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Chapter Eighteen

Calix

Watching Asteria have fun with everyone was a balm to my soul. Feeling her happiness even more so. She’d been leaving the bond cracked open since the night she harnessed her power, and I couldn’t have been more thankful for it.

Even if I couldn’t have her, getting this small piece of her was enough to reassure the wild protective instinct that arose in me around her. The bond was truly like nothing I’d experienced before, and trying to control myself around her was becoming increasingly difficult.

I’d been spending a lot of time in the air, letting my flames out to burn off some of that energy. And equally as much time in my room, pumping my cock and thinking back to the festival, imagining slamming into her tight heat, instead of my boring fist.

“Your eyes are going to fall out if you stare at her any harder.” Baach laughed, clamping a hand on my shoulder.

I tore my eyes away from her to see Eryx ducking his head to hide his smile. I glared at him. “I thought you at least would be on my side here.”

“Sorry, Cay, but I’m with Baach.” Eryx laughed. “You should just, you know, talk to her.”

I sighed longingly, shaking my head. “She needs this time with them. Before long, we’ll be too busy to enjoy moments like this.”

“And don’t you think you two should figure your shit out before then?” Baach raised a red eyebrow, and I scowled back at him.

“Coming from the man who still hasn’t figured his own shit out?” I countered, looking pointedly at Ilta, who would occasionally glance toward Baach, only to quickly look away.

Baach sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I’m working on it, okay? I just—I don’t want to lose what we have now.”

“Ilta’s crazy about you, Baach. You’re not going to lose your friendship with her just because you’re together.” Eryx rolled his eyes. “I wish Delia was half as crazy about me as Ilta is about you.

“She is.” I assured him, smiling slightly, “She’s just in denial.”

Eryx shook his head, “Enough about us. You and Asteria need to figure this out. People are talking.”

That was a significant statement coming from my spymaster.

“Talking about what?” I sat up straighter, leaning toward him with my arms resting on my knees.

“Your people want to meet her. They’ve heard rumors that the girl you brought back is your mate. But they’ve seen too little of her. They want to know about her. Have the chance to see their future queen.” Eryx explained, raising a brow at me as I winced.

“It’s too early for that,” I insisted, shaking my head. I didn’t want to overwhelm Asteria with this right now. Not when she was about to meet her mother. Not when she hadn’t fully accepted the bond.

“No, it’s not,” Baach added, rolling his eyes. “We should be organizing an introduction of Asteria to her future subjects. Let me plan it. I’ll have them come to the throne room, and you can introduce her and let them see her. We’ll have a ball where she can mingle with the people, and they can see what we all see, that she’s the queen we need.”

“Baach’s right.” Eryx nodded. “We need to be getting ahead of this.”

I winced again, and Eryx looked at me critically. I ran my fingers around the tattoos on my forearms, tracing the runes glowing silver against my pale skin.

“Calix,” Eryx said, ducking his head to meet my eyes. “Please tell me you’ve told Asteria.”

I shut my eyes, but Baach’s laughter made me open them back up to glare at him. Eryx’s mouth was hanging open in shock.

“You haven’t told her about the prophecy?” Baach laughed, throwing his head back. I rolled my eyes, shushing him when his volume got too high.

The pool area was loud, and I was fairly confident our voices weren’t carrying over to the girls with so many conversations happening right now, but I didn’t want to risk it.

“Calix—” Eryx started, his voice slipping into that tone he used when he was working.

“I will tell her. I promise you that,” I insisted, meeting his eyes as he ran a hand through his short hair. “But she’s overwhelmed enough right now. Let her get through meeting her family. We’ll have plenty of time when we go on our diplomatic trip up North to talk. I’ll bring it up then.”

I eyed Asteria across the pool as she laughed, the sparkle in her eyes, her cheeks flushed with health… so much more life in her than when she first came here.

She deserved so much better than the darkened past she had, but I would assure her future would be so light, it would be sung about for millennia.

* * *

“Calix!” Eryx rushed into my solar, looking harried with his hair a mess, the way it always was after he’d been flying in his hawk form.

Ilta blinked at him in shock from where she’d been working at her desk across the office. I stood up quickly. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s…” He trailed off, swallowing. “There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of humans making their way to our border from Day Kingdom.”

“What?” I demanded, walking towards where he lingered in the doorway. He was in his armor, and I knew he’d been flying back from scoping out the fortress on the Etheralta Mountains before we were due to leave today to meet Aurelia there.

“They were escorted by Bellin, Arien’s second. Apparently, they were rescued from Aelius’s plots, and Arien sent them here for refuge,” Eryx explained, a complicated look in his eyes that I understood well.

