Page 23

Promises Kept

R oan stood stiffly with Aunyx at one side and Ulric at the other.

Both men knew something was wrong, but neither had the privacy to ask when the other was so close, which was exactly as the prince intended.

He clasped his hands before him to hide his fidgeting, and he clenched his jaw to keep nonsensical babble from spilling out, staring straight ahead and watching the ballroom doors, waiting.

Roan was not one for admitting to mistakes, mostly because he didn’t make them. Well, no, Tenhaef bent around his blunders so that they seemed sound. But Maewyn was not of Tenhaef, not of the fae realm at all, and the mistakes he made with her were clear now.

But those mistakes would be made right tonight, and whatever she chose to do, at the very least Roan would have really tried for perhaps the first time in his life.

When the ballroom doors opened and his human stepped into the glow of the motes gathered overhead, he wondered how he could have ever thought her unsuitable.

She had chosen a dress with a corseted top as deeply russet as the fertile earth, flaring at her hips with a cascading, silken material, tawny like a fawn’s fur.

Burnt orange and glittering gold maple leaves trailed from her waist and curved around the skirt, littering the bottom hem as if she were enchanting them to encircle her.

She was very simply adorned otherwise, a few crimson baubles hanging from her hips and a thin golden necklace pooling in the dip of her collarbones.

Maewyn had left her hair free and long, the loose curls tucked back over one ear with a flower, but none of it mattered really—she could be clad in a sack, or better yet nothing, and he would beg her to be his queen just as she was.

And not a queen in name only.

She swept right to him, the motes following as courtiers instinctively moved aside. She may not have been fae, but she commanded the court in that moment, head held high, just as she had commanded him from the moment she’d tethered the two.

“My prince,” she said as she came to stand inches away, golden eyes trained on his.

He took her offered hand, guiding it to meet his lips as he bowed. But before he could straighten, her hand slipped from his and took him by the jaw, lifting his face to meet her own.

Maewyn pulled Roan into a kiss that nearly tore away his last thread of composure.

Her palms encircled his face with such fervor, her lips taking his completely, her body bending to close what little space had been between them.

He was hers, the kiss announced to the entirety of the court, and gods, it was everything the prince wanted.

“Stay with me,” he breathed into her mouth, a whispered plea if he had ever made one.

“Of course, my love, for as long as you wish,” she said, and the words burrowed into Roan’s heart like a fox in its den, prepared for whatever winter might bring. Then she pulled back and raised her voice. “But first, we must thank our guests for attending with a dance.”

A hand was slipped into Roan’s as music filled the ballroom, but it was not Maewyn’s.

Jynquil was there, tugging him away as Maewyn shifted elegantly to stand before Ulric.

She bowed to the fae—not a curtsy, but a full bow, which made Roan snort wryly even in his confusion—and then she pulled Ulric out onto the dance floor.

Maewyn had not become a better dancer in such a short time, but she was determined to fake it.

She allowed Ulric to put a hand on her waist, but she made sure her grip on his shoulder was firm as she pushed him deeper into the thrall of courtiers who adopted her example.

Couples spun around them to the quickening tempo, and she grinned widely up at her partner, moving him this way and that, her rhythmless prancing hidden amongst the others.

“Thank you for coming,” she said through lips pulled back into the most pleasant of grins—that, at least, she had practiced plenty and become an expert.

Ulric opened his mouth, but she redirected their dancing, and he tripped.

“Oh, do be careful—it would be a shame if something happened.” She did not hide the tick to her brow as she pulled him upright.

“I would caution you ,” he said, own smile crawling back on, though his blue eyes darkened. “The heart of a palace, surrounded by fae, has never been the safest of places for a human.”

Maewyn briefly glanced out at the ballroom filled with courtiers, but there were many of Ulric’s own there as well, their hollow gazes watching as they stood eerily still amongst the others.

“I’m not entirely surrounded by fae though, am I?” She spun them both around and giggled, sure the sound was demented to his ear.

His eyes narrowed, and she saw in them the exact glare she’d found watching her in the forest nearly a fortnight ago.

“Have you eaten?” she asked, brightening even more. “I know how hungry you often are.”

Ulric snarled but quickly pulled it back.

“No? Or are you saving room for something?” At this, Maewyn let her grin falter, let her eyes deaden, let her fingers dig in.

“What are you implying, human?” he spat as again they spun.

Maewyn brought their clasped hands to her chest, and with the simple flick of her thumb, flashed the interior of her locket. “I know what you are,” she said even though she was not certain, but then she could indeed lie. “And you know what this is.”

“Iron,” he hissed.

“Not blessed by starlight but brought from the human realm through the Harvest Way.” She flicked the locket closed again, but the fact changed nothing for him. “Tell me what you intend to do with Roan and Jynquil.”

“Give them sanctuary to fulfill…the arrangement,” he said through pointed teeth.

Maewyn felt his shoulder move strangely in her grip, as if the bones were slipping against one another on their own. “ Your arrangement,” she corrected, “to bring forth the archfae into this world who will then be under your roof, just like all the others who are slowly being devoured by you.”

“What could I do to an archfae?” he whispered, and surely he meant to chuckle, but it came out strangled.

She tipped her head back to keep their gazes level, the span of his fingers on her waist lengthening.

“Fight it to the death, I assume, but not when it’s newly born.

Even an archfae would be rather helpless at first, don’t you think?

” She dropped all pretense, falling still in the dance floor’s center. “Helpless and delicious.”

