The Prince of Secrets

by A J Lancaster

  Wyn wasn’t one of Stariel’s wyldfae, and he wasn’t just greater fae but a prince, bound to a foreign land much as the Valstars were bound to Stariel. His presence blazed like a beacon. The part of Hetta that was most in tune with the land, a part that didn’t recognise human rules or social niceties, wanted to flare up in response to the power she sensed in Wyn.

  She felt rather than saw Wyn quiver under the scrutiny, but to her surprise he didn’t back down. The bright inferno of his presence didn’t quite challenge Stariel, but nor did it falter. It simply said: I am here, this is what I am. I won’t lessen myself. Stariel bristled a bit at that, and Hetta gave it a stern talking to.

  She’d make room for them both.

  Hetta didn’t know what they were waiting for until, abruptly, she did.

  The world shifted, the infinitesimal moment when the tide turns. And in that turn, there was power. It crackled in the air, and through Stariel she felt the sparks of the wyldfae shimmer as they drank it in. It tasted cold and solemn, with hints of savagery but also of deep patience. Her senses filled with pine, snow, and bitter berries.

  Wintertide, she thought distantly as she braced herself: the power of the darkest season. It washed over Stariel and through her, infusing her with strange and conflicting desires. She was the bear, asleep in her mountain den, the growing bulk of cubs within her. She was the fox, lean and fierce with hunger, the copper-rich tang of blood on her fangs. She was a thousand trees, sap flowing ponderously under her bark, and seeds beneath the snow, waiting patiently for the sun to return. And she was the night, inexorable and endless.

  She surfaced slowly and sensed the change in her companion. He turned towards her, eyes dark and other as he stepped from parapet to stones in a single smooth motion, so they were suddenly at the same level. There was something predatory in the way he moved, sending a frisson of excitement through her.

  He wrapped his wings around them both, cocooning them in feathers, and pulled her to him. His lips were hot and shockingly demanding, and Hetta threw her hands around his neck to support knees gone suddenly weak.

  He brought one of his hands up to clasp the back of her head, deepening the kiss. None of his usual restraint was evident. She came up for air with a gasp, heart beating jack-rabbit fast as he laid claim to her throat, kissing and nipping his way down to the sensitive spot above her collarbone. Heat flared, fire under her skin despite the chill air around them, a heat that only increased when he let his other hand fall through the loosened ties of her dressing gown, to the hem of her nightgown. She shivered, with anticipation rather than cold, as the dressing gown slid from her shoulders and he teased his way up beneath the nightgown, splaying his fingers possessively over her bare stomach.

  She touched him back, savouring the touch of his bare skin. His muscles were incredibly defined under her hands, the skin almost feverishly hot. She could’ve lost herself exploring him, but he bent to bring his mouth to her breast, licking through the thin fabric of her nightgown, and she abruptly forgot what she was doing, forgot everything in exquisite, gasping pleasure.

  Before she could catch her breath, he spun them effortlessly and walked her backwards until her back pressed against the tower, cushioned on his feathers. Turning her head, she rubbed her cheek across the silk of them, rewarded by a soft hiss of breath from Wyn. She took the opportunity to distract him further, running her hands over his chest, up to the corded muscle of his shoulders. He made a sound she’d never heard from him before—a low, startled noise halfway between pleasure and distress. Her heart melted, and she cupped his face so she could press a soft kiss to his mouth.

  It didn’t stay soft. The world blurred, coherent thought impossible in the twist of sensations: heat, flesh, lips. Over and through it all crawled the cool tingle of winter magic. Their own magics rose to meet it, until Hetta couldn’t distinguish the physicality of Wyn from how Stariel perceived him. His power manifested as spice and the smell of earth recently touched by rain. Her own magic was tightly wound with Stariel’s. It tasted of cold mountain streams and pine, the dark damp of loam, laced with the faintest trace of coffee. The magic grew thick as water, and she realised with a shock that Wyn was glowing faintly, lighting their feathery cocoon with the luminescence of his own wings and skin. When their mouths met, the different magics seemed to flow between them, mingling and growing stronger for it, intoxicating, until Hetta wasn’t sure whose desire was whose.

