29
FORTUNES OF THE UNIVERSE
SAERIS
HAYDEN WAS HERE.
Really here, in Yvelia.
He lay in the bed, crisp white sheets drawn up underneath his chin, his bright blond curls messy against the feather pillow underneath his head.
Beneath his eyelids, I watched his eyes shuttle left, right, left, right, imagining what he could be dreaming about.
Onyx sniffed my brother’s face and whined, giving his cheek a cursory lick.
He hadn’t even met Hayden properly, and yet he seemed anxious for him to wake up.
I was anxious for that, too. The last time I’d seen Hayden had not been pleasant.
“I didn’t realize I was such a burden,” he’d said.
“Well, you are, Hayden. Your entire fucking life, that’s all you’ve been. Now leave me alone. Don’t follow. Do not come looking for me. GO!”
I’d screamed at him. It had been out of fear. I’d wanted to hurt him, to make him run, so that he wouldn’t follow me into the horror that I knew awaited me up at the palace, but it was hard to unspeak words sometimes. Especially when there was a grain of truth in them.
“Carrion slept for less than a day when he came through the quicksilver for
the first time. But he was Fae beneath that glamor of his. It could be a while before your brother wakes up, Saeris.” Te Léna pressed the back of her hand to Hayden’s forehead, pursing her lips together. No doubt her magic was flowing into Hayden, checking his body for injury or malady.
We couldn’t keep Hayden at Ammontraíeth. He wouldn’t have been safe, and there were no healers there who knew anything about human physiology.
The decision had been made, risky as it was, to use the gate to hop from the Blood Court back to Cahlish, and so it had been done—the work of moments.
It had been only days since I’d been here, but everything felt different suddenly. I felt different.
“Where’s Kingfisher?” Te Léna asked. Her soft, warm voice broke apart my thoughts.
“He and Carrion managed to secure the silver we need. Two big bags of it.
They went to take it to the armory. Fisher said he’d find me in his rooms as soon as he was done.”
The healer smiled gently, rubbing the top of my arm in a comforting up and down motion. “You should go, then. Physically, Hayden is fine. It’s just a big shift, moving from one plane of existence into another. He won’t wake for a while yet.”
I was already arguing. “I should be here—”
“You should be in bed. You look exhausted.” Te Léna’s hairstyle was new. It was tightly braided to her scalp, the ends, which were halfway down her back, decorated with bright orange beads. As always, she looked beautiful. “I’ll stay with him. If he wakes up, I’ll come and get you, I promise.”
Gods and martyrs, Hayden was going to be almost as disappointed as Carrion had been over the fact that Te Léna was mated and married. I sighed, knowing how pointless it was to push back against her once she’d decided
something.
The moment he wakes up?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable first, and then I’ll find you.”
“All right. I’ll go. But only because I am tired.” More tired than I had ever been in my life. I could barely keep my eyes open. Channeling the amount of power I’d used back in the tomb was a massive drain on my energy supplies, both magical and physiological. I probably wasn’t going to struggle to sleep ever again.
My hand was on the doorknob when Te Léna called after me. She sat at Hayden’s bedside, holding his hand, with the morning light gilding her bronze skin. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I can’t quite explain it. I . . .” She puffed out her cheeks and then let them deflate. “It isn’t an issue that I’ve ever encountered before.”
She had tried to heal me when we’d first arrived at Cahlish, but her magic had felt like water, beading and rolling off my skin. It hadn’t felt wrong per se.
Just . . . strange. I still had a gash on my arm, as well as a cut on my thigh, but both were already knitting closed on their own.
“It’s okay, I promise. They were just scratches.” I shot her a tired smile.
Upstairs in Fisher’s rooms, Archer was busy organizing a bath. Three other fire sprites lugged smooth, round stones from a metal bin by the fireplace and held them in their hands, heating them before lowering them into a tub by the window that was full of water. Steam rose from the water, the stones hissing as they drew them back out of the bathwater and reheated them again. Another fire sprite was busy cleaning off the nightstands and the desk, sorting through the scraps of paper and other bits and pieces I had been dumping there after emptying out my pockets.
