Chapter
Five
NORA
R í Túath Crystallo was sending me away!
The school would take note of my disappearance.
I hadn’t just survived because I was cautious, I’d also survived because I was skilled.
I wasn’t lying when I laid out all those titles for myself in an attempt to sound more impressive.
Sure, I’d never actually been hired under any of those position names, but that didn’t stop me from assigning value to my own skills.
I had the knowledge of an Agronomist, a person who knew a lot about soil and crop science.
I wouldn’t consider the type of farming we did at the school to be fully sustainable, as there was a magical element that couldn’t be replaced, but I still knew how to design a sustainable garden.
I had started a small one near my dorm to supplement myself when I couldn't get to the commons in time.
If he sent me away, I would end up right back at the school.
I should have just gone with the Orcs.
The school had spells they could use to track people down in the Mundane realm; it was how they knew where to send the school pamphlets to recruit promising young victims. All it took was one person deciding to hunt me down, and I would be dragged back and interrogated so that they could find out how I escaped.
“No!” I gasped. “You granted me your boon! You said I could stay by your side!”
This was a Rí Túath. None of the people in this room supports me against their Rí Túath. If he cemented his decision to send me away, away I would go.
I slammed my fist down on the table, forgetting everything I'd been forced to learn over the last few years. The sound of my fist hitting wood startled me, as did the cracks in the surface under my fist.
I stared down at where my olive skin met the wooden surface.
Embarrassment at the damage rushed through me.
I didn't need to be strong; I needed to be gentle.
I dropped down to my knees.
“I will be of service to you!” I said, bowing my head..
“Don’t do that,” Rí Túath Crystallo said, his voice gentle. “Stand up.”
He didn't want me to kneel.
I sucked in a breath, a sudden and sharp strange feeling I didn't quite understand wrapping around my heart. He was a ruler who didn't want me to kneel. I was nothing more than a dirty farm girl. I had the blood of monsters running through my veins.
I rocked back to my heels, rising back to my feet quickly.
“Sire,” the Aetheriani with brown speckled wings said. “If the seals are breaking, then it would be best if you were to beget an heir. Mundanes are known to breed well and true, and with a boon granted that removes the need for ceremony and pomp.”
My mind staggered over those words, trying to piece together what he was saying. What did a boon have to do with all of that? I didn’t know the details of the year-long service, had I run up to the Rí Túath in the field and basically begged him to bed me?
“We don’t know when we will be called to fight,” Rí Túath Crystallo growled, closing his eyes for a moment as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me.
“All the more reason to ensure your lineage, sire,” said the Aetheriani with tan wings dappled with streaks of white. “One so sturdy is an excellent choice.”
Should I tell them?
I pressed my lips together. If I told them, they might force me to leave.
“Leaving a fledgling behind without a father is not what I intend to do,” Rí Túath Crystallo said, snapping his eyes open to glare at the other Aetheriani. He looked from one to the other, studiously avoiding looking at me.
Relief filled me as the pressure I was under to tell the truth vanished. He didn’t want a kid right now anyway. I didn’t need to announce the whole thing to the room and risk his advisors changing their minds suddenly, cheerleading for me to be tossed through a portal into the mundane.
This way I could stay here for a year with just the risk of a danger bang.
If he were chivalrous, he would be down to even just pretend we were doing it if I told him the truth.
I eyed him, noting the chiseled jaw and curls in his hair.
The exposed muscles of his arms were strong and gorgeous.
He was the kind of man who could drag me by my hair without breaking a sweat, and the twinge between my legs let me know that he was exactly the type my body wanted right now.
Strong and dangerous.
“Of course, sire, but your intentions must serve the people, not yourself,” the tan winged one said.
Rí Túath Crystallo finally turned to look at me, his gaze hitting me like electricity, running up and down my spine as heat pooled, coiling in the root of my core. “Is this what you really chose? You can go home. You need not serve me and my people in this way.”
Strong, dangerous, and a good person.
“But you took me with you,” I said, my mind skipping back to our first conversation, realizing I had basically sold my body to him in exchange for an escape. I thought I would scrub floors, but in reality, I was offering to take danger angeldick.
