But for a moment, that night had been magic, filling my heart with warmth and light that echoed the glow of the lanterns all around us.
“You’re here,” I said to Kalen, my heart thumping at the spark in his eyes—flickering from ice-blue to sapphire back to ice-blue again. Always so strange how they changed in the dreams sometimes.
Kalen approached me with a smile. His crown was perched on top of his head, twisting silver branches embedded with glittering diamonds that looked like stars. “I always come to your dreams when you call.”
“Did I conjure this memory, or did you?”
“I followed you wherever you wanted to go, love. This night is not one I would have chosen, despite how happy it was before…everything.”
My soul ached as he wound his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. I leaned my head against him and listened to the pounding of his heart. Closing my eyes, I inhaled his scent. Snow and mist, darkness and leather. It was such a familiar scent to me now that it chased away the pain. The night of the ball had been magical…until it hadn’t been. One of the light fae had threatened my life, and Kalen had killed the bastard right then and there. A statement to everyone else. I was under his protection.
Some of the mortals, including my mother, had taken it as a sign that King Kalen Denare was just as vicious and cruel as King Oberon. And so they’d fled into the mists beyond the safety of Endir’s walls, and a group of shadowfiends had slaughtered them.
The grief I’d felt at losing my mother had been almost insurmountable. A fist had closed around me and yanked me into the darkness. I hadn’t been able see any way out of it, and for a time, I’d thought it might hold me there forever. If it hadn’t been for Kalen’s steady kindness, the gentle way he’d treated me, and how he’d spent hours enduring—no,encouraging—my frantic need to train my body, that grief might have eventually consumed me completely.
“It was one of the worst nights of my life,” I said, closing my eyes as he held me, “but there were a few moments before it all went wrong, moments when we stood like this, dancing, when everything felt right. I was happy.”
He sighed and tightened his hold on me, his muscles shifting against my body. “Washappy. I wish you were happy now, love. I hate that the world keeps taking that feeling away from you.”
But as he said the words, I looked inside myself and saw that he was mistaken. “I am happy, Kalen. Well, part of me is. Even though everything is going horribly wrong, you’re here with me, and when I’m with you, I feel…”
Contentment, excitement…love.
My cheeks flamed with heat, and suddenly, I felt subconscious about my words. He clearly cared for me. He’d fought so hard to reach me, and he’d made amarriage bondwith me just to keep me safe. Kalen had claimed me as his, and yet it still felt as if there was so much left unsaid between us. He had not told me he loved me, and I hadn’t spoken those words, either. Not yet.
“I know,” he murmured against top of my head. “I feel it, too. And we need to celebrate it. When all this is over, we’ll have a ceremony like this with lanterns and dancing and fion, where we’ll announce our bond to the realm. We’ll have it all.”
I lifted my eyes to his face. “A wedding?”
“Only if you’d like one, of course.”
Warmth rushed through me, and together, we swayed to a soundless tune, basking in the feel of each other for as long as we could. But the moment couldn’t last forever—it never could. And so, after a time, I slowly pulled myself out of his arms and met his knowing gaze. We needed to talk about what we’d seen and heard so far in this strange kingdom. I’d called him here because of it.
“I take it you saw the onyx gemstone on Queen Tatiana’s throat,” I finally said, folding my arms and wishing I could take the words back. Just for another moment, just for a little longer, where none of this existed at all. But we couldn’t ignore this. We had two weeks at best before the world changed forever and Andromeda and her fellow gods took these lands as theirs.
“I’ll admit, it does look like Oberon’s.” He frowned. “And I could tell from the look on your face earlier that you feel the…sense of wrongness.”
“I felt it at their war camp first. It’s here, too. What do you think is going on? Does that gemstone hold another one of the gods? I thought the rest of them were banished, not trapped.”
He paced in front of me, his silver crown glittering beneath the warm glow of the lanterns. “So did I.”
“The mortals will know, won’t they? In Talaven?”
“I should hope so.”
“Have you heard from Niamh tonight?”
Kalen had heard from Niamh a few days ago. They’d boarded the ship, but then the mortals had locked the three of them in a cabin. Kalen didn’t seem particularly alarmed. In fact, it seemed like he’d expected it.
“No, I’m sure their situation hasn’t changed,” he said in a dark voice. “I don’t want them to waste a stone telling me they’re still stuck in that cabin.”
“I never should have let Val go.” My voice cracked.
“If the humans decide to trust Niamh and Alastair and share what they know, it will be because Val is with them. I know you’re worried, but she’ll be fine. The mortals were caught off guard by the change of plan, and the comet likely hasn’t helped. They’re just taking precautions.”
“You’re eerily calm about this.”
“The humans allowed them on board and are taking them to see their king. If they didn’t want to do that, they would have sailed off at the first sign of trouble.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, the strands curling around his fingers. “We, however, are in a much worse situation. If Queen Tatiana has given herself over to the darkness, she’ll never let us leave here alive, and she’ll certainly never become our ally against the gods.”
