“I see the breaking of your throne hasn’t damaged your ego.”
A ragged truth snagged at my thoughts underneath all my attempts at rationalization. I should leave her here and get myself home—but I could not. “I’ll make sure you are safe here, Ava, but I can’t take you with me to Faerie. And I don’t have enough magic left in me to open two portals.” Only a glimmer of magic sputtered in my chest.
Her jaw clenched. She looked too angry to speak, and her dark green eyes flashed. “Who was following me?”
“A large Unseelie with silver horns and dark wings, armed with darts. But I didn’t see him just now. I think we may have lost him in the fog and darkness.”
She crossed to the cave mouth, peering out into the shadows. After a moment, she turned back to me, a line etched between her eyebrows. “How will you know if and when I’m safe?”
Fuck knows.
I scrubbed a hand over my jaw, my mind roiling like the wild river outside. Maybe the Unseelie would welcome her with open arms. She was one of their own, a long-lost daughter of the Court. I’d return to my kingdom as soon as possible. I’d fix my throne, restore my power, and marry…someone. Moria, maybe. There was no way I’d fall in love with her.
A queen only needed to fulfill her role, to bring the spring again. The granaries were nearly empty, the cattle had been slaughtered for meat, and the kingdom had run out of money.
I was king of the Seelie, and my life was an absolute fucking shambles.
“I’ll watch from a distance to see how the Unseelie react to you. If they accept you, then I’ll quietly return to my realm and try to restore it. I think you’ll be better off here than in Faerie.”
She took a deep breath. “Why so desperate to pull me into a cave, then?”
I ran a hand through my hair. “Because that demon was armed. We’d be better off finding someone harmless. Someone we could kill with our bare hands if necessary.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Sounds like we’re in for an interesting evening, then.”
She turned and slipped out of the cave into the dark forest.
I followed her, watching the intoxicating sway of her hips as she stalked between the trees. The deeper we walked into the woods, the more vibrant red the leaves became. Pierced by the moonlight, they looked like blood spatters.
How much had I angered the old gods by willingly jumping into that portal? The Seelie’s anointed king was letting his people freeze to death to keep a demon safe.
The old gods had chosen me to lead the Seelie. Before my coronation, the Horned God had transformed the male nobles into stags, and I had proven my strength by defeating every one of them. Then, covered in blood, we’d marched to the Sword of Whispers for the final test of the gods.
Only a trueborn high king could lift the sword. It was forged by the old gods in the land of the dead. Made of Fomorian steel, it could cut through stone. If I held it to an enemy’s throat, he confessed his sins. And when a trueborn high king grips its hilt, the sword whispers. On the battlefield in a king’s hand, the blade whispers of death and valor, of ravaged bodies and the songs of gods. That is how I’d known the old ones had chosen me.
So what the fuck was I doing right now?
She turned back to me with a frown. “What are you brooding about?”
“The Sword of Whispers,” I muttered absentmindedly.
She sighed. “Are you delirious?”
The corner of my mouth twitched. She wasn’t entirely wrong. Any king who used the sword would start to hear voices.
But my thoughts about Ava were their own kind of madness, and she’d already rendered me senseless.
3
AVA
Starlight streamed through the tree branches as we followed the river down the slope. The more we walked, the more it seemed as if we were approaching some kind of civilization. Between gnarled trunks, ruined stone arches appeared, covered over with climbing red flowers.
Torin walked behind me, and I stole a few glances at his bare-chested, athletic form. The moonlight seemed to shine off his spiky tattoos, making them look like blades. A little part of me appreciated that he was here, making sure I was safe. Another, much larger part of me rebelled at the fact that he would probably be leaving to marry someone else. He needed a queen, and it wasn’t like I was an option anymore.
The thought of him sitting on his repaired throne with someone like Moria at his side…
I wasn’t raised in these worlds, fed on the enmity between the kingdoms. What was the point of dragging out mutual hatred over millennia ?