I could feel dampness gather between my legs at the thought.
I wanted to stay.
I couldn't lie and pretend I didn’t want to.
Plus, I was well-versed with basic healing spells.
“There is no debt that needs to be paid,” Rí Túath Crystallo said. “I would help any mundane escape that place if the opportunity arose. You may go home without any obligation.”
His words floated through me, stroking a soft part of my heart that had survived under layers of hardened shells, developed by the unrelenting needs of survival. It had been so long since someone gave me a choice, a real choice.
The choice was to go home and risk the school coming after me.
It sounded like there was something brewing, and it was unlikely that anyone at the school would have the attention to spare to hunt me down, but it was always a risk.
The other choice was to stay here and sleep with a creature whose nether parts carried a big, serious question mark in my mind.
Rí Túath Crystallo's younger brother was one of the few Aetheriani at the school, and none of the mundanes I had spoken to knew of anyone who had slept with them. The knowledge I had of his malehood was based on rumor. Even so, it was a rumor I didn’t want to gamble with.
“Will it injure me?” I asked, my voice soft.
“It will not,” Rí Túath Crystallo said.
“There are several mundanes living in this city with Aetheriani partners,” the brown speckled Aetheriani said. “They are all healthy, strong, and able to walk around fine a few hours after mating, I’ve been told.”
"None of that," Rí Túath Crystallo growled at the advisor. "She is here now, she doesn't need the stories."
I narrowed my eyes and pursed my lips.
I could leave and go back home to a place I hadn’t seen in years and hated before I left. Or, I could stay here for a year, get to sleep with the hottest male I’d ever seen. The whole begetting thing I wasn't worried about.
“I’m DTF,” I said, nodding my head.
Everyone looked at me in confusion.
“I wish to stay,” I amended myself.
“EXCELLENT!” the brown speckled winged Aetheriani snapped his wings open in excitement. “Please, come with me. I am called Solarion, and I will ensure you are well taken care of.”
I glanced at Crystallo, and he nodded, so I followed after the brown speckled winged Aetheriani back into the large room I had landed in after coming through the portal.
The room looked like a giant hollow in a tree if the tree had started to grow branches inside itself, with a huge hole at one side leading out into what looked like open air.
The walls had perches jutting out from the smooth wooden wall at all heights, and those perches had winged people lounging on them, filling up the space with more chirping chatter than before.
In the center of the floor, just behind where I had gone sprawling, was a large ornate backless throne that looked like it had grown out of the floor of the tree trunk.
Solarion stopped in front of the throne, looking up at the people on perches around us.
“Rí Túath Crystallo has granted a boon to Nora, an Agronomist trained in Sustainable Agriculture with practical work experience at the Order Academy in Operations and Implementation! She is strong and skilled and ready to serve the Aetheriani in these turbulent times!” Solarion called out. “Rejoice!”
The room erupted into gasps and chitters.
A flush rushed across my skin like a backdraft in a fire. He had just announced to the whole room that I was going to bang the King.
“This way,” Solarion said, taking my elbow and drawing me across the room to an archway.
The archway had two armed guards on either side of it.
On the other side were a set of stairs that curved up to the left and down to the right, smooth, unbroken wooden walls on either side.
I went with Solarion up the stairs, following the curve as if we were walking up along the inside of a giant tree.
By the time we stopped at another archway, Solarion was breathing hard.
“I… normally… fly,” he gasped out as he paused, his hands on his knees.
I waited for him to recover.
“Where are we going?” I asked him as he chased after his own breath.
“To prepare… clean…” he said. “Then… chambers.”
“I have just been scrubbed clean,” I said, wrinkling my nose as I thought about the way the fairy workers had gone after me with those brushes.
They had been quite determined to make sure every speck of dirt was gone from my body before they shoved me into the tight-fitting dress and sent me to be eye candy for the dinner discussions.
At the thought of that, my stomach rumbled.
He stood up straight, putting his hand on his chest as he finally caught up with himself.
“You must be pampered,” he said. “It is tradition.”
“Does this pampering involve food?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he nodded. “And a massage.”
I grinned at him, and he smiled back.
“A massage?” I asked.