Chapter 26
HEKLA
Belenus was only able to tease me for about twenty minutes before Emer came stomping up from behind the trudging colony. My mate raised his eyebrows at her stormy expression and clasped his hands behind his back.
“How did it go, Emer?” I asked, having a feeling it didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.
“The man is infuriating! He is so stubborn! H—” she ranted, swinging her fingers up like she was pretending she had claws.
“Male,” I reminded her.
She was thrown for a second, breathless. “What?”
“It’s a shifter thing.” Belenus sent an attractive, cocky grin my way. “They don’t use man or woman. Just male or female.”
Good boy, Eventide praised happily.
I am also, on occasion, a good boy, Escort reminded her, hungry for attention. We’d have to give them time together soon.
Emer waved her hands about and snapped, “Whatever! The point is, that male will not listen to reason! He’s simply not going to eat! ”
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” my mate said with a sigh.
“Guess he truly cares about you,” I said, shaking my head. That seemed to calm her a little bit. “A love worth starving for, what a romantic notion,” I murmured loud enough for her to overhear. If Emer ever caught on to my little game, I was going to be in a lot of trouble. I glanced covertly over and nearly burst into laughter at the sour expression on her face.
She did seem relatively back to normal, though. Maybe she was capable of discussing what happened now. I looked ahead and called out to King Nechtan, who turned and relinquished his reins to Slaine. When we caught up to him, I turned to Emer and asked, “Are you able to tell us what happened now? It’s ok for King Nechtan to be here. He’ll be helping us, Emer.”
“I see…” she said, calmer now, though her brows had drawn in worry. Belenus wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and we waited patiently for her to talk. “Things went really quiet after you both left without a word. I found out what actually occurred from your human, Hekla. Koray told me everything he knew, and I wasn’t comfortable staying uninvolved anymore. Especially after…
“I finally unearthed who’d poisoned you, Hekla,” Emer said to me, breaking from a pained expression and pressing her lips together in a thin line. A short, surprised growl burst through my lips, and I covered my mouth to not interrupt her further. “I discovered it was Lynet and told her that if she didn’t help me, I’d get her sent to the dungeon. I forced her to go to Eislyn’s room to try to either get information out of her or form an alliance to collude if there was an opportunity for it. I wanted to listen from outside her balcony and find out if there was more to Eislyn than I suspected.” Emer kicked her boots particularly hard through the snow, and her eyes pinkened. She sniffed, sending several tears down her cheeks.
“Turns out that Lynet was either a really bad actress or Eislyn was crazy as shit. I guess it’s probably both,” she said that last part with a laugh and rubbed her weeping eyes. “Eislyn killed her, Belenus. She threw her off the balcony, bound in vines with nothing to break her fall but her neck. It happened so fast I didn’t expect… I didn’t think…”
I stilled in horror. The casual death had me reeling. Wolves were relatively violent but outright murder was rare and usually not without serious reason.
“Gods…” Belenus whispered.
“Then, Hekla, I heard a scrabbling, and the next thing I knew, your mac-talla was jumping off the balcony too! I barely caught him in time.” She chuckled again and wiped mucus from her upper lip while I continued to gape at her.
“What was Arse doing in there?” I asked, aghast. “What was he thinking?”
“He,” Emer began, outright laughing now, “ate holes through all her clothes in revenge!”
The laughter I was most surprised to hear came from King Nechtan. It was a deep, handsome laugh that made him seem a little younger. He just shook his head, laughing while keeping a shoulder bag close to him. I could barely see the pregnant mac-talla’s breathing swell the fabric. I imagined he had a lot of experience with ruined wardrobes, and I wondered how many socks he’d lost to a hungry mac-talla.
“And then? Emer, you mentioned something about the queen,” Belenus prompted, deeply focused now. I sobered a bit myself, processing that the woman who’d poisoned me was dead. Though she did me wrong, her actions weren’t enough to justify a death sentence. It had me feeling a bit ill.
