Page 3 of Seduction of a Psychopomp
“Then maybe we should take more care not to get attached to things that die,” Yelena replied hotly.
I wondered at my grandmother’s words. It wasn’t uncommon for immortals to get emotionally attached to certain mortals, or even an entire family lineage. I thought of my friend Levi and his wife, Elara. From the first moment I saw her, I saw their life together. I saw their children, and their children’s children, and I found I already loved these people who didn’t even exist yet. Because they belonged to my dearest friend. I knew from the first moment I laid eyes on her that I would go to great lengths to care for these descendants of theirs, could easily imagine my future-self pulling strings and arranging marriages with my own descendants—if that’s what it would take to ensure their well-being—simply because they were his. Therefore, I could not begrudge my grandmother her affection for this fae family, if that was what it was.
But my sister wasn’t finished and sighed as she pinched the bridge of her nose. Her voice turned beseeching. “He gets one chance, Mama Zdenka. Even in an arrangement he brings a superior family line and immortality to the table. What does she bring?”
Our grandmother was unimpressed with Yelena’s gentler tone. “As a princess of the Dawn Court she has a direct royal connection to the Kingdom of the Rising Sun and good genetics, Yelena,” she explained as if my sister was particularly slow of mind.
“Obviously not, if she’s dying,” my sister snapped.
Grandmother merely shrugged, unconcerned, and waved her hand dismissively. “Victor’s magic will resolve her of any pesky mortal afflictions. But she has a pretty face, and she’ll make pretty babies for my favorite grandson.” I nearly choked on my tongue. “She’s a sweet girl and the pride of her grandmother.”
“And this has nothing to do with the fact that Mom attended said grandmother when she began her reign,” Yelena retorted sarcastically.Ah, there it is.
“Your disregard for the partiality of others smacks of hypocrisy, considering how jealously you guard your younger sibling,” Grandmother replied.
I closed my eyes to block out the bickering, wishing I could close my ears as well, and then took a deep breath. This probably had less to do with my mother’s attachment to the Queen of the Dawn Court and more to do with her and my grandmother scheming for a way to get me out of the Void, since the high fae were terribly vulnerable there, but either way, I’d always known that this day would come. I would never deign to shirk my duty to my family, to refuse what our matriarch thought best for us. I realized that the room had grown silent and opened my eyes to find my sister and grandmother staring daggers at each other, until they both slowly turned to pinmewith those stares. I gave my grandmother my gaze and nodded.
“I am willing,” I responded, resolving to be just that.
But what was I supposed to do with a wife?
Chapter 3
Grim
“Idoappreciateyourpersonal sacrifice so that I might have a few days off work,” my cousin said with a chuckle as he buckled his cloak about his shoulders. Nikolai never took anything seriously, especially if it had to do with me being thrust into a new situation. Rather, he seemed to find great joy in it, and I’d taken many lumps in the battle arena as a child while he found great amusement in “teaching me new things”. At least… until I’d come into my magic and left him laughing face down in the dirt.Small satisfactions…
“Shut up, Nikolai,” Yelena hissed under her breath. “I still don’t understand why it’s notyou,” she sneered at him as we stood in the southern courtyard of the castle two days after our meeting with our grandmother. Several members of my family would travel together to finalize negotiations with the Dawn Court, and the rest would attend the wedding. I was doing my best to ignore them as I waited for the elders to join us. “Why is she making the youngest marry this girl, if someone has to do it?” she grumbled at him accusingly. No one wasmakingme do anything, but I wasn’t going to debate it with her.
“Because she’s saving the best-looking for last, dearest cousin,” Nikolai responded with a teeth-baring smile as he ran his fingers through his hair with a playful flick. It was wasted on my sister, and he knew it, but that had never stopped him in the past. She was the only person he’d never managed to charm. He had always reminded me of Levi—charismatic, magnetic, quick with a sharp reply when warranted, though obviously he didn’t have the underlying siren’s magic that my friend carried. The thrall that Levi cast was a force my cousin could never compete with. They shared the same confidence and swagger, however, and it reminded me of the ache I felt that Levi couldn’t join me on this trip.
I’d stood as best-man in his wedding, and he wasn’t even allowed tojoin meat mine. The necessity of speed required us to take a portal through the Underworld instead of the Gate into Faery, and that wouldn’t end well for my mortal friend. Not that the Gate would have made much of a difference. The high fae were generally unwelcoming of other mortals trespassing in their realm. Elara had promised they would throw us a party when we returned, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I just wanted them to be able to witness our vows as I had theirs. Spoken words of promise imprinted on the souls of those held dearest to the speaker. Perhaps I was being too sentimental about it, but these people mattered to me. I was staring down the barrel of eternity and I wanted to share my special moments with my mortal friends. My family loved me, I knew, but as the youngest among a people who had lived for centuries among each other I’d never really felt as though I fit in entirely. Not the way I did with Levi.
