Chapter 32 #2
“Enter.” I pushed to my feet, some wild and fearful part of me needing to see her as the invitation and what it might mean hung over me.
The door snicked open and she poked her head around it, her eyes widening as she spotted Jenavyr.
“Oh, I can come back later. I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She went to shrink out of sight.
“Wait.” I rounded the desk and she peered around the door at me again, this time stepping fully into view as she met my gaze. “Jenavyr was just leaving. You may speak with me.”
Because something was wrong. It was not like my little wolf to be so meek, and it was definitely not like her to shy away when Vyr was present, as if she did not deserve to be in her presence.
“I was just leaving apparently.” Vyr smiled at me and then strode to Saphira, placed her hand on her shoulder and said, “He is all yours. Do with him what you will, but try to keep the noise down if you want to do that with him.”
“Jenavyr,” I barked as crimson climbed Saphira’s cheeks and her blue eyes leaped to me.
My sister grinned unrepentantly at me as she closed the door behind herself, leaving me alone with Saphira.
Who glanced over her shoulder at the door and then settled her gaze back on me, and the awkwardness over what we had done had transformed into something dangerous that lit a fire in her eyes.
“I thought your shadows were concealing everything,” she snapped.
My lips curled in a slow smile that had her glaring at me.
“I only said that no one saw what was mine.” I stalked towards her, until I loomed over her and she was forced to tip her head back to keep her gaze on mine as my voice lowered to a purr. “I wanted them to hear. I wanted everyone to hear and know that you are mine.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “So you were staking a claim on me.”
I inclined my head. “You were not the only one who howled when they climaxed though, little wolf. I howled just as loud and as long as you did at the moment of our completion. One could say you staked a claim on me too.”
She huffed and pivoted away from me, and all amusement I felt slowly withered and died as my gaze tracked her.
“Is something the matter?” I canted my head, concern washing through me as Saphira stopped near one of the bookcases set into the black walls of my office and struggled to meet my gaze. “Are you truly angry with me for allowing others to hear?”
“What’s wrong with Neve?” she blurted.
I closed my eyes, clenched my jaw and sighed. “You went to see her. I warned you not to.”
“You lied to me. You said she was in a bad mood. You didn’t say she was…
I don’t know. Something is wrong.” She began pacing, taking clipped strides across my office between the bookcases as she looked at me, the ceiling, the floor, everything.
“She didn’t respond at first, and then she said strange things to me and she was petting An’sidwain and talking to it as if it was a person, and then she put it away and she couldn’t remember anything she had said to me.
She didn’t even remember I was there and she had been talking to me. ”
“I have come to realise the stone affects her, but I realised too late to take it from her.” I leaned my backside against the edge of my desk and folded my arms over my chest as her gaze came to land on me, a haunted edge to her blue eyes. “You encountered what I did.”
She nodded. “Neve just… turned on me. Scared the shit out of me if I’m honest. What is that thing? Why does it have such a hold over her?”
“I do not know what it is, and I cannot get close enough to it to study it and find out. She guards it too well. She is lucid enough whenever it is away from her, but there are times when it warps her mind and she does not even recognise me.” I sighed as I lowered my hands to rest on the edge of the desk on either side of my hips.
“I did not want you to see her like that. I lied because I wanted to protect you, and I should not have. I should have been honest with you, but you had gone through so much and I feared this would be another blow, one that might—”
“It’s fine,” she interjected. “It’s fine. It just shocked me. She said all these things and then she wouldn’t explain any of them. I think… I think she saw something.”
I snapped to attention, on my feet in a heartbeat. “She saw something?”
Saphira nodded.
“Tell me. Tell me everything she said. Word for word.” My heart raced as I waited, torn between hoping that it was something new that might help me understand Saphira’s role in my vengeance and tempering that hope so I would not be disappointed.
The longer she remained silent, the more that thought twisted into another.
Neve had seen a vision of Saphira and the fae who hunted her.
“Did she see the fae?” I barked, unable to hold back those words as a vicious blend of rage and fear swirled in my veins, stirring my shadows.
“No. No. I asked her if she had ever seen me with fae, and I don’t think she has.
I…” Her face crumpled. “Oh gods, don’t be mad at me.
I asked her if she’d ever had a vision of Riordan and Jenavyr because the two of them were so off with each other in the garden and I’m sure there’s something there…
something they both feel… and Neve just turned on me.
She said something like… ah… Don’t meddle with the fragile threads of fate and think to weave them…
for yourself, little wolf. It is not your power to wield…
and then she had this strange look in her eyes and told me…
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. ”
Ice slid down my spine as I stared at her as she nibbled her lower lip, her fine eyebrows furrowed and blue gaze imploring me to help her understand.
Stay in the light. Drink the water when the time comes. Drift in the dark and embrace all that she was, had been and ever will be.
I paced between my desk and the door, my thumb grazing my lower lip as I glared at the floor.
Stay in the light. Drink the water. Drift in the dark. Embrace all that she was, had been and ever will be.
“What does it mean?” Saphira shuffled a step closer to me.
“I am not sure.” But it felt ominous, like a bad omen. “But we shall work together to figure it out.”
I glanced at the invitation on my desk.
Dread knotted my insides.
She looked between me and it. “You look as happy to see that invitation as your sister did when she all but begged me to go with her to the seamstress. Can you really not just RSVP that you’re not attending?”
