Moving to face Raine, Kerym thought,Come on, Raine. Don’t kill me in front of the females. That’s just poor manners. Besides, I am trying to prove to Pellie that I am all strong and handsome, and you ripping my head off won’t exactly help my cause here.
What the fuck is going on, Kerym? Are you one of them?Raine’s eyes flashed with the protectiveness a male experienced only once they mated, and Kerym threw a look at Frelina’s neck.
Sure enough, a mating mark could be found there, stark against Frelina’s skin, and Kerym wiggled his brows at her when her hand flew to touch it. “Ah, so he got there first. I was going to offer if he didn’t stop being an idiot.”
The growl ripping from Raine shook the ship almost as much as Kerym had done.
“Just read my mind.” Kerym almost reached out to punch Raine’s shoulder, but given how much his friend’s muscles were quivering, he thought better of it and clenched his fingers instead. “It’ll explaineverything so you don’t have to spend the rest of your life upset that you killed me.”
“No one is killing anyone. At least not today.” Loche’s voice had Raine growl again.
Kerym shot the regent a warning look when he and Iviry made their way over the brow Loche’s men had placed to seal their ships together.
“I’d stay back if I were you,” Kerym said, keeping a grin on his face so as not to let Loche’s soldiers worry too much. They watched cautiously from the other ship, bird masks in hand.
But Raine was furious, and he somehow didn’t seem to be able to snap out of it enough to read Kerym’s mind—to see what Kerym had just learned about himself.
That’s when Frelina stepped forward, and Kerym didn’t have time to react before she clasped his hand, her eyes glittering with gold as she took the memories of his conversation with the half-witch currently hiding in the steering tower, as she saw him being possessed by whatever had been in that book, as she learned why Pellie was pushing him away.
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Kerym said as Frelina’s wide eyes dimmed, and he dragged the half-Fae back with him as the sound of Raine’s hiss rushed over the sea. “He’ll surely kill me now.”
Raine stared at their laced fingers for all of two seconds before he threw himself at Kerym, but as Kerym locked his muscles, moving Frelina behind him, Raine was stopped in his tracks.
Iviry gripped a fistful of Raine’s hair as her leg swept across the redhead Fae’s feet, and he slammed into the ground, his face hovering by everyone’s knees as Iviry kept her hold on his damp strands.
“Enough,” she snarled into Raine’s face. “I was so fucking happy to see you alive, but right now you two are behaving like fucking adolescents.”
Kerym laughed as Raine’s eyes focused, his face going as red as his hair when the Fae leader shook him by his tangled tresses to emphasize her words.
“Why are you laughing?” When they bore into Kerym’s, Iviry’s blue eyes were like the glaciers he’d seen surround a realm he and Thissian had never figured out how to make it to. “You riled him up. He must have just escaped the Oakgards’ Fae, who managed to capture them! What the fuck was that back there? Explain yourself. Now!”
Kerym’s eyes went behind her for a moment, and with the crowd gathering there, he knew this wasn’t the time to remind Iviry he’d seen her vomit behind bushes after trying to keep up with him and Raine on especially wet nights out on more accounts than he cared to count.
“Yes, Iviry.” Iviry finally let Raine go, shoving him to Frelina’s side like a child.
Kerym rolled his neck when Frelina left his side to take over Raine. Raine’s head hung between his shoulders as Frelina hissed something at him. The grip she took on his hand wasn’t tender, but Kerym noticed a shadow of a smile broke through Frelina’s words, and Raine must have as well, because he dragged her to him, brushing his lips over hers like a promise.
As more and more people gathered on the ships around them—many to welcome the Fae Kerym and the rest had traveled with and to show them their spots, but some to just watch what was unfolding—Kerym told a quick version of what had happened in Vastala, and what he’d found out about himself.
“Obviously not ideal,” Kerym finished. “But before they come, we can learn from what my gifts can do. And speaking of coming… I saw an eagle fly over our ships…”
“Yes,” Loche said, his gray eyes finding Iviry’s for a second before moving out to the south where the old sounds of war grew louder and louder. “Merrick and Lessia should be here by tomorrow.”
“What?” Iviry glowered at Loche, at the same time as Frelina turned her face in to Raine’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Loche mumbled. “I just got Merrick’s letter. I didn’t have time to tell you.”
“Why is she coming back?” Amalise, the blonde woman, came walking over the brow, hand in hand with Zaddock, Loche’s right-hand man.
Kerym shot him a grin as the human mouthed “Finally came to her senses.”
“Are you surprised?” Ardow came next, his man walking beside him, not touching but so close it was impossible to miss how they belonged together. “I couldn’t believe she left in the first place.”
“Elessia,” Frelina whispered, her voice mixed with sorrow and longing and fear and worry and pride and love. “She didn’t want to leave us behind. She didn’t want to leave Havlands behind.”
At that moment, another brow connected their ship to one of the Vastala ones, and the pale half-Fae Kalia stepped onto their vessel with Cedar Reinsdor, who ignored his father’s raging face as he also came over the brow from behind Loche and Iviry.
“We saw the wyverns heading to Vastala on the way here,” Cedar said as he wrapped an arm around Kalia’s shoulder, leading the way for a group of too-skinny half-Fae who seemed more like the wildlings Kerym hadheard roamed realms far away from this one as they hesitantly stepped onto the ship. “We guessed they were going to pick her up.”
