by May Dawson
“Tell me all about it,” I say, and at least the two of them fill me in on everything the scholars have told them. There’s even a last-known location for the thing. It should be an easy enough mission. Dirtsiders are easy to fool.
“I’ll pack my bags,” I say, rising from my chair.
Lord. Part of me wonders if my mother might have me killed while I’m in the next realm. She’s been so suspicious, but even my father’s loyalty might bend if she assassinated her only heir without hard evidence of my treachery.
If her men try to kill me, though, I’ll be ready. I’ve lived through a few assassination attempts before, and everyone who has tried has come to regret it. Hell, if I can prove it was her, it might be a help.
“One last bit of business before you leave,” my mother says.
Chilling. I turn back to her, pushing up the hem of my black jacket so I can slip my hands into my pockets. “Yes?”
“We did uncover one of the traitors helping the Fox. I thought perhaps you would take a look at him, see if he was familiar at all.”
“Very well.”
“Is this necessary?” My father asks her. “You know Devlin has a tender heart.”
“You still see him as a boy,” she chides, resting her hand on his. The two of them lean close, like lovers. “He isn’t just a boy anymore.”
The doors open and two guards step in, their spines stiff and faces stoic. No music plays for this next entrance; the room is eerily silent except for the ring of footsteps and the soft shuffling sound of something being dragged across the floor.
Two more guards turn the corner and drag in a man who clearly can’t walk; he leaves a trail of blood across the marble floor. Four more guards follow with drawn swords and take up their posts. They’re meant to protect us from the broken man bleeding across the floor, but their presence still sends a prickle of warning up my spine.
“Do you recognize him?” My mother asks.
Steeling my heart in case I do, I bend in front of him and run my fingers into his hair, which is so stiff with blood and sweat that I can’t even see what color it was. With my fingers close to the base of his hair so it won’t hurt him, I drag his swollen face up to mine.
His face is so black-and-blue, so swollen and damaged, that his features are almost unrecognizable.
“I don’t believe I do,” I say, my voice bored.
Then, the next second, his dark eyes meet mine, and I can imagine him a little differently—if his nose wasn’t swollen at the bridge, if his face wasn’t lopsided from a broken cheek bone. Jero. Son of a minor lord, and a good friend of mine whenever I wore the mask.
“Wait,” I say, before my mother can think I’m lying. “I do know him. He came to some of my parties. You say he was working with the Fox? Ungrateful wretch.”
“So you weren’t close?”
“Not terribly, no.” I release his hair and stand back. My mind races. I didn’t know Jero had been taken. I didn’t know he was being tortured. If I had, could I have freed him anyway? “I seem to remember him being a dreadful dancer.”
There are eight guards in this room, and my first responsibility is to be prince Devlin, heir to the throne, the head of the rebellion.
Jero knew what risk he was taking.
But still, steeling my heart to be cold takes everything I have. If I save him, if I orchestrate some daring last-minute rescue, how many more of my rebels do I damn? Hopefully, he didn’t talk. I wish I could know.
But he gives no sign of knowing me. Good man.
“So you won’t mind killing him.” My mother’s voice is just as disaffected as mine.
“Another loyalty test, Mother? Don’t you ever tire of these?”
She touches her finger to her lips. Right. Not in front of anyone else. The Crown must never show any cracks.
“Give me your sword,” I say to the guard. I want so desperately to turn and drive this sword into my mother’s chest, to save Jero.
Instead, I take the guard’s heavy cleaver sword—not like the lightweight saber I usually choose to fight with—and I strike down. Jero doesn’t even cry out. Then his head rolls across the marble.
I drop the bloodied sword next to his body, and it clangs against the marble. Turning my back as the guards begin to clean up, I say, “I personally wouldn’t care for having ghosts haunt my living room. But you have strange kinks, Mother.”
“Devlin,” she says, her voice warning.
