Chapter 54
KAELERON
Aroar of denial brewed deep within me as Saphira placed herself at the mercy of the wretched seelie. I somehow found the strength to hold it back, to remain calm and where I was, even as my heart demanded I take her back, that I get her away from the fiends and then return here to cut them down.
My vengeance was right there, just as Neve had promised it would be.
We were in neutral territory and this bastard before me was the steward of the Summer Court.
The proxy king.
I charted the positions of the ten men who flanked him on either side, a wall I would need to take down along with him.
My muscles ached and I flexed my fingers, shaking off the fatigue that hounded me.
The shadows I had tried to hold Saphira with had snapped like spider silk when she had moved, revealing how weak I was, but I would not let it stop me.
I had fought many battles when I was beyond my limit. This would just be another one.
But I still hesitated.
Staring at Saphira.
Catching that look in her blue eyes that told me not to do it. Not to risk myself. My sister. My court. Not for her sake.
She silently told me something else too, and her words echoed in my mind, her soft voice tormenting me with them.
She could do this.
She could enter the Summer Court as I could not, saving her friend and potentially my brother, and perhaps even delivering my vengeance for me as Neve had foreseen.
I had denied her before, sure she would not be strong enough to safely navigate the treacherous world of the Summer Court.
Now?
Everything I had sensed in her made a dreadful sort of sense. Her strength. Her speed. That tang of something in her blood.
It was magic.
So much strength and courage shone in her eyes as she stared at me, but there was fear there too, fear that lingered long after the revelation that had shaken us both.
Fear that made me want to reach for her and break this charade, so I could tell her that her blood changed nothing. Even when it might change everything.
No. It would not. I would not let it.
Saphira was mine.
An unseelie had loved a seelie before.
We were strong enough to get through this.
Together.
But I could not tell her any of that without placing her in grave danger.
She kept her back to the seelie and mouthed something at me.
Fear?
I held back my frown, keeping my expression neutral.
No.
Vyr.
My heart pounded a war march against my ribs as I thought of my sister, as I realised Saphira was not just doing this so she could find her friend, or my brother, or stop me from fighting. She was doing this for Jenavyr’s sake too, and that of my court. Her home.
She was protecting everything she loved.
That was not the only reason she was willing to do this though. She wanted to uphold the promise she had made to me, helping me with my vengeance, and I could not deny that this might be what Neve had foreseen. Saphira might deliver my vengeance for me. She was the key to it.
Her blood was the key to it.
The key to unlocking the Summer Court and entering it without breaking the rules, without inciting a war between the seelie and unseelie.
I calmed my shadows and that urge to fight, finding the strength to tame it in the thought that if I did fight, that she would too. She would fight to protect me, and she was not strong enough to battle these warriors. Not yet.
So, I denied my every instinct and remained where I was.
And I hated it.
I hated that she was going to do this—going to leave me—but I accepted it as that dark look in her eyes relayed all her anger and hatred to me. Anger and hatred she feigned aiming at me, when in reality she bore it for those who stood behind her.
She despised the seelie almost as much as I did.
Craved their blood on her hands and her fangs for what they had done.
By the Great Mother it was hard to play this role I did not want to play, one that might give her a better chance of surviving in the Summer Court and returning to me.
But play it I would.
“Hand her over to me and I will not destroy your armada, and I will not spill your entrails across these mortal lands,” I growled. “She is mine. I own her. I will reclaim her from your vile breed and she will return to the Shadow Court with me.”
Saphira reared back, blue eyes wide as her hands came up protectively in front of her chest, making her look so small as the flat of her short blade pressed against the black material of her dress. She turned those fearful eyes on Sylvan.
“Don’t let him take me,” she said and shook her head. “Luthryn said I was to be a guest at the Summer Court. I didn’t realise he meant… I still don’t believe I’m seelie, but… this unseelie hurt me.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, clutching her shoulders, driving a dagger through my heart as tears filled her eyes.
“He took everything from me.” Her voice hitched. “He probably lied to me about this too. He knew I had seelie blood and this was all some wretched, twisted game to him.”
The hatred and hurt blazing in her blue eyes backed up her words and I could not believe my eyes when Sylvan softened, when the seelie warriors with him looked at her with pity and then directed their anger towards me.
“He toyed with me,” she sobbed.
Driving the dagger a little too deeply.
I hardened my heart to her tears and her words, refusing to let the seelie see how deeply they cut me, even when this was all just a charade.
Her finishing salvo hit me a bit too hard though, rattling me and almost cracking my calm and cold facade.
“I thought you loved me,” she croaked, tears streaking down her cheeks. “You made me believe I loved you too… but how could you ever love a seelie when you are unseelie? When you hate them so much?”
That reach for reassurance opened a fissure within me, my feelings for her bleeding out of it, flooding me until I had to fight to hold them back, to keep them hidden from the seelie.
Her blood changed nothing.
I wanted to tell her that.
But I could not.
Because I was uncertain of myself.
I loved her.
But the revelation of what she might be had shaken part of me and that part was dark, and malevolent, and powerful.
It was born of the centuries of hatred towards the seelie—towards her potential father—that festered inside me and had been rotting my heart from the moment Sylas had sent men to steal my parents’ lives in front of me and abduct my brother.
I harnessed all that pain and grief as I sneered at her.
Using it to perfect my performance.
“You are right.” I slowly straightened my spine and plastered a parody of a smile on my lips as I angled my head, raking disgusted eyes over her.
“I could never love a seelie. This was nothing but a game, and oh… I played you so well, little lamb. Oh, how delicious it was to strip away your barriers, to watch you succumb to me knowing what you were, so desperate to live that you were willing to do anything. How delectable it was as you lowered yourself, degrading yourself to please me. As I will enjoy it once again when we return to the Shadow Court.”
Great Mother, it was hard to say those words and see that flicker of hurt in her eyes that she did not cover as she turned her head from me, letting all the seelie see it.
I was a monster.
Just as she had once painted me.
I was a monster for hurting the only female I had ever loved.
Would ever love.
Nyr ill’aeth ky’aethena.