Even when Ember and his father had their secret, disastrous relationship, his mother had not been jealous. There had been so many other females before her, and after her. Yet none had been formally chosen, not as she was, to continue the royal bloodline. And when Bryce had come along, the few times his mother had met her, she’d been kind. Doting, even.
Ruhn couldn’t tell if he admired his mother for never questioning the gilded cage she lived in. If something was wrong with him for resenting it.
He might never understand his mother, yet it didn’t stop his fierce pride that he took after her bloodline, that his shadow-walking set him apart from the asshole in front of him, a constant, welcome reminder that he didn’t have to turn into a domineering prick. Even if most of his mother’s kin in Avallen were little better. His cousins especially.
“Perhaps you should call her,” Ruhn said, “give the warning yourself. She’d appreciate your concern.”
“I’m otherwise engaged,” his father said calmly. It had always astonished Ruhn: how cold his father was, when those flames burned in his veins. “You may inform her yourself. And you will refrain from telling me how to manage my relationship with your mother.”
“You don’t have a relationship. You bred her like a mare and sent her out to pasture.”
Cinders sparked through the room. “You benefited quite well from that breeding, Starborn.”
Ruhn didn’t dare voice the words that tried to spring from his mouth. Even as my stupid fucking title brought you further influence in the empire and among your fellow kings, it still chafed, didn’t it? That your son, not you, retrieved the Starsword from the Cave of Princes in Avallen’s dark heart. That your son, not you, stood among the long-dead Starborn Princes asleep in their sarcophagi and was deemed worthy to pull the sword from its sheath. How many times did you try to draw the sword when you were young? How much research did you do in this very study to find ways to wield it without being chosen?
His father curled a finger toward him. “I have need of your gift.”
“Why?” His Starborn abilities were little more than a sparkle of starlight in his palm. His shadow talents were the more interesting gift. Even the temperature monitors on the high-tech cameras in this city couldn’t detect him when he shadow-walked.
His father held up the prism. “Direct a beam of your starlight through this.” Not waiting for an answer, his father again put an eye to the metal viewing contraption atop the prism.
It ordinarily took Ruhn a good amount of concentration to summon his starlight, and it usually left him with a headache for hours afterward, but … He was intrigued enough to try.
Setting his index finger onto the crystal of the prism, Ruhn closed his eyes and focused upon his breathing. Let the clicking metal of the orrery guide him down, down, down into the black pit within himself, past the churning well of his shadows, to the little hollow beneath them. There, curled upon itself like some hibernating creature, lay the single seed of iridescent light.
He gently cupped it with a mental palm, stirring it awake as he carefully brought it upward, as if he were carrying water in his hands. Up through himself, the power shimmering with anticipation, warm and lovely and just about the only part of himself he liked.
Ruhn opened his eyes to find the starlight dancing at his fingertip, refracting through the prism.
His father adjusted a few dials on the device, jotting down notes with his other hand.
The starlight seed became slippery, disintegrating into the air around them.
“Just another moment,” the king ordered.
Ruhn gritted his teeth, as if it’d somehow keep the starlight from dissolving.
Another click of the device, and another jotted note in an ancient, rigid hand. The Old Language of the Fae—his father recorded everything in the half-forgotten language their people had used when they had first come to Midgard through the Northern Rift.
The starlight shivered, flared, and faded into nothing. The Autumn King grunted in annoyance, but Ruhn barely heard it over his pounding head.
He’d mastered himself enough to pay attention as his father finished his notes. “What are you even doing with that thing?”
“Studying how light moves through the world. How it can be shaped.”
“Don’t we have scientists over at CCU doing this shit?”
“Their interests are not the same as mine.” His father surveyed him. And then said, without a hint of warning, “It is time to consider females for an appropriate marriage.”
Ruhn blinked. “For you?”
“Don’t play stupid.” His father shut his notebook and leaned back in his chair. “You owe it to our bloodline to produce an heir—and to expand our alliances. The Oracle decreed you would be a fair and just king. This is the first step in that direction.”
All Fae, male and female, made a visit to the city’s Oracle at age thirteen as one of the two Great Rites to enter adulthood: first the Oracle, and then the Ordeal—a few years or decades later.
Ruhn’s stomach churned at the memory of that first Rite, far worse than his harrowing Ordeal in so many ways. “I’m not getting married.”
“Marriage is a political contract. Sire an heir, then go back to fucking whomever you please.”
Ruhn snarled. “I am not getting married. Certainly not in an arranged marriage.”
“You will do as you are told.”
“You’re not fucking married.”
“I did not need the alliance.”
“But now we do?”
“There is a war raging overseas, in case you weren’t aware. It worsens by the day, and it may very well spread here. I do not plan to enter it without insurance.”
Pulse hammering, Ruhn stared at his father. He was completely serious.
Ruhn managed to say, “You plan to make me marry so we have solid allies in the war? Aren’t we the Asteri’s allies?”
“We are. But war is a liminal time. Power rankings can easily be reshuffled. We must demonstrate how vital and influential we are.”
