Page 13 of Queen of Ever (Curse of Fate and Fae #2)

Chapter 13

Tarian

I was going to wear a hole in the floor at the rate I was pacing. It was taking everything I had to keep myself confined to this room, to turn when I reached the door and go back the other way. If I opened that door, I would do something stupid. Like go and find Imogen and demand to know what the fuck was going on. I’d have to go storming through the Seelie quarters to do that, which would create a scene and all the effort I’d spent on keeping myself from chasing after her in the first place would have been for nothing.

That’s what I kept telling myself, but it was hard to focus on that when Solas had just paraded his intention to marry my mate all over the opening of the conclave when he’d offered her up as the second pledge in the bloodletting. If I hadn’t just bound myself to peace on pain of being thrown across the room, I would have had him by the throat right then. Still might have, if Briyala hadn’t anticipated my reaction and intervened, hissing, ‘Get a hold of yourself. Think of your mate. You don’t know what her part in it is.’

And I did think of her. I thought of the look on her face, that stricken uncertainty, and realised I had no idea what our time apart had been for her. Didn’t know whether she’d been in some kind of arrangement with the Seelie King from the start, didn’t know if anything that had passed between us had been real. Didn’t know how seeing me made her feel. And maybe it wouldn’t have been enough to cool the burn of possessive fury if she’d gone to Solas or shown any preference for him, but she didn’t. She returned to the other side of the room, far away from the Seelie King, to stand beside his sister. And the way she glanced across at me had so much confusion and misery in it that I clenched my fists and held my damn tongue.

But that didn’t mean I hadn’t been stewing over the whole event since the opening formalities had ended. And it didn’t mean I wasn’t going to take the first opportunity presented to find Imogen so I could get some answers to these questions.

I glanced with loathing at the half-face mask lying on the table. There was something sly in the bend of its expression, something vicious in the sharply upturned eyes and hooked beak. Even lying there, it muddled my thoughts, the magic woven into it working to disguise the table by scrambling my associations with tables, making it difficult to connect the four legs and flat top with what I knew tables to look like. It would do the same to me when I put it on.

The door opened without a knock and I turned on the intruder, ready to vent some of my frustration before I found Ethan prancing into the room dressed in something that looked like little more than a patchwork of leaves and—of course—copious amounts of glitter.

‘Don’t come near me in all that,’ I growled, eyeing the shimmering silver dust already coating the floor behind him.

He rolled his eyes. ‘Some glitter would do you good. I’m sure you could still look utterly miserable while sparkling.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know what your plan is. Other than moping about assuming the worst.’

‘Killing Solas in his sleep.’

Ethan placed a hand on a jutted hip. ‘As much as I would love to see that, your little bloodletting ceremony makes it a rather unattainable goal.’ The oath we’d sworn bound us to peace while it was in place. Any attempt at violence would end in being launched through the air to be dumped several feet away from whoever the aggressor was trying to attack.

I dropped onto the chair by the table and scrubbed at my hair with my fingers. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think clearly. He’s going to marry her. He walked her up as his second in place of Marietta. And she complied. What am I supposed to do?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe ask her what’s going on? At least now you’ll have the chance. She’ll be at the feast.’

I glared at the mask. ‘If she’ll talk to me. If I can even find her before the night is over.’ I could feel the thrumming thread of our bond gently tugging at me, but I had no idea if it would be enough to lead me to her in the whirl and revelry of the night to come. I suspected it wouldn’t.

With a flick of his wrist, Ethan waved something in my direction. A flash of sliver. ‘Lucky for you, I’m more than just a pretty face. I’ve already got an answer to that.’

I took it from him, rubbed it between my fingers. ‘What is this supposed to be?’

‘Look for the woman with the matching ribbon on her wrist. And don’t come back to this room until the two of you have sorted your shit out, for fuck’s sake. And yes—’ he said as I held the sparkling scrap of silver before my eyes. ‘It’s glittery.’

