Page 13

Cate

“I don’t understand.” Where was the punch line? What did any of this have to do with me?

Something niggled in the back of my brain, but I refused to let it squirm its way into my thoughts. This was just more fae fuckery. Another trick like the bargain or the handfasting. I turned in the opposite direction, preparing to storm into the city’s familiar arms, but something held me. I wanted to trust Lach— needed to trust him. I couldn’t love him without it.

“Tell me everything.” I watched Lach as we walked, the night fading away around us.

“When I was a kid, my mother’s penumbra was always around. We called her Aunt Stacia.” A boyish grin lit up his face at the memory, giving me a glimpse of who he’d been long before he’d risen to his own throne. My heart clenched at the vulnerability in that single smile. “We couldn’t say her full name.”

“What was it?” I asked softly.

“Anastacia.” The smile faded as his eyes grew distant, lost to some other place and time. “And then, one day, she disappeared.”

“ Disappeared ?”

He nodded, eyes meeting mine for only a moment. “My parents wouldn’t talk about it. Whenever I asked about her—whenever any of us asked—my mother would start to cry, so we…stopped asking.”

Children always learned about heartbreak in the margins. I’d seen it a thousand times at the hospital. The child tucked in the corner while parents whispered or wailed, too lost in their own problems to notice. Experiencing loss without the benefit of understanding and growing older in the process, thinking we didn’t understand. Or maybe they thought it made us wiser.

Maybe it just made us into the broken adults we all became.

“That must have been hard.”

He took a deep breath. “It was like having my family ripped apart,” he admitted. “In a lot of ways, Stacia was my mother, too. You would have thought they were sisters. They completed each other.” He laughed, scratching the back of his neck. “Whenever Roark and I were fighting, my father would say, ‘Be like your mother and Stacia. A penumbra is a gift.’”

“What about your father’s penumbra? You mentioned they dismissed both their penumbras.” It was the reason he thought his parents might have been mates. I looked at his hand, realizing for the first time that his own signet was gone.

“I never met him. He was gone before I was born. I guess that’s why my father was always riding me about Roark, about how not everyone was so lucky about the companions chosen for them.

“My mother understood, though. She knew what it was like to be linked to someone your whole life, how they could be your best friend and your worst enemy. She had a lot more patience when the two of us acted out. She would tell stories about the trouble she and Stacia got into when they were kids, how Stacia always covered for her. The stories stopped when Stacia left.”

That was how memories worked. In the beginning, when they were too painful to bear, it was easier to ignore them, and then gradually, they slipped away and became the past we didn’t share. I understood why she couldn’t bear it. Some memories were too painful to relive.

“But why do you think this is your mother’s ring?” I asked, fiddling with its band.

“I remember it, and there’s obviously magic in it,” he said quietly.

The witches had told me as much. The fact that I couldn’t take it off confirmed it. That was reason enough to be suspicious, but it didn’t mean the ring was hers. I needed more proof than the memory of a child, especially since Lach hadn’t been a child for quite some time.

“Even after Stacia was gone, my mother wore that ring every day of her life. I have no doubt she was wearing it on the day she died.”

“And you never found it?” It was a careful question. I knew the basics of how his parents had died—killed fighting in a war to protect the court they had abandoned—but he hadn’t told me much about what happened after.

“No trace of the court remains. I went once, when I was feeling particularly self-destructive, but I couldn’t find a single scrap of it left. It was like it never existed, like the earth just swallowed it whole.”

My stomach dropped, beginning to churn. I clutched my middle, trying to ward away the queasy sensation.

“Maybe someone else found her ring,” I said quietly. “And somehow, my parents got it. Bought it in a shop or something.” I was grasping at straws. I knew next to nothing about my parents. They were just names on my birth certificate. There was no family to take me in, no possessions left behind.

“I suppose it could have found its way from Warsaw.” He tilted his head and studied me for a moment. “Or maybe it’s Stacia’s ring. They’re identical. That’s why the magic works. The stones are cut from the same jewel, fashioned and forged to be perfectly matched.”

