Agravayn was the angry one. That was also easy to recall. And he deferred easily to his brother, the conciliator.
“Come to convince me of your goodwill? Your loyalty?” I lifted a brow at Gaheris. Nothing they could say would convince me. Not after what Gawayn had done. The primal need for vengeance mingled with the adrenaline of battle, driving away all reason. I would kill them where they stood—
Except I didn’t. The anger was there, alive in my veins. But my feet did not move. I did not swing Excalibur or throw my dagger. I waited, giving them a chance to say something, to convince me, to change my mind.
Mordred’s words from the Pit came back to me, when he’d beseeched me to judge him for himself, rather than the actions of his mother. There was a chance, ever so slight, that Gawayn’s brothers had not conspired to overthrow my throne. That Evander, hated and vile as he had always been to me, had a reason for his prolonged absence.
Gaheris mirrored his brother’s stance—feet apart, palms up in supplication. “We came because the humans called for aid. But our eventual goal was to find you and join our forces with the elemental army.”
“There is no elemental army. The succubus took Baylaur. Where was your aid then?”
Actions. That was what would convince me now. They’d come to the aid of the humans at the Crossing but left Baylaur tobe overrun? Where was the loyalty and duty in that? They should have done both. They should have been fighting and losing loved ones the way I had been. They could not possibly be loyal.
“We heard of the fall of Baylaur. The succubus has not spared us, nor the estates nearby. We secured our own homes and we came,” Gaheris explained, his voice steady and reasonable. The consummate elemental.
But I did not want to deal with him, with reason. I threw my snarl at Evander, his sneer shifting into a frown, the hatred in his gaze softened to something more difficult to identify.
“You do not step up to defend your queen,” I accused, although neither Agravayn nor Gaheris had offered any real threat. But I wanted to provoke. I wanted him to swing that shortsword, so I could finally let out my anger and put to bed the reason that kept trying to take control. “You have abandoned your vows.”
But his sword arm dropped instead. “I did not abandon them. But I am bound by new ones more powerful.”
He would not advance. Neither did I. “And what are those?”
“Marriage vows.”
Laughter bubbled out of my chest, wild and unhinged. “And how am I to trust anything you say? You, the brothers of a traitor.” I threw my hand wide, sweeping in front of the three men. “And you… the hatred still shines in your eyes.”
But they were spared a response by the crashing of water upon the shore. We turned as one as a pale-blue figure emerged from the water. A female, her dark curls sticking to her shoulders as she dragged herself up onto the shore. She wasn’t alone. I recognized the torso she gripped beneath the arms, hauling it out of the water. I knew the knot of dark hair and the stubbled bronze cheek. My heart stopped—his chest was not moving.
Then Arran heaved a massive cough, water ejecting from his lungs and spattering across the front of his leather armor and down onto the ragged rocks that broke the land from the sea. My eyes clung to his chest, watching every gasped rise and fall as he forced his lungs to function normally again.
I counted those rises and falls, the rich sapphire blue of the sea behind him slowly coming into focus. Until it wasn’t the sea. It was a tail. And it belonged to the pale-blue skinned female who’d dragged him out of the water, who now looked up at me with a smile so wide, it almost reached her delicately pointed ears.
Evander’s harsh laugh swept in along with his cold wind. “Because my wife is the Ethereal Queen.”
55
ARRAN
Sleeping felt like a waste of time. Not for Veyka, whose white skin was marred by dark bruises beneath her eyes. Exhaustion that she could not hide and Isolde could not heal.
I had not told her about being trapped in my beast form. Nor about Mordred’s role in saving my life. I did not want to admit to myself that I had needed saving not just once, but twice. Arran Earthborn, Brutal Prince, was supposed to be the most powerful terrestrial in millennia. Until that power failed. Until I nearly drowned.
Only to be saved by… the Ethereal Queen? Who was also Queen of the Aquarian Fae, a third race of fae that had wiped themselves from memory after the Great War? It was too much to think about. No wonder Veyka was exhausted.
I was, too.
Isolde healed the wounds on my back. I’d managed to clear the salty sea water from my lungs all on my own. Usually, I never slept better than the night after a battle. But tonight, I just wanted to watch her.
There might not be enough nights left to savor the feeling of her in my arms, completely surrendered and unguarded. Notnow that we’d found the Ethereal Queen. The other half of the prophecy.
I’d forced her to sleep before the argument could be made and vocalized. Introductions were all that was necessary for me to realize that the asking and answering of questions needed to wait. Gaheris and Agravayn, the males I’d met only once, whose own brother had helped orchestrate the massacre of the goldstone palace and the deaths of Cyara’s sisters. Evander, the wind-gifted male whose arm I’d cut off in anger when I first arrived in Baylaur, later deployed to assist Gawayn’s brothers on the shores of the Split Sea, and now married to the Aquarian queen?
It was too much after a battle we’d barely survived.
The fact that Veyka had not argued with me illustrated just how right I was. She’d curled into my arms and fallen asleep without hesitation. Without reaching for me in heat or even kissing me goodnight. I would give her whatever she needed, no matter how big or small. If she just wanted me to hold her every night for the rest of our lives, I would do it.
My cock twitched in a protest I chose to ignore.