The mask sat uncomfortably on my face, the magic numbing my skin, reacting against my own with an occasional fizz. I wove through the growing throng of courtiers flitting through the crumbling halls of the old castle, all masked, all impossible to distinguish between Seelie and Unseelie. The tang of magic hung in the air, the prickle of it running over my mind every time I fixed on any particular guest, misleading my thoughts and tangling my associations. But I stared at everyone I encountered all the same, fighting against the forced forgetting. I repeated the word blond in my mind, clung to it, and when a fae woman in sapphire blue with light-coloured hair darted past, I instinctively reached for her. She turned, her white half-mask concealing whether she was surprised or displeased as I scanned her face, fighting to draw my memories together. Her eyes were wrong. If I didn’t know it from the lack of pull I felt towards her, I knew it from the conviction that those weren’t Imogen’s eyes.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered, releasing her. Her answering giggle followed me as I pushed past, towards the enormous arched doorway before me, jagged with ruin and traced with veins of glowing faelight.

The steady pound of drums beckoned us all forwards, growing louder as the scene beyond came into view. An ancient sprawl of winding galleries and cavernous halls, gaping open to the whirl of the night sky by virtue of the collapsed ceiling. The stone was crumbling and crawling with vines that had only been cleared away so far as to allow for passage through. In some places, rubble and stone was piled in heaps, dancing with the shadows cast by torches and glittering with glasses perched on dangerously perilous ledges, offering all flavours and colours of fae wine, the sort that could lock the drinker in a waking nightmare, or make them glow bright green and float a foot off the floor, or fall in love for a night.

The churning sea of masked fae pouring into the space quickly swept me up, drawing me into the bowels of the old castle, where the hall sometimes became a series of winding tunnels branching off from each other before curling back to join the main fray again. And of course there was food everywhere. Tables of all sizes were crammed into corners or laid against stretches of wall space, piled high with sugared plums and gooseberry tarts, pickled nightshade, stewed roses, whole fowl glazed with spiced honey and stuffed with chestnuts.

As I passed below another stone archway, I eyed the human woman hanging from a swing above, her wrists wrapped in delicate golden chains as she sang with a clear, high voice that resonated with the drumming. A string quartet was clustered below her, unmasked, since they were human as well. All wore the same gold chains, but they were unnecessary as none would try to run. These weren’t changelings. They would have been temporarily stolen for their talents. They’d be drunk on magic the entire time they were here, and when they weren’t required any longer they’d be dumped back through a portal to be found wandering in the human world, their memories scrambled, unable to distinguish between what had been real and what had been a dream.

Which was lucky for them. At least a conclave didn’t involve a hunt.

Someone caught me, giggled as she draped arms around my neck. For an instant, I hoped it was Imogen. I hoped she’d found me. The hope was dashed when I realised this woman had snarls of red curls spilling down her shoulders and I quickly extracted myself. Stupid, to think it might be as easy as that. That she’d somehow find me , recognise me even in the mask. Yet, I could feel that she was here. Somewhere. It was impossible to pinpoint, in a space so stuffed full of Seelie and Unseelie and magic. Ethan’s silver ribbon had seemed much more promising upstairs, far from the chaotic pulse of two fae courts gifted a night of anonymity.

I was drawn toward an antechamber that still had its roof, where a crowd had gathered and laughter occasionally sounded loud enough to be heard over the drumming. I pushed through, looking for a silver ribbon, trying to follow that faintly thrumming pull that told me Imogen was somewhere near.

In the centre of the room stood a collection of glass boxes, each housing a lesser fae creature. One stood with clawed hands pressed against the sides of the box, as though trying to brace it up, and another sat cross-legged on the floor, blinking up at the crowd through curled tusks. Yet another was curled in a ball on the floor, translucent wings trembling.

‘Well none of you are going to escape at this rate, which will be no fun for those of us who’ve placed bets,’ said a lithe male in a suit half in green, half in polka dotted orange. The crowd settled, voices quieting as interest turned to him. ‘Pay close attention this time. Are you ready? Here’s your next riddle. I dance without feet, I sing without voice, I come when I will and leave you no choice. I weave through the night, invisible thread, yet if you can see me, I’ll fill you with dread. What am I?’

‘I don’t know!’ cried the one bracing the walls, her voice muffled by the glass. ‘Please, give me a task instead! I’m no good at riddles!’

‘Come on, now, you’re going to lose your standing room when the box shrinks this time. All you need is one little answer and you’re free.’

I drew back, lip curled with disgust. Imogen wouldn’t be in that crowd. She wouldn’t be drawn into watching that sort of game.