  She’d never seen Wyn like this: almost feral with need, utterly without control. This wasn’t her slightly shy partner, anxious over his own inexperience. This was the part of him he usually hid; the part that commanded rather than persuaded. There was nothing innocent about him now, caught in a dark tide.

  That same dark tide stirred something equally primal within her. She let her hands wander south, down the flat planes of his stomach. Lower. Wyn went rigid, made that same small distracted sound again, low in his throat, and kissed her with increased fervency. He tugged at her nightgown, demanding, and she obediently lifted her hands above her head so he could remove it. There was no bite of cold; the sheer force of the magic swirling around them was heating the air.

  Wyn pulled his wings back and stared at her hungrily, his eyes hot and black in the low light. The heat woke an answering flame in her, and she dragged a fingernail over his chest and down to his belt, holding his gaze while she undid it. The storm of magic around them grew wilder.

  Hetta had seen more men naked than her relatives would’ve approved of—though that wasn’t hard when the approved number was zero. Some men, she’d found, were oddly coy under a woman’s appraising gaze, awkward in their own skin. Not Wyn. There was a trueness to him like this, in his fae form. He was astonishing under the starlight, too beautiful, too erotic, to be quite real.

  When she touched him, skin-to-skin, he shuddered, and crackling energy surrounded them. The dynamic between them changed. Where before he’d been the pursuer, now she took the lead, running lightly over the hard length of him. He threw back his head with a groan.

  We could have him, she thought, claim him down to his bedrock as he comes apart under our hands. Their magics were already entwined; now they could swallow his magic as he unravelled, make him truly theirs, this foreign prince with his foreign magic. She shivered with lust at the thought.

  “My love.” His voice was low and harsh, nearly unrecognisable from his normally polished tones. “Hetta.” They were the first words either of them had uttered, both a benediction and a plea.

  It wasn’t unlike waking up, so deeply was she immersed in the magic. Stariel was no longer slumbering; instead its awareness burned in her, focussed with fierce intent. Her thoughts thrummed with unsettling plurality, and she understood in a single shocked second that she was channelling more than her own desires. The winter magic wasn’t only affecting the fae; she too was being swept away and taking Stariel with her.

  Shaking free was like pushing her way up-river through chest-deep water—warm, tempting water. Her body ached with desire, and everything in her—including Stariel—resisted as she made herself step away from Wyn. She shook her head, as if the physical movement would clear it of magical entanglements, and thought of frozen lakes, the touch of ice, and the barely flickering movements of trout sheltering under deep riverbanks. The magic fought her, wanting to continue its crescendo, but she hadn’t become a master of illusion by giving up easily. With iron willpower she slowly and inexorably broke her way out. she told Stariel. With extreme reluctance, the weight of the land’s focus began to subside.

  Carefully, she drew another long breath and took another step away. Now she had only her own and Wyn’s lust to deal with, a tightrope of her own desire. A misstep would summon Stariel back in an instant, ready to swallow Wyn’s magic whole—whatever that meant. It didn’t sound goo
d.

  Wyn had stilled, sensing something shift, but he was still under the full sway of the magic, and there was more feral wild creature than sentient man in his glittering gaze. Her blood stirred, and she wondered if it would truly be so terrible to give in to temptation? A small, shameful part of her pointed out that with Stariel extricated from the mix, it wouldn’t be some kind of disturbing metaphysical claiming; it would just be the two of them, flesh to flesh. Knowing Wyn, he’d probably forgive her even if she slipped from the tightrope and accidentally helped Stariel do…whatever it had been trying to do.

  That was the sticking point, of course. He might forgive her, but she wouldn’t.

  “Oh, Hallowyn Tempestren, what am I going to do with you?” She spoke his name—his true name—aloud. She saw its effect—the faintest beginnings of a frown—and stepped back again, further from the temptation he presented.