Fisher’s friend squawked when he saw me. “No, no, no! Oh no. Apologies, my lady. We’ve been too slow. The room was supposed to be clean by the time you got here. Your bath was supposed to be poured!”
“It’s okay, Archer. Please don’t worry—”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently, and a tiny ember flew off him and began to smolder on the rug. I stepped on it before he noticed and got even more upset. “There’s a way things are supposed to be done, my lady. You aren’t
even supposed to see us unless we’re serving dinner.”
“I want to see you, Archer. I want to be your friend. All of you. Yes, I want to be friends with you three, too . . .” I trailed off, the words dying on my lips when fire broke out atop one of the other fire sprite’s heads. The little sprite stared at me, mouth hanging open, fiery eyes wide.
“There’s a way things are supposed to be done.” Archer repeated this slowly, in an exasperated tone, as if I just wasn’t understanding what he was saying.
“I hear you. I do. But the realm outside the walls of this estate changes all the time, doesn’t it?”
I’d never seen a fire sprite pout before. I had now. “Not really.”
“Archer, come on. One day, maybe I’ll live here, and it would be nice if we didn’t have to stand on ceremony all the time. You should be able to relax around me. You shouldn’t call me my lady, either.”
“What are we supposed to call you, then?”
“You should call me Saeris. It’s my name.”
Archer wobbled like he might fall over. The sprite who had been cleaning the nightstands was standing over by the bookshelf now and had a little knickknack in his hands. A ceramic bird, by the looks of things. Archer squawked when he noticed what the other sprite was doing. “Put that down!
That was Lady Edina’s favorite!”
“It’s okay, I’m sure he’s just looking at it.”
The offending sprite pulled a sheepish face, put the bird back on the shelf, then scurried away. “No, mistress. You don’t understand. That ornament is how Kingfisher got his name! Lady Edina saw it in a market in Ballard when she was pregnant with the master. She wasn’t usually taken by things like that. She didn’t own many knickknacks, but she said she had to have it. She was so taken by it that on his first birthday, she announced people should call her son Kingfisher. She set that ornament there herself, on that shelf, when the master was just a Faeling. She didn’t like anyone to touch it.”
“Okay, Archer. It’s okay,” I said, laughing a little at his anxious rambling.
“The ornament’s fine. It’s back on the shelf. We all know now not to touch it.”
But Archer wouldn’t be consoled. One of the sprites helping to heat the bath dropped the stone he was holding into the bathtub with a splosh, and that was it.
“Out! Get out, all of you! Go! I’ll leave you out in the snow,” Archer cried. “I’ll turn you into doorstops. Go!”
The one who’d been investigating the Kingfisher ornament ran out of the room first. He was smaller than the others, which made me think he might be the youngest, but I honestly knew nothing of how fire sprites grew or aged. The others, who had been warming my bathwater, scuttled out with their eyes glued to the ground. Archer was last to go. He backed out of the room, his voice warbling with stress as he went.
“There’s some food on the tray for you, my lady. A clean robe on the bed.”
“Archer, come on.”
“If you need anything, just pull on that tassel there by the bed. Yes, you know the one.”
“Things are going to have to change!” I called after him as he drew the door closed. “We can’t go on like this!”
The tub was heavenly. The rocks—still sitting at the bottom of the bath— radiated heat for a long time, keeping the water nice and hot. I let my head fall against the back of the tub, and before I knew it, I was dozing.
I didn’t want to fall asleep yet, though. Not until I’d seen Fisher. Once my fingers had pruned and my muscles felt loose, I climbed out of the bath and dried myself off, dressed in one of Fisher’s loose shirts, and prepared to settle in the with the book on Alchemy that I’d removed from Ammontraíeth’s library
against Algat’s wishes.
But then the door opened.
He stood in the rectangular square of light for a moment, watching me, then slowly stepped into the room and swung the door closed behind him.
