"So—we're...dead? How's that possible?"
As the sun set over the Eagla forest, Elaina was beginning to regret trying to explain what she'd lived to Arlero. She pinched the bridge of her nose, sipped her wine, and buried a sigh. "She—I don't know. All I know is I died, I was in the Underworld, she gave me a choice, and she sent me back."
"Choice?"
She didn't want to say it aloud. What if Miro heard? If Miro knew what her sister and daughter were plotting, she'd be dragged back to the Wilt by her hair and bled like a lamb. "She cut me a deal, and I took it. That's all."
Arlo's mouth quirked to the side, he nodded, kissed his teeth, but didn't argue. "And it's all the same? How do you know it's not all going to happen again? Like it's not some infinite circle?"
"I don't know that it won't. As much as I don't like the idea, I have to trust Molerin to keep her end of the bargain and let me change things."
"So what do I have to do with all this?"
"I can't want to see you? The last time I saw your face, you were dead. I wanted to make sure you came back with me."
He squinted, like he didn't believe her, but didn't meet her eyes. His stare was fixed on the sunset. "They're making a fool of you, you know." When she made a questioning noise, trying to hide the stab at her pride behind a sip of alcohol, he scoffed. "You can't seriously believe that they want you to fix it," he mocked her, reap slammed against the coffin hard enough to almost make her flinch, "they want you to change something they fucked and they don't want to do it themselves. So they send you back."
"Or," she seethed, "I was chosen by them to fix the mistakes I made."
"You're a sheep to the slaughter and you know it."
She slammed her fist down on the wrought iron patio table, hissing through her teeth to keep from screaming. "Maybe next time I go bleed at an altar, I'll take you with me. We'll see who's the sheep."
Arlero groaned, dragged his hands down his face, stood up, and paced. "You always do this—you bring me back, like things'll be different and you'll act like a normal person, and you get all gospel on me like those bitches didn't ruin you." He stopped in front of her, trying to tower above her from her seat, and in the moment he was quiet, his eyes caught the trembling of her left hand. When he grabbed it by the wrist, she almost broke the promise of her right hand to do no harm—in the name of not taking his shit, but he held her shaking hand against his throat, eyes burning into her, and challenged her. "Do it," he snarled. It would be quick. Let reap free from its iron coffin, see into his soul and rip it out. She gritted her teeth, dug her nails in for a violent moment, before finally she jerked out of his grasp. And he scoffed. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned away from her.
"I asked her where you were."
"How noble. I wish you'd left me there."
"I wish I'd let my father behead you."
"That makes two of us, sweetheart."
End it. Make the same mistake as last time.
Like the clocktower was in his head, the hour chimed, and the fight in him left. He sank down into the grass, laid back, locked his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. In a sick way, Elaina thought he looked beautiful. She glanced down—her dress wasn't designed to wallow in the mud with the men, but the grass with her prince might've been acceptable. He cracked open one eye to look at her when she plopped down beside him, grace and etiquette abandoned, her curls fanned out around her as she copied his stance.
They stayed like that until it was nearly dark, silent, listening to the sound of each other's breathing. She was the first to break that silence. "I'm sorry for snapping."
He glanced over at her and sat up. His hand inched towards hers. "Me too."
Elaina swallowed, deciding to lift her hand before he could touch it and masking it as picking at her nails. "I was thinking," she turned her gaze to meet his eyes, "maybe I should leave Lasair. Just for a little while."
Arlo reached over and put his hand on top of hers, twining their fingers. She dropped her hand to her chest as he said, "We just got back, Elaina. Why not stay in paradise a while longer?"
Elaina? She scoffed, knocking his hand off hers. "This isn't paradise. Not for me."
"And roaming around the desert and fighting Snowfall witches was?"
Her eyes closed. She gritted her teeth. Don't. Don't let it escalate again. Sow bled into her mind freely, calming her, Breathe, Daughter of Stars. She did. Once. Twice. Slow. Calculating. "Did I ever tell you about my time in Borbatal?" Not caring about his answer, she said, "My mother sent me to the Graywind queens when she was tired of me." Tired of me whimpering in pain and pleading with servants to kill me before Miro could do it. "Leia and Callee were supposed to make a proper queen out of me." Elaina scoffed again, sitting up. "They failed, of course. The dragonkin princes and princess only made me as wild as them. Their mothers encouraged it."
Arlo's smile was soft as he watched her reminisce, but his eyes were hungry—hungrier than she liked. She regretted telling him all of what they'd done together after she'd fled. He wasn't listening to her, his mind was on undressing her. It made her uneasy. Her stomach churned and she stood up, excusing herself for the evening and not insinuating he was allowed to follow her.
***
"Could've gone better with the thief, I assume?"
Nyla had flitted around around her like she was giddy at her mistress's misery, and Elaina shot her a glare. "No good deed goes unpunished."