My throat constricted.

“The first news I had of Stacia came after the Terra Court fell,” he continued. “I returned home to an empty throne and a letter my father had left me.”

Part of me longed to close the distance between us, to hold his hand, but I continued forward, not wanting to interrupt.

“In the letter, he confessed a secret they had kept from all of us, one they had hidden since the day they married. My father took the throne during a turbulent period in our history,” Lach said. “Every throne but that of the Hallow Court had passed to a new heir in the last decade. When the Nether Court passed to him, he was young and unmarried and wanted to establish his court in the New World. He saw it as protection from the bloody politics of the courts in Europe.”

“Bloody?” I repeated.

“Thrones are rarely given up. For several decades, violence befell the courts. It was blamed on humans and other creatures. But the truth of what happened was guarded carefully, and I’ve long suspected that many of the fae royals who fell during that time did so at the hands of their own people.”

“But the Wild Hunt,” I pointed out.

Lach scratched at the mark on the back of his neck as if my words triggered the impulse. “That was the second part of my father’s plan. He wanted to establish rules between the courts so that they would stop fearing one another and be united.”

“I’m not sure that worked.”

“He was a bit of an optimist,” Lach said dryly. “But that’s what sent him to the Terra Court. The court that sat on the Axis Mundi was powerful in a different way than the others. It had access to not only fae magic—both light and shadow—but the magic of the earth as well. Its heiress was notoriously private, however. She accepted no visitors and kept few courtiers, save for a trusted few. Her parents had fallen when she was young, still away at school while she settled into her prime, and she’d been yanked back before she was ready to deal with the politics of a fractured court. He thought that if anyone would agree with his ideas, with the need for change, it would be her. So he went to see her.”

“And?”

“She refused to speak to him, but he waited. He had already settled on moving his court, and he wasn’t going to do so without an ally. He stayed for nearly a month before she agreed to see him, and when she did, it was love at first sight. But it was forbidden.”

“Because they were both heirs,” I murmured.

“That’s what we were always told.” But Lach shook his head. “My father wrestled with his feelings toward her, believing she was the heir to her own court. He decided to give up his own throne so that they could be together.

“But his letter to me revealed the truth. Calista, the heir , didn’t come to see him. She sent her penumbra in her place, pretending to be her.”

“What?” I blurted out. “He was in love with a…penumbra?”

Lach nodded. “I suppose it was panic that made her finally come clean to him. She told him the truth. That she was Anastacia, not Calista. Not an heir but a penumbra. She couldn’t let him give up his court without knowing the truth, but it didn’t change his mind.”

I couldn’t fathom how Lach had lived with all of this for years, how he had carried the burden of knowing the truth about his parents when no one else did.

“Calista was furious at the both of them, but she saw a way out of her own predicament. She would pass the court to her younger sister, who was more than happy to lie if it meant claiming the throne, and they would leave to be married in the New World. But when they got here, my father married the real Anastacia—and the lie was spread. My mother became Calista to the world, which believed that the heir of the Nether Court and the heir of the Terra Court had wed. My father’s penumbra was happy to be relieved of service. He took a binding oath never to tell the truth about what had happened. Calista, the true heir of the Terra Court, stayed out of sisterly devotion, pretending to be my mother’s former penumbra to sell the lie. And when we were born, she became Aunt Stacia and slowly, anyone who might have known the truth forgot.”

“And they never told anyone?” I could hardly believe it possible they kept a secret like that for so long.

“He left the letter for me. I think he suspected they were going to their deaths and that when that time came, there would be no way to hide the truth. If the Terra Court bloodline fell, the magic of the throne would not pass to me, and everyone would know it was without a true heir. Without someone from its bloodline to claim the throne, another could try to claim the Axis Mundi for their own court, and in doing so make themselves more powerful than all the rest of us combined.”

