Chapter eight

A Family Affair

I expected the two Fae males to wave their hands and dinner would appear on the table, laid out like a fabulous banquet fit for a king. But they actually cooked with their own hands. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as I watched them move seamlessly around each other in the apartment’s small kitchen, tossing each other herbs and spices, bickering about how much lemon juice was enough and how much was too much. It was so utterly normal.

I was so distracted, however, that I didn’t hear our visitor enter until she spoke.

“You two have spent far too long in the mortal realm.”

I turned at the sound of the melodic feminine voice to see the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. She was tall and slim, her frame looming even higher in the black stilettos she wore on her feet, open-toed, nails painted a deep purple. Her legs were smooth and toned and went all the way up to her short black skirt and sparkling, drooping top. Her lips were painted plum and her eyes were like starlight as she turned her megawatt smile on me, tossing her dark, wavy locks over a shoulder.

“Is this her?” she asked. Her voice was like honey, sweet and genuine.

I just blinked at her, understanding for the first time why my ancestors might have believed themselves standing before a goddess so long ago. Maybe that had even been this woman herself.

“Cass, this is Professor Seren Belling. She prefers to be called Ren,” Lark introduced, tossing a dishtowel over his shoulder as he strode across the kitchen and leaned against the counter I was sitting at to make the introductions. “Ren, this is my sister, Casseiopia.”

“Cass,” she corrected, sticking out a hand.

I shook it and she grinned from cheek to cheek.

“You’re half Fae,” she blurted.

“Cass,” Lark muttered a low warning.

“I’m sorry,” she said to me. “It’s just, these two haven’t told me hardly anything at all about you. Tell me what you do. Something with the rifts?”

She was moving quickly, already settling onto the bar stool beside mine as she leaned forward, interested. She placed a hand on my knee and Lark’s gaze shot to the contact.

“Oh, yes,” I answered, caught off guard by her overwhelming friendliness.

Something about Casseiopia put me at ease. She was bright eyed and friendly, teeth gleaming white in her radiant smile that seemed permanently affixed to her face. She came across as someone I could actually talk to. Someone who might tell me something about her world instead of keeping me in the dark until it was convenient for her, instead of grumbling or growling at me any time I asked a question, instead of commanding me all the time.

“I work for Hadley University,” I told her. “It’s a prestigious university in the mortal plane. Well, in my country at least. My uncle and I make up the entire astrophysics department. Anyway, when the rifts started popping up around the globe, the DAA, that’s the Department of Astrophysical Anomalies, hired us as consultants to help their agents close them.”

She just listened intently, nodding from time to time and showing genuine interest. She didn’t snap at me to inform me she already knew what the DAA was. She didn’t interrupt me with an observation or a question that she deemed more important. Was she entirely certain that she and her brother were genetically related?

“Fascinating,” she breathed and it didn’t feel condescending. It almost seemed like she truly found it fascinating. “How do they treat you there? Mortals. Do they know what you are?”

I frowned. What I was.

“Most don’t,” I confessed. “It only… causes trouble to tell people.”

She nodded, giving my knee a squeeze where she still held it. Lark cleared his throat and she released me.

“Well, welcome to the Court of Wanderers,” she said jovially, raising both hands before dropping them to her sides.

“Is that where we are?” I asked, raising a brow as I glanced over at the Fae males who were suddenly very interested in their plating. “No one bothered to tell me.”

“Oh yes, the Court of Wanderers is the only one you can travel into from the mortal realm. All the other courts have wards and protections to keep travelers from the other side out.”

“So none of you are from here.”

Lark tensed. Rook frowned. Casseiopia looked away from me for the first time, glancing to her brother for guidance.

“What makes you say that?” Lark asked in challenge, turning toward us. He stepped forward and braced his powerful arms on the counter in front of us in a way that flexed the muscles in his forearms and waited.

“The distinct lack of orange in your wardrobe,” I said. “And the overwhelming use of black.”

Cass snorted at that. Rook couldn’t contain his grin.

“I’m assuming color is a strong indicator of where you’re from here, which, what did you call it? Court?”

“Yes,” Cass answered, nodding. “They are called Courts. And they are all color coded, as weird as that is.”

“It’s the only reason for the repulsive amount of orange in this city,” I replied, wrinkling my nose and she laughed.

“Not every Court is as… proud of their color as this one.”

“What are they?” I asked. “The courts?”

Cass’ smile faltered. Her gaze flicked quickly to her brother who interrupted before she could speak.

“The geography lesson can wait,” he drawled. “Dinner’s ready.”

Though the Fae used no magic to make the food, they made it disappear and reappear on the table in the dining room. I flinched at the casual use of magic, wondering if I would ever get used to it, as I followed Cass over to the table. We arranged ourselves around the average wooden dining table. Rook took one side, Cass and I took the other. Lark sat at the head, the side I was closest to. Rook dug into the meal before anyone could say a word.

“I see your table manners have been utterly vacated,” Cass quipped. She gave a dramatic wave of her hand and Rook’s food disappeared from his plate and back onto the serving tray in the middle. Cass raised a brow in challenge. “Try again.”

“I didn’t miss you,” Rook groaned, pointing at her with his fork.

“Yes, you did,” she remarked with a grin.

He smiled back. I looked between them.

“How’s father?” Lark asked then and both of their smiles vanished.

Rook’s fork clattered to his plate as he gaped openly at Lark who hadn’t even looked up from his food. Cass glanced uneasily toward her brother.

