“You look exhausted, you sound exhausted, yet your mind is forever whirring. How do you do it?”
“Oh. Well.” She dunked her head in the newly warm water. “I have a mind for information. If I wasn’t human, Eldric would recruit me for the scribe order.”
“You’d never pass.” He shrugged out of his pants and left them in a pile on the floor. “Your humor is too dry. You’d tell sarcastic jokes, and they’d think you were saying facts. You’d get accused of lying and eventually killed, since you can’t quit once you’re admitted. In the meantime, the whole place would be in disarray.”
“The whole place—have youseenEldric’s mess of a library? There’s shiteverywhere.He kept giving melookswhen I stepped on discarded scrolls, but the floor was littered with them. It’s madness. I’m not super tidy, but that would drive me insane.”
“Yeah, he’s somewhat chaotic. It works for him, though. He’s one of the best. It’s why he moved into this kingdom.”
“The gods willed it.”
“Yes, they did.”
“To help you.”
“It seems so.”
She grunted. She had some things to say about that help, those gods, and this whole shitshow, but it was nothing new, and she was tired. There was no point in the anger.
“That’s about where I’m at, too,” he said at the basin in the corner. He filled it with water and started washing away the evidence of his day. “Just stay alive, get it done, and walk away.”
“Walk away? I thought you were going to offer your life for the betterment of the realm.”
“Yes. Butwalk awaysounds much nicer.”
She had to agree there. Maybe she’d adopt the lingo.
He had a few gashes across his back and what looked like a stitched-up wound. A couple of those fights looked like they’d gotten too serious for comfort.
“The underbelly of this court doesn’t fight fair.” Red water ran down his toned muscles and taut skin. “They like to bring all their friends and attack in numbers. I’m wise to their antics, though.” He gave her a low-energy thumbs-up.
“Are you constantly battling when you’re here?” she asked as he finished up, leaving water all over the floor. She frowned at it, but it wasn’t her bathroom, so she didn’t say anything.
“It’ll dry,” he said, answering her anyway. “I couldn’t be bothered to sop it up. Lean forward. I’ll get in behind you.”
A wave of heat and butterflies rolled through her body, but the feeling subsided as her body twitched with a dart of lightning.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked as he slid his long legs on either side of her in the large bathtub. “Fuck, this is hot.”
She didn’t bother answering with words, but instead mentally replayed her afternoon and into the early evening.
“Hmm.” He sighed and leaned back, pulling her in tighter against him. “Seems like it hurts.”
“Yes, thank you. It does. Nice choice in contraptions to train me.”
“You’ll get it. The learning curve is only steep if you’re a dum-dum, and Eldric doesn’t think you are. High praise coming from someone who thinks humans spend most of their time drooling because they forget to shut their mouths.”
She shook with silent laughter. He laughed as well.
“No, I don’t spend all my time here fighting. Usually, it is more politics and an occasional assassination. And hiding from Princess Elamorna. This time is different. The king is trying to settle things in preparation for going over the fringe, and I’m having to pry information out of certain individuals who won’t be missed. I need to know what the king is planning without his knowing that I know. He will try to use me and then destroy me, I’ve learned, which I’ve always suspected. I need to do the opposite. Things are progressing quickly, and I’m running out of time. Hence the long, blood-soaked days. Not to mention this court is badly twisted. Worse, even, than when I left. I’ve never seen a group of fae so badly off. It’s dangerous to all of Faerie. The Celestials have a lot to answer for.”
“I thought it was the gods.”
He pulled her hair from around her neck and bent forward to kiss her jaw. “My brother didn’t have the power to kill me on his own. He made a deal with King Valanor—the king of this court—that the Celestials would turn a blind eye to what was going on here if the king helped set a trap for me. The king went for it, and my brother delivered the deadly strike. If not for the gods, I would’ve died. The rest, you know.”
“Then the king was cool with your just taking up residence in his court even though he helped trap and nearly kill you?”
“Why wouldn’t he? He has the Ancestral Sevens Celestial at his beck and call. He has a Celestial trapped in his court and forced to use his style of magic. He knows how much that rankles one of my kind. We represent the balance. The turning points of light and dark. To be forced to use, solely, his shadowy power…”