Emer nodded and bit her lip. “Our… our queen came in right after and asked when someone was going to be delivered. Apparently, part of the marriage contract was for the return of an individual from the Spring Court.”
Belenus narrowed his eyes and asked, “Did she mention a name?”
Emer sandwiched her lips between her teeth but couldn’t hold back her sob. Movement caught my eye, and I looked over my shoulder to see Nofre several rows back, staring worriedly at Emer with a shadowed brow and a restless stance. He looked very much like he could sense her pain and didn’t want to keep his distance. The restraint impressed me, though, the context was sad.
“Emer?” Belenus pressed.
“I heard the queen say the name Ailill!” she blurted out and hugged herself. Belenus’s face dropped all expression, and King Nechtan finally acted like he’d heard something important.
“Belenus,” the king asked, “did they ever recover the body of your father?”
This part of his family history was news to me, and I moved closer to my mate, worried about his state of mind. “Was that your father’s name? Ailill?” I asked, experiencing the mess, the buzzing, of his numbness, shock, and confusion.
Belenus stared ahead and cupped his mouth. Emer released another reluctant sob, as lost as her brother. I gestured for Nofre to come closer as he stalked us. He had to be Emer’s support if Belenus was going to need me. The bat-shifter furrowed his brows, not understanding what I wanted but approached me regardless. In a decisive move not to be argued with, I grabbed his hand and placed it on Emer’s shoulder. They both stiffened from their very first contact, but after a moment of adjusting, Nofre broke through it first and gently squeezed her shoulder. She gradually relaxed, so I gave Nofre a meaningful look and allowed him to take my place while I swung over to stand by Belenus. At least Nofre had managed to find a shirt, and his wings seemed to have disappeared for now.
I linked arms with my mate and looked up at him. His face was drawn, and he seemed lost in thought. “I have no proof that his body was recovered,” Belenus replied to the king when I moved to hold his large hand in mine. “The queen said that he’d been cremated, but I wasn’t there to bear witness.”
“So very likely the summer queen lied, and your father never returned from the Spring Court,” King Nechtan said, scratching at his argentine chin. The winter fae seemed as silvery as the summer fae were golden.
Belenus’s breath caught when he realized I’d asked something as well. “And yes… that was my father’s name.” He squeezed my hand, and I leaned my head against his shoulder, hating the pain I felt from him. He was shocked and confused, but there was also a sense of clarity. Maybe this would explain a great many things.
“But why lie about it?” King Nechtan wondered. “If he was captured, why keep that a secret? Why not attempt a rescue? That seems worthy of waging war for any court. If I had a queen, I’d stop at nothing to bring her back, even if it was a marriage of convenience.”
“I don’t know,” Belenus said blankly. “He’d been gone for the majority of my life. I barely even remember him bringing Emer home.”
King Nechtan leaned over to patently study Belenus’s sister. “Where did Emer come from? You said she’s adopted, yes?”
My mate shrugged. “He just brought Emer home. Found her on one of his trips. The queen didn’t want any more children after me, but I guess Father wanted a daughter.”
“Wonder where he found her. She’s more an autumn fae than summer with that red in her hair,” the king mused. Emer had stopped volunteering information and stared straight ahead. Nofre still looked uncomfortable, but I heard him quietly whisper that he liked her red hair. Emer’s lips twitched, and her cheeks blossomed from the compliment.
“Our orphanages often have fae from other courts. Families get separated from wartime,” Belenus replied.
“The timing is unusual, but I suppose that’s possible.” The king didn’t sound particularly sold on Belenus’s explanation.
“So what do we do with this information?” I asked. “If we dissolve the contract, this person, who may or may not be your father, won’t be handed over.”
