Chapter Fifteen. Fallon
FIFTEEN
FALLON
One fucking horse.
I sighed, squirming and trying to put some distance between Etan and me.
He kept one arm slung around my hip casually, using it to pull me back.
I couldn’t even be too angry about it; my forward position probably put me too far from Thunder’s center of gravity and made it uncomfortable for him.
I reached down and patted the horse’s withers, settling into the discomfort of Etan’s chest pressed into me.
Riding bareback meant there was absolutely no barrier between us, my ass nestled into his groin so that there was very little left to the imagination as to how we might fit together if I were to ever agree to make this more than simply a political arrangement.
Given his perspective of what was required to be an equal to him, I very much doubted that would happen. He might think it acceptable to claim ownership over me, but I was not one to allow that to settle.
I was no man’s property, no man’s possession, and anyone who thought to change that simply because he felt entitled would wake up with a knife between his eyes.
“Tell me about your home,” Etan said, his voice far too casual for the awkward silence that had descended over us since we started the journey through the Summer Court.
The sandy terrain was difficult for Thunder to navigate, his steps slow and cautious as we descended the path down toward the valley.
The earth was dry and red, the cliffs beside us pointed and jagged.
Faces and animals and plants had been carved into the terracotta stone, a history of travelers who had come before us to mark our journey.
“I don’t have a home,” I said evasively, shrugging my shoulders with the truth of the words.
I might have had a home and a family before, a place to rest my head and human parents who loved me, but I knew I could never go back there.
I would never be welcomed back to the rebellion who hated the Fae, to the parents who would hardly recognize what had become of me.
Even if Nothrek hadn’t been filled with Mist Guard and other myriad soldiers who would have killed me on sight, I could never stand to see the disappointment in the faces of the people I loved. “Not anymore, anyway.”
I couldn’t stand the rejection I would find there, knowing that the very thing I had been born to, the thing I’d had no choice in becoming, would horrify them.
Etan sighed, his touch tightening on my waist in sympathy.
“Your home is with me now, Fallon,” he said, trailing off to let that sink in.
“But I meant the home where you were raised. I’d like to know everything I can so I might prepare you for what is to come.
I don’t want anything to be too much of a shock, but I cannot help arm you with information without knowing much of anything about your past. Those I spoke to about you in Tar Mesa were either unwilling to share what they knew or didn’t know much of anything.
Even your handmaiden didn’t seem to have much to say. ”
“Is this your desperate attempt to get me to open up to you?” I asked, wishing more than anything that this conversation had occurred in a place where I had an escape.
I didn’t want to sit with him and be forced to face the awkwardness of this, without a place to retreat if I bared too much of my soul and felt naked and vulnerable.
Etan chuckled, the warmth of the sound sinking inside me.
I felt the rumble against my spine, the genuine humor in it, as if he found my snark entertaining.
Not in a degrading way, like it was futile or useless, but like he genuinely enjoyed the path of our conversations and the unpredictability of what I spoke at any given moment.
“I have been desperate for very little in my long life, Sunfire.” He spoke the words above my head, the warmth of his breath surrounding me.
It should have been impossible to feel it with the searing heat pressing down on us, especially given the sun as it beat down on my skin.
I feared I would be burned to a crisp by the time we reached Vallania, but after several hours in the sun since it had risen, I couldn’t help but find peace in the slight golden hue, in the tan that was the first I’d ever had.
“But let me guess, you’re desperate for me, right?
” I asked, rolling my eyes toward the sun that I squinted at.
It had cast a golden hue over the blue of the sky closest to it, a wash of pure, unfiltered light radiating in a halo around it.
It was so similar to the sunkiss on my skin that I couldn’t help but draw comparisons, remembering the feeling of magic on my skin before I’d shoved it into that wall Imelda had created.
“Would that make you feel better about sharing with me? If I said I was desperate to know everything about you and where you’d come from?
Or is it just your body you expect me to be desperate for?
” Etan asked, lifting his hand from my hip to snag my chin.
He twisted my neck slowly, forcing me to give him my profile so that I could stare at him from the side of my eye as he leaned in and drew his nose up over the side of my jaw to press his lips to my temple sweetly.
“Desperation makes fools of men, and I have no intention of ever being a fool for a woman who will not so much as speak to me.”
I jerked away, my anger rising at the manipulation and games he seemed so inclined to play.
His words were so at odds with the physical intimacy he showed, leaving me reeling with no hope of ever understanding exactly what he intended for me—what he wanted from this marriage.
The mixed signals were the epitome of frustrating, and I wished I was capable of making the rest of our journey on foot to avoid his touch.
“I’m glad we’ve established that,” I hissed.
“You misunderstand me, Sunfire. I have no intention of being a fool for a woman who keeps me at a distance, but I would be desperate for the woman who was just as desperate for me,” he said, and I couldn’t help the way my head snapped back to stare at him with a furrowed brow.
“And you expect me to believe that’s me? That I’m the one who brings you to your knees with all your claims of ownership,” I argued, but the steel had left my voice. My breath felt uneven, altered by the intensity of his stare on my profile.
“You hear what you want to hear, Fallon,” he said, shrugging as if disappointed in me.
“Instead of focusing on the fact that I said I believe you’re capable of earning my respect as an equal worthy of ruling an entire kingdom at my side, you’ve chosen to focus on my not knowing you well enough to trust you with that responsibility right this very moment.
