Chapter 30
KAELERON
“Name that building.” I gestured to a tower jutting from a spit of land that cut into a lake on the other side of the Black Pass.
Saphira glared at the three-dimensional map in the centre of my war room, her lips twisting as her silver brows lowered.
I had been drilling her on the major locations and landmarks on the seelie side of Lucia all morning, teleporting her to the war room the moment she had finished her breakfast in my room.
“I know it,” she muttered when I angled my head, on the verge of sighing, and she turned that glare on me. “Give me a minute.”
“We do not have spare minutes to toss around wantonly. Every second counts. Do you remember it or not?” My tone was as grave as my heart as I watched her struggling, the fear that constantly whispered in that heart growing louder as she failed to answer me.
Fae were looking for her, and I could not shake that dream of her that had kept me awake for the rest of the night, far too aware of her where she slumbered in my arms. I would not let that happen to her.
I would not fail her as I had failed my family.
“Failure to recognise a landmark could be the difference between life and death.”
Her eyes lit up. “High Vellswater!”
“Very good.” I linked my hands behind my back, stretching my black tunic jacket tight across my chest. “And what can you tell me of that area?”
“This.” She pressed the tip of her finger to a small tower on an island in the centre of the lake.
“Is Vellswater Tower. It’s been the centre of a dispute between the Summer Court and Silver Court for centuries, and more than one battle has been fought over it…
despite it having literally zero significance.
It’s not a fortification. From everything you’ve told me, it sounds like a purely decorative tower with no function other than it being a destination for idiots who think swimming from the shore to the island is a better idea than just using a boat. ”
I bit back a chuckle at her scathing opinion of those who sought to follow the sacred path of swimming to the island, a tradition that had been in place since many centuries before my birth.
“And these are?” I tapped the mountains to the west of the lake.
She was quicker to answer this time. “The Argent mountain range. Property of the Silver Court, it forms the border between the Silver Court and the Summer Court. But there’s a trade route to the west, via a river.”
She pointed it out on the map.
“And this?” I rounded the map and gestured to an island off the southern lands of the Spring Court.
Her mouth flattened. “Are you sure you told me that one? You’ve gone through so much in such a short time and it’s all getting muddled.”
“Which is why we shall return here tomorrow to do this all again, and then the next day, until you are well-versed in the lands of Lucia and can answer swiftly, without the need to pause for thought.” I looked across the map at her.
“And yes, I did tell you the name of this place, as well as the purpose behind it and the significance to the court.”
She huffed. Glared at it for long minutes.
“It is Kaerhyn Temple,” I said, not caring when she glowered at me for telling her, because we did not have time for her to squander by wanting to be right every time.
“I am not judging you on your knowledge, little wolf. I merely test it to see what you have retained and where we might need to do more study.”
“There are mosaics inside it… and… ugh… something about it being really old and that it was used to worship some long-forgotten gods… dammit. Gods of the sea!”
“And what is it now?”
“A lighthouse.” She curled a lip at it. “Which seems massively disrespectful to those gods. Turning their temple into a lighthouse. Surely all the praying to them was for the safe return of fishermen and travellers? Turning their temple into a lighthouse sounds like a sure-fire way of igniting their wrath.”
I did chuckle now.
“I know so much about the courts that I could probably infiltrate that one.” She idly gestured to the Summer Court, as if what she spoke of was nothing.
The ground trembled as all amusement I felt died, twisting into a black mass within my chest, devoured by my shadows as they blanketed the room.
“That is not a strategy,” I snarled. “That is suicide, and I will not allow it.”
“But all this training,” she countered, unflinching. “If something does happen—”
“It will not!” I gripped the edge of the map near the Infernal Court, sinking claws into it as dust rained down from the ceiling and I breathed through my anger, the rage stoked by only the thought of her in the hands of a seelie court.
“You don’t know that.” She folded her arms over her chest. “Surely, it’s better if I’m prepared for any and all eventualities. That is what this training is about, isn’t it?”
It was, but I did not want to face the prospect of her actually needing to use it, and her speaking so easily of walking into an enemy court unsettled me. It was as if she was planning to do it, and I could not allow that.
Even as part of me needed to know she would survive if it happened. If she was taken from me, she would know the courts, she would know her enemies and how to defend herself against them.
She would survive until I found her.
She came to me and rested her palms on my chest, over my thundering heart as I stared at the Summer Court, my blood chilling at the thought of her there. Alone. Unprotected. At the mercy of those fiends who had already taken too much from me.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered and lifted one hand to catch my cheek and bring my head around, dragging my gaze from that dreadful court.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you don’t want me anywhere near that place or any seelie.
I should have thought about what I was saying before I said it. ”
I gazed down at her, sure I looked as bleak as I felt as I breathed in her scent and absorbed the feel of her hands on me, trying to banish that fear of losing her that gripped me too easily these days.
As if it was already done. She was here, with me, safe within my court.
No one could touch her. No one would take her from me.
“You won’t lose me, Kael,” she murmured as she tiptoed and wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me tightly as I banded my arms around her waist and drew down a deeper breath, seeking that calm I needed to stop myself from shaking my own court.
She would not be taken from me.
I would not lose her.
I pressed a kiss to her neck and rested my temple against her ear, holding her until the ground stilled and the darkness slowly lifted, dissipating like mist from within me.
She reluctantly released me and eased back, her gaze flitting over the map, as if she was looking for something.