"How cliché," the fae girl snorted. Groaning, Elaina braced her elbows on the vanity, folded her hands, and let the weight of her elbows brace her head as she pressed her thumbs to the bridge of her nose.
"Fuck me," she muttered, scrubbing her hands over her face after a moment. An effort was made to fight the urge to cover the mirror so she couldn't see the dark rings beneath her eyes. "I don't know why I do things sometimes."
Nyla kissed her teeth with a frown, gently pressing a warm cloth to the sore the princess had chewed into her bottom lip. "You can always tell him to leave, majesty. Even the rat isn't stupid enough to return to a trap he's seen others caught in."
"I was telling him about Borbatal and he didn't even have the courtesy to stare at my face," Elaina growled. Subconsciously, she pulled the blanket Nyla had draped over her shoulders tighter across her chest.
"Men are pigs."
"People are pigs. Arlero is one of many."
While Nyla laughed as she set the cloth back in the basin, she wasn't as jovial as she took her lady's hands in hers. "I'm sorry, my princess. I wish things could be different—I know how much you care for him."
Elaina, leaning back in the seat, squeezed her eyes shut, like that would keep her from wanting to cry. Her handmaid released her hands and gave her the space she knew she needed after so many years together, finding something on the bed to alter instead. "It's as if—he's not even the same person I fell for."
Her breath hitched. She'd found it: what Molerin had taken. It wasn't her mate that she'd been given back—it was some...clone of him, some Arlero Ghrian from another world, free of the hell they'd endured for each other, free of the hell he'd endured in his own life. Shared memories, but different man. A sob escaped her. Nyla's attention went from preparing the bed for a queen to rushing to her side. She turned the chair Elaina was stationed in, panicked as the Crown Princess allowed her body to be racked with sobs. Delicate fingers tried to pin her curls out of her face, tried to touch her forehead and check for a fever, and with every choked sob Elaina released, Nyla grew more frantic. "Elaina," she yelled, grabbing the princess by the biceps.
But Elaina didn't hear her. She doubled onto herself like a broken doll, nails like claws ripped into the exposed skin of her thighs, Nyla muttered some prayer under her breath, promised she'd be back, and scurried to the door. Elaina, still weeping, let herself drop from her seat, shivering with rage and hurt as she crawled towards the hearth on the other side of the room. A trail of blood followed, staining the white marble red, and she clawed her way across that floor. Her nails split, snapped, her fingers bled, she was still sobbing like a child when she reached the warm stone of the hearth, and she sat like one too, cross-legged on the floor as she grabbed the firehook. Trying to silence her cries, she screamed out for Molerin to answer her, sliced her right palm, tried to ignore the shrieks in her mind from sow, and plunged her bleeding hand into the flames of the hearth.
Fire swirled up her arm like silk, blood filled her eyes, and when it cleared, when she felt nothing at all, there was Molerin. She was back in Bloodbourne. The goddess arched a perfect brow, a smirk playing on her blood-red lips. "Yes, daughter? Why call for me?"
Elaina spat at her, a feral cat, teeth bared and body shivering. "You tricked me."
Molerin laughed at first, before the realization dawned on her. She placed a manicured hand over her heart, feigning offense. "Tricked?" she echoed, silent again until Elaina screamed in rage again. "My dear, I did no such thing. I gave you back your mate, didn't I?"
"That," Elaina shouted, pointing wildly behind her like he was there, "is not Arlero. That's...What did you do to him?" she demanded, still not quite trusting her legs enough to stand eye-to-eye with the goddess in her pulpit. When Molerin laughed again, though, she could've thrown herself through the fire.
The goddess stared down at the small, broken, exhausted princess beneath her, that wicked smile still daring her lips. "Your Arlero," she mocked, "is dead. You saw that yourself."
"So was I," Elaina shrieked. "Where is he?"
In that moment, Molerin seemed to lose her patience. She stepped around her pulpit, hands on her hips, glared down at Elaina, and in a moment of unbridled, storming rage, the goddess kicked her, just once, loud and hard enough that, if they were back in the mortal realm, her spine would've snapped and her organs would've been shredded. "Your mate," she seethed, lowering herself to the coughing, gasping princess, "is dead. He's in my Underworld with the rest of them. Be grateful I found one in another realm to replace him with."
Shivering, shaking her head, nearing tears again as the fight died into pain, "That's not fair," Elaina whimpered. "I love him." Molerin made some noise of annoyance and returned to her place behind the pulpit, like she couldn't bear to look at the pitiful excuse for a goddess-born woman anymore.
"That was the price you paid to return to your kingdom, Daughter of Stars. What was it that fae mutt said? 'Few queens are more revered than those married to their kingdoms', correct?" Elaina nodded. "To reach your goal, you'll need to learn to sacrifice everything you have."
While her voice was softer, the goddess still bled fury. Elaina whimpered, unable to cry anymore. "There has to be something else," she whispered. Pleading, she looked back up to the goddess. "There has to be."
