Page 23 of The Crown of a Fallen Queen (Curse of the Fae #4)
Six of Crowns
SETH
E lio confronts me as we climb toward the shortest of the three towers. “I told you to leave Devi alone. How did you strong-arm her into an engagement?”
“She’s a grown woman, and I’m hot for her,” I say. “Marrying me makes us the next in line for the Spring throne—even if my mother hates it. And it puts Devi under my protection. Why are you so upset?”
Why is he being such a prick about it? Even if he and Devi were lovers, he’s happily married now. Why does he care so much?
The Red Queen glances over her shoulder, and Elio lowers his voice. “You must’ve blackmailed her into it. Like you did with Lori when she joined the Yule pageant.”
“I didn’t.”
He growls under his breath. “We’ll talk about this later.”
I don’t care how much he scowls. Devi will be mine.
I want her bare, breathless, stripped of every little defense.
I want her to beg—for pleasure, for mercy, for atonement .
Because no one gets to toy with men the way she does, no one leaves that many wrecked hearts in their wake, without consequence.
She kissed me back, and not for the crowd.
She wanted it. I felt it in the way her mouth parted, in the way her fingers clutched my coat like she was holding herself back from ripping it open.
Saw it in the way she sipped her wine afterwards, carefully inching away, trying to hide the pounding of her heart, the heat rising in her cheeks, and the spicy edge of the desire leaking between her legs.
I drag a hand down my face to get my head back on track, willing my cock to soften the hell down. The last thing I need right now is to mix violent politics with raging erections.
The Winter King’s private library has been rearranged in a hurry.
Seven chairs of different colors form a circle around a round table in a rough replica of the Hall of Eternity that was destroyed.
Light pours through the turret windows, cold and bright.
It’s not meant to impress, but rather to allow seven people who detest each other to put aside their differences and save the Fae Continent.
The three monarchs in front of us filter in one by one, with Elio and me closing the march.
Freya is already inside, waiting, and the Winter King shuts the door behind him.
Ice spreads across the room, frosting the windows, dimming the sunlight, and sealing the crack beneath the door, cutting us off from the outside world completely.
The arrangement of chairs has been altered from its original setup, reflecting the current state of Faerie politics: Summer, Winter, and Shadows now face the Sun, Spring, and Red Courts.
I graze the armrest of the stand-in for the Storm throne, a gray chair squeezed between Spring and Summer.
The swing vote.
With a bit of swagger, I unbutton my jacket and sit with them, an action that earns me a scowl from every one of them—especially my mother.
“You have no standing here, boy,” Ethan enunciates in a deadly manner.
Elio clicks his tongue. “Seth is here at my invitation. As the only one of us who spent some real time in Storm’s End, his perspective could prove invaluable.”
“Let him stay, Ethan,” Freya clips, her amity for Ethan cooled by his blatant show of disdain toward me.
The King of Light shows his teeth in the cruel imitation of a smile. “I saw Devi Eros in the ballroom. Have you taken another lame duck under your wing, Elio?”
My fists clench at the satisfaction curling his lips, but the Winter King keeps a straight face, clearly used to his father’s antics, and definitely not as hot-blooded as I am.
“Helping people is only a sin in your book, Father,” he says.
Ethan links his long, skeletal white fingers over his knee. “Not a sin, but weak. Devi Eros needs to be thrown into a cell until such time as the rebellion has been squashed.”
Freya nods emphatically at that, but Damian clears his throat, commanding attention. The shadows hovering above his shoulders are twice as thick as usual, tendrils of smoke hugging the shape of his body.
“Enough squabbles, cousins. I have dire news to share. I can’t get anyone in or out of Storm’s End—and not because of the wolves prowling the sceawere.
” His tone is low and growly, making every word sound more ominous.
“My sources say the new Storm King allowed an armada of boats into port and ordered all mirrors destroyed in Zepharion.”
“As it’s been foretold… another Fae court has fallen,” the new Red Queen drawls.
“Who’s the new Storm King?” Freya squeaks.
“It must be Luther. I can’t see Maddox siding with the Tidecallers,” I say quickly, taking it all in. Zepharion at the hands of the Tidecallers… My father would faint.
“An armada of boats?” Ethan repeats.
“Yes. A fleet of war vessels sailing north from the Breach,” Damian clarifies, and the room falls dead silent.
The Breach is a narrow stretch of ocean renowned for its typhoons and the many monsters that hide within them.
