Chapter 37
SAPHIRA
Several people stared at me as they passed me by, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from Kaeleron as he approached the high king and that graceful dark-haired beauty who dipped in a curtsey as soon as she set eyes on him. Was she the high king’s mate?
A tall figure halted before me, blocking my view of him, and I growled as my gaze shifted to his raven-masked face and immediately darted away again, dropping to his chest to avoid his pale silver gaze.
Kalyn.
“Move along.” Rhyn wafted his left hand towards the stairs. “There are others here who deserve your attention more than this little wolven.”
“Wolven is she?” Kalyn purred, the ashy and choking scent of him growing stronger as he stepped closer to me rather than moving away. “No wonder her mind is weak.”
His gaze seared my face, weighty and oppressive, and I wanted to claw at my throat as his power swirled around me, conjuring echoes of the thoughts he had pushed into my mind.
Thoughts that only found a stronger purchase in my heart as they were joined with images of Kaeleron with that beauty and how pleased to see him she had looked. I wasn’t worthy of his love. I wasn’t beautiful enough. No one could love me. Not even my fated one.
“Kalyn,” Rhyn warned, his voice as glacial as the air as it chilled. “I suggest you halt whatever game you are playing and find someone else to amuse yourself with, because this wolven falls under the protection of more than one king present here tonight, and also a Forgotten Prince.”
Kalyn snorted. “I fear no Forgotten Prince.”
Rhyn purred, “Not even Oberon?”
The Nightmare King huffed and strode away from him, tossing over his shoulder, “Not even him.”
Rhyn muttered, “Funny how quickly you make an exit upon hearing his name though.”
The crushing weight of Kalyn’s wretched power lifted from my shoulders as Rhyn placed a cool hand on my left one, close to Kaeleron’s brand.
That brand warmed against my skin, as if Kaeleron was reaching through it, but when I looked at him, he had his profile to me, his focus on the high king as they talked.
“I will strengthen your protection, if you would allow me?” Rhyn said and I nodded, not proud enough to refuse such an offer when I was beginning to realise that I wasn’t as strong as I believed myself to be.
Not yet anyway.
I had worked on strengthening my body, and now I would work on strengthening my mind, just as soon as we returned to the Shadow Court and left this dreadful place that no longer glittered so brightly in my eyes.
Now everywhere I looked, I saw shadows and darkness so deep not even the bright lights that danced above me could banish it. I saw a threat in the eyes of everyone who stared at me, who whispered to their companions, no doubt talking about me.
Vyr returned, her gaze tracking mine to the other fae who continued to study me.
“They all know I’m not like them, don’t they?
That’s why they won’t stop staring at me.
Are they mocking me? Half of them are speaking ancient fae.
” Because they knew I understood them and they wanted to keep their vicious words about me from my ears, mocking me in private, amusing themselves with me just as Kalyn had.
Laugh at the ignorant, weak little wolven.
I was beginning to feel I had been brought here as some twisted form of entertainment for the gathered rather than as someone who Kaeleron felt deserved to be here.
Those claws scraped a little deeper into my heart, spreading their poison through it, and try as I might to loosen them, they sank deeper still.
I had been brought here as entertainment.
A creature so weak and pathetic that I would cower and snap fangs in some desperate attempt to appear strong.
Weak. I was weak.
Unworthy.
I snarled and gnashed my fangs, fury rolling through my veins as I shoved and shoved, and fought to push those words from my mind.
“Calm,” Rhyn ordered and studied me, his pale blue eyes darting between mine as he caught my chin and raised my head up so I was looking at him.
He murmured words in the ancient tongue. They sounded lyrical as he softly intoned them, laced with power that slowly sank into my skin and my bones, and loosened that hold Kalyn had on my mind.
The dark thoughts that crowded it dispersed, but as Rhyn finished whatever magic he had cast, I sensed they were still there, lingering in the shadows of my mind, waiting for an opening to strike at me again.
“They are not looking at you, Saphi.” Vyr moved in front of me as Rhyn stepped back, blocking my view of other fae, and offered me one of the fine crystal goblets she held.
I took the wine and sipped it, needing it to bolster my courage when my wolf side howled at me to run, that I didn’t belong here and remaining here would only get me hurt.
“They are looking at this.” Rhyn gestured to my chest.