“Send your magician and his men to my house by morning,” I say. “I’ll be prepared to head dirtside.”
When I step through the portal back to my own bedroom, I hum that damn song of my mother’s—it gets stuck in my head—as I scrub her magic from the room with my own spells.
I wave goodbye at her in the mirror as it ripples and her spell dissipates. No matter how often I have my magicians scrub this room, she does love to spy on me, and sooner or later, one of her people find their way in here again. Another kink of hers, I’ve joked before.
When the room is clean, I fall to my knees in front of the fire. For a few minutes, I let the agony of what I’ve done—and what I will do—to save my country crash over me. My chest is so tight I can barely breathe. I scrub my hands over my face, but nothing will take away the foulness on my skin any time I’ve been near her.
Jero knew the risks. Just as I did. We both knew it might end that way.
Just in case my mother has another way of spying on me that I haven’t uncovered yet, I dare not say the words out loud. I stare into the flickering flames and promise Jero that I will have revenge for him.
For him, and for so many others.
I don’t need to speak the vow aloud. It beats in my heart, a constant rhythm, no matter who I pretend to be.
Chapter 9
Tera
“If the navy has a welcome party out patrolling the coast, we can expect that there’s another welcome party traveling on foot.” I rub my hand across my forehead. “Does your father know that you’re the Fox?”
“No,” Rian answers in my ear; he sits right behind on Aerowyn. “He thinks I’m an indolent idiot, and I like it that way.”
“So if he uncovers you dressed as the Fox…”
“He’ll say nice things to me while quietly fuming. He hates the Fox. More dead Vasiliks are a positive thing as far as he’s concerned, but he’s far too diplomatic to say that in public.”
I squeeze my knees gently into Aerowyn’s sides and she rises higher, flying into the clouds. Penny follows. Mist beads along my hair. This is our chance to hide our direction of travel from the watchful eyes below, even if it makes Rian’s arm tighten around my waist.
“Don’t worry,” I promise him. “I won’t let you fall to your death. Avalon needs you.”
“Avalon needs you, too. They just don’t know it yet.”
Airren tried—twice—to convince me to run away from Avalon with him and to start a secret life somewhere else. Rian’s brought up the same idea. It sounded ridiculous at first, but even though it should never work, there’s a bubble of excitement that rises in my chest at the thought. “Maybe they don’t need either of us after all.”
“What do you mean?” He asks the question with genuine curiosity in his voice.
I falter at the question now that it seems like I should have some concrete thought beyond wouldn’t it be nice. “I don’t know. It’s stupid. I’ve wished for a long time I could be here, in Avalon, but as someone else…”
“Sometimes I wish I could be someone else too.”
“Really?”
“I know, I’ve got no right to complain.”
“Your father is trying to arrest you. I think you can complain.”
“I actually think at this point, he may have moved on to trying to kill me.” He says the words matter-of-factly, but I don’t think there’s anything matter-of-fact beneath it. His calm, stoic face makes my chest tighten; I love him, and I can’t make this better for him. “I need to get in touch with my sist
er when we stop. While you wake your men.”
I wrack my brain thinking about the spell to wake them; I’m afraid I’m missing something. The fact that they’re still alive—dead though they may appear to any observer, with stopped hearts and cold skin, frozen in time—doesn’t mean much if I can’t wake them. “Hopefully I remember all the details.”
I froze them. It’s my magic, my heat, that will wake them again
“I’ve got faith in you. From what Devlin said, they showed the most incredible faith in you.”
Fear presses my throat closed every time that I remember Airren’s gaze intent on mine as he tried to comfort me in what might have been his last seconds. I swallow, pretending it’s not there, trying to push it down, and focus on what Rian had just said.
“You talked to him?”
“He told me what was going on in the middle of all the chaos, when his mother and her sorcerers wouldn’t notice—lots of magical energy flying around. Then he went silent.” He shakes his head. “I understand why, but I was going out of my mind back on that ship, worrying about you.”
