Chapter 31 #2
“Do you always have to be so insufferably nosy?” Vyr snapped at him, shadows lashing at his boots but not fiercely enough to penetrate the black leather, and then stormed away.
Riordan watched her go, shock written in every line of his face, from his wide eyes to his open mouth, and then slowly looked at me. “What was that all about?”
“A ball, I think.”
Or it had been about what Kaeleron had said to me last night.
I wasn’t really sure.
I looked at the vampire, debated asking whether he knew what those words had meant and then shrugged it off, because I was beginning to suspect it had been something very personal and I had made a mistake asking Vyr about it, letting others know what Kaeleron had said to me in that tender moment.
“She hates them,” he grunted and shoved his hands in his pockets, rumpling the hem of his black tunic.
Worry glittered in his dark sapphire eyes as he looked in the direction she had gone.
“She likes to think the court doesn’t notice the things she does, but I do.
She fired her handmaidens decades ago, won’t let servants near her, and hates every suitor who dares to send letters to Kaeleron, asking for permission to court her. ”
“It sounds like she doesn’t want to be a princess of this court.” I looked from him to the castle, a fine home that could easily be a beautiful cage if the one who lived there felt trapped as Vyr did, unable to escape the things she hated or live her life the way she wanted.
“Vyr isn’t a princess.” Riordan’s voice was deeper, darker than I had ever heard it as he glared at the castle, crimson seeping into his irises as his pupils narrowed to elliptical slits.
“She’s a warrior… a fine one… and what these fae kings and stupid rules do to her…
she deserves better. She deserves to be free.
She deserves to choose who she loves and be with them. ”
He strode away from me before I could say a word.
I let him go.
And headed in the other direction, towards the courtyard side of the castle, near the forest and the wild garden.
When I reached it, I crossed it to the arched entrance to the dungeon and navigated the dimly lit broad stone steps that led downwards.
The air cooled by degrees with each step further I took into the gloom, until it was almost chilly against my skin as I came out into the corridor that stretched to my left and right, the fronts of the cells facing it.
Torchlight flickered over me as I banked left, heading to the largest L-shaped cell.
Neve’s home.
The dragon shifter sat on a fur on the floor, her blood-red dress matching the colour of the large crystal contained in the wooden lacquered box she held on her lap, in the valley of her crossed legs. She stared down at it, her golden hair obscuring most of her face.
I stood outside her cell, waiting for her to notice me and perhaps berate me for leaving the Shadow Court.
When I had been there for what felt like five minutes, I grew concerned and broke my silence.
“Hi, Neve.”
She didn’t move.
She just sat there, still staring at the crystal on her lap, as if transfixed by it.
“Neve?” I approached the door of her cell and reached for the lock. “I’m coming in.”
She turned on me in a flash of fangs and vicious talons, hissing at me as she suddenly stood before the door of her cell, the crystal clutched protectively against her chest.
“It is mine,” she snarled, baring fangs as she slunk away from me, into the shadowy area of her home near her hoard. Her voice fell to a whisper. “It is mine. Are you not, An’sidwain? No one can care for you as I can, for you were made for me.”
Maybe this was the reason Kaeleron hadn’t wanted me to visit Neve.
He had been worried she would turn on me like this, growing violent and unpredictable, and dangerous. Had she turned on him?
“I don’t want it, Neve.” I held my hands up and backed away from her door. “I just wanted to visit you.”
“I have no visions to give.” She cooed down at the crystal that pulsed with red light. “Not a drop of magic left in me. He squeezed it all out of me, and I am so very tired.”
“Who squeezed magic out of you?” I knew the answer to that question before it had even left my lips and I loosed a growl of my own as I snarled, “Kaeleron. He forced you to have a vision, didn’t he?”
And that was the real reason he hadn’t wanted me to come here.
He hadn’t wanted me to see what he had done to Neve.
My hackles rose as I recalled what she had told me once, and I uttered those words back at her, wanting to see if it was what had happened.
“Kaeleron would never hurt me. He would ask me to force a vision, and in doing so I would hurt myself. You told me that once. Do you remember, Neve? Is that what happened to you?”
She lifted her head at last, blinking large amber eyes at me. “I had a vision. But I did not see what he desired.”
She nodded her head, as if agreeing with something she had thought.
“What did you see?” I ventured a step closer to the door of her cell and this time she didn’t back away or bare fangs at me.
Her gaze went blank, her face going slack as she stared at me, and her voice was hollow as her fingers lovingly, rhythmically stroked the crystal she held.
“The key to your revenge is where it always was. In Saphira. Letting her go has not changed that. She is still the key to your future happiness. Without her you will fail. You may have found the stone, my king, but you have lost the an’sidwain you need. ”
She blinked and her eyes cleared.
She smiled brightly at me.
“That is what I told him. That is what I saw.”
“Nothing more than that?” I dared to wrap my fingers around one of the bars of her cell. “You haven’t seen exactly what role I have in that vengeance?”
She waved me away, pulling a face. “I said what I saw.”
It wasn’t enough information, and I could see why Kaeleron was frustrated by it.
“Did you see any seelie in your vision?” I said.
She shrugged.
“What is the an’sidwain Kaeleron needs?” I tried a different path.
She looked right at me. “You, silly. You are his an’sidwain. His heart. As this is my an’sidwain, but not mine. I stole it… but it belongs to me. It was made for me.”
I was beginning to get a little frustrated with Neve myself, but I drew down a steadying, calming breath, because she had been through a lot since I had last seen her.
She looked tired, thin, and I wasn’t sure it was because Kaeleron had forced her to have a vision.
She gently rocked with the crystal she held, one that throbbed with light, the shape of it pulsing as if it was a real heart, and cooed at it, words in a tongue I didn’t know and one I was sure wasn’t ancient fae.
“Neve?” I said, hoping to get her to come back to me. “Have you ever had a vision of Riordan and Jenavyr?”
Amber eyes snapped up to lock with mine.
“Do not meddle with the fragile threads of fate and think to weave them for yourself, little wolf. It is not your power to wield. You must stay in the light and when the time comes, you must drink the water to drift in the dark and embrace all that you are, have been and ever will be.”
That made no sense.
“Drink the water?” I gripped the bars as she turned away from me, transfixed by the crystal again. “What does that mean, Neve? Stay in the light and drink the water? Drift in the dark? Embrace all that I am?”
Had she lost her mind?
Had forcing a vision fractured her sanity?
“Neve,” I snapped.
She looked over her shoulder at me and smiled brightly. “Saphira. It is good to see you, little wolf.”
I looked at her hands, at the now-closed box she clutched in them.
She set it aside and bounced towards me, bright and filled with energy, her skin no longer sallow and her eyes no longer dull.
She flashed something at me. A bracelet.
“Kaeleron made it for me as he promised.” She twisted her arm back and forth, making it catch the light. “See how shiny it is.”
She snatched it back to her chest and pouted at me.
“It is mine, of course. You have your present from him. I have mine.”
“Neve, do you remember what we were just talking about?” Worry tightened my chest as I studied her, trying to see a trace of the female who had been with me a moment ago, when she had been holding An’sidwain and had been held in its sway, under its spell.
Her nose wrinkled.
“Talking about? You just arrived. You said my name and I said it was good to see you.” She touched my hand. “Are you not well, little wolf?”
That was the question I wanted to ask her.
My gaze drifted to the box near her hoard, tucked away behind other items, almost hidden from view.
But perhaps it was better I asked someone else.