Page 26 of The Crown of the Last Fae Queen (The Heartless and the Wicked #4)

Blár rubbed her back and she stiffened as his fingers brushed over the sore spots where her wings had been, and she inhaled sharply.

He froze, and then slowly pulled her out of their embrace.

His cold, calculating eyes scanned over her body, once, twice, and then stopped at her face.

“Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?” His voice came out barely constrained, the temperature in the room dropping astronomically.

She could tell he was trying to gain control over his anger by the way his expression shifted from the harshest of winters to a shuttered expression, but his powers never lied.

Kolfinna touched his cheek; it was cold, too. “I am well.”

“Truly?”

How was she going to explain to him that they had hurt her, but that she healed extremely fast? She tried to smile, though it came out wobbly. “Yes.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Did they hurt you?”

“Blár, I’m …”

He stared at her, his gaze trailing from her face to her ears, which were now pointed, and then to the rest of her body. She could see the questions in his eyes, the thinly veiled confusion that passed over his face.

Kolfinna’s eyes burned with tears and she stared down at her feet.

Shame built in the pit of her stomach, swirling within her like the shadows in the room.

She hadn’t told him the truth about any of this.

That she was the daughter of the commander.

That she was the key to freeing Queen Aesileif. That she was the root of the problem.

“Kolfinna.” He grasped her chin gently, tipping her head up to stare at him. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Then we can talk about the details later.” Blár pushed back a stray strand of hair behind her pointed ear, his touch tracking coldness against her flesh. She closed her eyes at the familiarity of it. “Look at me.”

She peeled her eyes open to stare at him.

At his beautiful face. At the sharp blueness of his tundra-like eyes.

At his gentle expression. There were faded bruises on his cheeks from the earlier battle, over his jaw, his cheek, down to his neck.

The fur-lined collar of his cloak did little to hide the bruised marks Vidar’s fingers had left on his throat.

Even now they were visible. Darkness smeared the bottom of his eyes like he hadn’t slept properly in days.

Her chest ached for him in a way it had never done before.

A moment passed with the both of them staring at one another, searching for all that had changed in their absence.

He slowly framed her face with his hands and leaned closer to her.

Her heart raced beneath his touch and she stared expectantly at his lips.

Were they going to kiss? They last time it had been sweet and quick, with the threat of the fae forces finding out about Blár’s escape running in the back of her mind. But now, there were no distractions.

Her skin warmed at the thought of his lips capturing hers, and heat pooled in her stomach. She lifted her chin to better look at him.

Blár’s gaze flicked down to her lips, and then back to her eyes.

But then he stepped away from her, his smile forced.

Kolfinna reached out for him, but he already had his back to her as he headed to the window and peered over it.

His sudden absence left a cold, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She could feel all the warmth rush to her face in embarrassment.

The rejection soured the taste in her mouth.

Why did she think they were going to kiss?

Maybe the last kiss had just been fueled with emotion, and now that he had time to think about everything, he didn’t actually mean to kiss her?

Was she imagining things between them?

Her mind jumbled together, different threads of thoughts splintering one way or the other.

“We need to find a way for you to escape,” he said, reaching down and picking up pieces of broken, frozen metal and crushing it in his hands until it was dust, and then scattering them into the night air.

He dusted his hands together and glanced back at her, his expression unreadable. “We were looking everywhere for you.”

“We?”

“Ivar. Gunnar. Eluf. Herja. Inkeri,” he listed off as he leaned against the window sill, his lean arms crossing over his chest. Already she could tell that he was shutting her off from him, guarding himself. The look in his eyes also shifted. “We found Herja, by the way.”

Relief pooled in her chest and she hugged her arms close to her body. “Ah. I’m glad to hear she managed to escape.”

“Yes.” He watched her and she couldn’t help but fidget with the sleeve of her nightgown.

Anything to distract herself from the way he stared at her ears, or her hair, as if seeing them for the first time—maybe he was putting the dots together.

But either way, he knew she wasn’t being truthful, and her stomach twisted into knots at the scrutiny.

At the shame and guilt building inside her.