  “Hallowyn,” she said, surprised at how easily the name came to her lips. She’d never used it before. “Hallowyn, come back to me.”

  He trembled like a leaf in a high wind, and then she saw awareness seep back into his gaze, a softness that had previously been missing. His wings fanned in and out once, twice, and then he blinked slowly, glanced down at his naked self and up to meet Hetta’s eyes.

  “Well,” he said, his voice deeper than usual. “This is…a little awkward. I don’t suppose you remember what you did with my trousers?” He seemed to be trying but failing not to look at Hetta’s own nakedness, which she found as endearing as it was ridiculous.

  Her voice quivered only slightly as she said, “I think I may have tossed them over the parapet.”

  “Ah. Well, excuse me a moment.” He ducked his head, turned, and in one swift motion had unfurled his wings and leapt off the tower. So he could still fly then.

  The night’s cold came back in full force with the magic dispersed, and she hurriedly gathered up her clothing, tying the knot of her dressing gown just as Wyn reappeared, a good half—sadly the most interesting half—of his own nakedness remedied. His form shimmered slightly as he shifted back to his more familiar human shape, wings vanishing in a rustle of feathers. There were snowflakes in his hair. He swallowed, somewhat at a loss for words, but he rallied quickly, mustering a self-deprecating smile to disguise his embarrassment. No, not embarrassment, she realised with a start. That was her superimposing what a mortal man might have felt in this situation. There was something more complicated going on here, because the emotion Wyn was trying to hide looked disturbingly like fear. Fear of what, exactly? Had he felt what Stariel had been trying to do to him?

  “Now I must merely remember where I left my shirt,” he said lightly.

  “Wyn,” she said, fixing him with a stern look. Oh, he was so good at burying any feelings he thought he ought not to have. His armour settled back into place, his eyes full of nothing but mild inquiry. As if they were merely lord and butler. It infuriated her.

  She made a frustrated humph and then simply went and wrapped her arms around him. He tensed, but she persisted, and he sighed and relaxed fractionally, though he didn’t hug her closer as she’d expected.

  “I’m—I am not yet fully in control of myself,” he said, and she could hear the strain in his voice. “I appreciate the sentiment, but…please, Hetta.”

  She unwrapped herself but didn’t move away. “Why did the magic pull you under so badly?” she demanded.

  “I am not…certain.” He hesitated in his word choice, and their eyes met. They both knew there was a world of wriggle-room in that statement. He gave the ghost of a smile. “No, don’t call me on it. I wasn’t trying to evade the question, truly. It’s just that I can think of several reasons, but I’m not sure which one applies, or if any of them do.” He took a step back, and she noticed his hands were held in loose fists, as if he didn’t quite trust himself not to reach out if he left his fingers to their own devices. He swallowed again, and his tone when he spoke was clinically detached. “First, it could be that the Iron Law being revoked has increased the power of the Wintertide in the Mortal Realm. Second, it could be because I have not often taken my fae form at Stariel until recently. I’m more sensitive to magic in it, but I’m also somewhat out of practice. My powers have changed since I was a youth. It’s possible that inexperience made me vulnerable. And third…it could be in some part due to the relationship between us. Stariel’s recent hostility…I don’t know. Perhaps it is testing me.”

  “Stariel was here tonight. I mean, more than usually present. I think it may have been influencing me.” She found herself reluctant to say the next words but made herself do so. “We wanted to see if we could ensnare you.” Was this a normal lord problem to have? Hetta’s thoughts unwillingly went to her father’s relationship with her stepmother and immediately recoiled. She was not asking Lady Phoebe anything even tangentially related to the subject.

  Wyn didn’t seem as alarmed as he should’ve been by this confession; he was still watching her the way men who are mentally undressing a woman do, his eyes lingering on her curves. It was immensely distracting, and she gave herself a shake.

  “Go and get dressed and come and find me in the green drawing room. I’ll make us some hot chocolate. We need to talk.”

  “I can—” he began but she held up a hand to stop him.

