Page 36 of Beyond the Winter Kingdom (Faeted Seasons #2)

Damon held a hand up. “Meera, stop. You don’t have to thank me.

I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.

I’m not on edge because I’m with you or have a grudge against you.

Did we meet under ideal circumstances? No.

Do I believe that you were going to search for me because you didn’t think it was okay to hand over a person?

Yes, actually, I do. You’re a fairly easy person to read.

I’m on edge because Evorsus wants you, and that’s more dangerous than just trying to trek through this land unscathed. ”

The softness in his eyes was sincere. He was here because of me, and I felt guilty for that.

I wished I could be more like Corvo and toss the useless emotion, as he called it, out the window.

I couldn’t, but it also wasn’t going to do me any good.

Instead of giving it more life, I pressed my lips into a forced smile and nodded.

“Okay. Friends?” I outstretched my hand in a peace offering.

He grinned, accepting it and shaking. “Friends.”

I turned to keep walking with him by my side. After a few paces, I said, “So, the Fold. Is that really its name?”

“Unlikely. But the real name given by the twin hells is probably unpronounceable and written in a dead language, so ‘the Fold’ it is.”

I gave him a sideways glance. “Do you know what to expect there?”

He hesitated, his mouth tightening before he shook his head. “No. Not really. No one does.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“There are stories,” he said, stepping over a root thick enough to be a stair step. “Rumors, really. Some say it’s where magic bleeds through. Others think it’s another prison for something ancient and pissed off. Vareck’s supposedly been there, but even he doesn’t talk about it.”

I frowned. “He has?”

“That’s the rumor,” Damon replied. “Don’t know if it’s true. He doesn’t exactly volunteer information.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Damon gave a dry chuckle. “No one who's gone there talks about it after. If they come back at all.”

I stared ahead into the trees, where the shadows swirled too thick to be natural. I wasn’t ready for this place, but ready didn’t seem to matter anymore.

We walked in silence for a beat before I glanced over at him.

“So ... sixteen, huh?” I asked, side-eyeing Damon subtly while trying not to trip and fall on my face. The branches, roots, and rocks were in abundance now.

Damon looked away and let out a tight breath. “Yes and no.”

My brows pulled together. “Go on.”

“I’d rather not talk about this.”

“Why not?” I asked, gesturing to the forest. “It’s just us. And we’re all we have for a while. Friends, right?”

“Vareck asked me how many women I’d brought to his room,” Damon said, brushing a low-hanging vine aside. “He didn’t ask how many I actually slept with on his bed.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Those are two different numbers?”

His chin dipped. “They are. I brought a lot of girls to his room to sleep off whatever they drank. Sometimes they thought we hooked up. I let them think that. Or they remembered and do their best to manipulate the conversation about it later making it look however they want it to. Either way, I never actually slept with any of them. Not in his bed.”

“Why not bring them to your rooms and just save yourself the trouble? Or any empty room for that matter?”

He huffed a humorless laugh. “So, that gets tricky. Sometimes ladies of the court are trying to attract my attention. They’re waiting at entrances to the hallways leading to my rooms. Other rooms are generally occupied when we have a gathering at the castle.

Lords and ladies stay there rather than traveling back to their homes. It’s standard.

“If my source tells me my rooms aren’t easily accessible due to someone waiting for me, I take a passage that leads me to Vareck’s. I know they’ll be safe there. Vareck won’t be back for a long time because he’s busy working, and women aren’t looking for me there.”

“Why are you taking these drunk women somewhere to sleep it off? Can’t you send them to their rooms, or back home or something?”

With a deep sigh, Damon shook his head. “It’s all a setup. Their mothers are putting them up to it.”

“Come again?”

“I’m the heir. An unwed prince. Vareck is assumed to be a more difficult target. So families looking to turn their daughters into royalty are more than happy to have a princess ... whether it’s their daughter’s shared ambition or not.”

My mouth fell open. “You mean ... their own mothers get them drunk and just, send them to you so you’ll bed them?”

“Yup,” he answered, popping the ‘p.’ “And I am many things, but I’m not that man.”

“But ... why didn’t you just say that when Vareck asked?”

He gave me a look. “Sadie calls me the playboy prince. You’ve seen how Vareck talks to me. They’ve already made up their minds about who I am, and when I tried to explain myself, Vareck cut me off. So why bother?”

I opened my mouth, struggled for words, and closed it again. He had a point. Vareck one hundred percent believed Damon had defiled his bed, and Sadie tended to assume the worst—especially when she was attracted to someone. Even I had made my assumptions.

“So,” I said slowly, “you haven’t slept with any of the sixteen women you took to his room. Not there and not elsewhere?”

“Not a one,” Damon confirmed. “Also, completely unrelated to the discussion that a mother’s consent isn’t the daughter’s consent, is the notion of doing it on Vareck’s bed. That’s disgusting.”

His face twisted in genuine revulsion.

“I may get around,” he added, “but when I do, I still have standards.”

I smiled and huffed out a laugh. “You know, there’s really more to you than meets the eye.”

Damon cocked an eyebrow, giving me a sideways glance. “You think?”

I shrugged, playing it casual. “Maybe just a little.”

“Wow. That’s high praise coming from you. Should I alert the bards?”

“Are there bards in Faerie? Actually, I take that back. Pretend I didn’t ask.”

Damon let out a full bellied laugh. “You’re dating the king and yet?—”

“I know nothing about his kingdom? That is correct,” I said, fighting the tug of a smile. “I’m still wrapping my head around the idea that you’re secretly a gentleman under all that ...” I motioned toward him.

“That what?”

“You know. Swagger? Supreme self-assuredness?”

He held a hand to his chest, mocking offense. “I’ll have you know my swagger is an essential part of my charm. Without it, I’d just be a guy with good hair, a title, and a tragic backstory.”

