Chapter 29
Lioran slipped out before Cora returned. His scent lingered on the pillow beside me. I clutched it when sleep escaped me.
Cora and I had barely spoken since my conversation with Thalen in the garden.
As the morning light crept in, another summons arrived. It was my only chance to make the bargain they wouldn’t refute.
“You can’t go through with it,” Cora warned, breaking the silence between us. “You can’t convince me that you want to be with Thalen.”
“I don’t.” My fingers slipped into the folds of my gown.
“Then why are you doing this?” She stepped forward and stopped. “Lioran is trying to help you. He will find another way.”
“He did.” The ache hadn’t dissipated. “I could marry Calyth instead.”
Cora gripped her throat, her fingers curled down toward her chest. “It would be better than marrying Thalen.”
“It isn’t what you think. I just need a moment to myself.”
Cora’s brow knitted. “Fine, but can you at least eat something? You’ve barely eaten in days.”
Bile churned in my stomach. Even when the bitterness settled, I couldn’t force myself to look at the food on the plate. “I’m not hungry.”
“Your heart is broken, but someday it will mend.” Her hand lingered on my shoulder. “Whatever you choose. I’ll stand beside you.”
“Cora.” I called as she stood at the door. “I’m not choosing Thalen.”
Cora rushed to me. “Will you go with Calyth then?”
The words lodged in my throat. “No. I will go to Myrwood Grove.”
“He…thinks you will marry.”
It was my secret to keep. “He will know my decision soon.”
“You don’t know what you’re risking. My vision was only a glimpse of the future.”
“A glimpse of hope.” I pressed my hands together. “It’s all that matters.”
As she exhaled her eyes lifted to mine. Not another word was said between us. She nodded with a grim smile on her face.
A cascade of colors sparkled onto the throne room floor. I stood alone in the center, waiting in silence for the king and queen. Footsteps echoed behind me—and his energy shifted over me. I heard his breathing—uneven with ache. He stepped in front of me.
King Thalorys strolled in with the Queen Rhaevin on his arm.
“It is not in your power to deny Lord Thalen.” King Thalorys’s head angled as he evaluated me. “Tell me. Now. Why do you deny his claim still?”
I couldn’t move. The silence thickened around me. Air drew from my lungs. Lioran caught me as I stumbled. His hand lingered on my back.
“Your future king requests that your fate be treated with kindness. We have obliged, but now my patience wears thin.” The king gripped Lioran’s arm and pulled him in front of me. “Tell her your command.”
Panic rippled through the silver flecks in his eyes. The pink in his cheeks slowly faded.
Lioran’s eyes pleaded with mine. “You must make a choice, for your future.”
The king sneered at his son.
“Bow to him,” the queen demanded. Her voice shook me. I froze before him. “You will bow to your future king,” she commanded again.
I lowered my body into a deep curtsy, my gaze lay at his feet.
“That’s enough.” Lioran’s voice stammered, his fingers twitched as he extended them toward me.
The queen shot a withering stare at her son.
I stood in silence, unable to utter the words I knew I must.
King Thalorys wrapped his arms across his chest. “You will answer him.”
I studied Lioran—desperate to remember every silver fleck the sun illuminated in his eyes.
The king raised his hand in front of me. The onyx felt like ice on my chest. Lioran’s jaw clenched.
“Thalen can’t claim me. I was never his.” The words flowed from my mouth without thought. I shouldn’t have uttered them at all.
The room spun. Each breath caught in my throat. The corset pressed into my chest—it seized my lungs.
“You can’t decide my future.” My arms shook. I shouldn’t have utter anything else. I didn’t want to, but my mouth parted again. Every thought spilled from my throat—without control. “You can’t demand anything of me.”
I recoiled with my own words. An inky darkness tugged at the corners of the room.
Lioran’s nostrils flared.
“Thalorys…” The queen rose to her feet. Her mouth formed a half grin that felt threatening, not to him, but to me. She turned over her shoulder to look back at the king. “Let her speak of her own free will,” the queen said.
A sharp pang rang out in my lungs.
“You promised you wouldn’t harm her.” Lioran examined me as his hand steadied my back again.
