Page 28

Zoey

I sit in the middle of a lush park and thank the goddess for all of Dev’s lessons on protocol when it comes to dealing with the high Fae, and in particular the Seelies. It makes it less awkward for me to know how to sit on this grand quilt beneath me and still look very much the lady. I circled my skirts around my bent knees and made sure my ankles are covered. My boobs are on serious display. Such a weird culture, but I know how to move through it. I keep my eyes downcast for the most part. As they would say in my time, I am all kinds of demure and mindful.

I wonder what my younger self would have done in this situation. Probably taken the knife in Devilshea’s hand and attempted to murder him with it.

“It’s odd.”

The king took off his formal coat when he declared this the perfect picnic spot. He’s in a snowy white tunic that’s been unbuttoned to show off his golden, muscular chest. “According to the head of my guard, some of the servants were affected by whatever happened in the temple last night. I use certain spells to make it easier for them to work, and the magic seems to have lessened the hold.”

Though he calls this a picnic, and we’re sitting on the grass that is absolutely greener than it was the day before, there are ten guards with us and three servants who drug out china for us to dine on, including the delicate cup I hold in my hand and pretend to sip from.

There are some mistakes you never make twice. I have a charm Evan gave me that would detect any kind of spell or poison, but I can’t use it in front of him so I pretend to sip. Bibi brought me a canteen of water early this morning. I hid it in the closet along with the bread and cheese she gave me. More importantly, she gave me news. Danny is hidden for the day. We decided the night before that we must figure out what Myrddin wants before unleashing hell on everyone. The last thing we want is Myrddin running away and leaving us stranded. Daniel is going to send news that he is willing to talk to Myrddin. He’s not, but it will buy us some time.

And I pretend to not be horrified by his behavior. “Affected? How?”

I hope they were smart enough to pretend, but I’m sure it’s hard for them. Thankfully my own maid had done a spectacular job of fooling him.

“I think the ones who wandered out of the wards had the bonds we forged broken. The gnomes especially were…feisty today. I’ve found bonding to the palace and their king makes them more satisfied.”

It made them into wordless zombies who couldn’t feel or use their own voices. It made them slaves. I stare at him for a moment, trying to see anything of my Devinshea inside this monster. “Tell me why you didn’t marry Zandra.”

He waves me off. “It simply wasn’t done.”

“But you wanted to.”

“I did. I wanted to badly.”

He leans back, giving me a lovely view of his profile. His hair is slightly longer than Devinshea’s. “But my brother convinced me such a marriage would bring shame to my family.”

“You were embarrassed by her.”

“Never. No. It was always my brother.”

It’s clear to see he had been, but I have to frame everything as Declan did it or I will lose him. “Declan didn’t like her because she wasn’t royal? She seems to have not been impoverished. You told me her family owned a vineyard.”

“She was somewhat wealthy, but she was only a quarter sidhe. Her grandmother was a troll. The kind that can pass as human but still a troll.”

“Well, you’re only half Fae,”

I point out.

His brows rise. “Where did you hear that? Are vile rumors going around? I assure you I am fully Fae. Why would you…he isn’t.”

The king seems to think about it for a moment. “Your Devinshea took after our father? Was your Declan also a halfling?”

This is news I was not expecting and yet it somehow makes perfect sense to me. Of course he’s an arrogant prick. He’s literally never had to face what my Dev did. He never had to face discrimination. He was a pampered royal, and the first time he didn’t get what… I have to slow down. There has to be more to this. I know this man. He can’t simply be evil. “Not at all. In my timeline you’re twins, but Declan takes after his Fae side while Dev got his grandfather’s Green Man powers and his father’s mortality.”

He shudders like he can’t think of anything worse. “It must have been hell for him. Growing up, I mean. They would have seen him as bad luck. I’m honestly shocked that my mother allowed him to stay in the palace. I don’t think she would have killed him, but she should have sent him to the Earth plane with the humans.”

“She didn’t realize he was mortal until he was three, I believe. By then she simply loved her child. She couldn’t send him away.”

I can’t help but remember this man didn’t want his child. At least he didn’t seem to. “A mother’s love is powerful.”

“I suppose so,”

he agrees. “I wouldn’t have thought it of Mother. She was a bit cold and distant. She thought only of the throne.”

“Perhaps because she wasn’t forced to face that choice. I obviously didn’t know Miria before, but I know she loves her son. She made some mistakes with him, but they all came from the fear that she could lose him.”

“She welcomes you?”

