Page 41 of A Song of Air (Fae Elementals #4)

B ryson’s eyes fluttered open to be met with shadows and light. Each blink came faster and harder than the last. Her brows furrowed, eyes squinting as she tried to make out whatever figures she could. Slowly, painfully, the world came to her in a clearer picture. Splotches of color contorted with the shadows, bright bursts of light and slashing, dark lines.

It wasn’t what she’d had, but it was something.

Her eyeballs still burned from the iron that coated the air, and she felt compressions against her chest with every breath, like there was a heavy weight against it, making every drag of air burn.

But she was alive.

Comforting warmth slipped across the skin at her nape. Strong fingers pushing aside knotted red curls to play with her skin. Bryson found herself leaning into the touch and the strong, prevalent aroma of cocoa and spices. Weylyn’s essence invaded her entire system, and she drew strength from it. From him.

She shouldn’t have found comfort in the way his fingers slid a slow trail around to the front of her neck, pressing firmly against the unsteady jumping of her throat. Her breath hitched, nostrils tickling, senses clouding as Weylyn pressed closer.

Her eyes had closed against his proximity. She didn’t want to look at him. Not when she could scarcely see and most certainly not when fear beat a compulsive rhythm in her body.

Bryson wanted to quit him. To be stronger than she was and push him away. But he was a force, a vortex she was twirling in, losing her head as her body lost control within him.

Maybe that was a reason they were in this mess in the first place, she thought as those strong fingers cupped the underside of her jaw, tilting her head up. His lack of a care for her personal boundaries were the reason they’d both ended up in the Unseelie Court.

His touch sent little currents dancing across her exposed skin. His thumb teased her bottom lip and her mouth dropped open on a gasp at the sensations he provoked inside her, all around her. Like little fireworks were being set off in her chest.

It was the bond. Bryson knew it was the bond, urging them closer, pushing them together.

But this was his fault. He invaded her mind. He made her lose all logic and reason. He forced his way inside her head. He’d fucked her, spiritually if not emotionally.

Weylyn’s hand cupped her cheek, and she felt his long hair curtain around her face, tickle her skin.

Bryson was to blame as well, she thought. She’d let him get the best of her. She’d let him push past her walls. She’d enjoyed his touch, far too much, and in doing so, she’d betrayed Everette.

That palm met the side of her thigh, sliding to the underside to lift and hook it around his waist. Her limbs complied, wrapping tightly around his lithe body within the confined space. He pressed closer like he belonged between her legs and would make a home there for eternity.

Everette was at fault too, though, Bryson reasoned. He’d been treating her abhorrently for quite some time, his jealousy becoming a monster that changed him and the way he treated her. He’d shoved her. He’d pushed her inside a portal to the Unseelie.

Everyone was to blame, and if she went over it again and again in her head, she would find nothing but an everlasting circle, a wheel that turned and turned and turned and turned and...

Weylyn’s lips neared her own and she gasped, swallowing his next breath. She curved her body up into his, tilting her head up like she would to accept whatever he meant to give her. In this moment, she didn’t care if it was weak. Sometimes it was okay to let your strength wane, she reasoned, so long as there was someone there to shoulder whatever evil came.

And Weylyn, she knew, would cleave apart the world to protect her.

“Open your eyes, little mate,” he whispered near her mouth. “I want to see you.”

They fluttered open. This close, she was met with few details. The outline of his sharp features, curtained by long strands of darkness. Like he’d undone his braid in the night and let the tresses hang free. His eyes were the brightest thing about him. They glittered and even through the haze of her vision she could make the burn of them clearly. Clearer than anything she’d ever seen. Brighter than they’d ever been. The thin line of his mouth curved up into a smile she had memorized.

“There you are,” he whispered, like he’d somehow lost her within the void and had found her after years of searching.

And for someone who had lost everyone she’d ever loved, the concept of being searched for when she thought she had no one?

It was everything.

Bryson’s hands lifted into the dark strands of his hair, playing with the ends, pushing them over his shoulders. He shivered at the contact, at the simple gesture of her playing with his hair that made a low growl rumble through his chest.

Her fingers itched to brush through it and separate the strands into braids. It was maddening, these urges. She could feel the bond like it was a living thing. Different from her bond with her familiar, more visceral, more pounding. It bled between them like a string forcing them together and wrapping around and around.