Molerin's eyes hardened. The girl struck a nerve. "Even if I could give him back, what would you be able to give me? What do you have left?" she challenged. Elaina's head bowed. "Exactly. Be grateful for what I let you keep. It's his voice, it's his face, it's him. Let him rest, or move on from your adolescent infatuation and learn that your destiny does not depend on him. You've been blessed enough to return to your kingdom and life as you knew it. You'd do good to humble yourself and realize what else I could've taken."
"Please, mother," she screamed. "Please, tell me what you want, tell me how to bring him back, I'll give anything."
"You humans never learn. Accept your failure and move on. Next time you come to waste my time, I won't be as forgiving."
She choked out a plea again, but by the time it cleared her lips, she was back in her chambers, Adrian cradling her head and Nyla trying to clean and bandage her hand. Her Guard Captain occasionally pressed a cold cloth to her face, silent as her handmaid worked. And Elaina couldn't find the energy to be angry with Nyla for fetching him, nor with him for what he'd done. It hadn't been his fault. He was familiar, he was warm, she gently wrapped her unwounded fingers around his wrist, murmuring her thanks.
She didn't bother asking for Arlero in that moment—the thought of him pushed her to tears again even when her eyes burned at the notion. Her friends were there—her real friends. The friends she hadn't let die in her foolish pursuits. To spite Molerin, she would be grateful for them.
When the bleeding had stopped and they'd worked out that Molerin's Helblood Flame hadn't left any burns that would impair the princess from performing her magic, Nyla dipped her head to Elaina and Adrian, and excused herself for the evening. Adrian, seemingly exhausted, attempted to do the same, but Elaina stopped him. "You asked earlier if we could talk," she said. "Let's talk."
If Adrian was afraid of her, he never dared show it. Sat in an armchair across from its twin, where Elaina currently lounged, the Guard Captain braced his forearms on his thighs and sighed. "Have I...done anything—that would make you angry with me, your majesty?"
Majesty. She scoffed. Crossed one knee over the other and flexed her burned hand. "Not in this lifetime, not that I remember." She cut her eyes at him, and he tilted his head. "There's some things that have happened to me that my court is wholly unaware of. It's...part of the reason that this," she flexed her hand again, "happened." Adrian raised his brows. "This is my...fuck, I can't even explain it without sounding insane." She swiped her undamaged across her face with a groan. "I'm...dead? Or, I was. The long and short of it is, Casta—my crown was stolen, I left for two years to try to gain some allies—turns out, a lot of people did not like me after I killed Gyn the first time, which I was oblivious to. I befriended the Snowfall Coven, I think, gave away my most cherished memory to Maven just to have a chance at anyone siding with me, I came back to Lasair to take it all back, and—" She gritted her teeth. This part, she never wanted to relive, but couldn't stop herself from playing it again and again in her mind, each time she tried to think of why she was home, and said, "You killed me."
Adrian's eyes widened, and he sat back in his seat. "Princess, I—I'd never—"
"That's what I thought as well, until you were ordered to stab me in the heart and you went through with it." Her tongue was sharp, her tone was cold—if she still had Molerin's flames, a fire would've been building. But she kept her magic in check: no storm brewed outside, no snake-like vine of ivy shadows wound around his neck, there was nothing in her. Adrian closed his eyes. "Promise me something, Adrian."
He sighed and said, "Anything, princess." She reached across the space between him and grabbed his hand, biting back the tears stinging again at her eyes. His gaze finally met hers.
"You took an oath, that you'd die before you allowed anyone to get close enough to do me harm. Do you still believe it?"
A fire lit in her Guard Captain's eyes. "Of course," he said. He squeezed her hand, reassurance over claimant or provocation. She sighed, let her head drop, and he released her grasp.
"You can go, Adrian." Wordlessly, he stood to leave, and as his hand grasped the door handle, without turning to face him she said, "Thank you."
All he said in return, "Get some rest, your majesty."
And for once, for the first time since she'd come back, she did.
***
Nyla was chipper the next morning, more so than usual, like the princess ripping open a hand while the other had barely healed excited her. "Majesty," she said, quickly picking through outfits for the princess, "do you remember asking me for a necromancer?"
Elaina squinted. "I'm not an invalid. Of course I remember."
Unbothered, Nyla whirled around to face her, a flowy gown of satin and velvet winding around her legs and she quickly held it up to Elaina's chest. "I found one—rather, Gen found one for me. Shall we have her brought to the palace or would you like to venture out to her?"
"That depends: how far will we venture?"
Nyla beamed. "It's funny, actually, the mage hails from Borbatal. Can you believe it?"
"If we're going to Borbatal to speak with a necromancer, I'm not wearing a dress." Elaina grabbed Nyla's wrist before she could start lacing the corset around her waist, and Nyla cocked a brow.
"Majesty, what else would you wear? Not the rat's walking skirt, I hope."
Elaina flashed her handmaid a wicked grin. "Better than that."
