Fallen King (Court of the Sea Fae Trilogy Book 2)

by C. N. Crawford

  As I looked down at the swath of ice again, it seemed to be melting.

  “Salem!” she shouted. “You can’t distract me. Can you go now, please? I can barely keep this magic going when I’m focusing.”

  I watched her as she concentrated again, conjuring her magic. A burst of power beamed out from her body, slamming into my chest. My body absorbed it.

  But I could feel it—the rumbling, the trembling of the ocean floor. Aenor’s magic was considerable, but it wasn’t a god’s magic. They’d needed someone with Shahar’s power to stop the Fomorians from ripping the ocean floor wide open.

  Where could I take her, away from this place, where she’d be safe? Let the rest of the world burn. Aenor could live in a rocky cave in the arctic.

  I watched her working her magic while I fantasized about things that made no sense. What sort of life would that be—alone in a cave, walls heating around her? Worse than death.

  The roaring beneath the earth grew louder, reverberating over my taut muscles.

  Beneath us, the hot ravine in the ocean’s floor was cracking open once more. Dread slid through my veins like venom. Before me, I could already see my destiny turning to ash…

  A blast of heat exploded from the fissure, searing the water around us. I couldn’t burn, but she could.

  Aenor’s scream pierced the water, and I watched her skin turning red, then blistering. Panic hit me like a bolt of lightning, driving all rational thought from my mind. It was like I was the one burning.

  She’d die here, literally boil to death before me if I didn’t stop this. When the blast of heat died down, I grabbed her face in my hands.

  Her eyes gleamed with pain, skin ravaged.

  “Fix this,” I mouthed.

  It was the same thing Shahar had said to me, minus any mention of cats.

  Aenor wasn’t meeting my eyes, too lost in the pain. I turned to swim away from her.

  The door of the driftwood cage swung in and out in the hot water, like an arm beckoning me close.

  I didn’t give a fuck about the rest of the world, but I cared about Aenor like she was a part of me.

  I swam into the driftwood cage—my prison—and closed the door. The lock sealed itself, gleaming with magic.

  As I felt the cage’s magic rip all my power from my body, I had only one thought in my mind: Aenor is strong, and she will fix this.

  40

  Aenor

  I stared into the driftwood cage. Salem’s body slumped against the side, and his pearly magic beamed around it. I looked down at my skin, burned from the hot blast of water. As his magic streamed over it, my skin began to heal. Although his magic was warm, it felt like a soothing balm on my skin.

  From above, I could still hear a few croaking whispers drifting through the waves… We are the buried ones…

  The driftwood cage was again closed, the lock gleaming with gold magic.

  The shock of what he’d done had robbed me of all rational thought.

  “Salem,” I said.

  He lay there, his eyes closed, his dark lashes stark against his skin. His muscles still looked tense, but his eyes were closed. Was he in pain as his magic was pulled from his body?

  I wrapped my fingers around the bars. It felt wrong—his body always radiated heat, but all the warmth was outside the cage now. When I reached for him through the bars, brushing my fingertips over his leg, he felt cold.

  My heart twisted. This would not do.

  Was it to save the world—or just to save me? Either way, I wanted him out of there.

  I’d been so intent on Salem that I nearly forgot to look at the crevasse beneath me, or the threat of the Fomorians.

  When I looked down at the seafloor, I found the crevasse sealing again.

  I stared at Salem, my mind roiling.

  So this was my mate. A man who delighted in telling everyone how evil he was, then sacrificed himself at the bottom of the sea.

  He’d been talking about his destiny since I’d met him. And I still didn’t know what he’d had in mind, but surely he wasn’t meant for this. This was a living death.

  Above, the sounds of battle faded completely, and the whispers of the Fomorians faded above us.

  I stayed there with him for what seemed like ages, studying his face.

  Fix this, he’d said.

  I didn’t know how, but I wouldn’t get the answers down here.

  I turned, swimming for the surface. So quiet now. I could hardly hear the music of any creature.

  On the rocky island shore, Lyr stood by himself, silvered in the moonlight. Dark blood streaked his armor, and bodies lay strewn around him like broken toys.

  His powerful body glowed with gold, and his pale eyes pierced the darkness. “How did you do it? You stopped the world from ripping open.”

  I slumped down on the rocks, my body exhausted. “I stopped them for a little while. Then Salem did the rest. Right now, he’s locked himself in the Merrow’s cage at the bottom of the sea.”

  Shadows leaked around Lyr’s body, staining the gold magic with darkness. “Why would he do that? What does he get out of it?”

  I rubbed my forehead. How did I explain this to Lyr? I didn’t want to tell him Salem was my mate, or that I planned to get him out. None of this fit with Beira’s vision, which meant Lyr would discard it. I supposed things had happened as she’d said—the Fomorians hadn’t boiled the sea, my magic had spread ice out over the horizon.

