And Merrick’s, he realized as he glanced down at thehand holding the dagger to Brouke’s throat, his skin mirroring his mate’s and the foreign male’s.
Merrick’s grip on the hilt tightened as that sensation… the familiarity he shouldn’t feel toward a man he’d never laid eyes on before… swept through him once more.
When Lessia and Merrick silently eyed Marlow, who seemed equally curious as he looked back at them, the snakes left Lessia’s side, and his mate shook her head when they coiled around the man’s body—fucking cozying up to him.
“You’re… you’re a veiled queen?” Lessia stammered.
Marlow threw back his head and laughed so loudly the lion prowling around them tensed, and even Merrick showed his teeth at the blatant damned disrespect for all the dead around them, the ones his people—because this man was clearly also a leader—had caused.
“No, Queen of Death.” Marlow seemed to realize why everyone around him glared, and his chin dipped for a moment before he said, “But I think my wife is.”
Chapter 47
Lessia
There was so much death… so much destruction.
Even knowing that the souls that had left all these bodies would be given a choice—like the one Thissian had made to stay behind with his mate—Lessia’s heart ached as they gathered whatever bodies they could onto two ships they’d send off into the distance, taking their souls to the rest they deserved.
She had been at it for hours, stopping only to embrace her friends, hold them to her chest so fiercely that there was no doubt that they were still here—that their hearts still beat. It wasn’t until Merrick forced her that she finally went to sit down on the railing of one of the ships facing south, where the Oakgards’ Fae worked like Havlands’ folks did to gather their dead and injured, before they readied themselves for the long journey home.
After Marlow’s declaration, with the bond—because it was a soul bond that tied together her and Marlow and Merrick and whoever Marlow’s wife was—tugging soharshly at both her and Merrick that they almost lost their footing, their senses screaming at them to let the leaders go, they’d finally caved.
The Oakgards’ Fae hadn’t been allowed to stay, though—there was too much pain and bad blood. Iviry and Loche had made that decision once Loche turned back into his human form—right now Lessia couldn’t even process that he’d shifted into that massive lion—and Lessia had in turn made the souls, still flickering in the air, form a wall between the Oakgards’ Fae and the Havlands people as they did what they could in the aftermath of the bloodbath.
Merrick’s arm slipped behind her back as he settled beside her on the wooden railing, and they were silent as they watched the first Oakgards’ ship leave, to return where they’d come from.
Apparently, their land was recovering—that’s why Marlow had been able to leave—whatever curse that had been placed on them lifted, and so the entire fleet, or at least what was left of it, could go home.
“You know… I didn’t believe her. Not really.” Marlow came up on Lessia’s other side, his tanned fingers curling around the railing.
While he wasn’t supposed to be on this vessel, she didn’t have the energy to fight the strange bond—the one that wasn’t love or even friendship but something deeper, something older than even the realm they found themselves in.
Marlow glanced down at the arm that started glowing again as it settled beside her, and he let out a long exhale before mumbling, “Unlikely allies find that the threads of their souls are woven from the same loom, that they were bound together even before the birth oftheir realm and their gods. That their past is linked as their future always shall be.”
Lessia had heard the old saying—knew that Merrick believed she and Ydren shared such a bond even before the soul stone had accepted her—but she remained quiet.
Merrick, though, pulled her closer to his side as he asked, “What did you not believe?”
“Anything of it. The veiled queens. The gods not being what they claim they are. The curses meant to kill the ones they’re scared might take them down.” Marlow’s green eyes were hard, something storming within them as he looked out over the sea. “I thought she’d fooled me, and that she’d come up with some insane explanation for just how much she’d betrayed me. But now… being here… she was right. Of course she was right. My clever fucking girl.”
One of his hands moved to his chest, covering a gilded pin of a thornbush fastened there. “I wondered why they went after… I heard of the curse that followed your family.” His eyes drew over Lessia to Merrick, and then back to hers again.
“She was fucking right,” he said again, almost to himself. “About the gods. About everything. Fuck, I’ve been such an idiot. Seeing you now… hearing how you brought her back from death, how you’re here, breathing the same air I do… it makes so much sense. But why… That I don’t understand yet.”
“I think I lived—that Merrick could bring me back—because nature wants balance. Natureneedsbalance against those who claim themselves deities. I think your wife and I… somehow we also exist because of that balance.” Lessia was surprised that her voice was so strong as she said the things that had swirled in her mind for so long.
Marlow eyed her for a moment before his head inclined. “I… think you might be right in that, and that means… I have something very fucking important to do.”
With those words, Marlow straightened again. The lethal grin he shot her way had Merrick pull her against his chest, the arm over her back snaking around her entire body when a shiver danced down her spine.
She almost laughed. It was ironic, because Marlow’s grin… it was the mirror to the one Merrick liked to cast at his enemies. The one she’d seen too often during those first years he watched over her—the one she’d seen him offer his opponents before he killed them.
The cold smile remained on Marlow’s face as he used a rope hanging off the side of the ship, threw it into his brother’s waiting hands, and then proceeded to climb his way over.
When the dark-haired Fae turned around again, one of his hands lifted for his men to open the sails, and the other shot out in a wave to her and Merrick.
A prickle of foreboding had Lessia’s shoulders grow taut and coiled every muscle in Merrick’s body behind her, when Marlow’s green eyes captured hers as the ship started moving.
