Chapter 3
BASH
With Darling, Pan, and Vane otherwise occupied, and the daylight fading in the distance, I coax my brother off the couch and into the breezy ocean air swirling around the back balcony. “Let’s go for a fly.”
Kas is already tying his hair back with a strip of leather. I’ve since started growing mine out again. I miss the weight of it and what it meant to me. Plus, I want to look like my brother again.
I tear off my t-shirt. I’m already barefoot and in a pair of fitted shorts. Now that we’re flying again, we’ve shifted back to tailored clothing to avoid wind drag.
“Where to?” Kas asks, finishing the knot in his hair.
“Let’s skirt the ocean, then head to Marooner’s Rock for a few cliff jumps.”
“You’re on,” he says and then jumps up onto the railing, his wings opening with a snap and rush of air. “Race you.”
“Hey! That’s not fair, you fucker!”
But he’s already caught a crosswind and is sailing toward the beach, his laughter echoing behind him.
Using the railing as a launch pad, I push off, and my wings respond immediately, opening independently of one another. Because I need speed to catch up, not agility, I quickly settle into a phased stroke, my hindwings slightly out of sync with my forewings so I can generate more thrust.
Within seconds, I’m just a few feet in lag behind Kas, the ocean beneath us, the air cooler and glittering with mist.
It feels damn good to be flying again. For too many fucking years, I convinced myself I was okay with losing my wings, that it was a sacrifice I had to make for the karmic debt I had accumulated.
But fuck that.
Now that I have them back, I realize just how incomplete I was without them.
Kas glances at me over his shoulder, some of his hair already loose and fluttering against his neck. “Took you long enough!” he shouts.
Several seagulls caw at us as we barrel past. In the air, we are the apex creatures now, and they seem endlessly annoyed by it.
Up ahead, Marooner’s Rock takes shape against the bright pink sky of the aging day.
First one to land wins, and I don’t plan on letting my brother get there before me.
“Oh shit, what’s that?” I shout and point to our right, farther out to sea.
Kas slows and follows my gesture…where there is nothing but water.
“Ha!” I yell and dive, knowing there will be an updraft just a handful of yards from Marooner’s Rock.
“That’s cheating!” Kas yells.
But I can barely hear him over my shouting.
“Wooooohoooo!”
Finding the sweet spot about ten feet off the ocean’s surface, I settle my wings and glide across until the wind cuts around the Rock, the air swirling around its jagged edges. It’s there I catch the updraft, slanting my wings so I’m shot up and up in a column of air.
The wind breaks once the cliff flattens, and it sails me over the edge, where I land with a soft footfall in the moss.
I won.
Except my joy is quickly snatched from me.
Doren is on Marooner’s Rock with three of his fae behind him.
Kas lands to my left with a snap of air.
“What, have you been here waiting for us?” I ask, light and airy, like I’m joking. “You could have called. Written a letter.”
“Sent an owl,” Kas adds.
Doren smiles, but I know this type of smile, cold, sharp, meant to cut. Like sleet. You can mistake sleet for rain, only until it’s driving against your skin.
“We were actually headed toward the treehouse when we heard you carrying on, on the wind.” He takes a step forward.
On the slope of the Rock, he’s at a tactical disadvantage and it puts him a head below us.
We measure up evenly in height on flat ground, but in brawn, Kas and I outdo him by twenty pounds.
If it came to fists, we’d win. If it came to flight, the victor would be less clear. We are fast and agile, yes, but weight does factor into speed. Doren might best us then.
I’m not entirely sure his age, though I remember him as a child, when I stood half his height, so he must be a decade or two older than us.
He has the same lavender threaded hair as the rest of the men and women from his familiar line.
In the right light, it almost glows against the black like gossamer spiderwebs.
His wings are large and strong, the same lavender color that highlights his hair, but his eyes are darkest black so that it’s impossible to define the lines between pupil and iris.
“What do you want then?” Kas asks, never one for beating around the bush.
“I came to apologize.”
“About?” Kas adds.
“Your Darling and my rather hasty response to her ruling by your side on the throne.”
Another step closer. Kas and I keep our position. We are not the type to back down.
“I was…” He casts his gaze out to sea where the last bead of sun is rolling at the horizon. “I was out of line,” he finishes. “Perhaps also unfair.”
I don’t like this.
And I don’t have to look at my twin to know he also doesn’t like this.
“What changed?” I ask, because sometimes I too can stop beating around bushes.
His gaze cuts back. “A new vision for the future.”
That smile again.
Now I really don’t like this.
Kas and I, fae kings banished from our people, have grown accustomed to speaking our fae language to one another with the knowledge that no one could understand us.
Pan might understand a few words, sure, but Vane has never bothered to learn, and Darling would require several years of study to understand it.
So it annoys me now that I can’t speak to Kas in the chiming language of the fae without Doren also understanding.
“Will you accept my apology?” Doren asks.
One of the men behind him shifts, catching my eye. There are two men, one woman. No one I know or recognize. But I can feel their hatred for me radiating across the Rock.
I know we have some damage to repair to our reputation within the fae court, but we helped save the fae from our undead mother, Tinker Bell and the hellish dark magic she dragged out of the lagoon with her. Do we not deserve some respect?
Kas folds his thick arms over his chest. “What’s the catch? What do you want?”
“Nothing.” The smile thins on Doren’s stupid fucking face.
“So just like that?”
“Of course.” Doren spreads out his arms. “I bow to you now and in the future, so long as the crown is on your head.”
Why do I get the distinct impression he is playing with words?
So long as the crown is on my head, as if there exists a possibility it will not always be.
I need Doren gone so Kas and I can figure out our next steps. We should probably also tell Pan and Vane.
“Great,” I say, clapping my hands. “What’s done is done. We accept your apology.”
The smile is stretching to his ears now. “I’m glad that’s settled.”
I don’t rattle easily. But the way he says this, it lifts the hair along the back of my neck.
Doren turns to his line of dutiful fae soldiers and together they jump off the Rock and fly off.
I turn to my brother and open my mouth to shit talk that son of a bitch, but Kas gives me a quick shake of his head.
Not yet, is the implication.
I roll my eyes.
“Fine. Race you back home.”
He gives me a shove, and I make a show of stumbling backwards towards the cliff’s edge, arms pinwheeling. “Oh no! Kas! Dear brother! How could you be so cruel to push me over a cliff?!” Then I tip backward, laughing, sailing toward the ground, hair snapping in my face.
At the last second, my wings open, back drafting before I hit the ground.
Might as well pretend we’re still in a good mood on the off chance Doren is still listening.
But I am not in a good mood. None of this makes sense, but I’m not sure what the angle is, and I won’t be in a good mood until I uncover it.