Three hours, several calls to the palace's tailor, and a far-too-long speech from Adrian about court customs later, the princess was buttoning a pair of men's breeches—specifically, Adrian's riding breeches, cuffed up the ankle by several inches. Nyla had insisted on a fitted shirt, or at least a cord at the waist that would cinch her in, but Elaina had shut down both ideas. She was dressing herself, in what she wanted to wear, even if it wasn't exactly what she might've chosen for herself. Fuck this kingdom and its customs on what my ladies aren't allowed to wear. I'll change that when I get back.
As for the shirt, it was loose-fitting and flowy, a light, lovely, white cotton, not a curve in sight, cutoff at the midriff with loose-hanging quarter length sleeves, and a neckline only decent because of the lacing cord that kept it together. Nyla looked ready to drop dead at the sight when Elaina had stepped proudly out of her dressing room—all that remained to be done was a pair of riding boots and for something to be done to manage her curls ahead of the windy moors in Borbatal. "Your mother would see me hang for allowing you to step out wearing this, I hope you're aware," Nyla grumbled; Elaina bared her teeth in that same grin from before.
"You'll live, I swear it."
Nyla huffed, still frowning as she did up those ebony curls in as dainty and delicate an arrangement possible while still accommodating for their destination. She intentionally left a few of the smaller curls to hang loose and frame Elaina's neck and collar—when the princess had seemed displeased, Nyla waved her off, and said, "You want it done a different way, you try to do something with that mop. You need to look somewhat feminine, riding sidesaddle in breeches."
"I'm not riding sidesaddle," Elaina corrected. Nyla, fit to be tied, let the remainder of her pins and, presumably, her sanity, clatter to the vanity. She picked up the princess's boots and handed them to her.
"Please, for the sake of my soul, please put these on yourself, if you can manage. I'm going to have a nap—or a drink, whichever is quicker—before we leave."
Elaina only rolled her eyes.
In the stables, spending time with Anam, when she should've been rekindling their soul's bond before they made the trek to Borbatal, Although it's a much shorter ride that going all the way around the continent to Garneria, her mind was on Molerin, Arlero, the necromancer, and hating the fact that the bloodied bitch god queen had been right.
She thumbed her fingers over Anam's black-tipped ears. "I've missed you, handsome man," she murmured, planting a kiss to that bowed nose. Across the aisle, Elska nickered, signaling the arrival of her rider. Adrian strode in, a set of tack under each arm. He didn't say a word as he reached the stalls, simply setting the leather and steel in a pile near Anam's quarter. Elaina raised a brow.
Adrian shrugged and said, "I figured you wanted the quality time with him." He sneered as Anam pinned his ears at the sight of his tack, and Elaina crossed her arms.
"You know I can't do it myself."
Her Guard Captain slung Elska's saddle overtop her withers and only cut the princess a grin, feigning apology and shock. "My dear queen," he jeered, "I was unaware that you were so helpless with your own mount. I thought you were the all-seeing, all-powerful heir to Opheria's wealthiest kingdom? And you can't tack your own mount? I've never heard of such an atrocity."
"Bite me," she snarled back. As playful as he meant it, it stung to attack her pride. Especially when it came to Anam. When Adrian didn't advance, she dropped her arms to her side with an exasperated huff and snatched the saddle off the ground. Heavier than she was expecting, she grunted and copied Adrian's move, trying swing with the same accuracy he did, but where her magic was honed, strong, sharp, her body was...lacking.
Adrian had Elska tacked and ready before she'd even managed to get her saddle onto Anam's shoulders. "May I ask, how in the fuck you roamed about for two years and never learned to tack a horse?" Elaina glared at him, his arms crossed and a smug fucking grin on his face as he leaned against Elska's stall door. Both of them knew she wasn't about to ask for his help, as desperately as she needed it, but crossed the aisle and helped himself anyway, gently shooing her out of the stall so she could watch him work instead.
"I...didn't. Arlero was with me sometimes, and he would do it."
"You never wanted to learn?" he returned coolly, grunting as he pulled the cinch taut. Elaina passed him the bridle over the door, her cheeks burning at how quickly he could manage to do something that she couldn't even begin properly.
"I didn't think I needed to. I've always had someone with me."
"Nobody showed you? He didn't teach you in case you were separated? How'd you carry anything?"
His questions made her feel smaller and smaller, more helpless than she had even before she'd been killed. She'd stopped watching how he worked and was staring at the ground when she answered, "I didn't." She wished, begged, pleaded that the ground would swallow her when she caught the pity in his eyes. "Don't fucking look at me like that."
He sighed, gave Anam a pat, and handed her the reins. "Princess," he began, pausing to call Elska to follow, "there's no shame in not knowing something."
"Don't patronize me."
He didn't react. No word of his defense, no bristling, nothing. Deadly calm. After a moment of silence long enough that she wanted to claw out of her own skin, he said, "Not everyone wants to go to war with you, Elaina."
"You don't live in my head," she snarled back. "Everyone wants me dead."