“She appears unscathed to me.” He waved his hand, releasing me fully. Air rushed into my lungs at a forceful rate. “If you answer what I ask, I will have no reason to compel you to answer me again.”
“Yes, your majesty.” My chest pounded with each breath. The king pulled at the bottom of his tunic.
This wasn’t Bailoc. I had no say there, but here, I had even less.
The queen’s icy glare settled on me.
“Tell her what has been decided about your future bride, Lioran,” the queen commanded.
I couldn’t bear to hear about her. “Please…” Each word I spoke threatened to take more than I could give.
“It hasn’t been decided.” Lioran hadn’t moved.
“Enough,” King Thalorys interjected. “Your future king commanded your decision. You will look him in the eyes and give it. Tell him you will marry Lord Thalen of the Vale. Now.”
They could have commanded it, could have sent me away, but instead they wanted me to say it—they wanted me to crush him with my words.
I wouldn’t.
My chin tilted upwards, until my eyes locked with Lioran’s. “I will not bond with Lord Thalen,” I said.
Lioran exhaled. I watched his shoulders fall.
It was a dangerous game. There was little hope I would win.
My lungs drew a deep breath, free and steady. I looked out the massive windows at a tree that arched over it. Its abundant leaves shone in the sunlight.
Nausea claimed me, the bile singed the back of my throat.
Lioran would never be mine again, but I would stand on my own.
My eyes settled on his. In my mind, I told him how much I loved him, how much I always would. He wouldn’t hear my thoughts, but from the look on his face—he knew.
My breathing hitched. “I propose a bargain. I will use my magic to ease the blight. A visionary has seen my fate—I can mend what is broken at Myrwood Grove.”
The onyx warmed again at my chest. Certainty settled.
“No.” Lioran trembled, his head shook. “I do not accept her claim. She doesn’t know what she’s speaks of.”
“A fae bargain can’t be broken. Magic of that kind may break you,” the queen warned, her pale blue eyes softened. A moment of silence hung in the air between us. “It is not too late to accept Thalen’s offer.”
One day I may regret this choice, knowing that I’d live on with part of me missing—without the one person who mattered more than anything. The life I desired would exist only in daydreams.
“My magic can heal the lands. It is meant to be my fate.” A sharp pain settled in the middle of my chest with my next inhale. If there was a glimmer of hope that the blight would be reversed, they would accept my bargain.
Lioran gripped me. “Aelira, don’t…say another word.”
“I will use my magic to restore Lythira—no matter the cost.” The queen winced as I spoke.
“I accept your pact,” King Thalorys said.
“Reverse it!” Lioran wailed.
“It will not be done.” King Thalorys didn’t look at Lioran when he spoke. His eyes only settled on me.
My magic stirred within me, heavier than before. It pulsed and thickened as it coursed in my veins. I waited for something to surface, but it only settled deeper.
Lioran couldn’t save me from what I promised.
I would offer my future king a solution he so desperately needed.
It was how I would love him, even when he was married to another.
Color drained from Lioran’s face when we left the throne room. “You should have told me. When I came to your chambers, you could have…” He gripped my shoulders.
“You said you didn’t want to know.” I knew he would, but it was better to lean into his words rather than risk him stopping me.
“We could have…” His words trailed off.
“Could have what, Lioran?” I leaned my back into the wall of the palace, sliding down to the ground. “They will never give you the power to choose. Not for me. Not for yourself.”
“Why did you leave letting me believe you were marrying someone else?”
“I needed to stand on my own. Without a protector to do it for me.” My words settled between us. “You would have stopped me.”
“Aelira.” He slid his arm around me, pulling me to stand.
“Where can we go to talk?”
“Go to your chambers. I will meet you there.” His voice was a low desperate hum.
I decided my fate, a fate I barely understood. The queen gave me a moment to alter it, but I didn’t take it. It was the only path forward—a life that I wouldn’t be at anyone’s mercy, but my own.
The gemstone pulsated against me. Neither hot, nor cold. It only pulsed with each beat of my magic inside of me.
I rounded the corner the winding halls curved in ways I didn’t remember—my mind was still in the throne room, still with him.