I snorted. “You do have good hair.”

“And a tragic backstory. That’s an essential piece.”

“Is getting kidnapped tragic?”

He pressed his lips together in a faint grin. “I don’t know, you tell me. From the sounds of it, you got kidnapped not once but twice.”

I gave him a dry look. “Okay, fair. But it sounds way worse than it was. At least when Vareck did it. The brownies were just assholes.”

“They usually are, in my experience.” Damon huffed a soft laugh, but there was something thoughtful in his expression.

“You’re not wrong,” I added. “Once I got the magic nullifying necklace off, things were looking up. Until I ended up in a brothel facing off a leprechaun who couldn’t be compelled.”

“Nullifying necklace? Brothel? Okay, you have to tell me this story because you left a lot out when recounting it to Sadie, not that I blame you given her temper.” I proceeded to tell him the whole sordid story of how I took the job to kidnap him, not knowing I’d be going after a person.

Then meeting Vareck and him showing up at my apartment after I left Damon that night.

I went on to what happened at the castle, minus details I didn’t think he’d want to hear about me getting it on with his uncle.

I finished the tale with being kidnapped by brownies, which I still have no idea what they were after, and ending up at Irene’s—where Vareck found me.

“Oh! And the cherry on top of it all was Corvo spilled pixie dust all over me and Vareck before we got away. Turd.”

“That is insane enough that I actually believe you. The truth is weirder than fiction in my experience.”

I laughed lightly. “Yeah, it’s been more than a little crazy. I might’ve been out of my depth, but I wasn’t helpless at least.”

One corner of his mouth pulled tight. “Are you calling me helpless?”

I flushed red. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

Damon laughed again. “Relax, I’m not mad at you. In the spirit of honesty, I understand more than you realize.”

“You’ve been kidnapped twice?”

“Four times, actually.” he said with a shrug. “When you’re valuable, people get ideas.”

The air between us shifted a little, the weight of something unspoken pressing in. I didn’t push, and he didn’t elaborate.

“I know I said it before, but I’m really sorry about the whole kidnapping thing. On one hand, I wish I hadn’t done it because then we wouldn’t be here ...”

“On the other, you wouldn’t have met Vareck or gone on this crazy adventure if you hadn’t.”

I bit my bottom lip. “Yeah, but it sounds kind of shitty given all you have gone through because of me.”

Damon shrugged. “As far as kidnappings go, I give yours a five. I totally would have gotten free if you hadn’t dropped me with the leprechaun so soon.”

I snorted. “Why do you think I did? Any good thief knows the best way to not get caught is to get rid of the proof.”

Damon lifted both eyebrows. “Oh, is that so? And here I thought Vareck found an upstanding woman.” I slapped his arm playfully and he snickered.

After a beat, I asked, “So, all that swagger, that’s just covering for what? The trauma of being kidnapped a billion times?”

Damon smirked faintly. “No. That’s just who I am. But it helps keep people from asking too many questions.”

We walked a bit farther, the silence between us easy now, more pleasant and comfortable than before. I didn’t know what waited for us at the Fold—or if we’d even make it that far—but this? This felt okay.

“So,” I said, casually, “if you didn’t sleep with them, why not correct Vareck? He may not believe you, but that’s his problem. As it is, he’s going to hold that grudge for a while now.”

Damon’s smile faded slightly. “Because it’s easier to let him hate me than to try to make him like me.”

My chest tightened. “He doesn’t?—”

“I know,” he interrupted, voice low. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always been the reminder of his brother. Of what he lost. Of what he has to protect.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Damon blew out a tight breath then ducked under a branch. “My father was a shitty person. When my grandfather tried to take over the realms, he helped him.”

“Oh ... I didn’t know that.”

Damon smiled sardonically. “It’s not exactly something Vareck is proud of.

While the mad king was siphoning power from Maeve, my father compelled Drayden and Vareck so they couldn’t intervene.

Drayden’s rage broke the compulsion, and he killed him for it.

Unfortunately for my aunt, he was too late. Maeve was already dead.”

I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat, lips pressed together. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know that, but I can still be sorry you went through that and that the legacy your dad left behind is a burden you have to bear.”

Damon smiled faintly. “Thanks, Meera. I didn’t really have to go through it, though. Mum was pregnant with me when all of this happened, so I never knew my father, or Maeve. I only have the stories and memories of others.”

“That in itself is a loss,” I said quietly.

Damon didn’t say anything for a while, and I didn’t push. The forest rustled around us, full of distant sounds and unseen movement, like even the trees were listening. There was so much history between us all—some of it tangled, some of it bruised—but this moment felt simple.

“I’m not my father,” Damon said finally, voice low. “But sometimes it feels like I’m paying for who he was and what he did.”

I glanced over at him, but he didn’t look at me. Just kept his eyes on the path ahead.

“I know you’re not,” I said.

The corner of his mouth lifted, subtle but real.

We kept walking, the path uncertain, the Fold somewhere ahead. But with each step, the silence between us didn’t feel quite so heavy anymore. Maybe we were all just trying to unlearn what the world had taught us about pain.

Maybe, somehow, that was the point.

“In fact, as far as being stranded in hell with someone—so far, you’ve been pretty good company. There are a lot worse people I could have ended up here with.”

Damon glanced at me, the icy blue of his eyes thawing in that moment. “Same. I don’t have many ...”

“Friends?” I said quietly with a gentle smile and a playful elbow to his side.

He smiled, and the way it crinkled near his eyes felt true. “Friends.”

As we headed toward the Fold, I kept him close. While he operated with the idea he was going to keep me safe, I moved with another thought in mind. Evorsus had already taken Vareck and Sadie away from me. I wouldn’t let it take my friend too.