“She gave us permission to marry because she was so desperate for her son to come home,”

I explain. “He left the sithein shortly after she tried to force him to procreate with a woman he didn’t care for. She was worried they would lose his Green Man powers, and quite frankly, she was scared she would lose him altogether. Following our fears often means walking into self-fulfilling prophecies, but she learned from it. When Dev requested the Goddess Chain, she sent two envoys. Declan and Padric.”

“Who is that?”

Another piece of the puzzle. “He was the head of your mother’s guard and all of her armies. She was also his long-time lover.”

A look of recognition crosses his face. “Her childhood sweetheart. Yes. I heard some speak of him. He died before my brother and I were born. Long before. I don’t think she ever got over him. So he is alive in your time. I suppose he loathes me.”

He knows nothing. “He treats you like a son.”

My answer seems to throw the king off. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he helped raise you. Devinshea, did you feel nothing for the child Zandra gave you?”

He seems to think for a moment. “He was an amusing child, though I never spent much time with him. I only saw him when I managed to get to Zandra’s village and honestly, I was far more interested in her. I did love the way she lit up when she saw him. She was a good mother. She could have had servants, but she preferred to take care of him on her own. It’s how Deinny got in.”

I would bet Deinny was in her life far longer than merely after her son was born. I would bet he loved her always. “He was a father figure to Lee?”

“He and that friend of hers. Neil, I think.”

“He’s my best friend in our time,”

I tell him with a wistful smile. “Of course he’s also a werewolf.”

Devilshea sits up a bit straighter. “Yes, there’s word of a wolf prowling around last night. I hope for your sake he leaves with your son and that vampire version of Deinny. I don’t like the idea of that man with power. Why in all the planes would I make the decision to share you with him?”

“Because you love him, too,”

I reply quietly, hoping for the same thing but knowing neither Neil nor Danny would ever leave Dev and I in this position. They might wait and watch, but they would never, ever leave us alone. “You don’t share me. It might have started that way, but we’re a happy threesome.”

I mentally wince because I’m giving too much away, but I can’t help but poke him to see if there’s some good there. “Well, we were until Myrddin came along.”

“I sleep with him?”

He sounds shocked.

I can’t help the salacious grin that covers my face. “Sometimes there’s not a lot of sleeping going on.”

He stands suddenly, pacing the length of the blanket. “I am…unnatural?”

It takes everything I have to not roll my eyes. “That’s your brother talking. You are a Green Man. You are sex on two legs. You are love and commitment and joy, and why would that have boundaries beyond the ones of your own heart? I can blame my Devinshea for many things, but knowing and honoring his heart is not one of them.”

“Because he defied the crown for you? Because he gave into unnatural desires?”

The question comes with a sneer that absolutely makes this man less attractive.

I lower my eyes because I’ve seen what I needed to see. He wanted Deinny but feared reprisal from his family. He wanted them all together but when he couldn’t have her, he allowed his guilt and grief to lead him to do monstrous things. “Forget I said anything, Your Majesty. Why are we speaking of this when we could speak of more pleasant things?”

He is quiet for a moment. “You are so like her. I suppose we’re speaking of it because I didn’t get to tell her. I didn’t get to say how much I wished I had scooped her up and left the plane. We could have gone anywhere. Deinny had a plan at one point. We were friends back then.”

I would bet they had danced around being more. “He had a plan?”

“He thought the three of us should take Lee and leave. He wanted to go to the Earth plane to find my human father. The one my mother tossed aside when she was done with him. Apparently he had some friends from the Earth plane, and they looked him up. He was wealthy, and Deinny believed he would have welcomed me. He thought we could be happy there. As friends, of course.”

Bullshit. If they hadn’t had some kind of physical interaction, I would be surprised. In this timeline’s Daniel, the connection between them made him want to risk everything for a chance at real happiness. However, this Devinshea was too mired in his own miserable devotion to royalty that he couldn’t. Or could he? “Is that why? Did your brother find out you were going to leave and he killed Zandra?”

“He couldn’t stand the shame I would bring on our name.”

“This is a very different sithein. Miria’s court in my world lived for gossip, but there wasn’t shame involved in having relationships. Your brother has slept with every pretty girl in the sithein, and he doesn’t care what their class is,”

I point out.

“Declan might sleep with them, but he would never have thought to marry one. He might have fathered a bastard, but he wouldn’t have dared to publicly claim him. He would have given the mother money and went on his way. I wanted to claim Lee. For her sake. I suppose I didn’t want her child to be ashamed of me, but I didn’t get the chance.”

He sits back down, and there’s an air of shame around him.

I can use that. I don’t mention that he had years to claim Lee but he hadn’t. I can point out how different he and his counterpart’s lives are. “Well, my Declan did have a child with a woman he considered unsuitable, and they are married to this day.”

Not happily, from what I can tell, but Declan does love his son, Sean.

