The Stray Prince (Royals Book 2)

by Ella Fields

  As though I were dazed, in a dream made from the imagination of a youngling wishing to enter a story, I pirouetted. Warm air glided over my skin as if in greeting. Moving to the giant, thick trunk of a tree, I gasped, spying a tiny moving hat in the grass.

  “Little folk,” Zad said with something in his voice that sounded like affection. “Don’t touch.”

  I pulled my hand back, watching as one peered up at me, his little black hat tilted back, falling from his head. The female with him, wearing a blue dress, made a clucking sound that could’ve been mistaken for an insect, bending to retrieve it. She thumped it back on his head, and he turned on her, his voice unable to be understood, but I knew he was reprimanding her all the same.

  They paused, gazed up at me again as if just remembering they had an audience, then saw who I was with. After a bow and a curtsey, the two scuttled inside the tree, a small piece of bark falling back into place to conceal them.

  “Do they bite?”

  Zad huffed. “No, but if you toy with them, they’ll do much worse.”

  Observing their home, I pondered how many more might be inside, and if they had younglings, how tiny they must be. “What might that be?” They were small, but I didn’t let that trick me into thinking they couldn’t be dangerous.

  “They will knot your hair while you sleep, and if there’s not enough to do so, or if they just feel like it, they’ll braid your eyebrows or nostril hair.”

  That didn’t seem so bad, so I merely smiled.

  Zad continued, “Should your hair be knotted or braided by the little folk, do not expect to untie the magic their hands have sowed.”

  “You need to cut it then?” I asked, and I couldn’t keep my fingers from smoothing my brows.

  “Indeed, and you would not think having no eyebrows as such a bad thing,” he said. “Until it happens.”

  There was a wisdom to those words that spoke to experience. “When?”

  He chuckled, walking on beneath the starlit canopy of trees. I followed, much preferring this to my rooms, even if I was reluctant to be around the source of what hurt me. “I was maybe ten summers old.” Basically a babe in faerie years, I surmised. With a look over his shoulder at me and then at the castle at our backs, he said, “Ryle dared me.”

  “Of course, he did.”

  “He said he wanted to know if it were true and that I could have his strawberry pie after dinner until the next full moon.”

  “Did he stay true to his promise?”

  “He did, but he did not say he wouldn’t tamper with the dessert.” At my silence, he answered, “Boiled frog legs. I’ve never eaten a strawberry since.”

  I crinkled my nose, then sighed, giving voice to one of the many questions I’d been too stubborn to ask. “Who is the eldest?”

  “I am, by four summers.” We stopped at a small creek, and on the other side, a deer drank from its shimmering surface. At least, I thought it was a deer.

  When it looked up, its slitted gray tongue was licking water from its purple lips. Silver and gray, it had the face of a deer but the body of a large mountain cat, its tail flicking while it studied us. “A spinder. Look away, and she’ll be happy to ignore us.” I did, and he continued, “My father loved my mother.” He paused. “But he was obsessed. Some might say she felt the same until she stepped out on him during the gathering of stars and left us for a week to be with a warrior from the Gold Court.”

  We continued, the shrill chirping of crickets and birds, the scurrying of beetles beneath the grass, and the fading sound of racing water swallowing us within a cocoon.

  “Why?” I had to ask.

  “They’d been together for four hundred years, and not once had either of them taken another lover, which is not exactly heard of unless you are linked, and even then, some don’t mind so long as they’re present.”

  The mere thought of it curdled... I shook my head.

  “Apparently, the affections of this female warrior had made her curious enough to test my father’s wrath. I was but a babe, and they’d lost two daughters before I was born. Some used to say she was overcome by sudden bouts of grief.”

  “Did you notice?”

  “No,” he said. “I’d never truly known her all that well, and I was too young to remember the years before Ryle’s arrival. She withdrew more after he was born and delivered to my father. The female who had hoped to earn a place in our court by giving him a healthy babe was eventually killed.”