“No, they won’t be, and I’m starting to understand why the queen was so fixated on this marriage. If the only thing the Spring Court wanted was a spring princess on our throne, then the queen was willing to marry me away in exchange for this mystery person. It has to be Father. It simply has to be him. I can’t imagine anyone else she’d sell her son for. But she hated him, though.” Belenus placed his hand over his face and snapped, “I’m so blisterin’ confused!”
“There must be more to this,” King Nechtan stated confidently. His confident observations and focus on results reminded me a little of Zorian. If Belenus and I took the throne, I honestly believed he’d make a good ally, and I could see us developing an advantageous relationship with his court. I’d have to keep an eye open for how we could all best benefit with improved communication.
When we take the throne, Eventide corrected. Yes, we had to stay optimistic.
“We need more information,” Belenus agreed. “In the meantime, we may have a little over a day until we reach the next door. We’ll need to stop a little sooner than normal to give the shifters time to hunt. We don’t exactly have a nuckelavee for them to split this time.”
“Did you say nuckelavee?” the king inquired sharply.
I explained what had happened, and he raised his thick black brows, suitably impressed. “I wouldn’t mind hiring them for problematic predators and demonic fae,” he said thoughtfully. That proposal intrigued me, and I filed it away for later. The bat-shifters would need to build their economy, to develop something of value to trade for blood rations. I sensed I had a lot of work ahead of me, but I was more optimistic about their future than I was several days ago.
We eventually released the exhausted bat-shifters to hunt for food. Fortunately, some of the game like deer and boar were large enough to share, but there were almost too many bellies to fill; hours passed before everyone received their meal. The winter fae warriors shared some of their rations with Belenus, Emer, and me, since none of us wanted to take game away from the blood drinkers.
In dire need of distraction, Emer wandered off, lifting her skirts and stomping purposefully through the snow to see if anyone needed wounds tended to. I kept an eye on her, not trusting any lustful shifter who might try to take advantage. The wary thought had me sighing; it wasn’t their fault, and it was atrocious that their curse manipulated so many facets of their lives. If I couldn’t tolerate over twenty-five years of no sex, I didn’t know how some of them stayed sane after a hundred years—or however long they lived. I hadn’t thought to ask.
Belenus and I huddled over our campfire, warming each other as the cold bit our backs. Sleeping outside in winter, even with the Sun God’s rise, promised to be miserable. I was about to ask Belenus what he thought of shifting before sleeping, but was interrupted by Emer’s bird form. She darted out of nowhere, and circled frantically before finally squeezing into the gap between my neck and my hair.
“Ah!” I shouted in surprise, then flinched and ducked as a large bat swooped past me and banked to avoid crashing. That scented like Nofre! What I feared had come to pass—or so I suspected.
“NOFRE!” I commanded in a harsh alpha tone to get his attention. “STOP HUNTING EMER! GO MASTURBATE!”
The bat faltered in his flight, and I’d swear to my dying day that I saw deep shame in his little black eyes. In half a heartbeat, he flew off, hopefully to do what I’d ordered.
Emer jumped from her sanctuary under my hair and changed back to her fae form, cackling wildly from the adrenaline rush of a close call. Belenus could have been enraged at Nofre’s attempt to mate with her, but he just started laughing too. I buried my face in my hands, unable to believe the words that had come out of my mouth. It promised to be the most utterly ridiculous thing I’ve ever said, and will ever say, in my lifetime. Deep chuckling from the winter warriors hit my ears, provoking further embarrassment. Trail was going to die over this story.
“You just”—Belenus roared with laughter—“ordered someone to go masturbate.”
“Just practicing being queen,” I mumbled into my palms.
Maybe it’ll work on Belenus, Eventide pondered.
“Don’t even joke about that!” he protested out loud.
“You weren’t kidding!” Emer continued, cackling with tears in her eyes. “I yelled at him to eat and shoved a rabbit in his face. He crumbled at the sight, sucked it dry, and looked at me like I was dessert! Oh, someone needs to break this curse. These poor shifters.”
I just kept my face buried in my palms, truly wondering what my life had become.
