Except that we were not the High Queen and King who had left Baylaur months ago. Neither of us.
“She is quite formidable,” Arran finally said when I moved to tuck the communication crystal back into my pocket.
I chuckled, careful this time not to jar my leg. “The former captain of my Goldstones was afraid of her.”
I heard the sound of Arran’s teeth clenching together before he wrenched them open to say, “The one who tried to kill you.”
“One and the same,” I nodded.
Neither of us expanded on that. Arran’s reaction to my joking while eating croissants at Castle Chariot was burned into my mind. Part of me savored it, his protectiveness. But the other part… it was empty. An instinct borne of the mating bond, not of any real love for me.
With the crystal put away and darkness all around us, there was nothing left to do but sleep. Yet I knew that neither of uswould be able to anytime soon. I knew Arran like I knew myself; better, probably. I understood the tension he tried to coax out of his fingertips where they were curled around my shoulder. I caught the soft, surprised exhale when I leaned my head onto his shoulder.
He wanted to give in, to let himself trust me. Maybe love me. But he was afraid. As I had been, before. It was torture, to have the roles reversed. Arran had been the steady one.I would have waited a thousand years for you to realize what was right in front of you,he’d said in the faerie caves. Yet, here we were, scant months later, and I was the one bursting with love while he struggled to parse need and the mating bond from real emotions.
I understood. I really did.
He had none of the last months together for context. He’d been dropped into a life wholly different from the one he remembered.
But understanding did not make it hurt any less.
I felt his throat working a second before he spoke.
“The solabear hibernates all winter,” he said, quietly even though it was just the two of us. Something about the darkness hushed our voice.
“And I thought I was grumpy in the morning,” I scoffed. But I understood the thrust of his thoughts. “Is it possible we got too close to its den? Woke it up?”
“Or someone else did.” The cool veneer fractured with those words. Battling the succubus was one thing; threatening his mate was another. His beast responded on a primal level.
Those words promised death.
“I saw… something. An animal, or several, retreating into the woods. Right before I lost consciousness,” I admitted. The images were vague, addled by my head wound. But my instinct told me they were real, not a delusion conjured by my mind.
Arran’s arm tightened around me. Shockingly—thankfully—the slight movement did not cause a lash of pain. My leg was healing.
“Maybe you were not as effective at threatening Palomides as you thought,”he said.
“Or maybe one of the terrestrials in Eilean Gayl saw an opportunity to be clear of the conniving elementals,” I sassed back.
Arran went rigid. “What do you mean by that?”
I should tell him.
The vines that had tried to pull me down on the bridge when we’d first arrived. The threat carved into the stairwell, bathed in blood. The looks that the terrestrials gave me. How I’d figured out that the guards Elayne stationed at our doors, the secluded tower suite she’d given us, were not to trap us but to protect me. The attack on Isolde. And finally, Palomides admission that someone within Eilean Gayl had reported about Arran’s injury.
But it was so much to explain. And I was so tired. And if I did tell him… how could I know he would not take the side of the terrestrials, his own people, over me? The female who had been forced upon him?
So instead of the truth, I said, “Terrestrials hate elementals.”
And I pretended like I was not part of the reason for the chasm between us.
71
ARRAN
My entire life, the terrestrial court had sneered at my mother.She’d allowed herself to be debased. She was not powerful enough to fight back against the males who’d raped her for the heir she would one day bear.
I had systematically slaughtered everyone who dared to utter those words.