It separates the continent from the Islantide, but its waters have been deadly since the fall of the Mist King, and the few rebels and pirates who managed to cross it in the last few centuries were almost as violent and merciless as the monsters themselves.
“But— That’s impossible,” Ethan scoffs. “Any boat spotted crossing the Breach is blasted on sight. The Zepharion fortress’s walls are riddled with cannons equipped to do just that?—”
Damian cuts off the King of Light. “I think we all have to re-evaluate what we thought impossible. We assumed the Tidecallers were a bunch disorganized rebels— We were wrong.” He grips the armrests of his chair.
“Where would they go next?” Freya asks.
The Red Queen plays with the sash of her war tunic. “Even if Luther Storm has been crowned king, the regional Lords of Storm’s End are bound to rise up against an insurrection of this magnitude. The Tidecallers can’t expect to invade the Fae Continent without being challenged.”
Elio nods. “Janina is right. I wouldn’t expect the Tidecallers to march onto Wintermere or the Shadowlands just yet.
They’ll be expecting a challenge from within.
But controlling Storm’s End’s capital legitimizes their rebellion.
With Alaveen behind us, we have only a month before the seven crowns need to reunite for Beltane.
Maybe Luther plans on strong-arming us in exchange for his participation in the ritual. ”
The Spring festival ensures fertility on the continent. Botching it could derail birth rates for generations to come. All monarchs must meet for each of the seasonal rituals, or chaos will ensue.
Elio perches on the edge of his makeshift throne.
“We’re going into this war blind,” he adds.
“We don’t know anything tangible about the Tidecallers, the Breach, or the Mists, aside from what we’ve read in history books.
We need to make contact with the new Storm King and the Lord of the Tides and find out what they intend to do with their newfound power.
If we mean to act in any efficient capacity, we have to know exactly what they want. ”
Janina sneers. “We need to kill them, you mean.”
“Killing Willow or Luther or both will not destroy their armies,” Damian says flatly.
“But it’s a start,” Freya sniggers, and a nasty shiver lances up my spine.
“The leaders of the rebellion wear a throng of Mist jewels that amplify their power. They might prove incredibly hard to kill,” Elio says. “Diplomacy could save thousands of lives.”
His status as the King of Death, combined with the strategic placement of his realm, positions him as a key leader in this matter. Which, judging by the grimace on his father’s face, annoys the older Fae to no end.
I stand up, breaking up the bickering. “Do you have a map of the continent?”
Elio walks over to the stacks, pulls out a scroll tube from the bookshelf tucked between the turrets windows, and hands it over.
I unroll the map across the table in the center, pinning its corners with whatever I can grab. The ink is faded, and the cartographer made a few mistakes, but I know this coastline by heart.
“Without using the sceawere, there are only two ways to travel from Wintermere to Zepharion,” I say, tapping the border.
“By foot, you have to cross the Uaithe, the bolt-shaped chasm that separates the Frozen Hills from the Lightning Point province. The official crossing is here.” I point to the Fenrall bridge.
“Reinforced. Guarded by watchtowers and too many eyes. If the Tidecallers have taken control of Storm’s End, they’ll be expecting Elio to send his army there.
But” —I slide my finger north, to where the land splinters and twists— “the Deiltine crossing hasn’t been used in centuries.
There’s no gates. No walls. Just a sky that keeps exploding and a dilapidated road leading into the city. ”
“Deiltine is a dump,” Ethan grunts. “And a deadly one at that.”
I ignore him and continue with my exposé. “The people who live there are mostly caretakers for the Aeolians, the giant turbines that power the factories, the forges, and everything else. We send our best engineers, technicians, and machinists in on rotations.”
I pick up a square-shaped receptacle that holds one of the cameras they use to broadcast the Yule Pageant. “All modern electrical-based technology built in Faerie—the projectors, the screens, etc., are powered by capacitors made in those factories.”
I move to the coastline, tapping the map again.
“Our only other option is by boat. We could sail from Taiga through the Deiltine channel, but the winds and tides here” —I trace the eastern coastline— “are tricky. Even if we’re lucky, it’ll take us a week, maybe more, to reach the port of Zepharion. ”
Freya clicks her tongue. “Not to mention the capital’s port is bound to be well-guarded.”
“Why would Deiltine even be an option, when it’s still eons away from the capital?" Elio asks.