Finding a break in the throng of mingling fae, I took a breath, tried to settle my mind and reach for that ever-present, invisible bond. It felt like the magic in the masks was permeating even that, making it feel like there was more than one thread and they were pulling in different directions. But if I concentrated, I thought I felt a stronger draw in one direction over another, so I followed it.

The space opened out again, large enough to encase a whirl of dancers, bodies packed too closely together to track a ribbon on a wrist. I should have just gone to her beforehand, the way Ethan had. Fuck the ceremony and the rules and playing endearing. I should have just found her, picked her up and taken her somewhere no one would come looking for us. Everything else could be sorted out later, when we had time to fucking talk .

And then I caught sight of a woman hanging back, standing at the edge of the room, arms folded tight, appearing more uncomfortable than any seasoned fae would in a party like this. Dressed in swathes of gold, she was clearly marked as Seelie in a party supposed to be dedicated to blurring the boundaries between the courts. She was looking around, eyes scanning the room through the narrow strip of white fabric serving as her mask, but her gaze slipped over the dancers with seemingly no intention of joining them. She looked like she was passing through, perched on the balls of her feet, ready to move on. Searching for something.

Searching for me?

I stayed close to the edge of the room, dodging the worst of the crowd, watching her. She reached out to accept a glass of wine from another woman. There was a loop on her wrist, clashing with her gold dress. A slip of silver.

I waited for her friend to turn her attention to someone else before I drew close and stepped in behind her. Caught her hand where it had been dangling by her side.

‘Got you.’

She jolted, spilling her wine, whipping around, eyes darting over me. ‘Tarian.’ There was no question in it. The resonance in the feel of her skin against mine, the relief, the feeling of being right , would have settled any doubts. ‘What do—’

‘Not here,’ I said, cutting off her question. ‘Come with me.’

‘Why?’

‘So we can talk without being interrupted.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to talk to you,’ she said, defiant as ever, but her words lacked conviction and I knew there was still a chance to convince her.

‘ Please. ’

She swallowed, her gaze flashing to her companion, but in that moment of hesitation I was already leading her away. And if her mind wasn’t ready to follow me, it seemed her feet were.

As we drew towards one of the shadowy halls leading away from the heart of the feast, she extracted her wrist from my grasp. She didn’t slow her pace, so I let her, though it made me flex my hand with the need to hold on, to keep touching her.

I only led her as far as that hallway and through an opening where the wall had given away completely, revealing a narrow, vine-covered stretch of outside between one wall and another. Shadowed. Inconspicuous. Empty.

She took only a few steps beyond the opening and stopped, arms wrapped tightly around herself again, eyeing me warily. What I wanted to do was cage her against the wall where she couldn’t slip away, kiss her until her hands were on me instead of wrapped so protectively around herself, and remind her exactly what she’d run from until she regretted running in the first place. But, judging from that stance, her feelings towards me hadn’t changed since our last meeting, when she’d knocked me unconscious and accused me of selling her out. My more impulsive, selfish emotions weren’t likely to win this battle.

So instead, I said, ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Are you sure? You didn’t look pleased to see me when I arrived.’

‘I wasn’t,’ I agreed. ‘Not to see you with the Seelie Court.’

There was a loaded pause while I tried to pick the right words to use next. I had so much to say to her, but standing here now, with her guarded stance and her face still hidden with magic that made her unrecognisable, the words were difficult to grasp.

‘I didn’t know if I’d see you,’ she said finally. ‘I thought… the attack… I didn’t know if you were alive.’

‘You’d probably feel it if I wasn’t.’

She coloured, shooting her gaze down with a frown as she rubbed at her wrist. The one that bore a mark matching the one on mine. My attention caught on the thick band she wore there, like a gold shackle hugging her skin. Hiding her skin.

‘I wasn’t sure,’ she said. ‘I guess I still don’t really know much about this…’ she trailed off, like the word bond had gotten stuck in her throat. Like it had caught on all that word meant, on the memories attached to it. She still wasn’t looking at me.

‘Neither do I,’ I admitted, and was rewarded by her glancing up to meet my eyes, maybe even the barest twist of a smile shadowing her mouth. But it vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a harder expression.

‘You wanted to talk,’ she said, lifting her chin. ‘Say whatever it is you have to say. Marietta will be wondering where I’ve gone.’

‘Solas has her tracking you?’