Weylyn’s palm slid over her thigh. He was gentle as he pushed her leg back down, unwrapping it from his waist. He leaned up and away from her, putting distance between their bodies, taking away the heady, honey-thick air with him. She could breathe again.

But a part of her didn’t want to.

She wanted to suffocate. To drown .

“Up, little mate.” He sat back on his haunches, his body tense. “It is morning, and we must find a way out of here sooner rather than later.”

Instead of sighing in frustration, Bryson curled her stomach, heaving as she sat up and met Weylyn’s chest. He didn’t linger a second before he was pulling away from her and tugging her with him out of the hollow of the tree.

The air was still thick with iron, yet everything around them was silent. The sunlight was bright, streaking against Bryson’s eyes. She squinted against the pain of it and her temples throbbed. She groaned, shoving her crusted hair behind her ears.

“Are you well?” Weylyn asked.

She turned towards his voice and form. “I’m fine,” she told him, though her voice was hoarse with the pain of iron. She felt it all around her. Down to the roots of the trees, like it had eroded and refused to leave. “My skin itches, though.” She had to fight the urge to rake her nails across her body.

“It seems the iron the humans left behind in Seelie made its way here,” Weylyn observed. “It was worse in Seelie. We traveled through the Iron Mountains, and it was far too embedded within the earth. It would be better if we left quickly before iron sickness sets in.”

“How are we going to do that? Jump into another circle?”

Weylyn let out a noise she couldn’t quite decipher. “Absolutely not. Circles are far too unreliable. We could step into one and easily end up in the Seelie Court or worse, in the middle of a monster-infested ocean. There is no guarantee where we might end up. I am not willing to risk it.”

Bryson took a breath, a sudden thought gripping her. “Then how did you end up here?”

She couldn’t see his expression clearly, but she could feel the way his body stilled. He didn’t make a single move and she wondered if he was about to invade her mind before he answered, “I jumped in after you.”

After everything that had happened, Bryson wasn’t sure how she could still find it within her to be surprised. She’d known he’d ended up here somehow, but given all that had happened since she’d fallen through the circle, she hadn’t questioned Weylyn’s presence until now. She’d only been grateful he was there at all.

“Why would you do such a thing?”

“Because you needed me.”

She dropped her mouth open, but no words came out. It seemed that Weylyn didn’t want her to speak anyway because he pushed on.

“We need to get moving. The day burns brighter, and we cannot be seen by anyone within the Unseelie Court.”

“Why?”

“It would be... unwise to announce our presence.” There was a lingering in his words that made her wonder if maybe he wasn’t being quite so truthful, but she ignored it. He was right, after all. The Unseelie Court and the Seelie Court had been at odds since long before the war with the humans had ever started. There’d been a classist divide between the two species for as long as Bryson could even remember, longer than the stories her father had told her.

Unseelie would not treat two High Fae with kindness.

“Are there even any Unseelie left, though?” Bryson had to ask aloud. “I can feel so much iron...”

“That ghoul was alive and well.” Weylyn took her hand. “It is best if we don’t assume anything and take necessary precautions against any and all Unseelie traps.” They started forward. She could see well enough to dodge anything in their path and not trip. Despite the burning in her eyes, she could make out shapes, colors, shadows, and light. That was enough.

“What kind of precautions?” she whispered.

She shouldn’t have asked, but it was better to garner any and all information she could. She’d fallen into Unseelie, a court that was foreign to her, and had nearly been devoured by a ghoul. Had it not been for Weylyn, Bryson would be dead at this very moment. And with her vision acting out of sorts, she needed all the information she could about where she was. If only to protect herself. To survive.

“What do you know about the Unseelie Court?”

“Only what I’ve heard in stories. That they are very different from High Fae. They can’t wield magic like we can. They have glamor and magic, yes, but Mana hasn’t gifted them with the same type of powers we possess. I know you aren’t supposed to make deals with them.”

“Never, ever make a deal with an Unseelie Fae,” Weylyn confirmed, squeezing her hand in warning. His tone had taken a low kind of urgency. “It will only end badly for you if you do.”

Unseelie Fae were tricksters. Mischievous. Bryson was smart enough to not purposefully or inadvertently make a deal with anyone no matter what. Unseelie liked to twist words to their convenience and find loopholes within their promises only to fuck you over.

Bryson had enough of that already.

“So how do you propose we get back?”

Weylyn sighed, not an irritated sound because of her questions, but it was something born of worry. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him worried before. It made her gut churn before suddenly it emitted a low growl.

