Page 38 of Fae Unleashed
We waited, breaths held while he clutched me close to his chest. The wine in my system made the seconds stretch into hours. Yet, nothing else happened.
“What the fuck was that?” I whispered under my breath.
Rhoan let me climb out of his grasp. I peered around for the source of the break, but only Rhoan and I were here. The small fae gasped and shouted inside, but no one screamed in fear. I got the sense that we were all staring up at the same sky.
Had…had I broken it? Was this the consequence of letting Beryl’s blight corrupt my arcana? I pressed a hand to my chest and reached deep in the earth. The seed that I’d planted was sleeping peacefully. It was still the same as it had been when I’d placed it.
This wasn’t me…
I turned back to Rhoan. Could his curse have caused this? Was this what he meant when he said there was a clause in his deal?
Tal walked into the garden. He snapped the lapels of his suit jacket to get the wrinkles out. However, that couldn’t get the blood out of the fabric. He wiped at his lower lip with the back of his hand and turned an annoyed glare upon us before his eyes rolled upwards and widened with shock.
“I didn’t do it,” Rhoan and I blurted out at the same time like a couple of kids caught goofing around under the bleachers.
Tal took us both in, pressed his eyes shut, and seemed to weigh his next words carefully. “You two are insufferable. I cannot believe you’re the next leaders of the Seelie Court. One is touched with an Unseelie curse that seems nigh unbreakable, and the other is a feral brat raised by wolves.”
I thought Tal was talking about me at first, then he brought up being raised by wolves, and I realized that was me. This made me glance back at Rhoan. So, he had a curse, too? He’d called it a deal. The two seemed very different to me.
I waved a hand at the sky. “What is this? What’s going on?”
“Beryl is furious,” Tal said, gesturing to the crack in the sky. “She’s trying to take the domain back by brute force.”
Panic hit my veins. There were people living here again. The sleeping fae weren’t the only ones here anymore. I had small fae living here because I’d thought they would be safe from Beryl’s influence so long as the domain belonged to me.
It seemed that if I could take from her, then she would try to take from me, too. I should have taken that into account. It seemed foolish to ignore the push and pull between us right now.
“This does mean that she’s threatened, though.” Tal grinned.
My panic didn’t ease. Instead, I gaped at Tal for being so confident.
“If she takes this back from me, then everyone here will be in danger!” I clenched my fists at my sides.
My arcana thumped like a heartbeat. It swelled and contracted around me, making the garden do the same. Tal shot me a concerned and confused look with his features twisted.
I grabbed the front of his jacket and yanked him towards me. “My job is to protect my court. You might think this is a good sign, but I see it as a threat to those who trust me to keep them safe. If I am to be queen, then I’m going to be a good one to everyone who trusts me, even the small fae.”
Tal’s expression fell as if he were ashamed of himself. He’d forgotten to take the small fae into account. The man didn’t even see them.
It occurred to me that Tal was the only one here who wasn’t looked down upon by the Seelie fae. Well, or so I thought.
He sighed, stepped back, and dropped his head. “Apologies. I often forget my own origins and how the Seelie hated that as well.”
Today was a day for secrets, it seemed. That reminded me that Rhoan and I had never discussed the clause that would break his deal with Faust. Somehow, it involved me. I wasn’t sure how since I hadn’t been in Rhoan’s life at the time. He was an ancient fae, and I was a young twenty-something princess. I’d barely been an idea at the time.
I couldn’t ask, though. Tal went on about his own secrets.
“There was a time when I was a mortal man. Lord Foxglove found me and fell for my beauty. When he stole me away from the mortal realm and fed me faery food, I started to change. It seemed that I’d had some fae blood in me and, under his care, he brought it out to make me more like himself…
“Not everyone in the court at the time liked that. They saw me as a mockery of their own beauty. I would never be like them. More than once, Lady Ostara spit upon me. It was…an interesting experience to say the least.”
Rhoan groaned. “You discovered that you liked it. Didn’t you?”
Tal straightened his tie. “I will neither confirm nor deny.”
We all laughed together, but I never forgot that Rhoan had narrowly avoided telling me his secret. He went to retrieve two more glasses so we could all drink and consider the crack in the sky while we talked about our next move.
There was one thing that we all agreed upon: Faust needed to be stopped.