Ulric’s next breath was labored as something like claws pressed to her side. “And to think,” he snapped, all decorum gone, “I was going to let him keep you.”

Maewyn saw the wolf a second before it became real, but it was long enough for her to rip the rose from her hair and hurl it into his blue eyes.

Shrieks filled the air as Maewyn pushed herself out of Ulric’s grip, feeling the fabric of her dress tear, eyes closed against the enchanted pollen.

She stumbled backward and hit the marble floor, confident then she could open her eyes but wishing she hadn’t.

Before her stood a massive creature very much like a wolf and yet not at all in so many ways. Ulric had become a thing twice as tall as any of the fae, his skin covered in fur and limbs bent in the wrong direction twice over, all four ending in claws that could have taken off her head.

She scrambled backward from her spot on the floor, the motes above in an utter frenzy and illuminating the chamber with flashes.

The only boon was that Ulric’s massive head was thrown back and jaws open in a terrible roar, the pollen of Jynquil’s enchanted rose having done something to upset him.

It was enough for Maewyn to flee, but before she could get to her feet, she bumped into the legs of another.

A group of the fae from Ulric’s manor loomed over her, hollow eyes and deadened smiles gazing downward in mock affection.

They were the only ones unfazed by Ulric’s transformation, but of course they held no fear—they held nothing at all, and they were encircling him completely so that there was nowhere for her to go.

Maewyn grabbed the belt at her waist, the cord already severed by Ulric’s claw.

She squeezed, and a pomegranate seed burst. The fae above her cocked their heads and sniffed.

“You’re starving too, aren’t you?” she called through a shaking voice and then whipped the belt overhead.

It flew as far as her strength would allow, and the fae stalked off behind it like a flock of geese chasing warm southern winds.

She stood amidst the chaos that was left, limbs trembling, motes darting, heart pumping, courtiers screaming, pain—so much pain— stabbing.

But she was struck still by the wonder of Ulric and his new form, the true form of the elylae forced to show itself.

The mykiis were right about an umbrabrute’s true form—it was not something humans were meant to see. Not see and survive, anyway.

But then there were only feathers, dazzlingly iridescent yet as black as the night sky.

Roan’s wings burst before Maewyn in a protective wall, the brilliance of a mote tearing across the darkness like a shooting star.

She glimpsed a flash of gold as Roan’s sickle materialized in hand, and then there was a sickening tear.

A scream ripped out of Maewyn at the sight of so much blood, but shadows folded in around her, and a tug at her middle disoriented her entirely as she fell backward, suddenly in a darkened alcove of the ballroom instead of its middle.

Aunyx was there with her, placing her gently on the ground as he called out something she couldn’t understand.

Then he melted into the shadows again and reappeared in a black haze at the ballroom’s center with a scythe in hand.

The beast had fallen to all fours, but it was no less horrifying, a gash across its face, fangs still bared.

Though it was surrounded, it tossed attacking fae away like they were dolls.

A spray of vines shot across the ballroom, wrapping around Ulric as he lunged and holding him still, a blow of the scythe landing, but then the wolf ripped through and continued to attack.

Maewyn’s vision blurred, and she pressed a hand to her side.

Wetness coated her palm, but the pomegranate seeds were gone and…

oh, that was a lot of blood. Her trembling fingers dripped onto the white marble, and a mote came to land on one of them.

It pulsed gently, a last light in the tunneling darkness.

“Maewyn!” Roan’s voice was in her mind, and then his hands were in her hair. His eyes had caught her own as her head was tipped back to look up at him. “Stay,” he whispered as he pulled her to him. “I want you—I need you. Please stay with me.”

She sighed, falling against his body as he knelt in her blood. How sweet it was to be wanted, to be needed…

“Maewyn, please. I love you.”

To be loved .

She struggled to blink her eyes open again and whisper back that she loved him as well and that she was sorry she hadn’t figured out things sooner and avoided so much mess, but the sight of a monstrous wolf breaking free of vines and shadows and barreling right toward Roan’s back silenced it all.

Jaws opened, claws rose, and then the creature jerked and froze mid pounce. Roan’s grip around her remained tight, but he turned, and the glittering of a golden spear revealed itself from the beast’s chest, run through from behind.

“You will not touch my son,” growled the king of the Autumn Court, hitching his spear deeper into Ulric’s back.

The head of the elylae that looked down on them was rearranging, attempting to cobble itself back into what had been Ulric’s most familiar face, but it was clear the thing was stuck, undying and too powerful to overcome.

Maewyn opened her locket with a shaking hand and pushed the bit of iron she’d once lost in the forest but found again into Roan’s palm. Her fae prince stood and paced up to the elylae that had been tricking him for so long.

“Your Highness,” the thing wheezed in a voice that could have once been Ulric’s. “I have been your most loyal servant. See me for what I’ve done, for striving to give you exactly as you wished.”

“I am getting exactly as I wish.” The prince plunged the sliver of iron into the umbrabrute’s heart.

Ulric was naught but dust then, just like in her useless books, and Maewyn sighed, eyes closing.

In a way, the task she had been given was finally complete: she had severed something, and there was a door beckoning her forward.

If only she had been able to truly begin, then to live, and to complete her chosen task of loving Roan as well.

She could hear his voice still calling to her in the darkness. Maewyn’s chest ached, the pull of the tether as strong as it had ever been, urging her back, but she couldn’t seem to find her way.

And then there was a second voice, a high-pitched and urgent one shouting above the din, “Excuse me, pardon me, a little room, if you all would just—oh, damn it , priestess-in-training coming through!”