by A. M. Hodges
I didn’t expect them to be, we have known something like this was coming ever since that Fae came after me and Jackson.
The room descends into silence after a bit, the four of them mulling over everything that they have just been told. Josiah is stoic when he speaks.
“You said that there are things that you and Reyna need to tell us. I assume that Mom and Bramble are also unaware of these things or you would have had them tell us.”
“I am not as unaware as you may think,” Bramble says cryptically from the corner.
My head snaps to her and she gives me a small, knowing smile.
“Go ahead and shake it out, youngling,” she smiles at Miles,
“I promise that you are safe here.”
Miles just stares at her, flabbergasted. He doesn’t drop his glamour. His mouth just wordlessly flops open and closed, making him resemble a fish.
“How did you know,” he finally finds words.
“Tree folk cannot be glamoured. I knew who you were the minute you stepped through the portal. Alas, it was not my secret to tell.”
Jeb’s family all wear pinched expressions, eyeing the two Fae, puzzled. Miles takes a frantic glance at me and Jeb and we both give him a reassuring smile. He steps back, no doubt trying to distance himself from Josiah just in case. Finally, he takes a deep breath and drops his last bit of glamour.
Josiah lets out a low growl from the window and Jeb nonchalantly moves closer to him and Lucah repositions himself to protect Miles. Julianna and Josie are staring at him with stunned looks.
“Marcus,” Julianna’s voice comes out soft with wonder.
“He goes by Miles now,” I walk to stand next to my little brother, “He was sent to the human realm when he was six to watch over and protect me. We have been best friends for most of my life. Granite, he was glamoured to look human until a few months ago, but we have all accepted him.”
Josiah is the first one to make the connection in our appearances, “You are related.”
I nod my head slowly, “He is my little brother. The King is alive.”
After that bomb is dropped, Miles tells his story. By the end
Josiah is still tense, but at least he doesn’t look murderous anymore.
Everyone, once again, goes silent.
“Is there anything else that we need to know?” Julianna asks, now sitting on the couch.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jeb looks at me and asks silently.
I smile at him and nod my head.
Before he can speak, Josie’s face breaks out into a grin. She begins looking between the two of us eagerly.
“No fucking way,” her smile spreads from ear to ear.
“Josephine!” her mother scolds her.
“Vayanas con priyatel,” Josie says in the native tongue. Jeb beams and tears spring to Julianna’s eyes as she swings her head around to look at me.
“You’re mates,” her eyes hold so much pride as she stands and comes over to grab my hands.
She moves one of her hands and places it softly on my cheek as she begins crying, “I couldn’t think of anyone more perfectly made for my son. Welcome to our family, mi dzimka.”
My daughter.
I begin to cry as she wraps her arms around me and hugs me tightly. Josie rushes over to us and joins us in tears, squeezing herself into our hug.
“I’ve always wanted a sister. Growing up with two broody brothers sucked ass,” she winks, and we all laugh.
“I knew that already too,” Bramble grins from her corner.
“Of course, you did,” Josiah rolls his eyes and gives Jeb and good-natured clap on the back before pulling him into a hug,
“Looks like we have something to celebrate after all.”
They all pile into the kitchen to begin our celebration and I stop next to Bramble on the way out of the room.
“I have a favor to ask of you Bramble.”
She gives me that all knowing smile again, “Ask it then, sweet one.”
“I need you to teach me everything I need to know about being a Queen.”
Chapter 31
First step in becoming a Queen, learning the native language. My brain is already like google translate, thanks to my mate, but that doesn’t exactly make me fluent. I hear the words, but they mean nothing until the translation comes to the front of my mind after a few seconds’ delay. Which means I can understand the language when others speak it, however, speaking it myself is a completely different thing. Trying to speak with the proper diction is proving to be difficult with my slight Georgia accent.
Jeb sits in on our lessons so that I can pull knowledge from the bond to translate the words I want to say. It takes all his effort not to laugh as he listens to me slaughtering his language. A grin still slips out every once and a while no matter how hard he tries.
Brambles has decided that the only way I am going to learn is to take away my use of English when I speak to her. I’m not sure what the extent of abilities she possesses, but one of them allows her to stifle my vocal cords. Every time I try to say something to her in English, a pressure builds in my throat, choking me. Only when I speak to her in broken Malatian does the pressure subside.
By the end of our lessons, my voice is always hoarse.
Although I can understand my subjects, it means nothing if I can’t speak back to them. Some Fae do not understand the English language.
Bramble has also been teaching me royal etiquette. Customs and courtesies as well as titles were the first thing she taught me. Then there is how to dress, sit, eat, act. My demeanor in battle and outside of court is my business, but when I am addressing the court and my subjects in a formal matter, I need to present myself a certain way. Especially around other nobility. Her clear disdain for the pompous Fae is not hidden from her face or her voice.