Ruhn considered the words. “You’re talking about a marriage to someone not of the Fae.” His father had to be worried, to even consider something so rare.
“Queen Hecuba died last month. Her daughter, Hypaxia, has been crowned the new witch-queen of Valbara.”
Ruhn had seen the news reports. Hypaxia Enador was young, no more than twenty-six. No photos of her existed, as her mother had kept her cloistered in her mountain fortress.
His father went on, “Her reign will be officially recognized by the Asteri at the Summit next month. I will tie her to the Fae soon after that.”
“You’re forgetting that Hypaxia will have a say in this. She might very well laugh you off.”
“My spies tell me she will heed her mother’s old friendship with us—and will be skittish enough as a new ruler to accept the friendly hand we offer.”
Ruhn had the distinct feeling of being led into a web, the Autumn King drawing him ever closer to its heart. “I’m not marrying her.”
“You are the Crown Prince of the Valbaran Fae. You do not have a choice.” His father’s cold face became so like Bryce’s that Ruhn turned away, unable to stomach it. It was a miracle no one had figured out their secret yet. “Luna’s Horn remains at large.”
Ruhn twisted back to his father. “So? What does one have to do with the other?”
“I want you to find it.”
Ruhn glanced to the notebooks, the prism. “It went missing two years ago.”
“And I now have an interest in locating it. The Horn belonged to the Fae first. Public interest in retrieving it has waned; now is the right time to attain it.”
His father tapped a finger on the table. Something had riled him. Ruhn considered what he’d seen on his father’s schedule this morning when he’d done his cursory scan of it as commander of the Fae Auxiliary. Meetings with preening Fae nobility, a workout with his private guard, and— “The meeting with Micah went well t
his morning, I take it.”
His father’s silence confirmed his suspicions. The Autumn King pinned him with his amber eyes, weighing Ruhn’s stance, his expression, all of it. Ruhn knew he’d always come up short, but his father said, “Micah wished to discuss shoring up our city’s defenses should the conflict overseas spread here. He made it clear the Fae are … not as they once were.”
Ruhn stiffened. “The Fae Aux units are in just as good shape as the wolves are.”
“It is not about our strength of arms, but rather our strength as a people.” His father’s voice dripped with disgust. “The Fae have long been fading—our magic wanes with each generation, like watered-down wine.” He frowned at Ruhn. “The first Starborn Prince could blind an enemy with a flash of his starlight. You can barely summon a sparkle for an instant.”
Ruhn clenched his jaw. “The Governor pushed your buttons. So what?”
“He insulted our strength.” His father’s hair simmered with fire, as if the strands had gone molten. “He said we gave up the Horn in the first place, then let it be lost two years ago.”
“It was stolen from Luna’s Temple. We didn’t fucking lose it.” Ruhn barely knew anything about the object, hadn’t even cared when it went missing two years ago.
“We let a sacred artifact of our people be used as a cheap tourist attraction,” his father snapped. “And I want you to find it again.” So his father could rub it in Micah’s face.
Petty, brittle male. That’s all his father was.
“The Horn has no power,” Ruhn reminded him.
“It is a symbol—and symbols will always wield power of their own.” His father’s hair burned brighter.
Ruhn suppressed his urge to cringe, his body tensing with the memory of how the king’s burning hand had felt wrapped around his arm, sizzling through his flesh. No shadows had ever been able to hide him from it. “Find the Horn, Ruhn. If war comes to these shores, our people will need it in more ways than one.”
His father’s amber eyes blazed. There was more the male wasn’t telling him.
Ruhn could think of only one other thing to cause this much aggravation: Micah again suggesting that Ruhn replace his father as City Head of FiRo. Whispers had swirled for years, and Ruhn had no doubt the Archangel was smart enough to know how much it’d anger the Autumn King. With the Summit nearing, Micah knew pissing off the Fae King with a reference to his fading power was a good way to ensure the Fae Aux was up to snuff before it, regardless of any war.
Ruhn tucked that information aside. “Why don’t you look for the Horn?”
His father loosed a breath through his long, thin nose, and the fire in him banked to embers. The king nodded toward Ruhn’s hand, where the starlight had been. “I have been looking. For two years.” Ruhn blinked, but his father went on, “The Horn was originally the possession of Pelias, the first Starborn Prince. You may find that like calls to like—merely researching it could reveal things to you that were hidden from others.”
Ruhn hardly bothered to read anything these days beyond the news and the Aux reports. The prospect of poring over ancient tomes just in case something jumped out at him while a murderer ran loose … “We’ll get into a lot of trouble with the Governor if we take the Horn for ourselves.”
“Then keep it quiet, Prince.” His father opened his notebook again. Conversation over.
Yeah, this was nothing more than political ego-stroking. Micah had taunted his father, insulted his strength—and now his father would show him precisely where the Fae stood.
Ruhn ground his teeth. He needed a drink. A strong fucking drink.
His head roiled as he headed for the door, the pain from summoning the starlight eddying with every word thrown at him.
I told you to warn that girl to stay quiet.
Find the Horn.
Like calls to like.
An appropriate marriage.
Produce an heir.