It was wonderful that more humans were being rescued and that Arien was helping in such an endeavor. But if he’d had to rescue them…

What the fuck were Aelius and Cyrus doing? Cyrus couldn’t possibly be using them all for his blood magic, could he? We knew he was using some humans in Dusk Kingdom for that purpose, but if potentially hundreds were heading there from Day…

Then, this was beyond bad.

The iron weapons the blood magic could help forge would be disastrous to us. We hadn’t had to deal with iron as long as I’d been alive, only the accounts I’d read from kings long past and the stories passed down like fables told us really anything about how iron could be used on Fae. Since it had been made forbidden across the realms, all knowledge of it had almost entirely faded out of existence.

And yet, I knew Asteria’s human father had somehow come upon an iron knife. One he’d passed on to her. It was now kept locked up, deep beneath the palace where no one but me could reach it. Asteria had gladly handed it off, not literally—she kept her hand wrapped in a shirt to avoid contact, and I made sure it was somewhere no one would stumble upon it.

As I rushed out of the palace, I paused, thinking of Asteria. She deserved to be here for this. Not only as my future queen, but this was her fight too, and this was her brother sending them to us. To her.

“Eryx, go grab Asteria. Fill her in on the way,” I informed him briskly, making my way to inform the guards. Eryx dipped his head with a smile, before taking off to find her.

It didn’t take long for them to arrive, Asteria clad in her armor, which I made a real effort not to look at too closely. Now was not the time to get turned on.

“We’ll fly over. It’ll be good practice for you.” I let her know, and she paused uncertainly. I smiled down at her, taking her chin in my hand and lifting her head to make eye contact. “You have this. I know you do. And I’ll be right beside you the entire time, my réalta.”

She gathered herself, visibly straightening and squaring her shoulders. I smiled wider, impressed as ever at her fortitude. I didn’t think I’d handle what she was dealing with half as well as she was if the way I’d handled becoming king and my sisters’ guardian proved anything.

I stepped back, shifting until glittering black and purple scales replaced skin. I huffed teasingly at Asteria, and she rolled her eyes before stepping back and shifting herself. Sparkling silver and purple scales overcame her, but those blue eyes shot through with starlight were still looking back at me.

“Looking good, Asteria!” Eryx called, a smile lighting up his face. “Though I have to say, you might be giving me a size complex!” He shifted into his hawk form, tittering as he flew up above us.

Asteria snickered, which in her dragon form came out more like a grumble. I sent my laughter through the telepathic connection we had in our animal forms.

“He’s just jealous,” Asteria replied, saucily. “ Though maybe it’s you who should be.” She flew upward and circled until I followed her, moving to lead the way west toward the mountains. The humans were going to be skating past Caersidi to arrive at the border closest to Tairngire, just south of the mountain range. It wasn’t far from us, and the guards I had rallied would be arriving without much trouble in an hour or two.

“ Me? What do I have to be jealous of ?” I asked her, bemused.

Her giggle echoed in my mind, and I wished it would stay there as she answered, “ I think I might be bigger than you. I don’t want to make you feel inadequate.”

I snorted. She was visibly smaller than me, even in her dragon form. Dragons got larger with age, and I had four centuries on her. Only Aelius was bigger than me.

“ I think you might be delusional, grá. ” I lowered my voice into a faux-serious tone. “ We’ll have to work on that; see if you can be saved before total delirium sets in on you. It’s an insidious illness. ”

Her laughter was reward enough, but she sobered after a moment. “ What does that mean? Grá?”

I froze for a moment, not having realized I’d called her that. Fuck . I didn’t know how to answer. I was trying to give her space and time to work things out on her own. I didn’t want to pressure her into being with me. And calling her love was implying a level of feeling that I was sure would have her running for the hills.

Or flying for them. As far away as her wings would take her.

I had been trying not to think, trying desperately hard not to, in fact, about my feelings for Asteria. I knew they were growing, quickly, in the time we had before she was taken. The fact I chose her over my supposed soulmate was all I needed to know to confirm that what I felt for her was deep and all-consuming.

But I tried not to put a word on it. Just thinking that word, love , opened the floodgates to a wealth of feeling I was currently trying to suppress.

But of course, I fucking loved her.

How could I not?

She was the light in my darkness, the star to my moon. Her fire matched my own, and together, I knew we could do the impossible. We would burn this world to ash and build a better one in its ruins, together.

And none of that even touched on who she was at her core. A fierce woman with a resolve and integrity that put my own to shame. Her capacity for care and kindness, even after all the horror life had thrown at her, was larger than should be possible. She so easily became part of our little family, seamlessly slotting in like she was always meant to be there. She saw and truly understood me, recognizing my pain and my faults, and she accepted them without issue, breezing past them while somehow also not minimizing my own feelings on the matter.

She saw into the dark heart of me, and she stared into the abyss without blinking.

Love was the only possible reaction to such a thing.

