I force myself to breathe, to hold myself together.
“Ivan said you were still asleep. I didn’t realize…
I didn’t mean to…” I thought he meant she was still asleep, still on the edge of the death, not just taking a nap.
That salve… I inhale a shaky breath. What would have happened if we didn’t have Ivan?
What if he had never heard of that salve? What if Asmo and I couldn’t find it?
Cally scoots closer to the wall, freeing a space on the bed. She pats it in silent command.
“How are you feeling?” I ask as I perch on the edge of the bed.
“Better.” She pulls her shirt up, revealing a pink—but healing—wound the size of my thumb. Gone are the red veins spreading from it like sprawling fingers. Gone is the smell of death.
“How did it happen?” I ask.
She lowers her shirt and pulls the blanket up to her chest. “I don’t know.
It was chaos. Everybody was trying to get out, and I was trying to get to you, and there were these freaky monsters in the crowd, grabbing people and ripping into them.
I think I caught a knife, maybe? Then they dragged us all to the dungeons, and it just kept getting worse.
” She stares at her hands, now wringing in her lap.
“What happened that night? I remember you walking down the aisle, Marik laughing…and then it all went to shit.” Her voice is a whisper, as if she’s scared to learn the truth.
I tell her everything—what Marik did, Cora pretending to be Willa, nearly dying from her lightning. Then I tell her about the witches and the Cursed, Elle pretending to be me. She stares at me in mute horror the whole time.
“This is…” she trails off, raking a hand through her damp curls.
“Fucked?” I offer.
“Yeah. That’s a good word for it.” She reaches behind her and winces as she tries to readjust the pillows.
“Here. Let me do it.” I grab another pillow from the end of the bed and place it behind her. “Better?”
She settles back against the stack and nods. “Thanks.”
I sit back at the foot of the bed and gesture toward her stomach. “Does it still hurt?”
She frowns. “Yeah, but it’s better than it was. Thank you for getting that salve, by the way. Ivan told me what happened when you went. You shouldn’t have gone. It was way too risky.”
I wave my hand in dismissal. She shouldn’t be thanking me. She should be cursing me out, screaming at me for allowing her to be thrown into a dungeon, for almost getting her killed. “It was my fault you were down there anyway,” I grumble.
She scoffs. “It was your fault you were tricked by a thousand-year-old witch and her boy toy? Please, Mae.” She nudges me with her foot. “Hey, I mean it. Thank you. You saved me.”
But I didn’t, did I? I’m the reason she was sent to the dungeons, and Asmo was the one who got her out. I know a part of me will always blame myself for her being there in the first place. My shoulders slump as regret returns.
“Where were you? Last night?” she asks. A subject change, for which I am immeasurably grateful for, even if the question isn’t exactly what I want to talk about.
Getting the hope beat out of me with a bat named Torben. Then Asmo and I…
My cheeks warm, and I stare down at my hands. “We left Ursidae and got stuck in Canis for the night because of some town-wide curfew.” If Cally notices my blush, she doesn’t say anything.
I fill her in on the visit to the other two courts, leaving out the part about my night with Asmo. It doesn’t feel right to share. Not yet at least. Not until I know what Asmo and I are doing.
“Well. Shit,” Cally says after I tell her about Torben She stares past me, gaze fixed on the empty wall. “What the hell do we do now?”