I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. We just savored the sight of each other. Relished the fact that we were both in the same room, breathing the
same air, and nothing had succeeded in killing us while we’d been apart.
Fisher took a couple of steps toward me, eyes pensive. He bent and drew off one of his boots, his mouth forming a disapproving line as he upended it and a stream of sand poured out of it onto the floor. It kept coming and coming . . .
I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh.
He repeated the motion with his other boot, turning it upside down, gaze locked stoically on me while he waited for the sand to be done pouring out of his footwear.
When he was finished, he dropped both boots to the floor with a thump, thump and took another small step forward. “Do you know how incredible you
were back there?” he asked.
“When I was fighting for my life?”
He shook his head. “When you single-handedly took down five guards with those pretty new short swords of yours. That was really . . .” He trailed off, eyes
burning.
“Stupid?”
“Hot,” he corrected, the tips of his canines glinting between his lips as he emphasized the word.
I tried even harder not to smile. Compliments from this male were still new.
My insides behaved ridiculously whenever he even looked at me. “You like the swords?” I asked, my gaze going to where they sat on top of the dresser to his right. Fisher arched an eyebrow, slowly heading over to take a look at the naked Fae steel.
“They’re beautiful,” he said softly. “Incredible. They were made for you, Osha.”
“I still don’t know what the writing means. The engraving is in Old Fae.
The one on the right with the abalone inlay in the hilt says Erromar. The one on the left with the ivory inlay says Selanir.”
Fisher angled his head, frowning as he read the inscriptions on both swords.
He nodded, smiling softly. “Erromar means mercy,” he said, in a reverent voice.
“Selanir means honor.”
“Huh. Mercy and Honor. The gods named my swords for me, then.”
“Maybe,” Fisher agreed. He stepped away from the dresser, facing me again.
“Or maybe those are traits they decided to bless you with. Either way, they’re appropriate names for your new weapons. Now enough about swords. Come here. If you can bear the fact that our bodies aren’t touching for one more second, then you’re a better person than me, Saeris Fane,” he whispered.
Those words lit a fire in me. I ran, crossing the room and launching myself at him. He caught me, his arms like steel bands around me as he held me tight.
Life was so unsafe right now. A million hurdles lay between us and peace. I couldn’t remotely begin to comprehend how we were going to overcome it all, and yet the world fell away. Nothing could touch me here, in his arms like this. I pressed my face into the crook of his neck so hard that his leathers muffled my words when I spoke. “What took you so long?”
He stroked my wet hair, laughing quietly.
“I went to get Lorreth,” he said. We hadn’t been able to find our friend before we’d left Ammontraíeth. Fisher had left a note for him in my rooms, telling him to head back across the dead fields as soon as he discovered we were gone. “I asked him to bring Bill and Aida back across the river for me. They were miserable in that dank barn. He had to find a safe place to cross, though.
The narrowest part of the river, where the camp was . . .” He shook his head.
“The rot has destroyed everything there now. The snow is black. I . . . I’ve never
seen anything like it.”
“But he’s back here now? Safe?”
Fisher nodded.
Now that I knew that, I had to ask the question burning a hole in the back of my throat. “How does an oath-sworn Fae break their oath, Fisher?”
He drew back immediately, searching my eyes. “They don’t,” he said. “Why?”
There were freckles on the bridge of his nose. Just a few small dots of brown against the paleness of his skin. I focused on them, too afraid to repeat
what Orious had said back in the tomb. “You’re sworn to Belikon. So are Lorreth, Ren, Danya, and everyone else who fought at Irrín. Orious said that he can command you—”
“Orious was trying to scare you. Belikon can command us until he’s blue in the face, but he can’t touch us here. The wards that prevent him from coming here also prevent his compulsion from reaching us. As long as we stay here in Cahlish or in Ammontraíeth, we’re all fine. And even if we do leave these lands, we would have to be in his physical presence for him to command us. There is no way he’s leaving the Winter Palace—”
I kissed him, my heart rising in my chest. I couldn’t bear to hear any more. I needed him more than I needed words of reasoning right now. His surprise was fleeting. His mouth answered mine, his tongue sweeping into my mouth, and the room faded to black. The heavy curtains were drawn, shutting out the cold morning light. His shadows were nowhere to be seen, though. He didn’t even call upon them when his hands roved south, tugging at the bottom of my shirt.