Heat suffused her cheeks, but she turned to him unapologetically. “I’m hungry.”

“Then I shall aim to hunt and feed you.”

“You don’t have to do that. We can just grab a fruit or something—”

“No,” he hissed. “Not everything in Unseelie is safe to eat and drink.”

“Why not?” She vaguely remembered stories, but her culture was long gone, the stories dead and buried. It was hard to sift through what was myth and real.

“There are some fruits and drinks that contain magic. Eat what you should not, and it will keep you tethered to the land, or to whoever offered it to you, for years, decades, or whenever they decide to release you from their service. Eating and drinking in Unseelie is dangerous.”

Her stomach churned; her appetite lost at those words. “The ghoul fed me—”

“You are safe, little mate,” he assured. “It is only some things. I will help you determine what to eat and drink. Besides, the ghoul’s death would have freed you from service, had that been the case.”

Bryson let out a breath of relief at that. At least she hadn’t fucked herself over by eating what she shouldn’t have. At least there was that.

They continued trekking through the Unseelie Court in relative quiet. Bryson allowed Weylyn to guide her. She wanted desperately to ask him where he was leading her too. If they couldn’t jump into mushroom circles, if they had no map, how did he know where he was going? But every step became a pain after a while. Her eyes eventually burned enough that tears slipped down her cheeks. While she could see, the brightness hurt so much that her head had already started to pound and the lack of food in her belly had her stomach twisting with every step.

Until finally, Weylyn sat her down in a shady area. The prickles of perspiration against the back of her neck cooled down with a slight breeze. She swiped her palm against it, but it only came away clammy and uncomfortable.

“I am going to hunt,” Weylyn announced. “The area is safe for now. Do not move from this spot.”

“Trust me, I’m not going to go wandering off in a place I have no experience traveling in. I’m not stupid.”

“I never said you were. Rebellious, but never stupid.”

“Yeah, well, I know when and where to rebel.”

The last she heard was Weylyn’s soft chuckle before he disappeared from her line of sight. She leaned back against the tree, the bark digging grooves into her hot back, and she listened for Weylyn to return. She took stock of her own inventory while she waited. A dagger at her waist and a quiver with arrows and a bow. She was sure some of them were broken because she’d fallen on them when she’d landed in Unseelie, but she had yet to remove the ones she no longer needed.

She began doing that now, pulling the pack from her back and feeling at the weapons with expert fingers. Splinters snagging onto her calloused fingertips were easy to ignore as she felt up and down on the arrows, tossing the broken ones off to the side.

Weylyn arrived once again, a dead bird in his hand of a species she wasn’t familiar with. He set the bird on the ground near her feet like an offering. It was a blob of bright purple and yellow feathers. While Bryson picked the poultry into her hands and began plucking at the feathers, Weylyn got to work building a small fire.

Using the dagger at her waist, Bryson gutted and cleaned the bird, stripping and cutting it down to hold it over the fire for consumption. It was instinct to fall into that routine, even if she couldn’t see it as well as she’d like.

While they waited for the meat to cook, Bryson sat back on her palms. A brief moment of peace settled over her mind. She didn’t trust it. It made room for the darkness and invasive thoughts to take root.

Her nails scraped into the dirt. “We have to get out of here,” she said finally, breaking through the oppressive silence. “We have to go through the circles.”

“No.”

“It’s the only way.”

Weylyn emitted a soft growl but didn’t contradict her, so she pushed on.

“We would hold onto each other as we step through. Keep stepping through circles until we end up somewhere I can make contact with my familiar. Unless...” Her gaze strayed to him. He sat with his shoulders relaxed, though his lips were pressed into a shadowy line. “Can you somehow make contact with one of your people?”

“Unseelie doesn’t work like that,” he whispered. “It is an older, much more wicked magic that controls the Ley Lines of this Court. It does not follow the same rules of time and space as other places; therefore I am unable to reach them, and it is why Uric would not be able to open a portal. We are in different dimensions, so to speak.”

“Great, that’s just great then.” She shook her head back and forth. “So, the circles are our only hope.”

Almost reluctantly, Weylyn drawled, “Yes.”

“Great. Then we need to find one immediately. I can usually sense them, but the iron in the air is making everything so much more difficult. My magic feels like it’s sleeping, but I think if I try, I’ll be able to get it working.”

There was a pop and a sizzle of the bird over the fire.

