Chapter 43
SAPHIRA
Sweat beaded on my brow and I swiped it away with the back of my hand as I strode in the direction of the castle, cutting through the trees between the glade and the garden.
My heart continued to race, yet to slow after a gruelling training session with Malachi that had seen me hit air or grass more often than the target.
I skimmed my fingers over the small throwing knives sheathed against my ribs, ones that had arrived that morning from Fierel’s and Malachi had presented me with before telling me to meet him in the glade at noon.
Kaeleron had ordered him to train me while he went over the reports his spymaster had brought back.
Malachi had needed a break from teleporting and flying around the Vancouver area, scouting large houses and looking for the one where Lucas was hiding, and it had grown too dark in the mortal world to continue his hunt.
The demon had noticed my worry when I had taken the throwing knives from him and had promised he would get back to his hunt as soon as it grew light enough in the mortal world, and that we wouldn’t let Lucas get away, and would find him, Everlee and Danica.
He had several more mansions to check thanks to Chase’s visits to the pack back in Canada.
My cousin had been drawing up lists of any large buildings he could see on satellite maps and handing them over to Malachi.
My tutor had unfortunately been unimpressed with my lack of natural skill with the blades he favoured, so much so I had asked whether Kaeleron could instruct me instead since he had been the one to teach Malachi.
Malachi had missed my cheap retaliatory shot and in response had told me that Kaeleron was unavailable as he was due to deal with court business today and was expected to spend the entire day in the great hall.
And then he had told me to return to the glade tomorrow after breakfast, where we would continue our training until I either landed a hit on the target or night fell and he had to leave to scout the mortal world again.
The bastard.
I jogged down the steps into the garden, the small brook that filled the ponds to my right failing to calm me with its gentle babbling today.
Maybe I would check on Neve before heading to my room to bathe and scrub the sweat from my skin.
Afterwards I needed to visit Chase and the pack and see if they received the supplies they had requested, and make sure that Morden was doing okay.
Malachi had muttered something about how impatient Morden was becoming, and how he had hounded the demon about leads on the whereabouts of his sister.
I changed directions, heading towards the great hall to have a word with Kael about my training, sure that Malachi should be spending more time working with Chase rather than wasting that precious resource on me.
I could train later. I would make him see reason and change his orders to Malachi, or I would convince him that he really wanted to take over my training as threatened and rather than spending hours eating dinner and enjoying each other’s company this evening we could be putting me through my paces in another way.
Although, I wouldn’t say no to a little of his particular brand of company, not after the ball last night and Elduin’s threat that still echoed in my mind, haunting me.
What had he meant by threatening to go to war with Kaeleron over what he might decide to call me?
I shuddered, chills sweeping down my arms and spine.
Maybe I could ask him about that when I reached the great hall.
After I scratched an itch.
An image of Kaeleron sprawled on his throne with me between his knees, my mouth on his rigid shaft, was enough to have my step quickening, hunger to taste him rising to the fore to steal control of my feet.
Something about training always fired me up.
And Kaeleron always knew the best way to cool me down again.
Someone crossed my path, heading towards the castle from the lake, and paused directly ahead of me.
I focused there.
Jenavyr stood in the middle of the broad stretch of pale flagstones that separated the garden and castle, her bright silver gaze fixed on me. She looked far more comfortable now she was back in her favoured blouse, leather under-bust corset and trousers rather than a stuffy ballgown.
“I’m sorry about what happened at the ball.
You didn’t get into trouble for letting me run off, did you?
Or with the high king after we left? He was not charming.
” Which wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say about him, but there were too many ears in the garden right now and badmouthing a male who had just threatened war with Kaeleron over what he chose to call me didn’t feel like the wisest thing to do.
She shook her head, her sleek fall of onyx hair caressing her shoulders.
“Not at all. Did you speak with Kaeleron? I hoped perhaps he would speak to you about things. I saw my brother heading after you, and you both looked happier when you returned. I had wanted to ask you if you had time to talk… only the high king summoned you. I can only imagine what was said. And then Kaeleron left with you before I could ask if he spoke with you about things.”
“I did. We talked and I’m fine.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You are fine?”
I nodded.
Her silver eyes widened a touch. “I am surprised to hear that. Perhaps I misunderstood things, but either way, Kaeleron should not have taken you to Ereborne. I was against it, but he insisted. I am sorry.”
Something about her words and her sympathetic air set me on edge and had me frowning at her. “Sorry about what?”
“Hearing the rumours. Seeing the truth right in front of you. Letting you speak with the high king. It was wrong of him to do it that way. I told him as much. I told him so many times that he should have left you alone when he had a duty to perform.”
I was really confused now. “Duty?”
She paled.
Took a step backwards, away from me.
“I thought he spoke to you of it. Saphi… I would not have said anything had I known.”
“Spoke to me of what?” I took a hard step towards her, unwilling to let her escape as those faint alarm bells that had jangled in my mind last night—even before then—rang louder and louder with the thundering beat of my heart.
She lifted her hands between us and shook her head. “I cannot speak of it. It is not my place.”
“Vyr.” I lunged for her arm, snaring it in a bruising grip as my brow furrowed and my heart felt as if it might break from how fast and hard it was beating. “What duty? Tell me, Vyr. Tell me. I deserve to know.”