A muscle feathered in Adrian's jaw. "What am I to you, your majesty? What is Nyla? Arlero? Casta? The court? What are we? Traitors?"
Red exploded in her vision as reap ripped its way out of the coffin at that word—traitor. Black swirled around her in clouds of smoke and thorns, Anam snorted at her side, black flames ignited from her eyes, she bared her teeth at her Guard Captain, "That is exactly what you are." Her lungs ached in that phantom pain, drowning in her own blood, choking on it, crying it, spitting it, Molerin's crooked dagger twisting in her heart, he'd left her to bleed to death next to her lover, alone—"I can't forgive you for what you did to me. None of you."
Adrian gritted his teeth, bravely staring her down through the shield of blackfire, those hazel eyes as cold and dark as they had been that night. "None of us did anything to you, Elaina."
The smoke vanished. Reap retreated back into the coffin, sow sealed it shut again. "You...killed me, Adrian."
"No, I didn't. The Adrian you made an enemy killed you."
And that was it. The war line. It had to be. "Is that a threat, soldier?"
He gaped. "Threat?" he echoed. He swung into the saddle with a scoff. Low enough that he thought she couldn't hear, he muttered, "You're delusional." All that stopped her lashing out and crushing his windpipe was Nyla and her escort calling them outside, blissfully ignorant to the storm churning on the coast. Elaina matched his gaze until he'd ridden out of the stables, gave Anam a pat, and hauled herself up, but she couldn't stop herself, couldn't stop the hateful curses that tumbled from her lips, delusional as she may have been.
Adrian, by rank, rode the front of the line—and Elaina secretly prayed there was a wyvern or dragon left willing to swipe him in its massive jaws as she stared at his back. Nyla to her right, no one to her left, one pack horse behind Nyla, and three guards trailing in a line behind all of them. She was beginning to wish she'd insisted on a carriage instead of individual horses, just so she'd have the chance to nap. That...smoke, whatever it had been, had drained all the energy she held in her body. All that kept her upright was the saddlehorn that dug into her abdomen each time she slumped forward. While it took two days to ride through Ryverin and across the Cintran river to reach Garneria, Borbatal was mercifully short and dry. Leaving before noon meant they'd reach the kingdom's border by sunset, Effamel and the palace by dark. As long as she didn't reap the entire company before then.
Nyla rode her little painted mare closer to Elaina and Anam, but of course didn't dare meet the princess' eyes—not when traces of that black flame lingered around her fingers. "My lady," she said quietly. Elaina blinked and pulled her stuck stare off the man and mare in front of her. It wasn't like she could shoot daggers through him with her eyes, anyhow. As desperately as she wanted to. "I sent word to Gen that the necromancer was to return to Borbatal and cease practice in Lasair—your orders, of course. Cannot have dear father's legacy as Witch Slayer tarnished if word got out he'd left one alive."
The handmaid was growing more and more to be a mouthpiece for a cenile woman than a young Crown Princess. Elaina wished she had the energy to feel cross about it, as grateful as she was for Nyla's stepping in. She'd never ordered such a thing, her father's legacy could rot with his body, wherever it lay, for all she cared, but her people still worshipped Ifreann as a god. She nodded slowly, tensing with Anam as he shot forward over a collapsed mole tunnel. She'd ridden him over worse. Part of her relished the idea of riding her stallion across a battlefield, the two of them a streak of sunlight and smoke; the only one on the road for miles that she would trust with her life in such a way. The only good her wretched father and bitch mother had ever done for her was have Anam stolen from his homeland and brought to her in chains, wild and hot and spiteful as the desert he'd been ripped from.
If she weren't still surviving on spite and piss and vinegar, she might wonder where her Arlero was.
No, not her Arlero. Her Arlero was dead. The cruel trick of a replacement—she hoped he was off her grounds. Her fingers tightened on her reins.
Dead. Arlero was dead. That man shared his name and his face—an imposter, a cheap imitation to appease a child.
A child. That's all the God Sisters saw her as. Their Daughter of Stars, who should've been a figurehead for the will of a trio of goddesses, was seen by them—hell, at the rate she was going, the rest of Opheria as well—as a child. A spoiled little girl. She growled under her breath and spurred Anam forward, faster, faster, faster. Heels down, fingers entwined in a fistful of blood-colored mane, teeth gritted against the stinging wind, pushing down on her stirrups as hard as she could as she rose in the saddle until she was near standing, her horse tore down the road at a speed that no doubt left Adrian rubbing gravel from his eyes. She laughed at the thought.
Arlero had trained this horse for her. Rather, he'd stolen and trained the horse for himself, but his soft heart had gotten the better of him and he'd brought the colt back. He'd disappeared for a year after that.
The tug of memory at the back of her mind—complaining to Arlero on the way to Briste Bay, whining that he never taught her any of the beautiful runes he had coursing through his veins. He'd laughed, said he'd taught her one—it had been tied to Anam's halter when he'd been returned. Prena.