“You shouldn’t have risked your life for me,” I say, but I’d do the same for him. “You’re a lot more valuable than I am to Avalon.”
“Oh, shut up,” he says, and when I twist back to look at him, a smirk coming to my lips, he kisses it away. “You’re a lot more valuable to me than anything, even Avalon itself.”
Those are dangerous words.
I’ve told him in the past that the kingdom needs him, and maybe that is the right, selfless path to take. Maybe nothing has changed.
But I still let the dream hang between us.
Chapter 10
I pick another long shred of brown packing paper out of Airren’s hair. “He’s never going to forgive Devlin for this.”
“I don’t think Devlin cares,” Rian says frankly.
The two of us are in the abandoned castle in Minsk. This place feels haunted by Devlin; I can’t stop remembering his hand wound in my hair, his rakish crown tilted back above his cold, beautiful face.
According to Rian, who seems to have spies everywhere, Devlin told the servants he needed them back for cleanup operations on his partially collapsed palace—oops—and so they brought these big wooden boxes upstairs and stored them in the guest rooms, as instructed, then left completely. Some of the boxes are full of books, and there’s another that seems to be entirely filled with marble phalluses. I have questions for the Vasilik prince.
But three of the boxes contain my men, their bodies so cold it makes me ache.
Rian looks down at Airren, who we’ve heaved to the bed with a lot of effort—he’s chiseled with muscle and heavy as hell—and then says, “I’ll get to work on unboxing your other men.”
“Thank you. I’ll get to work on the spell.”
He clasps his hand on my shoulder, and I touch his hand with mine. “You’ve got this,” he reminds me. “We believe in you.”
I nod. I wish it was as easy for me to trust myself as it seems to be for these men to trust me.
It’s my magic that froze Airren, and it’s my magic that will bring him to life again. I’m the only one who can undo the spell. The thought makes a shiver run down my spine. What if I’d died in that Vasilik castle? Or in that battle on the sea? My men would have died when I did. Worry clutches my chest every time I think of it. I can’t bear for my life to carry this much weight.
I murmur the words of the spell in Latin, pressing my hand against his chest as magic glows under my palm. “Wake.”
He draws a sudden, shocked breath. Hope rises in my chest, but his eyes are still closed.
When I press my ear to his chest, for a second, I feel nothing. I press my face against his chest harder, and my heart races in panic as there’s no movement. Then, a small babump against my cheek, so slight I might have imagined it. I hold my breath. It shouldn’t take this long. Then, again, babump. It’s slow, but his heart is beating.
But he still isn’t awake.
“Come on, Airren. Come back to me. I’ll even let you boss me around.” I press my palm to his chest and find the faint rise and fall of his breath.
His dark lashes are still pressed close above his high cheekbones. This close, I can see the fine lines at the corner of his eyes, the faint freckles of boyhood, now faded, under the ruddiness in his cheeks.
“I’m sure you have something you want to say about letting a Vasilik prince take control of my mind. That went well, huh?”
He doesn’t say anything. His lips are turning blue now and the red in his cheeks is fading. His skin is still cold, and he only seems to be growing colder. I’ve broken the spell that preserved his life, but without bringing the heat back to his body.
I frantically murmur the words of a warming spell as I lie down beside him, pressing my body against his. I pull blankets up over us, blankets that smell of dust, until I’m so hot that I feel feverish. His skin is cool against mine, his body stiff.
I focus my magic into him, and try to push away my fear that he’s cold as a corpse and always will be. His face in profile is a handsome blur before I wipe away sudden tears. All I want is for him to open his eyes.
Slowly, the temperature of his skin against mine seems to rise, although I’m not sure if it’s my wishful thinking or reality. I murmur the words of the spell again, trying to wake him all over again, hoping this time it will work better.
Suddenly he jolts awake. Vivid blue eyes meet mine. “Tera!”