  “Yes, I know you can, but I, quite frankly, could use the distraction, and although you may not be impressed with my cooking abilities, I’m quite capable of finding the chocolate.”

  A smile. “As you wish.” He hesitated, and she knew he was considering whether to shift forms again in order to take the swifter method to the ground below. But in the end he ducked past her and down the tower steps. He was still so deeply uncomfortable with being seen in his fae form, and she wasn’t sure how to change that. In truth, she still found it disconcerting too.

  With him gone, the air was colder but a lot more plentiful. She let herself sag back against the tower for a few moments, using the cold shock of it to try to cool her own libido. Gods above.

  23

  The Starcorn

  Hetta wasn’t a great believer in chastity, and if the choice had been hers alone, she and Wyn would’ve already consummated their relationship—frequently and with great vigour. She hurriedly wrenched her mind back from those fantasies and thought determinedly of snowstorms instead. Wyn had wanted to wait, had pointed out that this change from friend to something else was still so new that neither of them had quite settled into the shape of it yet. She’d known, deep down, that it was really because of his own uncertainty about his future at Stariel. While she couldn’t say she was precisely happy about that, she’d understood, and had been prepared to give them time. Wyn was right, in some ways; it had only been two weeks since their relationship had shifted. It only felt longer because she’d known him for so many years before that.

  But tonight—tonight had made her think there was something more going on here, something that she couldn’t quite puzzle out as she made her way down the tower and through the house. After a moment’s consideration, she detoured to her room to collect the package that had arrived with yesterday’s mail. Stuffing it under her arm for safe-keeping, she made her way down to the kitchen. It took her a little time to find the correct pan to heat the chocolate, and she used it to draw up another layer of calm.

  She arrived in the green drawing room and deposited the package safely out of sight underneath the armchair’s skirt in case she changed her mind. She’d just finished setting up the chessboard when Wyn appeared, hair slicked back and dressed like an elderly and conservative butler.

  “Protective armour,” he said with a gleam of amusement, correctly interpreting her expression. He raised an eyebrow at the chessboard. “Is this an ardour-cooling exercise?”

  “If you like,” she said.

  Hetta was a decent chess player, but not a brilliant one. Wyn was. It was one of the only times he let her see the cold, calculating part of his mind, the part that thought ten
moves ahead and ruthlessly sacrificed any piece necessary to achieve the ultimate goal. They played in silence, and Hetta was even less attentive to the game than usual.

  “Checkmate,” Wyn said softly, and Hetta flicked over her king with a finger. “But your mind was barely in the game tonight.” He paused, then reached out and covered her hand with his. “Thank you. I’m more myself now.”

  “All right,” she said, leaning backwards in her seat. “I think we need to talk then.”

  A shutter closed in Wyn’s eyes, though he shrugged carelessly. “About what, precisely?”

  “Gods, I want to shake you when you do that,” Hetta said. “Stop pretending it doesn’t matter, that you don’t care. It does and you do. Talk to me.”

  A tiny spark of anger in his eyes. Good.

  “I am talking to you,” he pointed out, his tone still mild.

  “Do the fae particularly value chastity?” she asked bluntly.

  His lips curved. “No. The opposite, if anything.”

  “Well, do you, then?”

  “I admit I was glad of it in the case of the lug-imps, but otherwise, no. My choices have not been driven by Prydinian morality, Hetta.”

  Well, that was a relief, at least, to know that the fear she’d glimpsed wasn’t about that. She hadn’t really thought it was, but the recent revelation about his inexperience had made her question her previous assumptions.

  “Then tell me what you’re so afraid of,” she said. “And try and tell me that it’s not fear driving you, because I don’t think you actually can.”

  He stiffened, and his fingers curled into the armrests, making small divots in the green fabric. “I am not afraid of you,” he said, enunciating each syllable with clipped precision. His eyes were dark, the russet of them rich and sensual as wine. “And I’m not afraid of sex, if that’s what you’re referring to.” His words carried the barest hint of earth-and-rainstorm, and Stariel stirred restlessly in response.