Forget prophecy. Forget the bond, even. That alone had my heart cracking open for her, inviting her into it and enclosing her within.

Best of all, she didn’t mind the darkness she saw there. What was it she had said?

“ Darkness does become me, does it not?”

She was absolutely right; the darkness became her like none other. It just allowed her to shine ever brighter against it.

But I couldn’t say any of that right now, so I merely said, “ I’ll tell you later .”

Hopefully, that later wouldn’t be too far away.

* * *

The line of people stretching out before us was massive. How many humans had Aelius rid himself of? Didn’t he use them for labor? How in Tartarus was he going to write off that many?

They all looked exhausted as we circled above them, trudging forward but slumped over. The soldiers beside them shined in their golden armor, leading them on, yet seemingly unsure of how to handle them.

They’d surely been using slaves without issue all their lives and didn’t know how to take them now being freed.

We landed before my border guards, who immediately bowed, even before I finished shifting back. Asteria bounded over to me, looking worried and pissed off in equal measure. Eryx cawed before swooping down, shifting midair, and landing on his feet beside us.

I rolled my eyes, every time , I swear.

“Don’t be jealous. I’m lighter on my feet than you,” he teased as he came up beside me, trying to bury his smile as he looked out at the line of humans approaching. Asteria snickered briefly before pressing her lips inward to stop herself.

I shook my head at them and approached the guards, waving for them to rise.

“My King.” Helio, the commander in charge of this border unit, greeted me. He had been stationed here for years. Having family in both Day and Night Kingdoms, my father had allowed him to take up his post here, and he’d more than proven his loyalty since then. His gratefulness for my father’s decision had never wavered.

“Helio.” I nodded in greeting. “This is my mate, Asteria.”

The man’s red eyes widened, and he immediately kneeled before her, his light blonde hair falling over his face slightly, and her own blue eyes flew open wide in response.

“Oh, that’s—that’s really not—” She turned those wide eyes to me in panic, and I had to bite down on my amused smile. As a human, she had stood toe-to-toe with me at our first meeting and held a knife to my throat, but she panicked over someone bowing to her.

Helio chuckled lightly before rising. “Forgive me, we’ve just been waiting for you for so long.”

Asteria tilted her head to the side, her confusion clear. I glanced at Eryx from the corner of my eye, and sure enough, I told you so was written all over his face.

“What can you tell us about this?” I asked, redirecting the conversation. From the look Asteria shot me, I knew we would certainly be returning to it later. I tried not to wince.

Thankfully, Helio was much more willing to accommodate. “They began showing up in the last few hours. I met with Bellin, he’s helping the stragglers along now, but it seems there’s some issues in Day.”

I raised a brow, well aware of that fact, but unsure of the extent or any recent changes. “How so?”

“Apparently, Aelius gave Arien orders to send a unit to Dusk. He did so, but Aelius sent another behind them. Only before this one left, they rounded up about two hundred humans from Day, most from the outskirts of Avalon, but some from other cities, brought there under cover in advance to bolster the numbers,” Helio explained, a wrinkle in his brow the only indication of his discomfort.

He was currently dating a human woman, Mayrah, who lived nearby. He’d always taken his responsibility to the resistance seriously, but falling in love with a human had upped his commitment substantially.

“They tied them up and shoved them along.” He growled slightly. “When the cowardly soldiers Aelius sent reached the ones who had left earlier under Arien’s order, they attacked. Thankfully, Arien was flying above when it happened, and was able to turn the tide of the fight.”

Asteria straightened, no doubt hearing any news of her twin brother was conflicting for her. I was sure she was anxious to know more about him, and how he responded to this situation in particular.

“What happened?” She urged Helio, who smiled slightly at her.

“He killed the attackers and, according to Bellin, ordered that Aelius couldn’t know what happened to the soldiers and humans he’d sent. It would be better for them to essentially disappear. That way, he wouldn’t know Arien interfered or had any knowledge of his plans.”

Asteria looked disappointed at his explanation. I’m sure she’d hoped Arien felt similarly to us about human slavery, and I worried how she might react to meeting her family, knowing both actively kept slaves.

“Arien told him to free the humans and bring them here, where they’d be safe.” Helio finished, and my brow creased as I thought it over.

“You told Soren about what we’re doing with the humans, right?” I asked Asteria, who nodded, understanding growing on her face.

“You think he told Aurelia and Arien?” She countered, stumbling over their names just slightly, unsure how to refer to them.

“He must have. There’s no way Arien would have known they’d be safe here otherwise.” I thought it over and glanced at Asteria. “It’s likely Soren is acting as a spy of sorts, though one used for a very specific purpose. He likely reported everything about your interaction to them.”

She glared in the general direction of Day Kingdom, as if Soren might feel her glare from here. I wouldn’t put it past her; her rage was beautiful and volatile—and nothing if not explosive.