He turned haunted eyes on mine. “And so I found myself, still in uniform, holding a letter that could tear our world apart when Oberon and Bain arrived demanding I choose between my courts.”

Not a choice at all.

“But the throne is without an heir now,” I said slowly, trying to ignore the weight of the ring on my finger. “Why has no one tried to claim the Axis Mundi?”

“Everyone believes its magic runs in my family’s veins—that I might have given it up in that moment but that I would not allow it to be taken by another. I’ve made sure they feared me, feared what I would do if they crossed me.”

“But Oberon…” Now I understood why he wanted this ring.

He nodded as if he could read my thoughts. “I didn’t see it coming. I have no idea how he knows or what he suspects. But there’s only one reason he wants that ring.”

To claim the Axis Mundi and with it the magic of both our worlds.

“And if he had it, the first thing he would do is wipe away any competition.”

“He said if I gave it to him, he wouldn’t touch your family,” I whispered.

“Haven’t you learned yet, princess? The devil is in the details. He might not touch us.”

But he could find others who would, and I had almost given him the key to everything he wanted. Bile rose in my throat. I was going to be sick, but I choked it back.

“He said something about magic converging.” I tried desperately to remember everything that had passed between us. Oberon had lied to me about many things, but he hadn’t hidden his desire to claim the throne. “That without the Terra Court, there would be chaos.”

Lach nodded, his face growing solemn. “Our magic is changing, mixing together in strange ways. Aurora spoke to me at Mabon, asked me to consider reclaiming my mother’s throne. She told me that Sirius is convinced the problem stems from the lost Axis Mundi.” He rubbed his temples. Aurora was a friend and the heir to the Astral Court. Her younger brother, Sirius, tended to have ideas of his own. “I couldn’t tell her the truth. If anyone knew… But I’d suspected as much for years and had been searching for Stacia—I mean, Calista. The real Calista. I had begun to think something terrible had happened to her, and then you showed up wearing that ring.” He stopped. We were only a street away from the Avalon, and this conversation felt far from over. “I should have told you the truth, but I didn’t know if I could trust you. If anyone else found out, they might have tried to take it to go after the throne.”

I shook my head. “Well, genius, you didn’t tell me, and they almost did.”

“That fact hasn’t escaped me.”

“So, no one else knows?” I lifted an eyebrow.

The edges of his smile faltered. “Roark does, but only because I’m shit at keeping secrets from him.”

“Noted.”

“He’s the only one who suspects what I suspect.” He took my hands, gripping them tightly. “It’s not a coincidence that you showed up in my court after all this time.”

The world tried to slip out from beneath me, but he held me steady.

“The night you came to the Avalon, something drew me outside. Some instinct I couldn’t explain. I stepped out for just a moment, telling myself I needed a break from all our guests, and I found you—wearing that ring.”

I was having trouble breathing.

“So, I let you inside, determined to find out who you were and why you had the ring. And then, you begged for your brother’s life…” He swallowed hard. “My aunt would have done that for my mother. At least, she would have before everything went wrong, and some part of me knew that you were linked to her somehow.”

No. I wanted to say the word, but it wouldn’t come out. “It might just be a coincidence.”

Lach inclined his head. “Maybe. But that night in my office, you offered me the ring in exchange for Channing’s life, and when you slipped it just slightly off your finger—” He paused and met my eyes. “I saw something.”

I sucked at the air, trying to force it into my lungs. But he had refused the ring—only to make a bargain around it. Obviously, Lach believed what he was saying. Me?

What was I supposed to think? That I was some lost fae heir?

I waited for the information to sink in and take root. A laugh gurgled out of me instead. Concern drew his eyebrows together as he stroked my hand.

But I leaned toward him, examining his eyes in the dim moonlight.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m checking for a concussion. I think you hit your head.” A traumatic brain injury might explain all of this.