She serves me my meals as if they are all a formal matter and zaps me (yet another ability of hers) when my posture falls or my etiquette slips.
Jeb was also instructed to acquire me some attire that is suitable for court. I am disappointed to learn that I will not always be able to wear my battle armor and casual clothing. For all my lessons, I am dressed in uncomfortable flats and elaborate dresses with light makeup and my hair done.
The best part of my day is when I train with Jeb and Josiah. I have my traditional fighting lessons with Jeb, as well as an extra one now. He has been teaching me how to use my glamour, which isn’t as hard to master as I imagined. Not only can I change my appearance, but I can also glamour others. That doesn’t just mean their appearances, it means that I can influence their minds, much like I can do with my empathic abilities. Jeb informed me that his glamour is what caused me to come to him that first time in my dream, almost like a compulsion to obey.
Since it is a common ability among Fae, he has also been teaching me how to defend myself against it. Being bent to the will of someone else wouldn’t be a good thing for me, especially if I am a Queen. I am expected to be powerful and impervious to all forms of manipulation, otherwise, it will be considered a weakness. A
Queen that can be controlled by the whims of her subjects is no Queen at all.
Josiah works with me on my water ability. There is water in places that I never even considered to look. I always thought of the obvious places, the air, bodies of water, the clouds, traditional water sources. But there are so much more than that. Not only can I control plain water, but I can control substances with water in it.
Since water is one of the most essential elements of life, almost everything contains at least a small amount of it. I can even control blood. Being that plasma is mostly water, I can boil and freeze it amongst other things like calling it to me or stopping its flow as well as speeding it up. Practicing spontaneous combustion on glass vials has become one of my favorite activities. Tears, sweat, spit; I can control it all at will as well. The ability is immensely more powerful than I gave it credit for.
Josie has taken to training Miles on hi
s element, since they share that in common. For some reason, it makes complete since that sweet and feisty Josie possesses the ability to control fire. She is, after all, a spitfire herself.
It showed when she arrived this morning on a war path and marched up to her brothers, demanding that they find other entertainment for the night. She wants girl time with her new sister, she informed. Neither male bothered to argue with her. It’s almost comical to watch the way the two warriors back down when it comes to her.
Josiah looks at his twin sister with the same reverence that Jeb does.
After all lessons have come to an end for the day, she shoos her brothers out of the cottage and slams the door on their halfhearted protests and laughter. She turns and regards me with a menacing grin.
“I want ALL of the details on how you got under Jeb’s icy armor,” she rubs her hands together playfully.
So, I tell her our story. I tell her of the first time I saw him in my dreams when I was thirteen. She jokingly cringes as I tell her that he spent five years silently watching me as I slept.
“Geeze, what a creeper,” she winks at me and I giggle.
I tell her how cold and impassive he was in the first weeks after we met, and about the near whiplash he gave me when he finally dropped the façade.
She asks me about my human life and the way that I grew up. My eyes go misty when I tell her about Jackson. She sheds tears of her own as I tell her the details of the human life that Miles endured in order to stay and protect me. When I tell her about Paisley, she demands to meet her one day, when all of this is over. I wasn’t surprised, the two share many of the same personality traits.
As we talk about the mating bond, I tell her, with as little detail as possible considering she is Jeb’s sister, about the night that we found out we were mates. The smile doesn’t leave her face as I continue to tell her about the rest my time with Jeb up until now.
“Jeb hasn’t been the same for centuries. He used to be as he is now, lighthearted and happy. Josiah was always the broody one. Charming, but broody. Jeb could make you laugh for hours and had a taste for adventure like no other. But all of that changed after he lost Myria,” her voice turns solemn.
“Who’s Myria?” I ask. I’m more intrigued that I am jealous. I don’t know much about Jeb’s past.
The look of trepidation she gives me shows that she realizes she’s said too much. Fae wine will do that, ply things out of you that are supposed to remain hidden. I gently take her hand across the couch.
“It’s okay,” I assure her, “you can tell me.”
She gives me a sad smile, “During the war with Angof, Jeb was in love with a Shvetlani female. Her name was Myria. They had been together for fifty years when the war broke out.”
She pauses and I squeeze her hand, urging her to continue.
“The mating bond never presented itself, but still, they loved each other deeply. One day, Myria was taken from their camp in
Dunewbe. Jeb was there visiting during a small break in the war.
When he awoke one morning, she was gone.”
My eyes begin to fill with tears.
“He spent months storming camp after camp, desperately trying to find her. On the third month, he did. There was a small camp in the woods on the border between Valterra and Polenka. Jeb fought dozens of soldiers, pushing his way to the camp’s center, searching for her. When he finally found her, she was already dead,” a tear rolls down Josie’s cheek.