Her lips flattened.
“Please,” I whispered, that stable ground Kaeleron had built beneath my feet in the garden at Ereborne beginning to fracture and crumble as my mind raced, as I pictured how right Kaeleron had looked with that female, as I thought about the meeting with the high king and that bastard’s demand that Kaeleron call me a whore and nothing more unless he wanted a war, and the times Kaeleron had tried to speak with me.
And my wolf side howled in rage and snarled for blood.
She swallowed, swiftly looked around us and then back at me, an apology written in every beautiful line of her face as she leaned closer to me and whispered.
“Vaeleryn—the high king’s daughter—is intended for my brother.”
Words that shattered the ground beneath my feet and my world with it, leaving me feeling as if I was in freefall, plummeting into a black abyss where only pain waited for me.
Pain that was eternal.
I blinked at her, desperate to convince myself I had misheard her.
When I knew I hadn’t.
“How… for how long?” My voice sounded as fractured as that ground Kael had built beneath my boots—the ground he had convinced me was solid and real, and created with a love that echoed the one my soul held for him.
Vyr remained silent.
I tried to wet my parched throat but it didn’t work.
I coughed instead, sure I couldn’t breathe as I stared at her, as I fought to take in what she had said and the implications of it all.
Kaeleron was a liar, with his pretty talk of biting my nape and claiming me, or he had been telling the truth and I was to be an addition to the stable of females he was building, ones who would be taken out and played with whenever he grew bored of his queen.
Words flickered through my mind. Moments from the few months I had known him.
He had a duty. The visit to Ereborne was done and their continued support ensured.
He didn’t collect strays, he collected alliances that would strengthen his court.
He had tried to speak to me of an alliance and Riordan had interrupted him.
An alliance he had started to say had certain… something. Conditions? Terms?
Were these the terms of his alliance with the high king?
He was meant to wed his daughter.
Oh gods, was this what he wanted to talk to me about later, over dinner, when I had thought he wanted to say things of a far more romantic nature to me? I had been looking forward to that stupid dinner all day because of him.
“How long has this arrangement been in place?” I didn’t hide the tears that pricked my eyes or how tight my throat was as I stared at his sister—silently begging her to answer me.
“Centuries.” She sounded as defeated as I felt, and almost as sorry. “Saphi, I am sure it was not something he wanted to happen. Think about how you yourself felt when you were growing up, promised to another.”
I wasn’t listening.
I stormed towards the main entrance of the castle, drawing one of the throwing knives from its sheath as white fur rippled over my skin and an all-consuming need to draw blood devoured me, narrowing everything down to the blade I gripped and the bastard who would feel it in his chest.
In his heart.
Mine was a fractured, bleeding thing inside me.
His would be too.
My bones vibrated with my rage as I strode around the facade of the castle and through the arched entrance, and all the people gathered there were quick to make a path for me, stepping aside to let me through as I growled and snarled and snapped fangs at all of them.
Kaeleron’s words to his sister echoed in my ears, drummed in my bleeding heart, the only thing I could hear.
We both have our burdens to bear, sister.
I cannot forget mine, and you should not forget yours.
I did as expected of me.
I know my duty.
And he had withheld it from me, against the counsel of his sister, concealing it and courting me as if he was free to do so, as if I could be something more than a mistress to him.
A whore, just as the high king had called me.
He had toyed with my feelings.
Amused himself with me.
He had gone to Ereborne to visit Vaeleryn and court her, while I had been here in this castle, waiting for him to return. He had been there. With another female.
Betraying me.
A vicious snarl pealed from my lips.
For once, I felt in perfect sync with my wolf instincts. Both of us were hurt. Dejected.
And really fucking angry.
I stormed down the aisle of the great hall—a wolf on the warpath—my narrowed gaze locked on the male lounging on the black throne at the other end of the vast cathedral-like room, speaking with Malachi and looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world as three people filed out of the room, casting wary looks in my direction as they passed me.
His silver gaze shifted to me when I was only two columns from him, and dared to brighten, as if he was pleased to see me.
I kept heading at speed for him, biding my time, stoking my anger as my hands shook and my wolf side snarled for me to let it out, to use my fangs and claws to tear him to shreds.
One column.
I was within forty feet of him now.
“You son of a bitch!” I screamed and hurled the dagger I gripped with all my strength, directing it right at his chest.
My aim true for once.
Kaeleron reacted quickly, his eyes wide with shock I could sense in him as he swatted it away with his shadows and shoved to his feet.
“You said her aim was poor,” he snapped at Malachi, his eyes still on me.
“Perhaps she merely lacked the proper motivation to hit her target. It would seem she has found it.” A black hole on the flagstones appeared beneath Malachi’s boots and he dropped into it, teleporting away and out of the firing line.
I grabbed another knife and hurled it at Kaeleron as he stormed towards me, and then another and another, but he easily knocked each one off course, denying me the pleasure of landing a hit and watching him bleed.
So I found another way of making that happen.
I pulled the ring off my finger and threw it at his chest, a blow he didn’t block as he stopped dead, shock written in every line of his face as the ring clattered across the marble floor.
I pivoted on my heel, body shaking with unspent rage, and snarled.
“Your bride is beautiful. I’m sure she’ll make you really fucking happy.”