“And that there, is where you secretly sent the families of the slaves and forced labour you rescued from various wars between courts.” Her smile was all mischief and hope as she walked around the map and swirled a finger around the Stygian Isles.
“Which you neglected to mention when trying to sound like some badass mean fae king.”
I shrugged that off even as I was grateful for her attempt to lighten the mood. “I do not recall any attempt to sound like some ‘badass’ mean fae king. You did not need to know the inner workings of my court, and so I did not tell you.”
“But you did offer a wage to those you saved, and you did set any family members or those who didn’t want to come here to work for another fae king up with a home far from the reach of another court.”
I nodded. “War is brutal, some courts even more so. There are those who happily enslave the weaker faeries and people of these lands, forcing them to work for nothing, holding them captive. Whenever I had reason to war with one of those courts, I would free those captives. Some wished to work for my court, others wanted nothing to do with it. Those who wished to work and live here were marked as members of the Shadow Court before they ever neared my borders.”
“Circumventing your own rules. Why not just let them in and then go through getting them papers?”
“Because there are some among my court who would view it as a weakness.”
She nibbled her lower lip, worrying it, and then shrugged. “I suppose. But now you don’t have to go through all of that. Now people can come to visit?”
I frowned and canted my head. “Do you have visitors in mind? Where are these questions leading?”
“A minotaur from town. He talked to me about his daughter coming to visit with her child. He was… happy… but also worried she might not be allowed. I think he wants her to stay.”
I rounded the map to her and brushed the backs of my fingers down her cheek. “Then I shall see to it that this minotaur is found and the court has the correct information about his family, so she and her offspring can be granted the right to live here.”
She leaned into my touch, her smile soft. “Thank you. I’m sure he’ll be grateful to you.”
“Not to me. If anyone deserves his gratitude, it is you.” I dipped my head and breathed against her lips, “For you are the reason these borders of my court are now open, and this shrivelled black walnut in my chest beats again.”
She pulled back before I could kiss her, a puzzled look on her face. “Shrivelled black walnut?”
I wrapped my shadows around her, pulling her back to me as I gazed down at her, at those tempting lips that beckoned me as she stifled a laugh.
“When you had the audacity to leave me, casting me away as if I was nothing, Neve was angry you had left and blamed me for some reason. She declared my heart was once again a shrivelled black walnut rattling around my hollow chest.”
“One, you pushed me away.” She wrapped her arms around my waist, tugging me against her body, maddening me with the feel of her supple curves and that teasing smile she flashed at me. “Two, shrivelled black walnut does seem a rather spot on description of your heart.”
“Shrivelled no longer.” I bent at the knees and planted my hands on her backside, lifting her so her face was level with mine. “It beats again, given life anew.”
Her little chuckle was the most intoxicating thing I had ever heard.
I swooped on her lips, unable to resist them any longer, drinking my fill of them and how she moaned and melted into me, her body relaxing against mine as she trusted me to keep her with me, supporting her slender weight in my arms.
Her fingers threaded into my hair, twining strands around them as she kissed me back, filling my mind with thoughts of spreading her out on the map so we could do more than just kiss.
But then she leaned back. “Didn’t you say you had meetings?”
I huffed. “A handsome king’s work is never done.”
She shook her head, her smile bewitching. “I have a meeting of my own. A beautiful queen’s work is never done.”
She tensed in my arms, her expression going flat. No, not flat. There was worry in her blue eyes as she fought to avoid my gaze. She felt she had overstepped by comparing herself to me. That or she felt she had made herself vulnerable, admitting to something she desired, finally answering me.
I set her down and her shoulders turned inwards, as if she believed I had done it to reject her or intended to admonish her for what she had said.
When I had only done it so I could catch her chin between my finger and thumb and make her look at me. Her gaze was unsteady as I tipped her head back and it came to meet mine.
“Ready for that throne now, my little wolf?” I had offered to bring her one that night at the camp we had been setting up in the Canadian woods—a throne fit for a queen—and she had not answered me.
Would she answer me now, seeing that it was not a mere seat I offered her but my heart?
The worry in her eyes faded, the fear subsiding as she boldly stared up at me, her confidence rising to the fore as I waited, a mesmerising thing to see. She had been born to be a queen.
She nodded.
I kissed her again, sweeping her back up into my arms, her light spilling through to brighten the darkest, coldest reaches of my heart. She would be my queen. I would do all in my power to make that happen, to make her see she was worthy of the position and was strong enough to rule at my side.
But I could still sense the nerves in her as she kissed me, the doubts that held her back, together with the constant hum of her rage. She would not be free to believe I was sincere and that this offer to be my queen was real until she had buried her past, and I had buried mine.
“When our vengeance is done,” I whispered against her lips, savouring how she shivered at the word ‘vengeance’, and that darkness I could sense in her grew, as if it fed off it and the pleasing images it placed in her mind. “I shall make you a throne fit for a queen.”
She smiled against my mouth. “I think I would like that.”
I knew she would.
I set her down, twisted her away from me and smacked her on the backside. “Now off with you, before you make me any later and before Chase decides you are not coming to your training session. Malachi will leave the books he has decided you should study on your table in the library.”
“Study. Didn’t I tell you I’m a terrible student?” She huffed with a half-smile that told me she wasn’t serious. She went, glancing over her shoulder at me when she reached the fortified door. “We’re still on for later though?”
I nodded.
I would keep my promise to her and her wolves.
We would return to that place she despised—to the home of that prick of an alpha.
Tonight, our hunt began.