She hadn't understood it when she'd been learning to ride Anam, but the bond between the three of them thrummed with that power whenever she thought on what that word meant, why she felt the need to scream it with her whole chest whenever she and Anam outran everyone trying to touch them. And for once, Arlero told her what it meant.
Fly.
She whispered it to Anam, over and over, as though the magic her lover had taught her would bring him back, as though she and her horse could ride into Molerin's hell and steal him back. She'd scream that word until she died, over and over again, there had to be something in that word that would bring her lover's soul back to her. Nothing more, she'd give everything she had and all she was if it meant her Arlo would be back in her arms. She'd fly into the sun, she'd dig her way to the Underworld with nothing but her nails and teeth, primal and violent as the powers that lay dormant in her husk of a soul.
Once, when they were young, a fae priestess held prisoner in her father's dungeon had asked her about her lover. All she'd been able to tell the aged woman was that she'd never felt for another like she'd felt for him. Suitors, friends, no one had matched the pull in her chest that he managed. The priestess had told her she'd found her mate, her Godsent. The lover that she would walk with in this life and the next, until the end of time.
"I don't have a soul anymore, priestess. What am I? Who can love me like this?"
The priestess passed the young Crown Princess a sad smile, and held out her hand for the girl. She took it. The priestess did not bother to hide her tears. "Lightbringer, even you are not exempt from the powers of the Godsent. You have found your mate. No man, woman, or other will ever hold the matching half of your soul bond—"
"What if I have to love someone else? Father won't let me have my Arlo."
"Your Godsent is here, Lightbringer. Your heart will not allow you to take another like your mate."
Fear struck the princess. "What if one of us dies?"
"You will spend your life searching for him again, knowing he will not be there."
It had been nonsense when she'd been an adolescent. The ramblings of a mad old woman facing death herself for treason.
But there, racing the moors, the priestess' words had seemed so right. Her soul had sent her to find a necromancer before she'd even known he was gone—the only other being in recorded history that could raise the soul of the dead was a necromancer.
Molerin's voice rang in her head. Let him rest.
Her fingers gripped Anam's mane with enough strength that the stallion tossed his head and lost his stride, agitated. Elaina choked down a sob, wiped her tears on her shoulder, and shouted that Moranth rune again.
Prena.
She realized once she made it to the city of Effamel's gates that—perhaps it hadn't been a good idea for her and Anam to ride so far ahead. Sure, it gave them some time to themselves, but sitting at the city's massive draw gate with a sweating pony and her own empty stomach had made that micro-adventure a moot point. So there they sat at dusk, her back pressed against the cool, ancient stone of Effamel's wall, watching Anam as he grazed closeby, and waiting for the others. At least Borbatal's moors lacked the thick, suffocating heat of Garneria's desert flatlands. It would be nice to stay in that chilly eternal spring for the rest of her days. So many easy memories and quiet moments roaming the moorland played in her mind as she absently watched Anam. The tether of their souls thrummed every time the wild horses called to him across the sea of grass—so desperately he wanted to join them. He nosed her hand out of the way of his graze. Her thumb rubbed one of his black-tipped ears, and he jerked his head up, answering them. "I hear them too, boy," she murmured. Her eyes followed his to the band lazily moving over the hill, and his desperate, lonely whinnies echoed in her chest. If she'd ever wondered if he'd missed running free in the desert, she certainly had her answer.
Finally, she saw her damned Guard Captain cantering his mare up the hill—and right through the band. Anam pinned his ears as they scattered. Elaina would've done the same if she were able. "Damn brute," she muttered, tossing Anam's reins back over his head and easing up into the saddle. She didn't say anything to him as he slowed Elska to a walk beside them, but he tilted his head in a silent question as the rest of their party caught up, What'd I do?
She didn't answer, opting instead to give the call to the sentries in the tower above them. "Open the gate."
It had been so long since she'd seen the inside of Borbatal's beautiful capital city—the city she'd all but grown up in. She was grateful for her mother's disinterest in her existence in the moments she was riding back through the bustling streets. It felt almost like a parade, when citizens recognized the stag-colored stallion and his silver-eyed mistress, and it was then that she realized how different her father's rule was than that of the Graywind queens. None of them feared a Soulreaper, no one cowered in the face of the soulless Daughter of Stars.
Anam stumbled to a halt, snorting at the golden-haired peasant girl standing in their path. Elaina tilted her head, and the girl raised a crown of wildflowers. The princess nodded, the girl looked to the women on the side of the street who ushered her on, and Elaina knelt down as far as she could so the little girl could place the circlet of white and yellow on her head. When she sat back up, the girl smiled brightly up at her, lips proudly curling around budding canines. Elaina smiled back until the girl ran back to hide among the skirts of the women, and she squeezed Anam's side. Forward. As much as she'd love to dance in the square like a girl coming of age in her first summer solstice, the queens beckoned from their Starlit palace.