“I know it’s a lot to digest—”

“It’s impossible to digest,” I cut him off. I’d spent my childhood waiting for a fairy tale that never came, wanting to believe my parents would show up and say that it was all a big mistake, that they loved me and wanted me. When I grew up, I let go of that fantasy. Now he expected me to buy into a new one? “And none of it explains why I can’t take the ring off.”

“Because there’s magic binding it to you,” he reminded me gently, as if he knew forcing more proof might break me.

“Fine.” I pulled at the ring, but it didn’t budge. I let out a frustrated sigh and thrust my right hand toward him. “You try.”

Lach watched me closely as he tried to slip the ring from my finger and failed. So much for Oberon’s theory that marrying me would trick the ring. After all, according to Lach, we were pretty much married. Then again, he also thought I was a princess.

Princess.

He called me that from the day we met. Not a taunt. Not an endearment. Had he been warning me? Had he been testing me?

My thoughts spiraled like water slipping down a drain. That wouldn’t do me any good. I needed to get a hold of myself, assess the situation, and figure out how to treat the problem.

Lach remained before me, gripping my hands, an anchor that might just as easily drown me as keep me grounded. But it was enough to help me see what I had to do.

“I need to get this ring off,” I told him. “Maybe then you’ll see that I’m nothing special. The witches who helped me in Ireland told me there were people here who could help with it.”

“We have to be cautious about who we approach with this,” he said slowly, as if choosing each word with care. “There are plenty of creatures in the city who would still sell us out to Oberon no matter what they’ve pledged.”

“And I can trust you?” I asked. His eyes darkened, but I pressed on before he could say something sweet and unmoor me. “Oberon tried to make a bargain for this ring to claim the Terra Court throne. Is that why you wanted it?”

A direct question. Lach didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“And now?” All he had wanted was a stupid ring, and he had gotten stuck with a mate instead. The throne. That was what this was all really about.

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “That’s for you to decide. I’ll respect whatever you choose.”

A retort died on my lips as I stared into his eyes, finding only sincerity.

But he had to want more than that after all this time. “And if you’re wrong, if I’m not what you think I am?”

“I know exactly who you are, Cate. The ring changes nothing between us.”

But that was a lie. “Yes, it does.”

Lach’s jaw worked for a second before he released me and started forward again. “Will you ever believe me?” he asked as I caught up to him. “Or will you hold the bargain against me forever?”

The anguish in his voice threatened to undo me, but I held firm. “You know that I have a point. It’s not just about the ring or the Terra Court. You think I’m fae.” I struggled to even say the word. “You’ve thought that the whole time! How can you love me?”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” he grunted, shaking his head.

“You don’t even know me.” Yes. Fighting felt right, or at least easier.

He twisted toward me, the anger in his eyes blazing. “Maybe I don’t. Because I thought you were fearless, but you’re acting like a coward.”

I flinched, his words hitting too close to the mark. “Say. That. Again.”

“Cate.” He hesitated, his eyelids shuttering. “I’m sorry—”

“Say it again, Gage,” I cut him off. “I dare you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing like the brand of the Wild Hunt stung.

We fell silent again, moving more quickly, both ready for the shelter of the Avalon. The hotel glowed in the night like a welcoming beacon, promising a reprieve from the tangle of information ensnaring us. Because what was there left to say? I knew everything now, and it would change things between us. Because how long would he love me if he survived the Hunt? When I proved to be fragile and fleeting and human? I barely managed to choke back a sob.

His expression softened, his fury dying out like an ember as we reached the front steps where we first met. That night felt like a lifetime ago. In a way, it was.

“What about the magic?” he asked.

“What about it?” I blinked, confused.

“The mating bond won’t seal without selfless love,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“What has magic ever done for me?” I ignored his pleading eyes, ignored the ache swelling inside me, and raced up the staircase.

Shadows swept toward the revolving door like he might use his magic to stop me. But before they reached it—before I reached it—it spun to reveal Ciara, arms crossed and glaring, the family signet glinting on her finger.

“You’ve got some explaining to do.”