  It just wasn’t quite as Lyr had imagined.

  I let out a long sigh. “Why did he do it? I don’t know.” That, really, was the truth. “But he did, and the Fomorians are now trapped again. It’s all over, Lyr. We can get on with our lives.”

  Lyr nodded, but his eyes had taken on a haunted expression, like he’d just drifted into the afterworld again.

  I felt the air thin around us, and his wary eyes slid to me.

  I had that feeling again—the one of not being quite right. I scared him.

  “It’s all over,” I said again.

  But it wasn’t. Not with Salem entombed in the sea.

  “I’m returning to Acre,” Lyr said. “Gina is safe, returned to her hotel. She’d been living in a friend’s hovel.”

  The distance between us was wide as an ocean, our conversation stiff.

  And yet—he’d taken care of the person I cared about. “Thank you.”

  “Will you return to London?” he asked.

  I had no idea what I was doing, only that I felt tethered to Salem right now. “I need to figure that out, Lyr. For now, I’m just going to sit here among the carnage, breathing in the scent of death.”

  He gazed out over the sea. “I may have been wrong about the collar. Beira’s predictions are not always direct. I saw the ice spread out over the landscape when I first arrived here, and I feared the worst. But I understand now.” He looked at me again. “If you can control your power, you can keep it.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. Like it’s your decision.

  He nodded, then turned away from me, the key glowing at his neck. I watched him chant the words for opening the portal, his body glowing. When he jumped through, and the portal sealed up once more, it was just me and the sound of the cold, lapping sea.

  I crossed back into the cool waters, breathing in the scent of brine. Then I dove under the waves. Even from here by the shore, I could see the faint shimmer of Salem’s light under the waves. It was brighter than Shahar’s.

  I hoped he was sleeping there, not conscious under a mask of sleep. Trapped.

  If he could speak to me, he’d tell me to find Shahar, then get him out. And I would.

  When I stepped out of the water again, I heard the rhythmic sound of oars splashing in the sea. On the gore-strewn rocks, I watched as a boat moved closer. The rower was lithe, with three birds flitting around his head.

  Ossian?

  As he drew closer, I saw his blond curls, threaded with flowers. A cloud of smoke bloomed around him.

  I wade
d into the water to greet him, and the spray from the ocean washed over me.

  He breathed out a cloud of smoke. “I felt shit going down through the waves. I felt Salem’s magic through the water.” His gaze slid over my shoulder to the carnage on the rocky island. “That your doing, was it?”

  “Not entirely.” I heaved a sigh, then crawled into Ossian’s boat, and it rocked under me. “Salem took his sister’s place under the water, and I need to find a way to fix this.”

  Ossian’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve got to be joking. Why would he do that?”

  “To stop the world from burning.”

  He leaned forward. “Since when has he cared about the world burning?”

  Since he saw my skin blistering, I think. I shook my head. “Let’s not worry about his motives.”

  “I’d say love would do that to a person, except I happen to know that Salem can’t love. It’s literally impossible.”

  An empty feeling rose in me. “Whatever his motives, I need to figure this out, as fast as I can. I know he’s the devil and all that, but I want to get him out of his prison.”

  “And why would that be, Aenor?”

  I cleared my throat. “Just seems like the right thing to do.”

  He started rowing, the water splashing over us. “Yeah. Better sort it out within days, ideally, or he misses his whole destiny thing. He’d get in a right mood about it. Start burning things again.”

  I blinked. “What is his destiny, exactly? It wasn’t freeing his sister?”

  Ossian leaned back in his boat as he rowed. “Oh, he didn’t tell you? I thought you two must’ve bonded, what with you being alive and all. And him in a cage.”

  “We didn’t get around to the destiny discussion. We were busy thinking about killing each other.” And thinking about doing other things with each other, I supposed. “Where are we going, Ossian?”

  “I have a house nearby. And I sense heartbreak.”

  I nodded. “Oh, here we go again.”

  “I owe you vodka and ice cream.”

  I stared at the dull gleam of light beneath the sea, my heart twisting. “Well, that actually sounds very appealing. And very necessary right now.”

  Thank you for reading. This is book two of a three book series. The next book in the series will be called Rising Queen. To find out when the third book is released, you can join my newsletter: https://www.cncrawford.com/faq

  In the meantime, if you want to read more about Aenor now, she appears in the Shadow Fae series, in book four. This is a linked series.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my supportive family, and to Michael Omer for his patient critiques and help managing my occasional panic. Thanks to Nick for his feedback and enthusiasm.

  Robin and Arran are my fabulous editors for this book.

  Thanks to my advanced reader team for their help, and to C.N. Crawford’s Coven on Facebook!

  Also by C.N. Crawford

  For a full list of our books, check out our website.

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