A quiet, confused Adrian mumbled from behind her, "They're all—"
"Fae?" Nyla sneered, no doubt gnashing her teeth. "Effamel is a safe haven for my villagers after your king's extermination, or were you not taught any history other than his glory in—whatever school you attended, Knight's Academy?" Elaina snickered. Though only half-fae, the princess was positive Effamel's citizens could still sense it on her handmaid. Probably the only reason the warriors aren't descending on us already is because we have one of their children riding with us.
Elaina tried not to feel bitter about it, even going so far as to raise her chin in defiance as the full might of the midnight-blue palace began to loom over them. While the city's people were welcoming, while the queens were loving, Starlit had a reputation nearly as nasty as Elaina's own. Still, her emerald palace paled in comparison to its ancient beauty—as lovely and deadly as the fae legends that dwelled within its grasp.
And there were the queens, ethereal and immortal and lovely and so very deadly, waiting for them at the palace's grand entrance. Moonlight and starlight, Callee and Leia smiled sweetly to the daughter of fire they'd once housed within their walls. Elaina was quick to dismount and bow, her hand over her heart. "Ladies Graywind." The only royals she would ever show such respect to. Bow to no man. Callee and Leia returned her graces, either of them extending an arm, and Elaina ran to them, embracing them like lost friends.
Leia held her back to arm's length, examining her attire—Callee went so far as to brush a curl out of the Crown Princess's face. "The triplets will be so delighted to see you again, Solas," Leia murmured, running a slender hand down Elaina's frame. Her eyes flickered to the rest of her company, an eternal hunger igniting in her eyes at the sight of Adrian. "Who've you brought with you?"
Callee raised her brows, scrutinizing every inch of Adrian and Nyla as Elaina's spare royal guards were escorted to the barracks for a reprieve with Effamel's sentries. Elaina swallowed. "Surely you haven't come uninvited and bringing cargo for us to feed?" the ancient queen growled.
Fuck.
Delighting in the panic that flickered across Elaina's face, Callee laughed, lilting and loud, and straightened Elaina's flower crown. "Lighten up, Daughter of Stars. It's a joke. All of you, come in, please. Any guest of our High Lady is a guest of ours."
"Praytell, Solas," Leia began, forking her slab of beef with a ferocity that made Elaina question if she needed utensils, "Why've you come? Not a vacation, I'd assume. Not with you—your title, boy?"
Adrian choked as he answered, "Captain of the Royal Guard, majesty."
Leia, unimpressed, raised a brow. "Right," she said. She turned her steely blue eyes on Elaina, seated at the head of the dining table—customary as an honored guest, she assumed. The princess had been used to eating on the floor with the triplets when she was a girl, but she supposed she wasn't a guest when her mother dumped her there for the summers. Leia, gaze unwavering, waited for an answer as Elaina sipped from what seemed to be a never ending goblet.
"My sources told me that a mage in Lasair hails from Borbatal. I need her services. We thought she might've come here when she got wind that the royal house was after her." After my brute of a sire slaughtered her entire school those years ago.
Callee's purple-painted lips curled into a feline smile. "Farrion, I'm assuming. What magic were you seeking?"
"Necromancy," Elaina said, that same cold from those nights before gripping her chest. Callee nodded, her smile widened.
"That would be Farrion. We believe her to be the only one left."
Even more reason to hide her from Molerin. "Do you know where she lives?"
Leia, after silently watching their exchange, laughed. "Beneath you, dear Solas. She's been training my Ardyn."
Ardyn. Her chest tightened—it'd been years, years since she'd seen the youngest of the triplets. Hearing his name again...Quickly, she set the goblet of wine down, in the hopes Ardyn's mothers would draw the conclusion she was teetering on drunk. "Ardyn," she drawaled, biting the grin back that followed his name, "I never would've pegged him for a necromancer's apprentice."
Callee's emerald eyes shredded her like claws, squinting at Elaina's sudden aversion to eye-contact. That token grin of hers nearly morphed into a hunter's smirk. "A lot's changed about the Draganóg since last you met, your majesty."
Mercifully, Adrian stole her attention. "Draganóg?" he echoed. The princess used the moment to trade the wine for water and have her scraps removed from the table so she could slump with her elbows braced on the wood. Callee's eyes flickered between the princess and her captain, and she widened that grin until her canines bared. Elaina swallowed.
"Our children," Leia reached across the table to clasp Callee's hand in her own, "are, well—"
"Dragons," Nyla snarled, eyes glinting with excitement. Leia raised her brows, amused, and Nyla quickly murmured out her apology. The queen tilted her head.
"You have an interest in our children?"
Nyla looked at Elaina for permission, who nodded, and the girl grinned, turning her full attention to the dumbfounded Adrian. "They're born from dragon eggs. Ladies Graywind struck a bargain with the last draconic bloodwitch. Aran the Brave, Alana the Wild, and Ardyn the Young are the only ones left with dragon's blood."