“He married a commoner?”

The question isn’t whispered with disdain. The king sounds shocked but almost envious. “And Mother didn’t disown him?”

I am going to be way nicer to Padric the next time I see him because he seems to have done Miria a world of good. It’s interesting to know how deeply the love and affection of the right person can change who we are and the choices we make. Terrifying but interesting. “No, she encouraged the marriage, though it wasn’t to a commoner. He married the Unseelie princess.”

“He married Chima? They hated each other here.”

The king shakes his head. “I heard she died in childbirth. It was six months after our last meeting with the Unseelie. My brother and I both went as envoys. It was one of the worst times of my life.”

“Because you were caught by a group of Unseelie who raped you while your brother ran away?”

Dev’s eyes close. “I rather hoped that hadn’t happened to him. I’m surprised he would so readily accept a male in his bed.”

“Danny isn’t some random male. He’s Dev’s best friend, his partner. Yes, they sleep together and there’s a lot of passion between them, but there’s also the shared experience of loving me. It’s not always easy. I don’t know what I was like here, but I’m trouble where I come from. A whole lot of it.”

“And they share the job of loving and protecting you.”

He stares off in the distance for a moment. “I suppose Deinny and I did that as well, in our way. Or rather Deinny took care of her while I took care of myself. When I look back on it, I wonder if she really loved me in the end or if she was afraid of me.”

Yes, he should ask those questions. Asking those questions will never fix the past, but they might save his soul. “She could do both. I assure you. I can love and be disappointed at the same time. We’re imperfect creatures. We’re always going to fight, to be upset, to wish things were different. In a marriage, getting through it all with honesty and love is the measure of how successful it can be.”

“And when did you realize you couldn’t trust them?”

Danger. I need to not overplay my hand. He still has to believe he’s got a shot with me. “When they didn’t listen to me about Myrddin.”

Damn, but there was some truth there. I understand now they were under a thrall stone, but there’s a tiny piece of me that knows it would have been hard for me to get them to listen even without it. I still remember how Daniel had looked at the wizard when we first met him, how sad he’d been at the thought that Myrddin chose to walk the Earth with Nimue instead of mentoring him. “Daniel is what’s known as the King of the Sword. He carries an ancient sword meant for kings who rule during particularly important times. It was a system set up millennia ago by the Heaven and Hell planes. To keep Earth in balance. Myrddin is the king’s mentor. But he decided to take the power for himself this time. I always knew something was wrong with him. I knew it from when we met, and they wouldn’t listen.”

“Your anger is more about the lost time with your children than it is the throne,”

the king surmises. “Losing the throne and the crown are just things you threw in for me.”

Yes, this is a delicate line. “I have to think of my children, Devinshea. Yes, they are my primary concern. I don’t really care about the crown. I loved the man, not the king. Not the high priest.”

He nods as though he expected the answer. “You are so much like her it worries me. It makes me think I’ll disappoint you like I disappointed her.”

“Did she tell you that?” I ask.

“Not in so many words, but how could she not be? I left her alone.”

“You left her with her best friend,”

I point out.

“And made it plain that if she were ever to be with him physically, our relationship would be over. I knew she loved him but by the time she was willing to open herself to his love, she was pregnant. I could have stepped back and let them raise the child. If I had done what I needed to do, she would be alive and Deinny would be alive. They would be a family,”

he admits.

“You didn’t mean to hurt me. I might have been lonely without you, but if I stayed true to you it was because I loved you. If she was anything like me, she didn’t let fear rule her. She made conscious decisions.”

I give him the words because I think he needs to hear them. But there are things he must atone for. “But why kill Deinny?”

“I couldn’t stand the way he looked at me after. After I took my revenge.”

His head drops. “We had a fight. I was drunk. I used some potent drugs to try to forget how my brother looked when I ran a sword through his gut before taking off his head. Deinny said some things to me I didn’t want to hear, and I gave the order. I regretted it when I was sober again, but it was done. They all think I feel nothing. They do not know the weight of guilt that presses on me.”

“Devinshea, I am not her. You are trying to recreate a relationship that can’t exist.”

I think I have him for a moment and then his expression clears, and I watch him make the choice to stay mired in this course he chose so long ago. “It can. You will see. I will be better this time. This time I will make things right. I already started by allowing your son to take over my temple. We will have to fix that, but I think it proves I can be a better husband for you. And you will come to enjoy the crown and throne. I think your husbands didn’t do it right. Servant, bring my fiancée another pillow.”

I sigh inwardly because we’d gotten so close.

And then I feel something whiz past me and hear a terrible thud as an arrow launches itself right into the king’s shoulder.

I take a deep breath and pray I survive this battle.