“Hey.” His heart is hammering, and I run my hand over his jaw, hoping to soothe him. “You’re fine. We’re fine. You were just knocked out.”
“Not dead,” he says, like it takes him a second to come to terms with the idea. He’s surprisingly matter-of-fact about it, as if he was fine with death.
“Not dead,” I confirm.
He suddenly comes to life, grabbing me tight, and I laugh as he smushes me against his chest. “God, Tera, you are incredible.”
“I thought I killed you.”
“I thought you did too.”
“The last thing you said to me…” I trail off. “You thought I was going to kill you and you told me—”
He shakes his head, cutting off all the emotion in my words. He doesn’t want to talk about how his last words were of love and forgiveness. But nothing shows his heart more clearly than the words on his lips as a dying man.
Airren has made mistakes, but I’ll love him to my dying day. He might be a spy, and sometimes a liar, and yet I know who he really is underneath it all.
“I thought the goddamn Vasiliks were going to kill us,” he says breezily. “How are Cax and Mycroft?”
“Next up on my list.”
“You woke me first?”
“You’re my practice case.”
“Figures.” His playful smile makes me want to kiss him, so I do. His lips are soft above that hard jaw, and he kisses me tenderly, his hand rubbing across my hip and lighting sparks in my body. I pull away before lust can take me over.
“How did you do it? Did you manage to alter his spell?” he asks.
“He’s on our side,” I tell him.
“Really?” He rubs his hand through his hair, then groans. “He’s got a funny way of showing it. God, everything hurts right now. Where are we?”
“Minsk.”
He licks his lips, as if his mouth is dry, then frowns. “Why does my mouth feel like paper?”
I press my lips to his instead of answering. Airren wraps his arms around me, and we trade slow, deep kisses.
“I hope this counts,” he murmurs when he breaks away.
“Counts for what?”
“That things are different between us now.” His blue eyes are serious when they meet mine. “You said you needed for things to change between us. Well, you saved my life.”
“You trusted me.”
“I did. I do trust you, Tera Kate.”
“I just wanted to be your equal.”
“You’re a lot
more than my equal,” he says, his voice teasing, “and we both know it.”
“How about if we forget the past?” I ask. “The things that went wrong between us. From, you know, you lying, to me murdering you…”
His grin is a quick flash across his chiseled, handsome face. “We do have quite the history, don’t we?”
“That’s one way of saying it.”
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers quick and fond. “What if we don’t forget? It’s just part of our story, T. A big, crazy love story between two flawed, fucked-up people. As long as we find our way back to each other, I don’t care how hard the road’s been. I don’t want to forget one moment of our life together.”
I stare into his eyes, which have gone soft; his gaze is focused on my face with a dreaminess I rarely see in my pragmatic warrior. His words send a warm flush through my chest.
“Did you just call me fucked-up?” I demand.
He throws back his head and laughs. “Yes, I suppose I did. What can I say? I’m supposed to be professionally charming, but you throw me off course.” His fingertips stroke gently over the curve of my cheekbone. “It’s different when it’s the girl you love.”
“I love you too,” I murmur.
Chapter 11
Cax is sprawled across the bed, and it looks as if he’s merely sleeping. His lips are faintly parted, his high cheekbones jutting out from his angularly handsome face.
But I know he’s not really asleep, because he’s not snoring. The beautiful man has terrible adenoids.
Next to him, Mycroft looks just like I remember him lying on the bed when we were students at Corum. It feels like a lifetime ago. He’d pretended to nap while Stelly and I studied, but really, he was lying in wait to make fun of us. I’d do anything to hear his gruff voice teasing me again.
One of Mycroft’s arms is flung out so that the back of his hand rests on Cax’s chest. I wonder if Rian just left him that way after all the work of heaving the heavily muscled warrior onto the bed, or if Mycroft fought through the magical coma and reached out to touch Cax.
