Her betrothed gave her the sort of hungry look that she’d never thought to see directed at her.
“I always feel the need of sleep with you,” Torquil murmured and then he kissed her in full view of the watching fae.
When he pulled away, she laughed in sheer joy and tugged him into the tower to dream with her.
Zephyr wasn’t entirely sure what happened after Lilywhite and Creed arrived at the Row House, but he woke up facedown inside the vat of soil in Alkamy’s sofa. Someone had obviously removed everything but his shorts. Soil covered his entire body, and he was grateful for the healing nourishment it offered. Despite spending what he guessed was hours burrowed into the earth, his head felt like it weighed an extra twenty pounds, and his mouth felt like something had died in it.
He rolled to his side, blinked burning eyes, and looked up to find Violet watching him. In a voice that sounded almost as bad as he felt, he rasped, “What are you doing here?”
“Babysitting.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leveled a disapproving stare at him. “We all took shifts, so
Lily and Kamy could sleep without worrying that you were going to die of alcohol poisoning.”
“All?”
“Will, Roan, Creed, and me. Seriously, Zephyr, what were you
thinking
?”
She handed him a glass of water, which he gratefully accepted and sipped.
Voice less scratchy, he said, “I’m sorry you had to do that.”
“But not sorry you got so drunk that we had to carry you? Or that you practically humped Kamy in public? Or that—”
“I get it, Vi. I fucked up. It’s okay for you or Kam or Creed to get drunk, but I can’t. I
get
it.”
She stood and slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re an idiot. Seriously. I don’t care if you make mistakes. I
care
that you’re going to be upset now, that you’re hurting. You put yourself in danger. I care that you were in
pain.
”
He started to sit up.
Violet’s hand came down hard on his side. “Stay in the soil, Zeph. Let your body heal from all of the poison you swallowed.”
Despite being embarrassed by his weakness, he obeyed her and burrowed his feet deeper into the soil. He’d only used Alkamy’s soil once before when he was injured in an explosion. Doing so for excessive drinking seemed foolish, but he wasn’t up to arguing with Violet—or ready to go back to his suite and deal with Creed.
“The girls made me promise to wake one of them when you woke,” Violet said, her tone still disapproving. “After I do that, I’m going to see Roan and Will, so I can tell them you’re okay. Then I’m going to snuggle up with whichever one of them is asleep, so
I
can get some sleep.”
Zephyr grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
Violet stopped, met his gaze, and told him, “You’ve done the same for most of us.” In a flicker of a moment, she softened and added, “I’m sorry about your father being who he is, about your grandmother being . . .” She swallowed, unable to even say the words. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” Zephyr said again. Violet was terrifying sometimes, but under it all, she had nothing but love for the rest of the Sleepers. She would protect them if she could. He felt the same way, but he couldn’t express it with the ferocity she embraced so openly.
“I need to wake them,” Violet said in the silence that had filled the room as he thought about the things he’d learned.
“Not Kamy,” Zephyr half ordered, half begged. “Just Lilywhite.”
Violet said nothing, but a few moments later, Lilywhite was sitting in the chair beside him and Violet was leaving the suite.
“I’m not sure whether to yell or hug you,” Lilywhite said quietly.
He looked at her. “I’m sorry I worried everyone. I’ve never done that.” He winced as he tried to sit up so he
could at least pretend not to be incapacitated. “I don’t know how they do that repeatedly.”
“Zephyr,” Lily began, “what we learned—”
“Changes everything,” he cut in. “You need to explain to Creed—”
“No.” She shook her head. “It changes very little. I’m still not hers to command, or yours to have, Zephyr.”
“Did you not hear everything I did last night?”
“I did actually.”
“You’re the
rightful heir.
”
“I am my father’s daughter, and if I take any hereditary duty, it’s to the Abernathy family businesses. I’ll accept that I’m a little more fae than I thought, but that’s it.” Lilywhite folded her arms over her chest, and Zephyr couldn’t help but think that she was painfully naive. She might be wise in the ways of drug dealers and money laundering, but when it came to the fae, she was almost pitiably clueless.
“No one tells Endellion no,” he said. “You will be wed against your will if necessary. You will be threatened if necessary. She doesn’t accept refusals.”