You owe it to our bloodline.
Ruhn slammed the door behind him. Only when he’d gotten halfway down the hall did he laugh, a harsh, rasping sound. At least the asshole still didn’t know that he’d lied about what the Oracle had told him all those decades ago.
With every step out of his father’s villa, Ruhn could once more hear the Oracle’s unearthly whispering, reading the smoke while he’d trembled in her dim marble chamber:
The royal bloodline shall end with you, Prince.
15
Syrinx pawed at the window, his scrunched-up face smooshed against the glass. He’d been hissing incessantly for the past ten minutes, and Bryce, more than ready to settle into the plush cushions of the L-shaped couch and watch her favorite Tuesday night reality show, finally twisted to see what all the fuss was about.
Slightly bigger than a terrier, the chimera huffed and pawed at the floor-to-ceiling glass, the setting sun gilding his wiry golden coat. The long tail, tufted with dark fur at the end like a lion’s, waved back and forth. His folded little ears were flat to his round, fuzzy head, his wrinkles of fat and the longer hair at his neck—not quite a mane—were vibrating with his growling, and his too-big paws, which ended in birdlike talons, were now—
“Stop that! You’re scratching the glass!”
Syrinx looked over a rounded, muscled shoulder, his squished face more dog than anything, and narrowed his dark eyes. Bryce glared right back.
The rest of her day had been long and weird and exhausting, especially after she’d gotten a message from Juniper, saying Fury had alerted her about Briggs’s innocence and the new murder, and warning Bryce to be careful. She doubted either friend knew of her involvement in finding the murderer, or of the angel who’d been assigned to work with her, but it had stung—just a bit. That Fury hadn’t bothered to contact her personally. That even June had done it over messaging and not face-to-face.
Bryce had a feeling tomorrow would be just as draining—if not worse. So throwing in a battle of wills with a thirty-pound chimera wasn’t her definition of a much-needed unwinding.
“You just got a walk,” she reminded Syrinx. “And an extra helping of dinner.”
Syrinx gave a hmmph and scratched the window again.
“Bad!” she hissed. Half-heartedly, sure, but she tried to sound authoritative.
Where the little beast was concerned, dominance was a quality they both pretended she had.
Groaning, Bryce hauled herself from the nest of cushions and padded across wood and carpet to the window. On the street below, cars inched past, a few late commuters trudged home, and some dinner patrons strolled arm-in-arm to one of the fine restaurants along the river at the end of the block. Above them, the setting sun smeared the sky red and gold and pink, the palm trees and cypresses swayed in the balmy spring breeze, and … And that was a winged male sitting on the opposite roof. Staring right at her.
She knew those gray wings, and the dark, shoulder-length hair, and the cut of those broad shoulders.
Protection duty, Micah had said.
Bullshit. She had a strong feeling the Governor still didn’t trust her, alibi or no.
Bryce gave Hunt Athalar a dazzling smile and slashed the heavy curtains shut.
Syrinx yowled as he was caught in them, reversing his stout little body out of the folds. His tail lashed from side to side, and she braced her hands on her hips. “You were enjoying the sight?”
Syrinx showed all his pointy teeth as he let out another yowl, trotted to the couch, and threw himself onto the warmed cushions where she’d been sitting. The portrait of despair.
A moment later, her phone buzzed on the coffee table. Right as her show began.
She didn’t know the number, but she wasn’t at all surprised when she picked up, plopping down onto the cushions, and Hunt growled, “Open the curtains. I want to watch the show.”
She propped both bare feet on the table. “I didn’t know angels deigned to watch trash TV.”
“I’d rather watch the sunball game that’s on right now, but I’ll t
ake what I can get.”
The idea of the Umbra Mortis watching a dating competition was laughable enough that Bryce hit pause on the live show. At least she could now speed through commercials. “What are you doing on that roof, Athalar?”
“What I was ordered to do.”
Gods spare her. “Protecting me doesn’t entitle you to invade my privacy.” She could admit to the wisdom in letting him guard her, but she didn’t have to yield all sense of boundaries.
“Other people would disagree.” She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “I’ve got my orders. I can’t disobey them.”
Her stomach tightened. No, Hunt Athalar certainly could not disobey his orders.
No slave could, whether Vanir or human. So she instead asked, “And how, exactly, did you get this number?”
“It’s in your file.”
She tapped her foot on the table. “Did you pay Prince Ruhn a visit?” She would have handed over a gold mark to watch her brother go head-to-head with Micah’s personal assassin.
Hunt grunted, “Isaiah did.” She smiled. “It was standard protocol.”
“So even after your boss tasked me with finding this murderer, you felt the need to look into whether my alibi checked out?”
“I didn’t write the fucking rules, Quinlan.”
“Hmm.”
“Open the curtains.”
“No, thank you.”
“Or you could invite me in and make my job easier.”
“Definitely no.”
“Why?”
“Because you can do your job just as well from that roof.”
Hunt’s chuckle skittered along her bones. “We’ve been ordered to get to the bottom of these murders. So I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but we’re about to get real up close and personal.”
House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City) Page 17
