Fine, so maybe Creslynhadnoticed her twin sister was fading away, but she’d done nothing to improve her welfare.
He shook his head once. Resolutely. “It’s not a good idea, my lady. Brackroth is dangerous. You most of all should know the true nature of its dangers.”
To her credit, Creslyn didn’t even flinch. “Indeed. But she’ll have you.”
Except Kjeld didn’t want the responsibility of Caelian. He didn’t want her to be dependent upon him to keep her safe, he didn’t want her to need him to be her protector.
He didn’t want to have to worry about her.
That last thought left an unsettled feeling in his chest. A tightness he didn’t particularly like.
“Please, Kjeld,” Creslyn pleaded, and he caught sight of it then—the worry, the fear—reflected in the depths of her eyes.“She needs out of Aeramere. At least for a while. Perhaps the upcoming season.”
The unspoken entreaty filled the space with desperation.
Creslyn, and likely Ariesian as well, did not want Caelian to have to suffer through Midsummer. Throughthe Season. Through the embarrassment of knowing that she would not be an ideal match for any lord because the loss of her magic was too great. At dinner parties, she would be excluded from conversation. At balls, she would never receive an offer to dance. Unless her magic returned, she would be cast aside by the very same society that once adored her.
He might be fae, but it seemed he was still capable of feeling human emotion. Most notably, empathy.
“Fine,” he grumbled, tugging at the leather of his vest. It was suddenly too tight, and he was far too uncomfortable. “But I will not be the one to tell her.”
Creslyn breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Kjeld.”
He shrugged, shifting his weight, and dipped his head in her direction. “You’re most welcome, my lady.”
Kjeld excused himself from the dining hall, claiming he had to pack his bags and ready Odryss for the flight. Even though he had no idea when he was leaving, it mattered not. He needed to clear his mind, needed space away from the elaborate walls of House Celestine that made him feel like a giant walking amongst the stars.
As soon as he took one stride out into the corridor, he caught the soft cadence of her voice floating on the air. Her scent lingered. Lush and blooming starflower. Warm amber. Mouthwatering vanilla. The smell of her enraptured his senses, but it was not what made his blood thrum with lust. That was her heartbeat, the delicate dance of her pulse through his veins. It drove him mad, making him acutely aware of her at all times, made him long for things he shouldn’t want.
Avoiding Caelian was a useless endeavor. He would never be able to escape her. Not when she occupied every crevice of his mind. Soon enough, he would be forced to spend every waking moment with her. It sounded like absolute torture. For no other reason than the fact that Caelian’s careless wishing changed him irrevocably.
She wished for him to survive—and he lived. His chest filled. His heart began to beat. She wished for him to be fae—and his soul was immortal. He possessed no magic, but he had the damn pointy ears, and a kind of chaotic ferocity churned in his blood, making him damn near feral. He’d admired Caelian before, dreamed of her, perhaps even fancied himself courting her. But now his fae instincts amplified those mortal sentiments, and that was something not even the gods, or stars, or fate could control. In his new life, his free will remained his own. It was something he couldn’t stand, the anger he couldn’t erase paired with the truth of his heart. No, Kjeld was not madly in love with Caelian.
He was fucking obsessed with her.
CHAPTER THREE
Caelian glanced around her mother’s former bedchamber and wrinkled her nose in disgust. The linens had all been removed, the tapestries were stripped from the walls, and most of her belongings, every object that could be traced to her, were gone. All that remained was a four-poster bed, her crystal vanity, an old desk in the sitting room, and a chest filled with ballgowns that had never been worn.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Caelian scowled. “It smells of musty parchment, wilted flowers, and death.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Sarelle breezed past her into the bedchamber and walked in a small circle, planting her hands on her hips. Starlight shimmered around her, catching on the fluttering sleeves of her amethyst gown. “She didn’t even die in here. It’s just strangely empty without her constant, overbearing presence.”
Oh.
Maybe that was the cause of the disconcerting shift in the air.
Caelian always remembered her mother’s quarters as being uncomfortably stagnant. The temperature of the room was always warmer than it should’ve been despite the weather. Suffocating and heavy with dread. Each time she stood beforeTrysta’s disapproving glare, her lungs would tighten, her eyes would water and burn, and her skin would prickle with unease until she felt the need to soak in a freezing bath and scrub away the unsavory sensation. The cloying scent of her mother’s perfume still clung to every surface, making it impossible to erase her memory completely.
“What exactly are we doing in here?” Sarelle asked, drawing Caelian’s attention back to the task at hand.
“We’re snooping.”
It seemed fairly obvious since she asked to rummage through the rest of Trysta’s things at breakfast. But Sarelle was often lost to her own musings, her fanciful daydreams usually taking priority over the conversations flowing around her.
“Snooping,” Sarelle repeated, her voice as soothing as a lullaby as she wandered over to their mother’s vanity. She inspected a few pots of colored rouge, each of them coated with a fine layer of dust. Wiping her hands off on the silk of her gown—their mother would have been scandalized and Ariesian would be appalled—she pulled open one of the selenite drawers and peered inside. “Are we looking for anything in particular?”
“Well…” Caelian rolled her lips together in consideration, surveying the space. “I suppose we’re searching for a clue of some sort. Something that might give us some direction about why Mother chose to poison Father, though most importantly, why she deemed it necessary to disguise her Druidic bloodline from us.”