“She’ll have to. The queen may be our grandmother, but I am my own person.”
“We’re only half-cousins, Lilywhite. In the Hidden Lands, that’s not so much. I don’t like it either, but we just need to learn to—”
“No,”
she said again, far more firmly this time.
“Am I that horrible?” He didn’t mean to sound weak, but his pride stung. It hurt to be rejected so thoroughly.
“No, but you love Alkamy, Zephyr, and I . . . I
like
Creed.” She blushed briefly, but she didn’t look away. “Even if I didn’t, I won’t be commanded like that. You’re a good person, but . . .”
Zephyr laughed bitterly, eliciting a frown from her.
“And I’m glad we’re family,” she continued. “I was raised to believe that family is everything.”
“Endellion is your family too.” Zephyr sat up. “We need to figure out what to do. We can talk to the queen and explain that—”
“I can’t.” She shook her head. “I won’t serve her.”
“The queen will make us both bleed or worse.” Zephyr thought about the rest of the cell, about his friends, about Alkamy. “If you tell her about the true depth of my feelings for Kamy . . . You can’t tell her.” He reached out and grabbed Lilywhite’s hand. “I can’t swear fealty to you like Creed did, but ask anything else of me. I can’t let you say anything that will cause Endellion to hurt Alkamy.”
Lilywhite didn’t pull away. “I don’t need you to make any vows,” she insisted. “I wouldn’t do anything to risk Kamy either.”
“I must obey the queen, Lilywhite. If she orders us to wed, you know that we will. Maybe we could at least forestall that if she saw that we were together.” Zephyr tried to find words that were gentle, but he didn’t know if gentle would get the point across. “You cannot disobey her, but maybe we could
compromise
for now.”
“What are you saying?” Lilywhite’s grip on his hand
tightened painfully.
“I’m saying that I don’t want to see any of us killed, and I don’t think that acquiescing to being mine would be a fate worth than death. Even if you don’t mention Kamy, there are ways she can find out, or did you miss my father’s truth extraction trick last night?”
“I’m sorry.” Lilywhite looked up at him, staring into his eyes, and said, “I made a vow to Creed, Zephyr.”
Zephyr felt like he was going to be sick, and he wasn’t sure it was just the alcohol he’d nearly overdosed on last night. “Ninian help us all.” He leaned back in the soil again. “Do you think you’re the only ones who have feelings that aren’t allowed? Will and Roan have been in love for years. I love Kamy more than I thought it possible to ever love anyone, but—”
“Then why not tell me that?” Alkamy said from behind him.
Any words he might have known vanished as he saw her standing there watching him with tears in her eyes. She didn’t move from the doorway of her bedroom. Her robe was loosely tied, and her hair fell around her face like a dark veil framing perfection like no one else in this world or the other.
“Just once, Zephyr. Say it to me,” Alkamy half ordered, half pleaded.
“I can’t.” He stood and went to her.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to get hurt,” he whispered.
She shook her head. “I love you. Everyone knows. You think Endellion doesn’t already know?” Alkamy crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll stand by your side, do whatever you ask. I always have. I always will. If that means you being with Lily, I can accept it. I
did
accept it years ago.” Tears started to slide down her cheeks. “None of it means that I don’t need the words. Say them.”
“I love you,” he swore. In that moment, he wished he could be more like Lilywhite and Creed, that he could ignore the consequences and do what he wanted, that he could take Alkamy and run far from their responsibilities. But standing there with Alkamy in his arms, with words of love on his lips, didn’t change reality or duty.
A sound from Lilywhite’s room made Zephyr look into the half-open doorway. Creed looked back at him from his seat on her bed. He was clothed, so perhaps they hadn’t done anything to further complicate this mess.
He kissed the top of Alkamy’s head, and then he turned so he could see Lilywhite instead of Creed. “I love Alkamy, but I won’t sentence any of us to death at the queen’s order.
That’s
what it means to love someone: being willing to give them up to keep them safe.”
Lilywhite held out the object she’d been carrying then. “I told you my mother had left me a book. The others all read it last night while you were . . . sleeping.”
Zephyr looked down at it, read the title, and then glanced at her.