  “Your father?”

  “I suspect my brother.”

  I shuddered involuntarily. “What happened to your mother?”

  “She poisoned herself. When that did not work, she stabbed herself in the chest with an iron arrow.”

  I struggled for words. “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen summers. We are a species prone to dramatics, of that you can be sure.” He’d said it in jest, but it fell flat upon the curling breeze. “And so my father did not take her grief too seriously until it was far too late.”

  “Ryle’s mother...”

  “When my father discovered my mother had not only lain with another but had also spent a week with them, regardless of their gender, he sought revenge and picked a female of low status to spend a week in his rooms.”

  My eyes widened, and Zad caught me before I tripped over a moss-blanketed rock.

  “Your aunt,” I said, understanding how they’d grown close enough for her to leave her home.

  “My mother’s sister. Emmiline does not care for Ryle, and when he killed my father...” I halted at that, and Zad offered a grim smile. “We both left. Ryle tricked him into drinking a sleeping tonic. He killed him while he slept after he’d made yet another remark about Ryle’s less than pure blood, his blight on our family and its now tainted history.”

  “That is how the crown is inherited?”

  “That.” He tipped a broad shoulder. “Or a king can choose to step down, in which case he passes the title to his son.”

  His touch was so familiar, so comforting I’d forgotten I didn’t want it and moved away. His eyes gleamed knowingly, and I said, “Not a daughter?”

  “Not in the Onyx Court.” He chuckled at my expression. “I know.”

  A veil of vines rippled up ahead, twitching more as we neared. As Zad grew closer, I realized. This land... it wasn’t just land. It was a living, breathing entity—that knowledge made more apparent by the male who’d stopped to inspect a grouping of toadstools. Red-capped with white spores, their heads were bigger than his large hand, and their legs as tall as his shins.

  He crouched down, the air around his fingers growing visible if you peered close enough—akin to tendrils of faint smoke. “He had no power of his own. We waited, though. He even tried to have a witch spell him, everything and anything in hopes something would manifest, but nothing ever did.”

  I found that hard to believe after all I’d witnessed from the king so far. “None at all?” Moving over to Zad, I wondered what he was doing when I noticed the bases of the toadstools. Some were patchy brown. Others were bent and folding into the ground, their heads withering against dying blades of grass beneath.

  “Other than paltry parlor tricks, he has nothing, which is why he wanted to be king”—he curled his fingers into his palm, the mushrooms changing, brightening in color—“to take it from the land.”

  “But it speaks to you,” I said, my eyes fastened on the once limp toadstools.

  “It is me,” he said with so much resignation, it squeezed my chest. “Beldine might be under his rule, and he might be able to borrow from it as he sees fit, but he knows, everyone knows, whose lifeblood is knitted to it.”

  Zadicus rose just as a familiar roar rumbled above. Everything in the forest stilled, including my heart. Though I knew it couldn’t be Vanamar, I still watched in silent awe as two furbanes swooped and tumbled around one another. Trees shook and branches groaned as the white beast’s wings flapped like mini bouts of thunder before it gave chase to its p
artner, who appeared similar in color.

  For long moments, we watched them soar over the castle, then circle back to dive to the river below. My stomach emptied as I imagined myself on Van and doing the same. Then it refilled with that aching heaviness when I turned to Zad, my gaze flicking to his back. Had he done that? Flown above the trees and rivers and met the clouds before the ability was stripped so callously from him? I couldn’t even imagine...

  “Why?” I heard myself finally ask. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Would you believe me if I said it never felt like the right time to admit something of this magnitude? That I was at war with myself over it because I never, not once, planned to return, so what did it matter, and why rush? Because you know I cannot lie, but that does not mean any of my excuses are good enough.” Unable to meet his gaze, I watched his throat dip. “Audra.” He clasped my fingers within his. “I won’t lose you. I’d finally gotten everything I wanted. Can you blame me for wanting to enjoy it before I potentially ruined it by admitting all that I am?”

