“What the fuck?” Flynn exploded.
“Sathia?” Declan said, gaping.
“It seems,” Morven drawled as the Murder Twins dragged the Fae female forward, their grips white-knuckled on her arms, hard enough to bruise, “that your sister has landed in a heap of trouble, Tristan Flynn.”
48
Bryce didn’t know who to focus on: Sathia Flynn bristling with fury in Morven’s throne room, or Tristan’s shocked face as he processed the scene before them. Bryce opted for the latter, especially as Flynn snapped at the King of Avallen, “What do you mean, trouble?”
Morven drawled, “Many of the Valbaran Fae sense … unrest on the horizon, and have been seeking shelter within my lands.” Those serpentine shadows writhed around his neck, over his shoulders, with unnerving menace. The king’s shadows, the Murder Twins’ … they felt different from Ruhn’s: wilder, meaner. Ruhn’s shadows were gentle, stealthy night; theirs were the dark of lightless caves.
“If you pitched this place as a luxury vacation, you’re about to get a bunch of one-star reviews,” Bryce muttered, earning a chuckle from Tharion. She didn’t smile at the mer, though. He’d added another nearly all-powerful ruler to their list of enemies—she didn’t want to talk to him right now. From the way Tharion’s chuckle quickly died off, he knew she wasn’t happy.
So Bryce watched as Flynn, dead serious perhaps for the first time in his life, said to the Stag King, voice dripping with disdain, “Let me guess, my parents came running right over.” He glanced around the throne room. “Where’s my oh-so-brave father? And everyone else, for that matter?”
Morven’s face might as well have been carved from stone. “A select few have been allowed in. Most have been sent back to Lunathion. But for those who remain here, there is a price to be paid, of course.”
Flynn slowly turned toward his sister. “What did you promise him?” Pure rage and a hint of fear laced his question. But Flynn didn’t go for the female or the twins holding her.
Bryce sized them up, and found both males already smiling at her. And then, deep in her mind, twin dark shadows snarled, readying to strike—
She incinerated them with a mental wall of starlight.
The twins hissed, one of them blinking as if that light had physically blinded him. Bryce bared her teeth, and kept that shining wall in her mind. A second later, there was a polite tap against it and Ruhn said, Keep this up. No matter what.
Tell Hunt and the others to put up a wall as well, Bryce replied, glaring daggers at the twins.
Already did, Ruhn replied. You should see the lightning around Athalar’s mind. He burned their probes into crisps.
Yuck. Don’t say probes.
Ruhn snorted, and his presence faded from her mind just as Morven continued, “Sathia has promised me nothing. In fact, she has refused to pay my asking price. A generous one, at that: her choice between the males who stand beside her. And as a female has no worth here beyond the offspring she might bear Avallen, I don’t see a reason why your sister should remain in this haven another moment.”
Morven’s words sank in. “I’m sorry,” Bryce said, glancing between Sathia’s outraged, pretty face and the Stag King and his feral shadows, “but to clarify: Are you saying you’re requiring any females who seek refuge here to marry?”
“It would be unsafe for so many unwed females to be running about without a male relative or husband,” Morven said, picking at an invisible fleck of dirt on his night-black pants.
“Yeah,” Bryce said, “the gods know what would happen if all us females were unsupervised. Absolute anarchy. Cities would crumble.”
But Flynn said to Morven, “So bring their brothers and husbands over.”
Bryce glared at him, but Morven declared, “I have no need for more males in this land.”
Bryce ground her teeth hard enough to hurt. This was the male who’d agreed with her father that Bryce and Cormac should marry, injecting more power and dignity into the Fae royal line.
Flynn said, “And my parents?”
Morven sniffed. “I have allowed Lord and Lady Hawthorne to remain here, as our ties date back to the First Wars. They are currently residing at my private hunting lodge up north.”
“So send Sathia to my dad,” Flynn snapped.
“He won’t,” Sathia said at last. Though her Fae voice was soft and cultured, Bryce didn’t miss the backbone of steel running through it. “It’s either marry here, or go back to Lunathion.”