·
I wandered through the woods because I hadn’t seen Belenus for a while. He wasn’t answering my mind-links, and Escort had fallen silent too. I couldn’t even get Eventide to talk to me. A deep dread filled my belly, painfully tangling my guts as I stumbled through the underbrush. I’d occasionally catch the briefest scent of Belenus, and though it wasn’t potent, it helped me track him to a moonlit clearing. I didn’t know why I hadn’t heard anything. The view before me crushed my heart—shattered it to bloody shards.
Belenus and Eislyn were wrapped in a passionate embrace, writhing naked and joined at the hips. I fell to my knees and screamed, but neither of them heard me over their lovemaking. I asked him why he was doing this. I begged him to explain and tried to convince him he was bewitched. From the look on their faces though, I could see the fierce love they had for each other. Eislyn didn’t even take a second to gloat, to sneer at me. They were completely focused on their joining.
Once Belenus leaned down to mark her, I screeched until I woke, drenched in sweat. The nightmare had wrecked me, and I sobbed. I searched for Belenus in the darkness, but once again, I couldn’t find him. Had it been a dream? It must have been!
Like I’d dreamed, I picked up his scent… which led me to the woods. I prayed to every single god that he’d be alone this time, but it was not so. Belenus’s face was between her legs this time, worshiping her core as he used to mine. Another piece of myself died as the agony of betrayal ripped through me. The crimson shards that had been my heart crumbled into red ashes. I screeched until I woke anew.
Belenus was gone, so I wandered back to the meadow to find Eislyn’s lips around Belenus’s cock. Another piece of myself died, and I woke again. Each time I stood from the cold ground, I knew I’d find them locked together in bliss. Each time I became a throwaway, I died a little more until all that was left was a husk.
I had no idea how many times the experience repeated, but I had lost hope that it’d ever stop. I had no idea if the current iteration was real until I’d wake, and I wished for death with each foray into the woods. The shadowed ground offered no alternate routes. The only way out was forward, but it was never a true escape.
After the trauma ate at my husk, my feral mind escaped. I repeatedly fell into my wolf form and ripped my mate to shreds. Somehow, they never noticed my attacks and continued fucking until they were dead, torn to pieces. Then I’d utterly lose my mind to grief and wake. There was no knowing how long the cycle clutched me, but at one point, I’d finally woken to a different space.
Above me, the Sun God cut into my vision. He was awake this time.
Then I remembered it all. I shrieked and jumped to my feet, unbalanced and wild. I wasn’t alone this time. Belenus woke with a startled expression, his amber eyes darting to me. His form blurred as tears took my vision and streamed down my face. Still, I could see movement, and I recoiled when my ex-mate reached for me .
“No!” I screamed in his face and slashed, raking my claws into his forearms. Knowing he was just as dangerous, I immediately lunged to kill him, but he side-stepped and attempted to grapple me. I scrambled from his grasping hands and snarled at the approaching soldiers and shifters. Their faithless eyes covered me, suffocated me.
“Traitors! You’re all traitors!” I screeched at the top of my lungs. “You betrayed me!”
Too many enemies. Too many wicked fae attempting to catch me. I had to escape his army of turncoats. I spun on a heel and left the swarming commotion behind me, unable to absorb what people yelled. It didn’t matter. They’d all betrayed me and supported the man who’d killed me.
I tried to shift into Eventide, but her form evaded me. Not even my wolf was there for me. They’d all abandoned me! I screamed into the burning sky, wondering if the Sky Gods had abandoned me too, like They’d once abandoned Ragna. Would Ragna allow me back or would she reject me as well?
I raked my claws into my neck to rip out the flesh where Belenus’s mark lived, and blood poured down my chest in between my breasts and over my belly, staining my clothes the color of a broken heart. I shrieked at the physical pain, the rending of muscle and sinew, but it could not compare to the loss of my mate. How could he kill me like this? He knew I’d die from heartbreak, and he chose her anyway.