‘No.’ Her tone was hot. Defensive. ‘She’ll just worry if I vanish. They’re worried I’ll be attacked again.’

‘Attacked?’ I repeated sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

She let out a sigh, as if she was annoyed at herself. She hadn’t planned to tell me that, but she surely knew me well enough by now to know I wasn’t going to let her go without an explanation. ‘Someone tried to kill me during the Equinox celebrations at the Summer Palace,’ she finally said.

‘ What ?’

‘One of the rebels. They were disguised as a servant.’

I’d been told she was protected in the Seelie Court. I took a step closer to her, reaching for her without thinking, driven by a desire to keep her close, to keep her safe . I closed my hand as she drew back a little, almost imperceptibly, reminding me that she didn’t want me to touch her anymore. I swallowed hard and dropped my hand, the simple action taking a surprising amount of effort. It went against my every instinct.

‘Were you hurt?’ I asked when I’d mastered the impulse, studying her eyes through her mask closely, trying to read the answer. I would make someone pay dearly for it if the answer was yes.

‘No. One of the courtiers stepped in and stopped them.’ She took a breath. Seemed to swallow something down. I was studying her so intently, trying so hard to push through the magic trying to displace my recognition to remember her face behind the mask, to compare what I could see of her eyes and her mouth with what I’d known of her before.

‘For a moment, as it was happening,’ she continued, ‘when Lord Niall stepped in, I thought it was you. But it wasn’t.’ She swallowed again. I tried to speak. Still couldn’t find the words. Not words that wouldn’t make this worse. ‘I thought you would come. But you didn’t.’

‘You’re the one who left,’ I said, and they were the wrong words. Too laced with anger. ‘You should never have been in that situation in the first place.’ My tone was sharp. I knew it was. But the reminder of the moment she’d run, left me unconscious on the floor and run , had me by the throat. I should have been the one to protect her, and if she hadn’t left, I would have been.

‘What choice did I have?’ she demanded. ‘How was I supposed to stick around after you gave my fiorainm to the Unseelie Queen? You betrayed me, Tarian.’

Shame caught me as I stood frozen in the chill of her stare. I tried to pick better words this time. ‘I know how it looks,’ I said slowly. How to defend the indefensible? ‘But that isn’t how it happened. I wish you hadn’t run. I could have explained. I want to explain now.’

‘Maybe I’m not interested in what you have to say anymore. You showed me who you were when you kidnapped me. I shouldn’t have been dense enough to need showing twice.’ She seemed almost taken aback when she’d finished blasting me, like she was surprised by the sting of her own venom. The silence hung taut, resonating with the faint drumming and occasional laughter drifting to us from the feast. I felt the threads of the conversation slipping through my hands, felt the certainty that I was about to watch her walk away from me. After all this time being gnawed at by the desperation to talk to her, I wasn’t prepared for what I would actually say. I wasn’t prepared for how my own anger and jealousy would curl around me, warping my words, demanding some kind of satisfaction.

‘Or maybe you were always going to Solas,’ I said, finally reaching the subject that had been scratching at me hardest. ‘Maybe you were just waiting for an excuse.’

‘What the hell would make you think that?’ she demanded, a note of disgust in her voice.

‘You’re engaged.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘Engaged?’ She snorted a laugh. ‘To Solas?’ The laughter continued for a moment. ‘Where did you get that ridiculous idea?’

‘You declared it publicly at the blood-letting ceremony when you were called second.’

She blinked. Snapped her mouth shut. I was angry, but not stupid enough to miss the look of genuine shock on her face. It eased the grip of my anger a little. Maybe I hadn’t lost her just yet. Not completely.

‘Everything that brings the courts together is done with ceremony and meaning,’ I said. ‘Nothing is without reason. Including the order of those adding their blood to the oath. Whoever succeeded Solas would be the next highest in rank, so his heir. Or his consort.’

‘I’m not engaged to him,’ she spluttered.

‘You didn’t know?’

‘Of course I didn’t know! Do you think I would just fall in love with you one minute and agree to marry someone else the next? As if my experience with you hadn’t served me with enough sullen royal fae wankers to last me a lifetime?’

Maybe she’d meant to provoke me more, but I was too stuck on the phrase fall in love with you to care about being insulted. The coils of anger softened, curled back, gave me room to move, let in some light. Some hope. Fall in love with you.