The color drained from Adrian's face, and he met Elaina's eyes only. His first real assignment as Guard Captain under her father: help destroy any witches left. The Dragonblood coven had been the last. She blinked once, slowly. I won't tell them.
"Dragons aren't that frightening, Captain," Nyla sneered, breaking the bond between captain and charge after a moment. Adrian, to his advantage, played along, though if Elaina peeked she could see the fear still burning through his soul. She pitied him.
Leia, drumming her fingers on the table, looked expectantly at Elaina, a perfect brow arched. "You still won't entertain the idea of coupling with our Aran?"
Elaina laughed, loud, cynical, and shook her head. As much as she trusted the queens, she and her court were the only ones allowed to know that she wouldn't couple with anyone. She was the finale of her blood, the last of House Dorcha, and the world was better off for Miro snatching her womb in return for sowing life. Adrian and Nyla, realizing quickly the secret they were sworn to keep from the fae royalty, teased her, but the words blurred together. She'd never tell Leia and Callee that they were promising her the wrong son. "A High Lady doesn't need a consort to keep her tethered," was all she offered.
Callee leaned back in her seat, eyes roaming up and down what she could see of Elaina at the head of the table, and locked her hands behind her head. "Think of it, Solas: you, with your power over life and death, and a Draganóg consort. Ryverin would never be more feared, and you'd finally have all the fae on your side again." Her eyes flickered to Nyla.
She was right, Elaina would admit. She had a fair point. No prince—hell, no male—on Opheria was as well-liked as Aran. No other, fae or human, was as respected. It had been a joke, once upon a time, that Aran would transcend into fae goddom when his long-living blood finally bled dry. But Elaina stared right back at Callee. "You never told me why your beloved, sheltered youngest son was training with a necromancer like Farrion."
"Can't a boy be allowed to have a hobby?"
"Resurrecting the dead is not a hobby," Elaina snapped. Gritting her teeth, she said, "There's something you're not telling me."
A muscle feathered in Callee's jaw and she swept a lock of auburn hair off her shoulders. Before she could undoubtedly start ripping Elaina to pieces, Leia placed a hand over her wife's, answering for her, "Later, Solas. It's not a pressing enough matter to start a fight over, hm?" She looked expectantly between Elaina and Callee, and smiled sweetly at the younger when she finally cast her eyes back to the table. Submission. "Come now, heartstrings. I'm sure the triplets would love to see you again."
Trying to split them apart. Casta had done that—had torn Adrian and Nyla from her, her two most trusted, she gritted her teeth, her right hand trembled—and the strength left her so rapidly she had to catch herself so she didn't collapse face first into the table. At her right, Adrian stood from his seat so quickly it clattered to the ground, hand on the hilt of his sword, readied for an evil they hadn't seen. She couldn't feel her hands, couldn't summon the strength to stand, she looked at him desperately, spitting an order to hunt them down, and he unsheathed his sword, flanked to the side of his fallen princess, ready to strike at anyone daring to get close, and Leia raised a hand, an artificial calm filling the room. Adrian slowly sat back in his seat, Elaina almost asking if he was fucking mad, and the queens stood. "You know that trick is cruel, Ardyn," Leia chided. Elaina could've vomited.
"Trick?" she seethed. Her hand lashed out, nails like claws stabbing into the wooden dining chair and ripping it to the side, she stood as it fell, ready to rip the arrogant boy's throat out—and stopped.
There was Ardyn, a sly grin devilish enough to almost mirror Callee's gripping his perfect face, rolling a ball of black smoke between the fingers of his left hand. He winked at her. That heaviness in her chest returned, she brushed it off as a childhood crush reigniting. "Did I frighten you, uri?" he purred, arching a black brow, those dragon's eyes boring into her, enchanting her. My light, he'd called her. She curled her lip.
"You're a bastard."
"So I've heard." Crimson eyes flickered behind her, and his grin morphed to a smirk at the sight of Adrian, sword loose by his side. "Mother told me it was impolite to have that out at the dinner table, soldier." A moment of confusion, a lilting laugh, and a flush across her Guard Captain's cheeks later, and Ardyn turned his attention back to Elaina. "You look lovely, High Lady." He stalked around her like a predator, shaggy snow-colored hair bouncing with each reptilian jerk of his head.
"Don't encourage her," Nyla grumbled. Ardyn laughed at that, too. He grabbed Elaina by the chin, gently, eyes roaming over her face like he was surveying a piece of fine art. His gaze flicked down, however briefly, and he chewed his bottom lip. Elaina steeled her eyes. She couldn't see his soul—she reckoned Draganóg didn't have them. Close enough to scent her, close enough to probably eat her, too, Ardyn purred, "Ravishing, High Lady."
Elaina jerked her chin from his grip. "I'm not High Lady yet. Flattery will still get you killed."
Ardyn tsked, feigning hurt at her open threat in his own home. "That dog won't bite," he murmured, glancing at Adrian. The prince lifted his left hand, smoke balled and waiting, "Trust me."