“Did you agree to go to the Grove?” Cora walked toward me.
“I can’t find the way back…” I couldn’t breathe—couldn’t think. “I need to meet Lioran in our chambers.”
She slid her arm under mine. With one step at a time, I brought my breath back. Cora steadied me as I trembled.
“I didn’t just agree to it—I made a bargain.” The tears caught in my eyes, pooling there until they fell on their own accord.
Her eyebrows lifted as she slowly turned her head toward me. “Why would you do that?” We rounded the last corner, and a familiar painting of a flower field caught my eye. A display of color splotched throughout a grassy field.
“So no one could take my future from me.” Irony laced each word. The tree would take my magic and hopefully nothing more.
Cora pried the door open to our now busy chambers.
“The princess requires a moment of solitude. Please leave us.” Cora’s voice was bold. The lady’s maids left the room.
Color drained from her face. Then I knew it.
I hadn’t just determined my fate—I had sealed it.
Lioran darted toward me as soon as he opened the door.
“I’ll be back to check on you later.” Cora’s voice cracked as her hand lingered on the door before she finally slipped through it.
He wrapped his hands around me, pulling me closer. For the first time since I stepped into the throne room, I could fully breathe. I laid my head on his chest. Tears pooled deeply in my eyes until I couldn’t hold them back any longer.
“I could have found another way.” His voice cracked as he slid his hand over his mouth. The other arm held me tightly, like he may never let me go.
“Would you have rather me married Thalen or Calyth?” I don’t know why I asked it, because I already knew.
He slammed his fist into the wall behind us. My tears fell faster.
“Yes, I wish you’d marry either of them.” His breath fell heavily on me. “It would have killed me inside to think of you with someone else, but I would deliver you to Thalen myself if it would save you from that fate.” Pain leached into every word.
“You wouldn’t,” I protested.
“Your magic will be gone…” The rest he left unsaid.
“I can live on without it.”
The weight of the corset dress pushed on me as I fumbled with the ribbons, pulling it free, gasping for air. Lioran loosened them for me. His hand brushed mine.
“You didn’t just make a bargain with my father—you made one with Lythira, too. Both will take from you slowly until you travel to the Grove. There is no way for me to undo it.”
“The cost will be worth it. I will restore it so everyone I love can thrive—including you.”
I kissed his lips, gently, softly savoring their sweetness for what may be the last time.
“You were the only future I ever wanted,” he said.
“I always thought you wanted this life—to be king.” The weight of my body collapsed into his. He wrapped his arms around me tighter. Waves of nausea ran through me.
“All I ever wanted was our life in Lythira.” His hands cupped my face. “I want to hold you every night and every morning, to grow old with you, to have a family with you.”
Everything we couldn’t have seemed heavier than before.
I closed my eyes, trying to imagine it in my mind.
The way our mornings in Lythira would look—the way our babies would look, whether they’d have his dark curls or my golden eyes.
I blinked it all away. Too afraid to hold on to moments I couldn’t keep.
“I was just picturing them.”
“Picturing who, my love?”
“Our children… what they would look like.” The words caught in my throat and hung there for longer than I’d liked.
“Aelira…” He gripped me tighter.
Silence fell in the dimly lit room. He held me as if he’d never let me go. I needed more time with him, away from here. Time to love him, to be with him freely before it was too late.
“Can we go home?”
“Home?” His voice cracked.
“Yes, to Lythira—can you take me home before I go to the Grove? Before you marry? I want one last night with you away from here.”
“I can’t endure you talking like this.”
“I need to be home with you for however long we can be together. Even if it’s only one more night.” I lay my head on his chest again.
His chest rose and fell.
“I would love nothing more than to go home with you.” He pulled me into him, holding me against him. “I will see if I can arrange it. Someone needs to escort you back.”
After what they did to him in throne room, I knew they would never let him leave.
My future wouldn’t be what I envisioned, but it would be my own. I couldn’t be claimed, controlled, or forced to live a life not of my choosing.
Time would reveal a path illuminated by the stars.
With a chilling breath, I released my expectations, allowing light to wash over me.