Page 154 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

L ilac sat up to stare first into the eyes of her mother, whom she’d never seen cry, except for the night her arcana lingua was discovered. Then, she locked eyes with Garin standing over Henri’s lifeless body, her dripping blade hanging loosely in one hand.

All her incandescent rage and anxiety returned as fragments of memory, flashing through her mind. Numbly, unthinking, Lilac pulled herself off the floor, off her crying mother—she didn’t even know how the bloodied stake ended up back in her hand—and charged.

Garin’s incredulous, sun-laced smile and the way he opened his arms as he strode to meet her only infuriated her further.

Lilac pressed her thumb over her pointer and middle finger wrapped around the hawthorn and aimed for his shoulder—but Garin sheathed the Dawnshard and dipped, dodging the point. He scooped her up in a chest-breaking embrace.

Unable to help herself, she leaned into him, furious tears streaming down her face. He smelled of a bluebell wood, of the summer hyacinths peppering the glades, and the iron-tinged rush of the Argent. Of dark and ancient magic, and an existence foreboding.

He was everything she ever wanted, the darkest parts of herself in the flesh. He brought them out of her .

Garin slowly released her, planting his lips upon her forehead as his fingers found her wrist—gave it a quick squeeze, causing her to drop the stake—and pinned it behind her back. He kissed her, just deeply enough to make her mother look away, and found her other hand.

There was a quick clink of metal, then. Much too fast to be mundane.

Lilac looked up at him, and he, down at her. She pulled at the iron and hawthorn chains binding her wrists. They tightened magically—painfully—cutting into her skin.

“I will be your blacksmith,” he said, glancing over her shoulder. “I’ll come to Ys.”

Lilac slowly turned. The sea witch, Morwenn, stood there silently, watching them—watching Garin—with too thin-lipped a smile.

“You will not ,” Lilac breathed furiously, her mind and memory muddied. He would not be going to wherever or whatever Ys was.

But Garin shushed her. “Hold your tongue while I do the negotiating, please,” he said quickly.

Lilac tried to argue, but no sound would come. Whatever countereffect had taken hold on her upon the rafters, berries or otherwise, had vanished.

“Oh, I do love a rift. Alas, that irreverent, cantankerous thing is not your wife,” Morwenn offered playfully, eyeing Lilac unabashedly. As if she were an animal. “That is not your ring on her finger, is it?”

“I will come.” Garin didn’t so much as blink. “But let this be clear: Lilac—whether my mistress, my fiancée, my wife, or the nice village baker who once overcharged me for bread—is coming with me.”

“No need for the violence, vampire.” Morwenn dismissively examined her long, teal talons.

“I can see perfectly well what she is to you. Though, I should warn you both, that in the realm of the Fair Folk and of every creeping, clawing thing you can imagine,” she added, explaining very slowly for Lilac, “any relationship between Daemon and mortal are considered… irregular. At best.”

They’re not accepted in our world, either, Lilac thought bitterly. Kestrel had once given them a similar warning. She yanked her arms against her constraints, unable to fathom an arcane island—one led by the likes of Morwenn.

“As a human, your pet cannot exist there as your public counterpart—as anything other than your subordinate. She will never be seen as an equal. Most definitely not yours.” Morwenn shrugged, turning away.

Garin’s shoulders began to steadily, noticeably rise and fall.

“Granted, I cannot help nor regulate what goes on behind closed doors. In my centuries imprisoned underwater, I, too, have fucked several of my servants out of pure boredom. Or pity.” She eyed Lilac, something like ravenous admiration crossing her serpentine features.

“I’d say it surprises me she’s lived to tell the tale, but I’ve seen her strength.

And her speed. She must make for an entertaining blood slave.

” At Garin’s murderous glare, she stuck her bottom lip out.

“Do you have her convinced that what you have is something more?”

Fuming, Lilac descended the steps. Doing so was harder than she’d ever imagined with her hands tied.

I will not go as a servant , she thought at him, boisterously as possible. Not yours.

Would you rather be hers? he growled, claws against her mind. “Eleanor is mine. Whether they choose to acknowledge it or not is irrelevant. She will be my hand at your forge.”

“I’m not seeking apprentices.”

“Funny. I am.”

The sea witch ignored this and merely turned, producing a glistening conch out of thin air.

As she put it to her mouth, Garin spoke again. “Lilac’s court will accompany us. That is my last and final demand.”