“Read the first bit,” Lilywhite said. “Then we’ll talk.”
Silently, he walked over to the sofa. Alkamy sat next to him, her hand in his, while he read what he quickly realized was a story of the past written by the missing heir to the Hidden Throne.
The Book of Secrets
Iana Abernathy
It was almost dusk when the Unseelie Queen started to swim toward the shore. Today was the last swim until her daughter was born. Children weren’t meant to be born into the churning sea—even children like hers. Although the babe wasn’t due quite yet, Endellion was near enough to her birthing time that from here on out, she’d restrict herself to land.
Her daughter would be the beginning of a new era, the start of a treaty that had taken both Unseelie and Seelie decades to create. As part of that treaty, Endellion had lain down with the Seelie King, Leith. The Queen of Sea and Sky would bear the daughter of the King of Fire and Truth.
The two fae monarchs agreed that their daughter would one day rule the two courts as one.
Endellion took a deep breath and dove down again, enjoying the lightness the water gave her now heavy body. Her hair was still unbound after her visit to Leith, and her stress was temporarily set aside in the aftermath of his affection and the joy of the sea. It wasn’t the sort of peace
she’d known in past centuries, but she was closer to content than she’d been in more recent decades.
The burden of making decisions for her subjects had been heavy on her shoulders. Both the Unseelie and Seelie fae had been hidden away for several centuries, no longer meddling in the affairs of men. But faeries—as beings of nature—were left suffering from the consequences of the plague of humans that had spread over the world. The seas grew murky with poisons, and the soil had been exhausted from toxins that were discarded carelessly. To save their kind from the poisonous world, the two courts retreated to a series of islands hidden near the great whirlpool, the Coire Bhreacain.
With some subtle urging, the British queen had declared the Gulf of Corryvreckan “unnavigable,” so Unseelie and Seelie Courts had hidden their islands near the Corryvreckan. The two fae courts were learning to find peace on the chain of islands they’d divided between them. They mostly kept to their own kind, but there were those who traveled between the isles.
Endellion herself had been diving into the twisting waters of even this whirlpool since before the mortals knew it existed. She was of the sea. In her long life, there was no ocean that she’d not visited. She drew her strength from the waters and from earth, much as Leith found his strength in air and fire. Their daughter would share the strengths of both courts, and so be able to safeguard both Unseelie and Seelie.
The queen surfaced on the far side of the gulf when a screech of metal drew her eyes to the left. An over-large vessel had sailed into waters too treacherous and too shallow. The rocks that marked the edge of the hidden islands shredded the underside of the ship.
Endellion dove to try to avoid the sinking heap of metal, but a piece from the hull of the ship smashed into her, sending her deeper than she would have gone with a babe growing inside her. As she kicked toward the surface, her skin grew tight from the oil that coated the water. The poison spilled into her sea, choking her, clinging to her skin.
Rage filled her as her body went into shock.
Blood mixed with oil as her daughter’s birth began—too soon, in water too deep, in seas too poisonous.
Shock, blood loss, and birth proved too much. Endellion couldn’t cling to consciousness.
When Endellion woke, she was on the shore of her island. The survivors of the crash were surrounding her.
“Where is she?”
“Who? There weren’t any other women,” a sailor near her said.
“My
baby
.” Endellion’s hands fell to her stomach, as if she could touch the skin and find that she was wrong.
The truth was in the blood and pain that she remembered. The truth was in her empty womb.
She pushed to her feet and looked around the beach. “Where is my daughter?”
Another sailor reached out to touch her, as if there was consolation to be found in his murderous hands. “There was no baby.”
Endellion looked to the oil-slicked sea where her child had been born and ran until she could dive under the surface. She dove into those toxic waters, again and again. She cried out to the sea creatures, begging for help. She swam until her body screamed in pain. She searched until her lungs burned.
There was nothing. No sign of the life she’d carried and lost. Her child was gone.
When she reached the shore again, her subjects had arrived and stood behind the sailors. Every mortal and faery on the shore watched her as she stepped onto the land. Blood and oil streaked her skin. Her entire body shook.
Silently, the Unseelie Queen walked up to her son, Rhys, and held out a hand. Words seemed too heavy to speak.