“Of that I have no doubt, little mate.”

Bryson rolled her eyes at the cool confidence he mustered. She didn’t even bother telling him not to call her that. “Your faith in me is astounding.”

This time, Weylyn chuckled deep and low. “I have witnessed Fae Elementals do extraordinary things. I have witnessed iron melt at our feet and rendered useless against ice. I’ve seen it consumed entirely with water. If anyone is able, it is you .”

His faith in her brought a new surge of warmth that had no business nestling itself in her chest. But it also brought up so many more questions. “They can do that? Defy iron?”

“Yes.”

A thrill shot through her. She’d sensed their individual power, but all of them together had been astounding. It made her wonder just how far her own abilities could extend, what she would be able to accomplish. She wanted to find out.

Discreetly, she called forth her magic. It responded far too slowly for her liking, like it was sluggish and wading through thick pools of sludge to get to her. It was the iron, but it frustrated her that it responded so slowly. Once it was there, she sent a small gust towards the fire, fanning the flickering flames.

It responded and blazed up, consuming the bird before dying down once again, leaving scorched edges behind. She smelt the charred skin and her stomach rumbled once again. With a groan she laid back down against the grass, pressing her palms against her stomach.

“You know a lot about the Unseelie Court,” she murmured in the ensuing silence.

From beside her, she felt Weylyn’s body stiffen a single fraction before he relaxed. “I know what everyone else knows.”

“Hmm.” She wanted to push, but was afraid to pry into his life. She didn’t want him to think this would be anything other than what it was. They were helping each other to get out of this court. Nothing more. When they arrived back at camp, she was going to reject the mating bond, no matter what pain it brought them both. She had to make that very clear to him now. “Why did you jump into the circle after me?”

He sighed, almost as though she were annoying him. “Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because you are my mate.”

“That’s such a shitty answer.” She sat up again, turning towards him. She made him out in splotches and glared at him. “You don’t even know me. I could be the world’s worst mate in the history of mates. And yet you risked a lot to go in after me. Why?”

“It does not matter.”

“Oh, I think it does.” She scooted closer so her knees touched him. The brief bit of contact lit every nerve, and she knew he’d felt it too by the way he shivered. “You don’t know me, why do you even want me so bad?”

“On the contrary, I know you rather well. I know you better than anyone in the entire world, living or dead, has ever known you.”

There was a sudden thickness in her throat that made it hard to swallow. “How much does your mind magic allow you to see, anyway?”

She felt, rather than saw, the way his lips curved. She felt his stare penetrate her. She felt the phantom touch of hands glide along her back as if he were caressing her, but he hadn’t moved, so it wasn’t him. That she knew.

“Everything,” he purred in her mind.

She swatted near her ear like one would a pesky fly. “Stop doing that. It’s invasive.”

He huffed and poked at the fire with a stick. “Everyone is always so quick to tell me to leave them be, but tell me, little mate, if you had magic such as mine, would you be able to control the urge, the need, the curiosity, to see what lives in another’s heart?”

When she didn’t reply, he shoved the stick fully into the fire.

“Exactly.” There was a smile in his voice. “Everyone loves to keep secrets. Everyone wants to know everyone else’s secrets–until their own are on the line or being threatened.” His long fingers lifted near his face. He stared at them, flexed them, before dropping his hand to the grass. “Everyone has a use for me until they do not like what I discover.”

His voice had lowered, and while she didn’t detect a single hint of sadness, she felt empathy for him. She dared a few inches closer.

“Fine,” she said. “I admit, I would be a bit curious. But doesn’t it get tiring being in everyone else’s head all the time?”

“No.”

Bryson rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

“Why wouldn’t you? I like my magic. I like picking at secrets. I like knowing things no one else does. I like to hold it over their heads and watch them squirm like fish at the end of a line. I take great joy in blackmail. Why should I be ashamed of that?”

“So, you do it for fun?”

His eyes burned as they found hers. They scorched a path down to her soul. “Yes,” he hissed. “I do it for fun. Because I fucking can. Because I fucking want to. Because it makes me feel powerful. Is that so wrong, little mate?”

He asked like he truly wanted to know the answer. And Bryson’s answer came immediately.

“No,” she said. “It’s not.”

Predator or prey, her familiar had told her. She’d been prey many times and would kill not to be that again. And if using his magic to invade the minds of others made him feel the power he deserved to feel, who was she to reprimand him for it?