“Blár …” She smoothed down her skirt with trembling hands. “How about we sit down?”

He blinked.

Kolfinna motioned to Aslaug’s empty bed. “Please, have a seat.”

Blár didn’t move, and she could see his muscles tensing, his gaze flickering from her to the bed, and then back to her.

Color rose to her cheeks as she realized what she was saying—for him to sit on a bed, in the night, while they both were alone …

Heat bloomed over her body and she cleared her throat, hating the direction of her thoughts.

“Well, perhaps you can stand there, and I can sit?” She slowly backtracked onto her bed and sat on the edge of it, hating how awkward this was all becoming.

She had thought that when she and Blár reunited with one another, it would be magical, romantic .

They would run into each other’s arms, embrace tightly, kiss passionately, and maybe even cry together between the kisses—so this cold, awkward reunion was the last thing she expected.

But she didn’t blame him. She had lied and kept the truth from him.

“We don’t have to do this right now,” Blár said tightly.

“No, I need to explain.” She wrung her hands together.

He probably already knew everything, especially if he had seen Herja, who likely would have told him everything she knew too.

“Do you remember that cave we went in the Forest of Great Divide? And we found out that the heir to the fae throne, the child of the half-elf commander and the evil queen, had been sealed away there but someone had apparently woken up the heir and released her? Well, somehow …” She stared down at her toes, her throat tightening.

The silence was deafening, and when she finally peered up at him, his face was just as it had been before, shuttered, with the darkness obscuring some of the hardness.

He already knew.

Her heart sank. “Well … I am the heir. The reason the elf-commander captured me is because … I’m his daughter, and he needs me to free his queen.

” She quickly added, “I don’t know why my parents—the ones who raised me—freed me, and I don’t even know if they knew what they were doing either, but …

but here I am. Trust me when I say that I had no idea who I was until a few months ago. ”

Blár pointed to her ears. “And the ears?”

“Oh.” She inadvertently touched the pointed tips. “Ah. They … I don’t really understand it either.”

“Are you going to start looking like one of them? With wings and …” He stared pointedly at the white sections of her hair.

One of them. It sounded wrong hearing him say it like that. Like it was an insult.

She bunched her hands together on her lap. “Blár, I am one of them. I’m fae. I’ve always been fae.”

He opened his mouth, clamped it shut, and then tried again, his voice coming out low. “I didn’t mean it like that. But they are our enemies, Kolfinna. You’re fae, but you’re on our side, so you’re different. All of this is complicated.”

“Complicated how?” Kolfinna shouldn’t have felt any type of way about Vidar’s fae and elf army, but she felt strange being told she was different to them when she truly wasn’t.

If anything, Blár was different from them, different from her.

“This isn’t complicated, Blár. I’m the same as them, I just don’t have the same mindset as them.

The same …” Her lower lip wobbled and she couldn’t stare at him.

“It’s complicated because most fae believe in your father’s cause,” he said.

“They want the humans to fail. They want for this kingdom to be overtaken by the half-elf and his wicked queen. It’s complicated because I don’t want the fae to be killed once this war is over.

I don’t want there to be a giant hunt to kill them all.

I don’t want for you to be hurt in any of this.

It’s complicated because you side with the humans, even though you have every right to side with the fae.

And, it’s complicated because I don’t really fault either side.

It’s just about survival, and I wish there was a way for there to be peace between the two of us, but I don’t see it anywhere. ”

Silence stretched between them, his words ringing in Kolfinna’s ears.

She didn’t know why she was being sensitive over the semantics—Blár was on her side, she knew that.

But maybe there was a part of her that wanted to deflect, for him to say something wrong, so she would have a reason to lash out on him.

So that she could ignore the guilty part of her that told her that she hadn’t been truthful to him.

Kolfinna released a shuddered breath and peered up at Blár hesitantly; he was still leaning against the window sill, his strong arms crossed over his broad chest, and his eyes cast down to his metal-toed boots.

He was frowning. This certainly wasn’t the reunion she’d had in mind, and it was mostly her fault.

“Blár,” she whispered.

He raised his head up to look at her.