Morwenn followed his gaze to the huddling group. Yanna, Isabel, and Piper froze, an array of emotions crossing the terror on their faces.

Lilac would never intentionally subject them to whatever Garin had just agreed to. But… what was left for them at the castle?

And what of Maximilian? John and Riou would likely aid in the administrative declining of his offer—wherever they were.

If they were alive. But what then? After such a public affair, what if her decision angered the emperor to the point of seizing them with the very army he’d promised in exchange for her hand?

The thought of bringing them along for whatever Morwenn had in store was terrifying, but the thought of being torn from them was far, far too much to bear.

What will they do there? Lilac glared at him questioningly. It seemed he hadn’t thought that far. I will not be the cause of their suffering.

You need them just as much as they need you, he snarled.

You were the one who offered your services!

Garin faced her, fuming. He didn’t say a word—but her throat tightened, and her knees nearly buckled with the unnatural wave of terror and want that flooded between her legs. Do you think she was asking?

“No,” Morwenn said after a second’s deliberation.

Garin’s defensive anger hit Lilac like a blast of frigid air. “They’re her courtiers and attendants. She is still royalty here.”

Myrddin stepped forward. “If I may, Lady Morwenn,” he said, voice even with diplomacy. “Their presence may be of some benefit. She is human, after all. Would you truly wish your wretched sea-born things preparing her bath? Dressing her? Touching her? Feeding her?”

Lilac growled in her mind, but Garin quieted her with a brush of his knuckles on hers.

Morwenn regarded the warlock. “And you are?”

If she’d truly been buried beneath the sea for centuries, if time had eroded her name from every living memory until she’d been reduced to a folk tale… it made sense she wouldn’t know his identity.

His eye twitched slightly, but he folded into a deep bow. “Myrddin Ambrosius Wyllt. I am Her Majesty’s advisor in Diplomacy and Magic.”

“I see,” Morwenn murmured. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes as they turned slowly, gleefully, onto Lilac. “You want me to bring her servants and a pet wizard, too.”

“Warlock. Sorcerer,” Myrddin corrected.

A harsh growl erupted from Garin’s throat. “ Be quiet .”

“ And a Strigoi, wrapped duly around her finger, rather than her throat.” Morwenn studied Lilac, the room that stood behind her in silent wonder. “How bizarre.”

“She does not come alone,” he repeated, the threat in his voice thick.

Morwenn laughed softly. Her tone dropped like a knife into water.

“You mistake my hospitality for weakness, vampire. You both come freely at my mercy. I will not house human courtiers, or any flailing handmaidens clutching onto a blood slave’s skirts.

This is no diplomatic visit. This is our reckoning. ”

Without warning, she pressed her lips to the conch, puffed her cheeks—and blew.

The sound was like a foghorn, a slow and steady moan that rattled the timber above, shaking her to her core and sending any perching fowl who’d decided to roost in the aftermath of their duel, flocking from the structure.

It sounded like a cry for help, a summoning for ships filled with the dead.

It might as well have been.

Even Myrddin looked panicked, his eyes bulging as the floor began to rumble, the wet pebbles bouncing. Everyone but Morwenn backed towards the walls and the cracked opening leading into the courtyard.

Just when she thought the earth would open up and swallow them all, the same seafoam mist that had infiltrated the castle with the Bugul Noz’s invitation began to rise from the floor.

The conch’s final note echoed like the dying breath of her chapel. The sharp stench of brine filled the air, seeping into her lungs before she realized what was happening.

This was a portal .

“No!” Lilac shouted, lunging for her sisters.

They dashed past the altar toward her, Bastion and Giles shouting—but Garin was faster.

His arm snagged around her waist, and he lifted her off her feet as the fog engulfed them quicker than she would’ve been able to escape it.

She felt the ghost of her mother’s fingertips against her cheek, then Garin’s steady arms around her before the world fell away.

There was no scream, no wind nor weight to their falling. Only an overwhelming sense of dread and being dragged down, down—down through a deep, long silence. Through cold, across moors and towns, in the liminal dark.

Then—salt. Lilac gasped, the breath knocked out of her, the taste of it on her lips and the crash of waves below.

The smell of kelp and brine thrashed in the wind, fluttering her hair back.

She stared disbelievingly at the vast swath of turquoise beauty—at the hiss of tides colliding with cliffs, the bones of the world cast in blinding sunlight.

The coast . A corner of her kingdom she’d heard of many times, but never experienced herself.