Hands found me and my face met with snow, buried deep into the foam of winter. I couldn’t even feel the cold anymore. My ashen heart spread the numbness like a dead sun radiating poison. The hands, three pairs of them, lifted me and turned me over, holding me in an unbreakable restraint.
A trio of bat-shifters had me pinned, and the faces of more traitors appeared in my line of sight. “You all betrayed me!” I cried through furious tears. “I freed you, I nurtured you, I tried to help, and you supported the man who killed me!”
The silvery fae glanced over at the redhead and my enemy. “Do you feel that?” he asked.
“Why are you ignoring me? You signed my execution!”
The redhead knelt closer. “I’ve never felt that before. What is it?” She started as I snarled at her, warning her to keep her filthy distance.
“Rot,” my enemy said, looking worried. He brushed his yellow hair aside and dared appear concerned about me. What a disgusting actor he was. No wonder I’d been fooled.
“You fucked her!” I screamed at him. “You fucked Eislyn for hours and hours! I had to watch! You made me watch!”
He also dared to look surprised, as if this was news to him. My enemy turned to the others and asked, “What do we do? Is this a curse or some other kind of spell?”
The lies piled offensively, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, nigh tearing my throat, “I’m not making this up! How dare you lie!”
The stern fae reached toward my forehead with a hand dusted in silver. “Hibernate,” he ordered in a low voice, and my torture finally ended. Sweet bliss. Oh, how I welcomed death.
BELENUS
“We need to search the area,” King Nechtan said in a cold voice and directed his men to scatter. I started when Emer’s fingers landed on my arm, hastily working to scab gashes that had nearly reached bone. As painful as they were, I was far more worried about the damage Hekla had inflicted on herself. She’d nicked an artery and bled heavily, the rivulets spurting into her dress. I fell to my knees by her head, panicking. My heart clenched as I struggled to recover from the emotions she’d radiated. Our bond had been flooded with her deepest despair and loathing, spreading its agony to me .
“Help me, Emer,” I begged and lifted Hekla’s head to my lap so I could access her slaughtered shoulder.
“This has to be the most creative assassination attempt I’ve ever seen,” the king fumed as he jotted a message on a small scroll. He summoned a bird handler and released the grey avian with a full tube. “This is too far southwest from the previous rot-witch sightings. They’re moving fast.”
I vacantly noted that Nofre remained nearby, but Ferrer and Luzia had made themselves scarce, likely too tempted by the sight of fresh blood. All I could say was thank the blazing Sun God they’d just eaten.
I can’t find Eventide, Escort alerted, more distraught than I’d ever heard him.
Hekla’s unconscious. Wouldn’t Eventide be too?
Not usually. One can be awake while the other is asleep.
Fuck, I replied and continued working on my poor mate’s neck while Emer held her flesh together. Nofre kept his distance for a while but eventually crouched next to my sister and placed a very hesitant hand on her shoulder.
“Can you sense where any curses might be, Emer?” I asked, then looked up at the winter fae. “King Nechtan? My wolf says that hers has gone unusually quiet.”
Emer and the king leaned over my mate’s supine form, searching for clues. “It might be nestled in her skull,” he said, gesturing to her limp head. “Her affliction is obviously psychological. She appeared to exhibit signs of brainwashing you’d find in torture.”
“If her wolf is a separate mind, they might not have been able to curse them both with the same illusion? Maybe they had to block her?” Emer guessed and helped me close up the last of Hekla’s lacerations.
If I hadn’t been looking at my sister, I wouldn’t have noticed Nofre’s openmouthed expression. He looked torn, like he wanted to say something but had reservations. I met his eyes and raised my brows in question .
He knew an unspoken order when he saw one. “Is it possible to get her to drink while she’s unconscious?” he asked in such a low voice I almost couldn’t hear him.