‘Why are you smiling?’ she demanded irritably. ‘I just called you a wanker.’

I caught her hand. She started but didn’t pull away. ‘You can call me whatever you want,’ I said, brushing back the lock of hair that had fallen loose in her rage. ‘As long as you’re still mine.’

She bit her lip. Her eyes were bright with starlight. ‘Please don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t do this to me again. I can’t take it.’

I wasn’t sure what this meant. The arguing with her. The touching her. The looking at her like she was sunlight and springtime and everything good that had ever lit the land of night.

‘Can we take these off?’ I asked, already reaching for her mask. But she drew away, her own hands going to the laces.

‘Fine,’ she mumbled, ‘but only because whatever spell is on them is giving me a headache.’

And then the mask was off, and she was looking up at me and all of my recollections crashed down on me at once. Gold hair bound high on her head, a frown of anxiety on her forehead that I wanted to smooth away, lips I’d kissed until they were flushed and swollen pressed tightly together. I wanted her to smile. I wanted to make her blush, to see her flush with colour because I’d said something wicked and she wanted me. But her frown only seemed to draw tighter when I drew my own mask away.

‘I’m sorry, Imogen,’ I said. ‘For what happened that day. I know how it looks. I know it was my fault that you ran. But I swear to you that I never meant to betray you. I went to the Unseelie Palace that day to declare my pledge to you and I let you down, but it was because I was stupid, not because I was cruel.’

She sighed, shaking her head. ‘You’d say anything to pull me in. But let’s not forget that I’ve heard nothing from you since that day. Not a letter, not a message passed through someone else, not a whisper that you’d been trying to reach me. You’ve been happy enough to let me slip out of your life where I can’t inconvenience you anymore, and you did that without feeling the need to make any apologies for what happened between us.’

Tears began to fill her eyes as she spoke, and I felt as though she was tearing at my heart with her bare hands. How could I explain to her? How could I fix this?

‘Imogen?’ The voice of an intruder drew both our attention, and Imogen took a step back, inhaling sharply. The woman she’d been standing with when I found her was peering through the opening in the stone, one hand resting on the wall. ‘Are you alright?’ She shot a look at me, and while her mask clouded my ability to tell who she was, I could take a guess that it was Princess Marietta.

‘I’m fine. Sorry, I should have told you where I was going,’ Imogen replied, quickly tying her mask back onto her face, slipping out of clarity again.

‘Maybe you should come back to the feast,’ Marietta said.

But I’d only just found her. I wasn’t letting her get away again that quickly. ‘We need a few minutes.’

The princess seemed unconvinced, raising her brows at Imogen.

‘We’re here under truce,’ I said impatiently. ‘It’s not like I’m going to hurt her.’

‘Maybe not physically,’ Marietta replied, a protective edge to her tone. ‘In any case, Solas is looking for her.’

‘Actually, I have something to say to him,’ Imogen said, drawing herself up, hands balling into fists. ‘Where is he?’

Marietta softened a little, seeming relieved. ‘I’ll show you,’ she said, ducking back through the wall. But before Imogen could follow her, I caught her hand again, held her in place.

‘I’ve left you alone because I’ve been told numerous times that being rash and possessive isn’t… endearing. I’ve been trying really hard to keep from overstepping and making this difficult for you,’ I said, ‘but I’m reaching my limits. Stay. Please.’

For a moment, it seemed like she would. But she blew out a breath, stirring the loose strands of hair around her face, and shook her head. ‘This is not the moment. I’m not having Solas march out here and the two of you using me as an excuse to throw punches or magic or whatever else you do in a fight. If you really want to talk to me, you’ll keep from turning me into some kind of political showdown and find me when we can actually talk in private.’ Again, she extracted her hand from mine, nothing but a sharp inhale that sounded almost like a sob betraying that she was anything but resolved.

‘You’re not an excuse to pick a fight with Solas.’

‘Then prove it.’ She made to leave. Paused, turning back. ‘I’m glad you’re okay,’ she said, softer now. And then she was walking away from me, and I was letting her, because fuck it all if she hadn’t basically bidden me behave myself if I wanted to prove I was serious in trying to fix what had been broken between us. I only took a few moments to wipe the emotion off my face and compose myself, but by the time I followed her, she was already out of sight.