“That’s gods-awful.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Perhaps, but it acts swiftly against a spinning head and belly.”
“An elven trick?”
Skadi paused, smoothing a rabbit hide over the top of one pouch. “A me trick, I suppose.”
She strode back into the bedchamber. I rubbed the back of my neck, following. My tunic was askew, my feet bare, I was certain my hair was standing on end. Hardly the vision a woman would want to greet with the dawn.
“A bit of a healer, are you?”
Her eyes lifted from the disheveled quilts over the grand canopied bed. “From age six to eight I learned to survive on my own, Prince. I’m certain you find that rather beneath you, but one learns tonics swiftly when seasons bring about illness. It is nothing but a mix of tidebaneroot that soothes upset bellies and sjal vine—a leaf native to Natthaven—that soothes the deepest aches of the skull.”
I knew Skadi was not Eldirard’s blood, but I never thought long on her life before the king brought her into the palace.
If I was to entice her to keep choosing this alliance for a turn, I was off to a piss-poor start.
“I, uh, I’ll just clean myself up before I embarrass you further with my appearance.” My fingers tapped the thick frame around the door. “I didn’t make an utter fool of myself—or you—last night, did I?”
For half a breath Skadi almost seemed stunned by the question. She folded a linen shift and shook her head. “No. I managed to remove you from the hall before shame befell us.”
“And I, we . . . I wasn’t untoward, or?—”
“Other than the moment you made maddening love to me? No, you slept quite soundly.”
I coughed, hand to my throat as though it might steady the thrum of my pulse. “What did you say?”
One corner of Skadi’s mouth twitched. She kept folding night shifts.
My shoulders slumped with relief. There was my fire. “You’re mocking me. Well played.”
“Never fear, Prince.” Skadi strode to the doorway to the sitting room, glancing over her shoulder. “You didn’t bed the beast.”
A touch of bitterness wrapped the term and it turned my stomach over again. Is that how she thought I viewed her?
“I won’t be long,” I said, pausing halfway into the wide washroom. “Oh, and Skadi.” When she met my gaze, I forced a weak smile. “I do not see surviving in the streets as beneath me. My folk did much the same. Look at that, Wife, we have so much in common already.”
I closed the door, relishing in the puzzled furrow to her brow.
Sea fae would ferry the earth fae and alvers home. The magic in their voices was the only power capable of diving vessels beneath the tideslike a bowing whale before we slipped through the watery borders and surfaced back in earth realms where fae and alvers made their kingdoms.
Natthaven was a fading isle. A place from myths and old lore. To fade and appear in different seas was a strange magic, one Skadi tried to engage the night we fought against each other.
The strain to pull away the whole of her land into her darkness was too fierce. It was the move that made her vulnerable for the strike of my mesmer, the burn of waking nightmares I shoved into her mind.
On the docks, I blinked against the sun. “Why did the isle not fade for you that night?”
Skadi hesitated. “It stopped speaking to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Natthaven has a magic all its own.” She turned, taking in the dark trees coating the hillsides. From the shore, the peaks of the palace carved through the trees like spears. “Grandfather taught me, the affinity of the Norns flows through the soil. Fate is felt, and the isle will help those it trusts to meet their fate.”
“So, you believe it was fate that brought us here since the isle did not bow to you?”
“I think it’s nothing but a story to tell a curious girl so she respects the land. The only fate there that night was you arriving when I was utterly exhausted.”
Something about her tone made me wonder if she spoke more to convince me, or herself.