He flashed his canines at her. She caught the gleam of them, heard them snap together. Like he wanted to lean forward and take a bite out of her neck.

“I knew you would say that, little mate.”

“Because you cheat and use your magic.”

“I didn’t need to that time. Don’t forget that I already know everything there is to know about you. I know what vortex lies within you. I know you fight hard to keep it tamped down, but I know the truth.”

She felt her breath catch. Her heart pounded. Suddenly that vortex he spoke of seemed to come alive and she had to shove it back into place. So much anger, so much feeling and nothing to turn it into, nothing for it to become, nothing but wish she could do something, anything, with it.

“What truth?” she found herself asking.

He chuckled against her mouth. She hadn’t even felt him move closer yet there he was, his breath blowing warm against her lips, and she wanted to swallow his essence down like Fae wine she never imbibed in, if only to feel what she never let herself feel.

“That you want to watch the world burn just as much as I do.”

In that moment, Bryson knew she hated him. She hated him so much for pulling out of her chest the words she was never brave enough to face on her own. Words that had haunted her for so long because she knew that if her mother, if her father, if they heard what ran rampant through her mind, they would be so ashamed. She had garnered darkness for years. Anger, hatred, bitterness, it grew within her and coalesced into that current that she wanted nothing more than to unleash upon the world that had wronged her.

But she couldn’t bring herself to, so she hid it away. So much anger and so little to do with it.

Bryson slowly peeled herself away from Weylyn’s presence, but all he did was follow.

“Don’t back away from me now, little mate.” There was a malicious glee in his tone. He was enjoying this. The bright, golden hue of his eyes only brightened more as he crowded into her space. Even as she tripped back against the grass and lay there, he loomed over her and smiled that dangerous smile, his hair slipping over his shoulders to curtain them. “We were having so much fun, weren’t we?”

Her breathing grew labored. That anger wanted unleashed, but she kept a tight hold on it. “No,” she croaked.

“You think your family was so good, don’t you? You think they’d be ashamed that darkness lives inside you when only peace lived within them?”

“Weylyn,” she pleaded. She wanted him to stop. She needed him to stop. She was unable to face what he was saying. It felt like he was cleaving her apart from the inside out.

“Foolish little mate,” he scoffed down at her. “Darkness? Anger? Bitterness? Resentment? It lives in us all. It even lived in your precious family. You just don’t want to see it. You refuse to remember it. Because those are the only memories of them you have, and you don’t want them tainted.”

“Don’t talk about my family!”

He leaned up, his brows two slashing lines that curved with his disappointment. “Fine,” he conceded. “But there is no shame in darkness. There is no shame in wanting revenge on those who have wronged you.” He pushed away from her again, and this time when he spoke, his voice sounded far away as he started to leave. “Sometimes, it is the only thing any of us can hold on to.”

She didn’t move until she was sure he was gone. Until his footsteps had receded. Until she could no longer smell him in her nose, but he was cloying, crowded. He invaded her with his cruelty and that malicious smile and there was nothing to do to expel him from her system.

He was a menace, a cruel, terrible menace with no regard for anyone’s feelings but his own.

And yet he was right.

He was right .

Tears burned the backs of her eyelids, and she pressed her fists against the scars, as if that could shove the emotion back down where it belonged. But it wouldn’t relent. She hated it. She hated him so much it ached. Her chest burned and she clawed at it like she could reach inside and grip the bond that tethered them only to tear it out from her being.

She didn’t want it; she didn’t want him. She didn’t want that truth haunting her because she’d tried so hard to keep it hidden. Now that it was out in the open, what did that make her?

What was Bryson if not loyal to her family and their memories?

What would she be if not what they told her what she had to be? Someone great. Someone who was meant to help. Someone who was meant to fight in the Seelie Court’s war? What was she if not everything they always told her she was supposed to be?

If she stripped herself down, she’d be left with nothing but fucking bones and rage. A hollow shell of a thing.

Because what would rage do for her? What had rage ever done for anybody in the world except leave it desolate and bare?

The rage was no good.

But... Weylyn was right, too.

Sometimes, it was the only thing anyone had within them. And for so long, all she’d done was tamp it down and live within the shadow of who her parents wanted her to be. So she held on. To it. To them. But now it felt like her grip was slipping and she was falling... falling...

She sighed and opened her eyes.

And she was met with the snarling face of a creature of bone and rage.

And Bryson opened her mouth to scream.