“Why are you sulking?” Aleksei, my older brother, asked as he joined us in the courtyard, flecks of snow swirling about him as he moved. “Marriage is great fun. You’ll see,” he said with a slap on the back, which I didn’t appreciate. This was part of why I liked living in the Void. Humans didn’t try to talk to me. It was quiet there. No one touched me.
Nikolai barked a laugh at my brother. “Why are you wearinggreaves, Aleksei? Do you plan to fight our way into Faery?” He took a mock fighting stance, earning an unimpressed sneer from Yelena.
My brother frowned at his leg armor and then back at Nikolai. “I don’t like the feeling of underbrush grabbing at my legs, if you must know.” My brother looked incredibly similar to me: tall, fair skinned, black hair, same facial shape. But where some would describe me as leanly muscled, my brother was filled out with bulky muscle and always carried a permanent five o’clock shadow.
Nikolai rolled his eyes and laughed. “You think the high fae don’t have roads? We’re just going to go bushwhacking through the woods to find the Court of Dawn?”
“Holy Creator. Shutup, all of you,” my sister growled as my parents and grandmother exited the keep. “We can’t enter at the roads anyway,” she added with a grumble.
My mother shot alookat Yelena and Aleksei before scanning Nicolai and me with a practiced eye, her features softening as her gaze took us in. There was nothing soft about my father’s gaze, though whether he was mentally listing all the ways we could embarrass him in front of the Dawn Court or calculating whatever new obligations and responsibilities he would bear to our expanding family, I couldn’t say. Grandmother Zdenka wore a placid expression that could be mistaken for patience if you missed the sharpness in her eyes.
“Are we ready?” she asked, tucking a pair of gloves into her cloak, and not bothering to wait for a response. “Dmitri, if you would, please.”
My father produced his staff mid step and planted it in the snow as he reached our group, opening a portal just beyond us to the Mahajarem. No boatman attended the river of souls just then, and we stepped through the opening into silence except for the slow-moving water below. Grandmother was the first one through, swiftly stepping to the side to make room for everyone on the sandy shore of the dimly lit cavern. The lights had no discernible point of origin, and they cast no shadow, which always gave the entire area a dreamlike appearance. My father was the last one to enter and allowed the purple-edged rift between the realms to close with a hasty snap. I ignored my own mild annoyance at the reverberation it caused in my chest. This was how he always operated. He immediately opened a new portal a small distance to our right, and my grandmother stepped through into Faery before it had even settled.
I followed through behind my mother, entering a large meadow with a wary glance at the melting remnants of wet snow, watching for anything that might be a danger to her. It was a pointless endeavor in her case. My mother could fully handle herself, but the need to ensure the safety of those around us was deeply ingrained in our psyche.
A thin layer of morning fog blanketed the meadow and weak beams of light filtered through the white-barked trees at the far edges of it, back-lighting the party of fae that waited to greet us. To one side, a smudge of mountains the color of bruises stretched low across the sky, and to the other there was nothing but newly budding forest as far as the eye could see. The sun’s position behind the trees ahead told me it was currently a similar time as it had been in the Boundlands, but that didn’t mean the passage of time would remain relative.
Humans mistakenly refer to the Boundlands as Faery, but that’s because they don’t know any better. The high fae had left the Boundlands many thousands of years ago and had taken Faery with them. This place wasrealbut notnatural. Time passed differently here, as Faery didn’t align properly with any of the natural realms. Case in point: the budding trees signaled that it was spring here, but it was early autumn in both the Void and the Boundlands. There was no way to know howmuchtime had passed until you left. One could spend a handful of days here and return to their homeland to find that a year had passed or merely a few minutes.
I shrugged my shoulders uncomfortably, trying to shrug off thoughts of my friends back in the Boundlands. It didn’t matter how much time passed when you were immortal and everyone you cared about was too. But there was a small mortal child I cared about deeply back in the Boundlands, and the thought of returning to find him half grown into a man already made me feel strangely grief-stricken in a way I didn’t understand.
The party waiting in the trees—lithely built high fae in full ceremonial armor, shining like glass with an iridescent sheen—rode forward on their mounts to greet us. The man at the front was the most heavily muscled, though still lean compared to most other races, with dark brown skin and tightly bound locs, and the soft purple eyes that marked his people as high fae gleamed with bright intelligence. The rest of the group bore the same willowy builds, pointed ears, and purple eyes, though they displayed a myriad of skin tones. Everything from light to dark and a few with deep greens and pale lavenders, but this was more telling of their momentary mood rather than any hint at ancestry, as they had the ability to shape shift at will. Their customs dictated that they keep their “fae” forms as a courtesy to outsiders, but among themselves they regularly morphed between any number of forms throughout the day.