“Why?” I inquired, slowly lifting her head and parting her hair to see if there were any other injuries or curse marks. I hoped to the Sky Gods she served that I wouldn’t find anything as complicated as what we’d found on Ragna at Eysteinn’s hideout. At least Koray was in this realm, though, so the worst-case scenario was something we could eventually fix.
“I’m… taking a huge risk telling you this…” he whispered, grimacing and turning his gaze to where his people waited.
“Do we need to make a promise, Nofre?”
He pressed his lips together, creating an even paler white line around his lips. “I suppose that would be acceptable…”
My sister reacted first, surprisingly. “I promise I will not share what you are about to reveal,” Emer swore and held out her hand. His expression softened, and he shakily took her smaller hand in his to seal their promise.
The rest of us made the same vow, and Nofre rubbed his eyes while taking a deep breath. “We didn’t realize until we’d received several cursed fae into the Night Court. One of our fated mates had been cursed with starvation by a fear gorta and had wandered into our territory, near mad with hunger. He lost his control after a nightmare and bit his mate on accident but was cured after having taken in some of her blood.
“We believe,” he continued, looking away again, “that not only are we immune to other curses, our blood may act as a cleanser for the cursed. We’re so thoroughly cursed that there’s simply no room for another spell to latch onto.”
I blinked and straightened, astonished. Curse immunity had always been considered an impossibility. So that was why Ferrer remained healthy after his own faery encounter.
“Wow,” Emer whispered. “Our healers would be flabbergasted.”
Nofre fidgeted uncomfortably, but his eyes flashed with a humble devotion. “I’m willing to donate some of my blood if it helps her,” he offered quietly. “She’s… potentially my future sister.” He mumbled that last part out and Emer bristled.
“You don’t know that!” she hissed.
It was my turn to bristle. “Emer, you may technically be able to say whatever you want to say, but sometimes you just fucking shouldn’t,” I snapped at her. Her face flushed with humiliation, and she fled back to the campsite, leaving a gutted Nofre in her wake.
I shook my head at her immature reaction. Now was not the time for her dramatic outbursts. “Forgive her,” I growled and hoisted Hekla up so she’d be leaning against my chest, “but she does owe you an apology. That was cruel.”
“I’d just forgotten that rejection was even possible,” the bat-shifter replied in a strained voice. Profoundly shaken, his pale skin had lost several shades of pigmentation. He practically resembled a corpse now.
“She’s been through a lot. She’ll calm down. So what do we need to do here?” I asked, much more concerned about my mate at the moment. I’d have to talk to Emer later about poorly timed tantrums.
“I’ll bite my arm and just let it drip into her mouth. You’ll need to hold it open for me,” he answered and extended his fangs, the sharpest teeth I’d ever seen in my life. I’d say they were even sharper than Hekla’s. King Nechtan simply watched in silence, seemingly fascinated by the procedure.
Nofre didn’t have to dig deep. He merely punctured one of his bulging veins and held it to her open mouth. “This is so bizarre,” he murmured as he fed my mate his warm blood. “I’m supposed to be the one drinking blood here.” He laughed weakly and waited a little while before pulling back and pressing on his vein to stop the bleeding.
I closed my mate’s bloody mouth and nodded in the direction of the camp. “You’ve done some good here, Nofre. I hope this works,” I said, stroking her hair and washing her face with snow. “Go back to sleep. It’s not yet nightfall,” I ordered, suddenly feeling exhausted. The weight pressed down, growing heavier the more I thought about Hekla’s condition.
King Nechtan quietly interrupted my weary thoughts. “I think we should bind her wrists and feet before you retire in case the blood doesn’t work.”
I really did not want to bind her, but I couldn’t bear watching her hurt herself again. I also wasn’t a fan of someone using her to kill me. My poor Hekla was going to feel so guilty.
“Alright.” I caved with a heavy sigh and carried her back to camp, hoping she had a spare dress in her bag.
Oh vengeful Sun God, please return my mate to me.