“My boobs?” I burst out, and then grimaced, my cheeks heating as I looked down and saw what he had meant. “The sapphire necklace?”
I touched the stones that shone so beautifully in the warmth of the magical lights.
“Even I was surprised that Kael gave it to you to wear.” Vyr touched it too, lightly brushing her fingers over the largest of the stones, her silver gaze growing hooded before she broke contact with it and quickly lowered her hand back to her side.
“I do not know what game my brother is playing this time… or if he is even playing a game.”
I looked from the necklace to her, and then Rhyn. Both were transfixed by it, a glimmer of something in their eyes that made me feel they wanted to touch the stones, and were drawn to them for some reason.
“Are the sapphires rare?” I covered the necklace with my hand, shattering the spell it had cast on them, and they blinked and lifted their gazes to my face.
More fae passed us, staring at the sliver of necklace they could see, all of them looking as bewitched as Vyr and Rhyn had.
“I figured it was expensive, and I’ve never seen a necklace like it.
None of the stores I’ve ever been to have had sapphires this large.
I was surprised when Kaeleron offered it to me.
All my life, I never imagined I would ever end up wearing something that must have cost a small fortune. ”
“One, the necklace is beyond expensive. No one would be able to put a price on it and nothing anyone could offer Kael would make him part with it. Courts would go to war over this necklace you speak of as if it was a bauble.” Vyr’s solemn gaze and tone had me looking at Rhyn, who continued to study the stones with an edge of hunger to his blue gaze, one that made me clutch the necklace even harder and made me wish Kaeleron had never given it to me to wear tonight.
“Two, the blue stones are not sapphires. They were chipped from the Cerulean Star.”
“Oh my gods.” The necklace dug into my palm as I gripped it so hard I feared I might break it.
The weight of it grew to an oppressive level as I recalled what I had read about that huge sacred tower of crystal in the southern Dark Court lands of the unseelie side of Lucia.
My eyes widened as I shook my head and hissed, “Why in the name of the ancestors would Kaeleron give me this to wear? I don’t want it.
Take it. Just… I don’t want it. Please, Vyr. ”
She shook her head. “No. I cannot take it. I… I am not strong enough. Not tonight.”
She cast a stricken look at the dancers and the fae milling around the edges of the ballroom.
“Not tonight,” she whispered.
I instantly knew why. She was teetering on the edge because so many of her suitors were here and she wasn’t sure what her brother was up to as he spoke with the high king.
For all she knew, he might be marrying her off to someone not of her choosing for the sake of pleasing the high king or strengthening alliances between the courts.
I didn’t dare ask Rhyn to take it, not when he gazed at it with such unmasked hunger.
“Do not let Ryven see it,” he murmured, his voice distant. “Ryven has desired it from the moment he discovered Kaeleron was in possession of it. The male is a fanatic. Twisted by the presence of the Cerulean Star and the priests who worship it.”
Priests who believed the Star to be the source of all magic in the unseelie side of Lucia.
Ryven, who I had read about in Kaeleron’s library, and none of the things written about him had made him sound any less than deranged.
Dangerous. Unpredictable. One of the books even said he had been fed crushed chippings from the stone as a child to make him strong, that he had been a sickly thing until his father had taken the drastic step of forcing him to ‘become one’ with the Star.
“Is he here?” I whispered and then my lips twisted. “Of course he’s here. Everyone is here. No one can refuse the high king, right?”
Rhyn and Jenavyr nodded.
“What if I lose it? Or break it? Or someone tries to steal it from me? What if Kalyn makes me hand it over to him?” I sounded panicked.
I knew it before Vyr hissed, “You must get better at hiding your emotions. Hyperventilating in a room filled with hungry fae will only draw their attention even more.”
She took hold of my arm and ushered me away from the crowd who had all turned to watch me, as if my fear was a summons to them, or blood in the water, luring all the predators to me because they sensed I was weak and vulnerable. Easy prey.
I sucked down slow breaths. In through my nose and out through my mouth.
“Better to remain calm and cold and hide your cards closer to your chest.” She plastered on a pleasant smile, concealing her own unease like a master, or someone who had needed to don such a mask so many times that it had become second nature to them.
“Calm and cold like an unseelie,” I said. “Like your brother?”
I glanced beyond Vyr to the dais and Kaeleron where he still stood with the high king and the beauty.