Don’t tell me you’re going to undress me the normal way this time, I said teasingly into his head.
He flicked his tongue over my lips, a low rumble sounding at the back of his throat. Does this feel normal to you? He took my left hand and placed it in the center of his chest, mirroring what he’d done the very first time he’d shown me how fast I had made his heart race back in his tent.
I could hardly feel his pulse hammering beneath his thick leathers . . . but I could hear it now. “No,” I whispered.
And this? He took hold of my other hand, guiding it low until it rested on top of his hard cock. He wasn’t just hard. He was rock solid, his erection straining at the front of his pants like it needed to be free.
No. That doesn’t feel normal at all, I said. That feels . . . extraordinary.
When Fisher lifted my hand again, he paused, turning it over so that my palm faced up. The quicksilver in his eye flared a little as he gently ran his fingers over the inside of my wrist. I’d noticed it, of course: the veins that had
once been green-blue there now shone metallic silver through my skin.
Does it hurt? he asked.
I shook my head. No.
Do you feel . . . He narrowed his eyes a fraction. Unwell?
Unwell was a tactful way of asking if I was being plagued by a million voices that were gradually driving me insane. Again, I shook my head. No. It isn’t like that. It feels . . . like magic. Like power, right there under my skin.
Lightly, he kissed the inside of my wrist. All right, then. We’ll unpack that later.
Because right now . . . He spoke the question out loud. “Do you have any idea how good you look in that shirt, Osha? Two days was too long.”
“Technically, we did have sex in the cottage.”
He walked me backward, cradling my cheeks in his hands, raining kisses down onto my face. “It doesn’t matter. My soul is on fire. Tell me yours isn’t.”
He bent over me, pressing his lips to my jaw, up to my ear, over the sensitive skin of my neck. My eyes rolled back into my head, my breath faltering. “My soul is on the winds,” I panted. “You’re carrying it away.”
He was so strong beneath my hands. Packed muscle and power. In his arms, the dangers of this place couldn’t touch me. I was sheltered. Safe. He held me tight to him—as tight as he could without crushing me—and didn’t let me go.
Did he know this was what I needed? Could he sense that in me? He held me as if he would use his body as a shield against the dangers of this world. I could think of occasions when he already had, and my throat hurt from the memory of it. His shoulders tensed as he lowered me to the bed, but still he didn’t let me go.
“Never again,” he murmured. “Wherever we go, we go together.”
“Yes. Promise me.”
His mouth was hot on my skin, his hands possessive. A promise was the same as an oath in Fae, but Fisher made this one without a second’s hesitation.
“I promise. I swear it. You’re mine.”
“And you are mine.
The words weren’t enough. I needed him inside me. Needed to be as close to
him as I could get. I was raw with emotion as I unfastened his chest plate; my fingers were too numb to feed the leather straps through the buckles. Fisher placed a hand over mine, stilling them, and I saw the ink on the back of his hand had changed, too. The quicksilver rune was solid now, marked in metallic blue- black. Fisher saw where I was looking and began working free of his armor with one hand, using the other to lift my chin so that my eyes met his. “Don’t think about that right now. Don’t worry about any of it. Just be here with me.”
My prince of shadows.
I had been born into the light, but my salvation had been waiting for me in the dark. It was a miracle that we’d found each other. I’d learned the hard way that anyone could have come through the quicksilver that day in the Hall of Mirrors. But it hadn’t been just anyone. It had been him, the tides of fate turning, or the machinations of the universe at play. Whatever it had been, I was grateful for it. I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.