Rapidly, images from the night that the mating bond snapped into place flood my mind. Memories of Jeb’s. I see a female with hair the color of straw and amber eyes. There are flashes of her wide, dazzling smile and her lyrical laugh rings in my ears. Then, there is one final image. Myria was strung up between two posts, her hands and feet tied apart.
She was in nothing but under clothes, her body beaten and bloody. Gashes, from what I assume to be whip lashings, and cuts from various knives covered her porcelain skin. That is how Jeb found her. Oh, my love. My poor beautifully broken warrior.
My stomach roils at the image now burned into my mind. It’s no wonder he hardened his heart. The fact that he made it through something like that at all attests to his strength. I wouldn’t survive if I found Jeb, or anyone else that I love like that. Even if I did survive that, I don’t think I would ever truly be the same again.
My heart breaks for him.
“They knew what she meant to Jeb, so they took her, hoping to break him. It did the opposite, and they weren’t prepared for what they turned him into,” she laments.
They tortured her to death, to get to him. Her life was so insignificant to them that its only worth was to be used as a pawn. I can’t fathom the guilt that he has been living with for centuries.
Josie and I cry in each other’s arms for a while, mourning the loss that our loved one suffered.
Suddenly, everything makes sense. Now I know why Julianna was so weepy when she found out we were mates. Being mated to me brought her son back. I also understand Jeb so much more now. His immediate hatred and distrust of Miles. The coldness in the beginning and his reluctance to let me into his heart.
His sureness that our bond is a weakness. Except, if I die, he won’t live through it this time. He will die with me.
It makes his willingness to let me go instead of forcing the mating bond on me that much more noble. I am his second chance at love and having a life worth living. He was willing to give me a chance to find a love of my choosing, even if it meant sacrificing his own. The selflessness of that man is astonishing.
When Jeb comes home, Josie is already passed out on the couch. After such a heavy revelation, we moved onto lighter things to talk about. She told me about what it was like to grow up with Jeb, from her point of view. Some of the stories I had already heard but he made it seem like he was always cold and stand offish. I was under the impression that Josie was the life of the party but, it was my mate.
Jeb smiles at his sister, sound asleep on our couch, before inclining his head for me to follow him upstairs.
I decide I am not going to question him about Myria tonight, if ever. Losing someone you love isn’t something that you can ever get over, but you can make peace with it. He seems to have done that, finally found peace with his past, and I don’t want to reopen those wounds. If or when he is ready to talk about it, I will listen. But about this, I will not push him.
He is drawing us a bath when I walk through the bedroom door. I leave my boots and dirty clothes in a pile by the closet and saunter into the bathroom. He has already slipped beneath the bubbles when I climb in and get comfortable between his legs. He begins undoing my braids as I soak quietly.
“You have your mind blocked from me. I can only assume that means my sister told you something that you don’t want me to know. What’s on your mind, Krasivaya?” he massages my scalp.
I stay silent, gnawing on my lip and playing with the bubbles in my hands.
He hooks his finger under my chin and turns my head so that he can see my face, “There are no secrets between us, Reyna. If there is something that you need to talk about then tell me. Don’t shut me out.”
Shit, so much for not talking about it. His eyes search my face as I try to decide what to say.
I can’t come up with the words, or rather I can’t form them and force them from my mouth. Instead, I drop the barrier between our minds and let him see tonight’s conversations. Pain registers in his eyes, but that is the only thing I see. He isn’t angry that she told me. If anything, I see a sliver of a regret, like he feels that he should have told me himself.
“I’m sorry, my love. I should have been the one to tell you,” he deflates a little, “You must understand, what happened to Myria was my burden to bear. There are things in my past that I’m not proud of, and I don’t talk about them often. Chalk it up to centuries of living behind the wall of ice that I built around myself. Talking about my past is not something that I am used to.”
I try my
best to show my understanding on my face, “Can you talk about it?”
He tenses a bit and ponders the question.
“It will be difficult,” he admits, “But for you, I will try.” I nestle into his chest and get ready to listen.
“What was she like?”
“Actually, she was a lot like you. She was headstrong and difficult,” he nudges jokingly, “But where you power lies in battle, like mine, hers was in healing.”
“She was a gentle soul. Myria wanted nothing to do with the violence of war. Instead, she joined the army as a healer. That was her ability. She could heal even the gravest of wounds. Many soldiers’ lives were saved because of her. Her light and tenderness balanced my darkness and blood lust. Where I grew up a warrior, she grew up is the gardens of Dunewbe, learning to her craft from the most powerful Shvetlani healers.”
“She sounds wonderful,” I give him a soft smile.
“She was,” he goes silent, lost in a distant memory.
“After I lost her, I lived in my darkness. I spent centuries feeding it, nurturing it. The details of that time you don’t need to know,” he pauses seeming to reconsider, “I take that back, the details of that time I don’t want you to know. I do not wish for you to see me as who I was before, only who I am now.”