I shook my head, my voice grim. “No one refuses the high king. To do so is to lose their head.”
“He sounds charming and not at all like a tyrant,” she muttered as she crossed the room to the infernal card and picked it up, pulling a face at it before she glanced at me again. She studied me a moment. “You don’t want to go either.”
My instinct was to deny that, to play a role expected of me and say what an honour it was to be invited to the ball, but this was my Saphira I was speaking to. I did not need to stand on ceremony or behave as required of me with her.
“I do not.”
“Why?” She flipped the card over and over in her fingers, her gaze drilling into my face, as if she sought the answers there because she knew I feared giving them to her.
I reached over and plucked the card from her fingers and read it again, that same feeling plaguing me.
“Because I feel the high king is up to something. The timing of this ball… the request he has made regarding attire. All of it leaves me feeling he is aware of you, that his men who were sent to assist us in the Wastes reported how often I was missing and where I had gone, and that this is perhaps a test. Or a show of power.”
She frowned and tiptoed, trying to peer at the writing on the card as her soft scent gained the acrid edge of fear, and then shook her head. “Why would the high king want to do either of those things?”
I swallowed, trying to wet my suddenly parched throat as I looked at her. I drank my fill of her and tried to convince myself I was reading into things, that I was simply tired and on edge because fae were looking for her, and because things between us had shifted recently.
Becoming far more than I had ever anticipated.
I could not lose her.
I would not.
“There are things you do not know.” I glanced at the card again, seeking strength in it. “I have an alliance with the high king, one that has been in place many centuries and one that has certain—”
Someone knocked on the door, making her jump and me snarl as it opened to reveal Riordan.
The vampire stopped on the threshold of my office, his gaze darting between me and Saphira.
He held up a thick stack of files in front of his chest, as if using them to protect it as I scowled at him and my shadows grew sharp.
“The reports about the Forgotten Wastes arrived from Ereborne and the Winter Court. You told me to bring them the moment I had read them over.” Riordan edged into the room, casting wary glances at the floor and my restless shadows that tracked him.
He sidled towards my desk, giving me a wide berth.
“I’ll… uh... I'll just put them over here.”
Saphira touched my arm. “We can talk more later. I don’t want you running so late that we don’t get to go to the Hunt Pack.
If this ball is going to call you away from Falkyr, I want to get as much time there as possible before it happens so we can find out where he’s gone and where Everlee and Danica are. ”
She tiptoed and pressed a kiss to my cheek, and I caught her wrist as she tried to leave, holding her in place as I stared at the black invitation.
I did not want to take her with me, but I could not leave her here, alone, not with such an omen hanging over her. Not when I felt the timing and specifics of this ball felt as ominous as the things Neve had told her.
And perhaps it was best she came.
I needed her to be there.
I needed her to see.
I turned to her, lifted the card and held it out to her.
“Do you wish to come with me?”
She looked between the invitation and me, her eyebrows rising high on her forehead. “To a ball? You want to take me… to a ball?”
She said it as if it was ridiculous, as if she did not belong there or had no right to be there with me.
“Yes, my little wolf. I want to take you to a ball.”
She shook her head. “Are you sure? I mean… I want to see it… I’m curious about it of course… but me… at a ball. Not just a ball… but the high king’s ball. A ball you think is a test of some sort.”
“Or designed with you in mind,” I added.
“Because of some request about what people must wear. To a ball. Hosted by your high king. People will laugh at me.”
“No one would dare,” I growled and my shadows swept around her, wrapping her in tendrils of night to shield her from these invisible foes in her mind.
“Oh, I think they would.” She swatted at the ribbons of shadows. “A wolf, walking into a grand ball… on the arm of a king.”
Riordan tried to slink away without me noticing.
“Wait,” I snapped at him, snaring his boot with a shadow to hold him in place because I was damned if I was going to wait for him to come back to discuss what he had read, further delaying me.
I turned on my little wolf, narrowing the whole of the world down to her as she gazed up at me, fear colouring her eyes, so many doubts for me to strike down and banish.
“You belong at this ball as much as any attending fae, and you belong on my arm more than any of them. You know this in your heart, Saphira. You are more beautiful than any who will be there, stronger than any who might look down on you because of your breed. You know this in here.”
I placed my hand on her chest, splaying my fingers, and felt her heart drumming against my palm.
My voice lowered.
My gaze sincere.
Because she looked as if she did not believe me.
And I needed her to believe me.
“You are more beautiful than any female who will be there. Stronger than any king. And no other has the right to be on the arm of this king, for there is no other who means quite as much to me as you do.”
Riordan squirmed in my hold, struggling to free himself so fiercely that I was sure he would willingly lose his leg to escape.
Saphira melted before my eyes, all her doubts and fears falling away as she smiled up at me.
“If you’re sure,” she said, a flicker of uncertainty remaining.
I banished it by dropping a kiss on her forehead and murmuring against it.
“I am sure.”
Riordan’s tugging against my shadows became more insistent as he muttered things beneath his breath.
I released my commander and then Saphira, holding her gaze as she backed towards the door and tossed an apologetic glance at the vampire as she passed him.
Her gaze met mine. “I’ll go with you.”
I slowly smiled.
“Then prepare yourself, little wolf. You are about to witness the full wickedness of the unseelie courts.”