I watched him undress. He watched me while I did the same. Naked, he lay back down beside me and turned to face me, examining each of my facial features in turn. So many people were afraid of this male. Yvelia was full of Fae who would gladly have seen him strung up and put to death. He’d destroyed an entire city. He had gone to war. He had slain a dragon and faced the Iron Death at the Ajun Gate. Earlier, he’d ripped a male’s head off with his magic and hadn’t batted an eyelid. He was a creature of violence—it was his creed. But he was also this, too. When he loved, it was with everything he had.
He blinked at me owlishly, his expression very serious as he stroked his hand over my hair. Pulling his bottom lip into his mouth, he frowned slightly, as if he were still learning how to be gentle with his hands. “When I look at you, I feel as though I’m peering into a mirror,” he said quietly. “I can speak into your mind, but it’s still a mystery to me. I feel as if I should already know your every thought.”
Laughing silently, I curled a lock of his ink-black hair around my index finger. “You wouldn’t like it if you could.”
“I already know what I’d find,” he replied, his eyes dancing.
“Oh, really? Please enlighten me.”
Fisher rolled onto his back, throwing an arm up over his head. There was a dimple in his cheek—only his true friends knew it existed, since they were the only ones who’d ever seen him smile broadly enough for it to be coaxed out. I could see it there, an inch from the right corner of his mouth, fighting to make an appearance. “Oh, y’know. ‘I am so in love with Kingfisher. Kingfisher is so handsome. Look at his ass in those pants—’ ”
“Hey!” I prodded him in the ribs, hard. “I do have other things to think about besides you!”
Pulling both his lips into his mouth now, forcefully preventing himself from smiling, he rolled his head to face me. He couldn’t keep it from his eyes, though.
“It’s okay, Osha. Many women have appreciated my posterior in a pair of leathers. I don’t let it go to my head.”
I flicked the top of his pointed ear, and the Bane of Gillethrye yelped like a startled dog. In a blur of movement, he was straddling me and had my hands pinned above my head. “You think I’m above tickling you?” he asked in a deadly serious tone.
I looked him dead in the eye. “Go on. Do it. I’m not ticklish.”
Squinting, he looked me over, trying to see if I was telling the truth. “Well,
that’s no fun,” he said at last.
“What about you? Are you ticklish?”
Fisher sniffed, his hair tumbling into his eyes. He lowered himself so that his face was only a couple of inches from mine and butted the end of my nose gently with his own. “I’m afraid I’m not going to answer that question.”
“Because you can’t lie!” I squealed, laughing, trying to wrestle free from his grip so I could test my theory, but Fisher held on tight.
“A warrior never reveals his weaknesses.” He spoke the words breathlessly against my mouth, and I could feel his smile there now. He was loving this.
“That really isn’t fair. You know all my flaws,” I complained.
Martyrs, he was so godsdamned hot. He looked like he had been carved out of marble by the hands of the gods themselves, all muscle, the lines of him sheer perfection. And he was naked, lying on top of me, and he was mine. He sobered a little, pulling back so that he could take a look at me. “You have no flaws, Saeris Fane. You are perfect in my eyes, imperfections and all. I’m in love with every part of you. Your stubbornness. Your wicked tongue. Your foul temper when you’re tired. Your inability to close any door quietly—”
“All right, all right, I think that’s enough of that, thank you.”
“Every part. I love all of you.” He blew a dark curl out of his eyes. “I’d spend the fortunes of the universe to protect you. I’d drain the seas dry. Fell every tree.
I would sacrifice the sun from the fucking sky and surrender the stars, too, if I could. But those things aren’t mine to give. All I have is my life. It isn’t much, but I’d spend it and consider the price small if it meant keeping you safe.”
He spoke so easily, but I would never be able to describe what his words meant to me. There was nothing in any dictionary, in any language, that could possibly come close to explaining what I was feeling right now. “There it is,” I
whispered.
“What?”
“The way that you love me. Some would say that is your weakness.”
The lines of his face softened. “Some would say that,” he agreed. “But they would be wrong. It’s my strength.”
We slept for a while. Fisher knew how badly I wanted him, but he could also tell how tired I was. We sank into nothingness, curved tight around one another, skin on skin. I woke hours later with his hard cock butting up against my ass and his fingers trailing over my hip bone.
