Page 60 of Fae Unleashed
“We will not sign your contract, but if you lend us fighters, then I will send them back stronger than ever after our war has been won.” It was the only thing I could think to offer Foxglove.
The gleam of interest in his eyes made me wonder what he would want fighters for. He tried to play it cool before accepting my offer, but I could see the gears turning behind his eyes. I didn’t, for one moment, trust Foxglove.
No one in this room could be trusted. I took in everyone at the table, from Feri to Foxglove. Each and every person had turned against the original Seelie court at one point—some to my surprise. Even Tal had proven that he would save his own skin before dying for the court.
I turned to Cerri to silently ask her for permission before signing off on this deal. Her face blanched. I caught the flutter of her eyelids right before she collapsed. Of everyone present, I was the only one to move…
That, or I reacted before anyone else could even think of what to do. I caught Cerri and lifted her into both arms while my heart pounded a furious beat. My beast sniffed the air for threats, but there was no stench of rot that came with Faust. I saw no cursed glass needles.
Lady Ostara stood. I jumped to blame her while my beast snarled defensively. The woman stilled and offered a reassuring smile.
“Your princess passed out from exhaustion.” Lady Ostara bowed her head. “It seems that we have put a lot upon her shoulders. We should do better to keep her from bearing the full weight of what needs to be done. Her condition is our fault, and for that, I apologize. I will have a room prepared for her so that she may rest. You are more than welcome to sit by her side.”
The fae woman’s words could have been construed as manipulative. I knew there had to be a reason behind her sudden kindness, but my beast’s fear and fury polluted my mind. All I could do was clutch the unconscious Cerri tightly.
Cerri
The last thingI remembered was the weightlessness right before I passed out. My stomach had pinched tightly moments before, warning me that I’d barely eaten anything all day. I was doing a god-awful job of taking care of myself lately.
When I woke, I found a beast at the end of my bed. His big, black paws rested on the foot of the cushioned bed. He watched me with his chin propped on those big paws. When he noticed that I was awake, his wings fluttered behind him.
“When did you change forms?” I asked, groggily.
Rhoan only changed when there was a powerful threat. I ran both hands over my face and sat up. We’d been in a makeshift war room with people we couldn’t trust. It was no wonder Rhoan had shifted to his chimera form.
Fear sent a cold shiver down my spine. Had the curse taken him? I’d assumed that Faust would claim him the moment that Rhoan lost to the curse attached to their deal, but I honestly knew nothing about how this might work.
“Rhoan?” I asked nervously.
He stood and shook out his rainbow-black fur. With every step he took towards me, his form shrank. I breathed a sigh of relief when a tattooed man knelt at the side of my bed. I reached to cup his face and flinched when he jerked out of my reach.
Rhoan couldn’t hide his grieving stare from me as he glowered at the floor. Even his veil of black hair wasn’t enough to cover those glassy orbs from me. His jaw tightened, the muscles twitching from the strain.
I pulled my hand back and let it fall uselessly in my lap. Silence hung in the air between us. Rhoan had changed forms to keep me safe. That alone should have been enough to tell me he loved me, but his rejection stung more than I could have anticipated.
Were his feelings for me growing to be too much? Or was it simply that he’d lost interest in what I’d become? If that was the case, then it wasn’t fair. I wasn’t any different than I’d ever been. My hair color had changed, and I had unexpected tattoos now, but that was all Beryl’s curse could do to me.
“You should eat,” Rhoan said, his voice devoid of emotion.
My lip curled. I couldn’t bear this. He moved to put a silver tray on my lap, but I kicked off the blankets and threw my feet to the floor before he could trap me beneath it. I wanted to be anywhere but here, where the love between us had gone to die.
I raced out of the room and up to the bedroom that had once belonged to my biological parents. Staring at their bed, I yearned for the memories that Ostara had locked behind magical doors. It occurred to me that I could go to her and ask her to unblock them so that I could remember both of my loving families.
Now wasn’t the time. I yearned to be alone for the first time since I’d learned who I really was. Here, in the castle, I didn’t have to shrink away from open windows. I didn’t need Rhoan constantly in my shadow.
I found the hidden latch in the stone wall and opened the secret door up to the laboratory. The cauldron from my dream sat on the table. Had it been there the first time I’d visited? I couldn’t remember if it’d been this specific one or a bland stand-in.
The cauldron hummed with power. I ran my fingers along the lifted decorations around the rim and read the story in them. This cauldron had belonged to the original Cerridwen, the one who belonged to neither Seelie nor Unseelie.
The Cerridwen that came before me had been nothing more than herself, and that’d been enough for her to be written down in history. Fae that came long after her remembered her name on both sides of the courts.
This time, when I cracked open her journal—I wasn’t quite sure how I knew it was her journal—I managed to break through her code and dive into the secrets she’d stashed. It wasn’t until much later, curled up on the floor with the journal in my lap, that I realized the journal had appeared out of nowhere. I knew that I’d left it back at my apartment, yet here it was in my hands.
It was a sign, but I wasn’t quite sure what the sign wanted to tell me. It seemed to be written in a language I didn’t understand yet. Instead of lingering on what I didn’t know, I stood and set about exploring what Ididknow—potion-crafting.
The first Cerridwen had recorded her journey deep into arcana. She’d used her cauldron as a way to explore the vast capabilities of undedicated magic. There were threads of arcana for life and death, for truth and justice. Cerridwen had pushed past all of that to claim raw magic for herself.
The life arcana that my parents had given me still thrummed within my core. The garden of power that I’d discovered still bloomed, but with Unseelie power now. I reached past that. I delved deeper into the threads that bound the universe and plucked pure magic for myself.