  “Yes,” I said, freeing my fingers, though the absence of his touch burned. “Yes, I can blame you.” He watched me retreat. “There are some secrets too huge to keep, too important to hope to hide, especially from someone you’d all but pledged to commit your life to.”

  His voice roughened and took on that lethal edge. “I do not wish to stay here. I’ve lived in Rosinthe since your grandfather ruled, Audra. If I wanted to come back, I would have long ago.”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “It’s not.”

  “You said it yourself.” I glowered at him. “That you are tied to this land. You give to it, and it gives to you in return.” Staring into those fiery eyes, I felt my mind explode. “Wait, you...”

  He waited, face tight with apprehension and his feet shifting.

  “You would not need to drink blood after exerting your magic in extremes if you were here, would you?”

  His lack of response answered that, as did the flattening of his lips.

  “Zadicus,” I groaned. My hands rose to my head, fingers tunneling and pulling at my hair. “You are a king without a crown, do you not understand that?” Again, he did not answer. I marched over the grass, felt it protest at my abuse, and shoved at his hard chest. “You belong here, and you know it, and that’s why you could not tell me, for you know I’ll insist you stay and do what you need to.”

  Too quick for me to stop, he stole my wrists, lifting them to his mouth to kiss. “I belong with you.”

  “Liar,” I rasped, knowing he wasn’t and that he genuinely believed that. “You filthy fucking liar.” He pulled me closer, and I sucked in long mouthfuls of rainbow-doused air and his scent. “What do you need to do? To help the young? To help the dying parts of this land?”

  “Audra.” His arms held me tight to him, his tone sharpened with warning.

  “Just tell me,” I said, sniffing and turning my head side to side against his chest. “Tell me because it’s okay, because there’s no way we can avoid this now, and because you can’t leave them this way...” Even without bathing for darkness knows how many days, he still smelled like him. Heady with everything I wanted but could not forgive, could not have. Mint mingled with undertones of sweat. That sun-soaked winter morning scent that I now knew wasn’t winter at all, but spring.

  His entire frame seemed to wilt. “It’s an ancient undertaking that has only been done a few times in the history of Beldine, and no one even remembers if it worked.”

  “What is it?” I seethed, gazing up at him, the moon residing in his eyes.

  After a dragging moment of staring someplace behind me in that absent way that said he wasn’t seeing anything, he released a hoarse exhale. “A coupling with the three queens and their High King. They call it the act.”

  I broke free of his body, though I knew he’d allowed it, and stumbled back. “What?”

  “Ryle has tried.” Zad licked his lips. “Nothing changed, so he wants me to—”

  “No,” I cut him off, now seeing the peeling bark upon the trees that sheltered us, scented the stench of rot in the many withering branches. As though the curtain had been pulled back by his gentle, low words, and what lay behind it, if you dared look closer, was not as beautiful as it first seemed. “I understand just fine,” I said, not knowing my own voice or if I even spoke the words at all.

  My senses flooded with the life around me and the shattering of my own, leaving me reeling, trembling on two feet.

  Feeding the land. I almost laughed, remembering my visit—if one could call it that—to the Sun Kingdom and the ritual Raiden and his court thought to partake in, stolen from faerie lore. I’d thought it merely an absurd excuse to have sex with others and get drunk, and it likely was.

  But it was also another faerie fable that might not be a fable at all.

  Of course, it would be that. Of course, it had to be something that would revive just as surely as it killed. “You know,” I said, out of breath even though I wasn’t moving. “I’m beginning to wonder if this”—I gestured between us, at that hidden tether, the excruciating pull that only he and I could feel—“was some sick jest of your faerie fates.”

  “You know better than to so much as think that.” Zad made to come closer until I tripped back. “I would lay down my life before I ever hurt you like that.”

  That was what I was afraid of—losing him, in any and every capacity.

