A low chuckle. “She’ll be mistwalking with you to Varethiel.”
“What the hell?” I hiss, not bothering to feign ignorance. “She needs to be with your strongest Guardian. Hell, take her yourself.” I fight to keep my voice low. I want to strangle him.
“You know I can’t be paired with anyone, especially the Princess. Breezewalking is too unpredictable to have her with me. Plus, I have no interest in dealing with a prince of Castara wanting to murder me when I touch her.” His tone is amused, a side of him only those closest to Niko get to see.
But he’s right—every muscle in my body tenses at the thought of her in anyone else’s arms. “Forget me. You need to help keep her safe from Aiden.”
Niko is the only Fae who knows I care about Nissa. At Beltane a few years ago, being around her for two days had me going outof my skin. One too many elemental experiences, and I tried to talk to her, but she kept avoiding me. Afterward, I ranted about her and the weekend to Niko. Now that she’s supposed to marry Caspien, he keeps reminding me of that.
“Nothing will happen to her on a short trip to the Varethiel,” he says. “And I won’t leave her side once we’re there. Especially with your concerns.” He isn’t laughing any more, and the haunted look has returned to his eyes.
I roll my shoulders and let some of the tension fall off, knowing I can trust him.
“I haven’t been able to find any evidence to support Caspien’s theory about Aiden,” he continues, “but I’ll be on the lookout today. If it wasn’t the humans, whoever did it had immense power to make it look that way.”
I nod, clapping him on the back. I follow Niko to the group at the center of the entry way. My mother and brother have also joined the team and both of their eyes snap to me when the assignments are read aloud. I do my best to seem unaffected as Nissa also looks between Niko and me.
Taking the last deep breath, I do my best to prepare myself for her touch.
Chapter
Seventeen
NISSA
My feet hit the ground in Varethiel, and Cillian’s strong arms let me go as fast as possible. Despite his tension when he wrapped an arm around me, my response to him was the same. My body melted into him the instant we touched, and I’m over pretending it didn’t. Something about our magic wants us together and it has not liked that he has been avoiding me for a week.
The instant the thought enters my mind, Cillian is striding away, and my magic withers back to that dormant place that it hides.
You’re betrothed to Caspien, I remind myself. Which doesn’t really matter sinceI’mleaving. And Cillian loves this kingdom—he loves all of Castara. I knew it as a child, and he’s proved it over and over since I’ve been back. He would never abandon the Fae, especially not when they’re in such a state of turmoil. So why am I even thinking about this?
I raise my eyes to help blink away the pressure building behind them. I’m sure it’s from the cold air of this kingdom or the mistwalking, not that my chest suddenly has an overwhelming weight of loneliness. Loneliness that will only increase once I run.
I’ll have to get used to this feeling. It would be too risky to stay in touch with Ophe. I would never put her at risk, and I can’t involve Cillian. That would be a selfish burden to put on him. Especially since nothing has actually happened between us.
Pivoting towards the door, I focus on Varethiel’s breathtaking castle. The dark stone edifice towering above me is carved to mirror the castle I grew up visiting in Solevara, but this rock is almost black instead of pale limestone. The dark hue stands out in stark contrast to the snow that covers the ground. The burning lamps lighting the castle in the gloom, shine blue, instead of the red-orange of our kingdom.
A chill creeps up my arms, and I pull my fur-lined cape tighter around me. Varethiel is located in the northern region and has cool weather year-round, but this feeling is more than that.
My eyes roam the intricately carved frames of the diamond-paned windows. White galanthus flowers fill window boxes in a hauntingly beautiful contrast to the dark stone. Despite the beauty, this shadow castle fills me with an eerie unease. Looking high above the entrance, my eyes are drawn to a small open window, where a silhouette of a female peers out. I tilt my head, squinting, a line forming between my brows as she quickly disappears, leaving swaying curtains in her wake.
“Are you ready, Princess?” Niko says at my side. He follows my line of sight and then looks back to my face, motioning a hand towards the steps.
A frozen breeze that sweeps against my cheeks has me following his lead to the front doors. Entering the large foyer, the heat licks around me but does little to send warmth through my bones. The similarities and differences of the two palaces are jarring. The entryway is structurally identical, but instead of artwork full of images of war, royal events, and past rulers, theart gracing these walls are of Fae living within the kingdom and the elemental lands. Peaceful images.
As we make our way down the hallway, four meticulously woven tapestries loom above us. Each piece of art represents an individual elemental land of their kingdom. I pause in front of Terrania as the others begin to file into what I assume is the council room. The weaving of the masterpiece is so intricate that it appears like a window opening up to the elemental land itself. The image is clearly from before the devastating destruction of our Goddess.
If Gaia’s wrath is a result of letting the “enemy’” into her world, weakening us against those enemies seems a funny way to express it.
I study the forest depicted in front of me. Pops of color show through the snow from the winter aconite, hellebores, pasque flowers, forget-me-nots. All plants that I’ve studied but haven’t actually encountered since I’ve never been outside the warm weather of Solevara until today. A thin, worn path cuts through the flowers and snow, evidence of a time that Fae frequented their elemental lands.
The path leads to a dense forest of black spruce, subalpine firs, and paper birch. I tilt my chin up to take in the snow-topped trees in their original majesty, standing tall and covering the forest floor with their thick foliage of moss and ferns. I can see in my peripheral vision that, aside from Niko, I’m now alone in the vast hallway, but I can’t seem to pull my attention away from the tapestry.
I stare at the pinpoint of the walkway in its center. I step forwards, my hand reaching out unconsciously, drawn to the image.
“Stunning, wasn’t it?” A deep baritone voice right behind me echoes in the space, breaking my trance.
I jerk my hand back from the priceless piece. With a pounding heart, I do my best to save the image to memory.