We barely know one another, Fallon. I am merely trying to bridge that gap for both our sakes. ”
I withered, shrinking in on myself and hating the logical explanation. “Your words were intended to hurt. You said them as cruelly as you could manage,” I said, shoving away his attempt to reason with me about something that had been deeply personal.
“You’re right. They were spoken in an attempt to get you to listen and understand the reality that we were going to leave Tar Mesa whether you liked it or not.
No matter what you may think of it, Mab expects me to be responsible for both your safety and your behavior now, so I will not allow your actions to put everything I have worked to protect at risk.
I have given centuries to doing everything I can to keep my people safe from the worst of Mab’s impulses and lost a part of myself to do it.
If you would stop to see me as anything more than your enemy, you would understand that you are now in that list of things I will work to protect,” he said, dropping his arm back to my hip as I tensed.
“Bold words coming from one of Mab’s allies,” I spat, relishing the way his entire body turned solid behind me. My words had left their intended mark, striking as deep as he’d meant to hurt me.
Instead of spitting venom back at me, he only sighed and released all the tension into the dry air around us.
“I think you might understand my position in Mab’s life better if you got to know me and how I came to know both her and Rheaghan,” he said, his hands tightening where they held me as if on reflex.
“What difference could that possibly make? Are the whispers I heard at Tar Mesa untrue? Was Mab not the one to name you Rheaghan’s second-in-command?
Did you not spy on your own King at her behest?
” I asked. I didn’t dare to admit to the hope surging within me, the tiny inkling that maybe everything wasn’t what it seemed.
Given all that I’d seen in my short time in Alfheimr, it seemed unwise to hope for decency in a world where the cruel prevailed.
“I can’t remember my own parents,” he said instead, the vulnerable words stated in such a matter-of-fact way that I froze in place.
“Most of the Gods didn’t generally have much interest in parenting, given the poor example they’d had from the Primordials.
They dropped me off with Diell in the Summer Court when I was five years old.
She wasn’t with Khaos anymore—he disappeared long before the other Primordials and before Mab could be born, but since she had fallen in love with the Goddess Aesira, the two of them were raising Rheaghan and Mab together.
Rheaghan and I were the same age, in spite of the fact that he was a God and I was the child of two Gods.
Mab was less than two when I came to live with them, and I can still remember the way her brother doted on her. ”
“Look where that got him,” I said, shaking my head from side to side to reject the tenderness of his admission.
“Rheaghan and Mab were just as much my siblings as they were each other’s.
I grew up alongside them, and Rheaghan and I eventually grew very close.
When Mab adorned her crown with that gem, everything inside of her changed overnight.
She was suddenly dismissive of Rheaghan’s protectiveness, competitive with him in ways she hadn’t been.
She was the opposite of what Diell and Aesira were raising us all to be, but I was the only one who could penetrate that hatred.
Rheaghan always theorized it was because I was her sibling by choice, because I had actively chosen to love her as my own sister, versus the rest of her family, who had just gotten stuck with her,” he explained, and I furrowed my brow as I tried to understand how he’d come to choose Mab over Rheaghan.
How his loyalty had strayed to the crueler of the two he considered siblings.
“And you continued to choose her? Even after all she’s done?
” I asked, swallowing with my fear that I’d been right.
Hoping he was a decent male had been foolish, but I had such difficulty reconciling the gentler side of him with the cruel one—his soft center with the hard edges he liked to show like a preening peacock.
He continued on as if I hadn’t spoken, not directly offering me an answer.
“I think when the gem gifted her with those dark powers that twisted her up from the Princess of the Summer Court into what she is now, they also enhanced every insecurity she’d ever had.
Took every notion that she didn’t belong and blew them to new proportions.
Mab is the most insecure woman I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and that’s why she needs constant reminders of her power.
It’s why she binds everyone to her will, so they cannot betray her when they realize she isn’t infallible.
Everyone but me,” he said, and I raised a brow as I touched his hand with mine.
The movement seemed to shock him, a moment of something tender lingering between us that hardened to sharpened edges as I processed his words.
“You and I are the only two people connected to Mab who are not condemned to carrying one of her snakes within us. We are the only ones who are capable of directing her to produce change. It is a great gift of power she has given us, and I do everything I can to use it wisely while remaining free.”
“You have free will, when so many others are not fortunate enough to be able to do as they please, and you spend that free will in her service anyway?” I asked, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was to spend the rest of my life standing next to someone who supported the Queen of Air and Darkness willingly.
“It is because I spend my life in so-called service to her that I am able to have free will even after all this time. There is something to be said for keeping your enemies close, Sunfire. Some wars are fought over centuries of deception before they ever reach the battlefield,” he said, and I went quiet as I let those words sink into me.
The implication in them was that he was actively standing against Mab, that he was working to undermine her.
But how could he pretend to support the woman who had killed his brother?
“So, you’re not loyal to Mab?” I asked, unable to take an implication of anything as significant. The man was going to be my husband, and I needed to know where I stood. If I could trust him not to run to Mab with every development, or if he was as much my enemy as she was.
“No, Sunfire. I am loyal to the people of the Summer Court and to those I consider family. Mab stopped being my family centuries ago when I lost hope that she could be saved. After all she’s done, I’m not even certain I want her to be.
The little girl I remember would have rather died than seen what she became and what she’s done.
She was a good person, and I loved her.” He paused, letting that revelation sink in for a moment. “But she’s been dead for a long time.”