He moved slowly, waiting to make sure I was awake, to make sure that I was aware of what he was doing. My breath hitched in my throat when his hand moved down, between my thighs, and he slowly began working tight circles with his fingertips against my clit.
The action was lazy at first. Languid and teasing. I shifted my top leg down
a little, giving him better access as I arched back against him, letting out a stifled sigh.
“Fuck me, Osha.” His voice was rough from sleep. “That sound haunts my fucking dreams. I want to make you moan for hours.”
I trembled, my heart stuttering, as he worked his right arm underneath me and wrapped it around my waist so he could change hands. With his left, he began stroking my breast, toying gently with my nipple. “We have lifetimes of this ahead of us. Lifetimes to explore each other.”
Shit, that felt so good. “Lifetimes? We’ll . . . lose our minds . . .”
I felt Fisher laugh rather than heard it. “There are worse ways to go mad, Osha. If I get to fuck my way to insanity with you, then I’d call that a win.” He rocked his hips forward, grinding against my ass, and my skin broke out in goose bumps. A fire burned in the grate. It hadn’t been lit when we’d fallen asleep, which meant that someone, probably Archer, had come in and lit it for us while we’d been lying here, naked on top of Fisher’s bed.
I couldn’t make myself care in the moment. My body had come alive, responding to his touch, his breath, his pulse. His fingers worked the small, slick bundle of nerves between my thighs, moving in circles, coaxing heat to build in the pit of my stomach.
“Relax,” he murmured. “I’ve got you. You can let go.” He kissed my neck, my cheek, my jaw, and the anxiety of the past few days slipped away.
Only he could do this for me. Only him. This thing between us, it was love, yes. But it was obsession, too. He was the making of me and my ruin. I thought about him relentlessly. And when he slid his fingers through my wet heat and thrust them up inside me, his name was a prayer on my lips.
“Fisher! Fuck!”
“Shhh, shhh, shhh.” He soothed me, murmuring softly to me in Old Fae.
“Irrellieth ka tintar shey an mé correshan dow.”
I let out another wordless cry, unable to stop myself. Reaching back for him, I buried my fingers in his hair. “What are you saying?” I gasped.
“Only whispering secrets,” he rumbled in response.
“Tell me.”
He rubbed his thumb against my core, driving his fingers into me and then stroking from the inside in a come here motion. I hissed when I registered the sharp nip of his teeth at my earlobe. “I said, ‘I’m going to drown myself between your thighs.’ Or something close to that. There’s no word for what I’m trying to say in High Fae. Correshan means lethal bliss. Death by pleasure, perhaps. Old Fae was a far more descriptive language.”
“Ahh! Oh my fucking gods,” I panted. “That . . . that feels . . .” I cried out when he roughly rolled my nipple between his thumb and forefinger, squeezing it.
“The good comes with the bad. The pleasure comes with the pain. I’m going to make this hurt so good for you, Osha. Are you ready?”
“I—” I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded. I didn’t want him to caress me, or hold me, or make love to me. I wanted raw emotion. I wanted electricity. I wanted to fucking scream. When Fisher sank himself into me from behind, his fingers gouged into my hip bones, biting deep, and a feral snarl worked free from his throat. It was the sound the hellcats made as they prowled the dunes outside of the walls of the Third at night. It was a claiming.
His arm banded around my ribs like a vise, and he fucked me hard until I came apart.
Our bodies formed a bridge to heaven, and both of us ascended.
The whole of Cahlish heard my screams.
When Fisher came moments after me, I watched, amazed, as a swirl of ink rippled away from the God Bindings that wound around my wrist and arm, transferring from my hand to his. It didn’t stop there. I turned in the circle of his arms, watching as it rose over his biceps until it settled on his skin, just below his collarbone.
Fisher bent down and kissed me deeply, his heart racing from the workout he’d just undertaken. “Why are you smirking like that?” he asked, curving a dark
brow.
He hadn’t seen what had happened.
I would let him discover his new ink the same way he had let me discover mine.