  And I was exhausted from that fear and the misery it brought with it. There had to be a way to end this torment, this sick torture we were forced to endure.

  “You do it then,” I said, growing numb to everything this male now seemed to be, for it was nothing I thought I wanted, and nothing I was so sure about anymore. Perhaps if he did what was expected of him, then it would murder me enough to be free of him—link be damned. “You feed the land with those queens, and then we can go.”

  “Audra,” Zad growled, horror twisting his features. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  No, but I was mad. So furious, I didn’t know what I was asking for, and I no longer cared.

  I whirled on him, whispering harshly up into his face, “You will do it, and you will do it with haste, for if I spend another unnecessary hour in this place, I cannot tell you what I might do.” My chest was heaving, my eyes welling and burning. “Do not let our intolerable bond get in the way of what I need. What I need is to return to my people. What I need is to be away from you.”

  “Intolerable?” he said, a soft snarl that rustled the leaves.

  I wouldn’t be deterred or cowed by the sheer magnitude of him, the primal energy that radiated from him in dizzying currents. The way this place had taken everything he was—which was already far too much—and made it more. Or maybe, it had just revealed exactly who he’d always been. “You have much better hearing than I, so there’s no need to repeat myself.”

  His arm coiled around my waist, the rise and fall of his chest mirroring the violent waves of mine. “I will give you the time you need, but do not think for one fucking second that I will ever let you stay away from me permanently.”

  “I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

  “Your walls have returned,” he said. Eyes flitting back and forth between mine, he gripped my chin with his fingers. “But I will shatter them again.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “You cannot stop me,” he purred to my mouth, his fingers now brushing hair away from my face with a gentleness I feared might induce falling tears. “We both know it.”

  “I hate you.”

  Zad’s lips parted, warm breath mixing with mine. “I love you.” He pressed whisper-soft kisses to my scars. “Now.” His lips brushed the other side of my mouth. “Always.” Then they moved to my nose. “For all eternity.” His lips stopped on mine, and I lost myself to the desperate clawing of my heart, to the silken sliding tenderness.

  A wolf howled in the distance, ridding the
stupid from me. Growling, I pushed away and stumbled back, heading for the glowing towers through the trees.

  “Audra, wait.”

  I didn’t. I hurried back through the forest, tripping over vines but righting myself before I fell. He followed, but he did not chase.

  Audra

  I didn’t see Zad again until dinner. I hid in my rooms, grateful to return to them and be left alone with my thoughts as I untangled them.

  I wish I could have done the same with the knots inside my chest cavity.

  A roar cut the silence in two, and my heart sank and soared as I scrambled off the bed to the window.

  In the distance, a familiar white and blue horned beast with giant wings dipped low. Its feathers skirted the racing river as glittering water misted the air. Then another roar, so close it shook the foundation of the castle, as another entirely white beast gave chase.

  I expected them to turn, to tumble through the air as their teeth snapped at one another. But they merely met above the water, and together, they flew toward the scythe-shaped moon.

  More furbanes—or perhaps the same pair we’d seen earlier—flying free and without riders.

  I watched as they disappeared around a sharp cliff and wondered how Vanamar was doing, locked up in his cage. I missed him. I missed my own court. I missed the people I hadn’t known I’d miss until I’d been torn away from them for yet another male’s schemes and treachery.

  Temika arrived to dress me in a gown that reached my toes in soft, simple layers of ruby silk. Its bodice was two scraps that crossed over my breasts and gave view to my navel, cleavage, and more skin than what I’d grown up thinking was acceptable.

  I swallowed down the impulse to demand decency and stood still as she dusted my curled hair with gold, and then did the same to my cheeks and my kohl-lined eyelids.

  Everyone was already seated when I arrived in the throne room, including Zad, who watched me glide down the long table with unnerving focus. I couldn’t read his eyes, his void and too-still features, so I attached my own to the king.