“He, um, he’s the same as always, I suppose,” Cass answered after a long moment of silence.

“Hm. I would have thought Ursa would have killed him by now.”

“Lark—”

“Given that she tried to kill me.”

Cass’ cheeks burned. She stared down at her napkin.

“I know you’ve seen her,” he said then, that intense gaze aimed directly at his sister. Even Rook had stopped eating. “He is an immortal king. She’s fighting for a succession that may never occur. She tried to kill me, her own brother, to claim a throne that may always be his.”

“Lark, I didn’t—”

“Why?” he snapped, his dark gaze gone icy cold.

Cass closed her eyes.

“What has happened, Cass?” he asked, his voice oddly strained. “Be honest with me.”

“There was an attempt on father’s life,” she answered, her voice barely a whisper.

Lark’s jaw tensed. Rook gaped.

“When?” Lark growled a moment later and I jumped in my seat at the raw power behind it.

“Last year. When she came for you. It was poison. We thought he was… we thought he would die.”

“And where was Taurus?”

“He was—she went after him too.”

Casseiopia was suddenly very interested in her purple nails.

“Cass,” Lark started, carefully. “What happened?”

“He nearly killed her, Lark. You know how powerful he is. Almost as powerful as—” her eyes flicked to me and she hesitated. “He tried. He tried to kill her and he might have if I hadn’t found her. I took her to the Court of Blessings and they healed her but she was unconscious for six months after that. Every day was touch and go. I tried to tell you, I did, but I couldn’t find you.”

“Where is he now?” Lark asked, his jaw clenched in pure rage.

“The Sanguine Throne.”

“That figures.”

It wasn’t the time to ask so I remained quiet even as I filed the small nuggets of information away to bring up later. Court of Blessings, Sanguine Throne. Court of Blessings, Sanguine Throne.

“Once they know you’re here…” Cass trailed off, looking from her brother to Rook and back again.

“We have no intention of staying in this orange monstrosity of a city,” Lark said then and my gaze slipped to him. We didn’t? He met my eyes and gave me a small nod of almost apologetic understanding. “I’ve been meaning to pay Sophierial a visit.”

Rook’s lips parted again in surprise at that.

“The Court of Light and Life,” Cass muttered, nodding in understanding. She turned to me as if to explain. “It is forbidden to kill on their lands.”

I nodded slowly, appreciating the explanation though I was several steps behind it.

“This Ursa woman is still trying to kill you?” I asked, showing how far behind I was as I glanced at Lark.

Rook became suddenly very interested in his food again. Cass huffed out a breath and waited for her brother to respond. Lark just watched me, fork dangling from his hand, and swallowed slowly.

“Ursa is my sister,” he told me and the color drained from my face. “Taurus is our brother. We are all siblings, all four of us.”

I just blinked at him, lost. He set his fork aside so that it clinked gently against his glass and cleared his throat, tenting his arms in front of him so that his hands folded together near his chin.

“It is a tradition in our court, the Court of Blood and Bone,” he began slowly, holding my gaze as he explained, “that succession is not determined by birth order or even by preordained choice of the former monarch. Our father is the king. The four of us are his heirs. If he should die, we will fight to the death to win his throne.”

My jaw dropped in shock. Both at the revelation that Lark was a prince and at the atrociousness of the custom he had just informed me of. It was one of the most barbaric things I’d ever heard and I had spent a good deal of my adolescence studying witch trials.

“You can’t yield?” I asked, stunned.

“You can,” Cass chimed in then, her expression one of sorrowful compassion. “I already have. My siblings know I don’t intend to fight them for the crown. They know I will yield to whoever wins.”

“And you?” I inquired, turning back to Lark, in awe that he could even consider taking part in such a brutal ritual.

He frowned deeply, crumpling up his napkin and throwing it hard on the table before him.

“I would yield,” he spoke. “I have no desire to kill my own blood. But I can’t. If Taurus or Ursa took the throne, things would get even worse than they have under my father. I can’t let that happen.”

Rook was nodding his agreement. Cass was frowning, that bright smile of hers having faded at last, but she wasn’t arguing either. I just gaped at all of them.

“You all agree with this?” I asked, astounded. “You think he has to do it?”

“It’s the only way,” Rook muttered.

“You can’t at least help him?”

So that he doesn’t have to kill his own brother, his own sister. So that particular evil doesn’t stain his soul for all eternity.

“If we interfered in any way, we would be executed,” Rook grumbled, having clearly considered it as an option before.

“No one can kill the royal family except, of course, the royal family,” Cass mused, as if the idea itself might have been funny if it were happening to anyone other than her family.

I turned to Lark, watching him swirl the contents of his glass around in brooding silence. It was hard to believe the man who had sealed my rift, the arrogant bastard who had waltzed into my office as if he owned the place and knew exactly how to get under my skin, was destined for such a fate. Before I could think about it, I reached up and grabbed his hand, pulling it into the warmth of my own. His skin was cold but, when that dark, penetrating gaze met mine, I did not look away.

“She told me what happened when she came for you,” Cass said then, so quietly that I almost missed it. “She told me what you did.”

Rook looked up at Lark and it seemed, for the first time, that I was not the only one unaware of something.

“I need a stronger drink,” Lark said simply and then rose and strode toward the kitchen, leaving us all in his wake.

We spent the rest of dinner eating silently and avoiding eye contact with one another.