“I feel peculiar,” she said quietly. Then she drew a shaky breath and slumped into him, almost taking him to the ground.
Zephyr barely managed to hoist her into his arms. “Rhys!”
Rhys started to turn toward St. Columba’s where there was a pathway to the Hidden Lands. “We will take her home.”
“No,” Zephyr corrected. “Not until the others are with us. I need to know they are safe.”
Rhys brushed the princess’ hair back and felt her head. “There are no bumps.” He glanced at her seemingly without emotion, although Zephyr knew better, before pronouncing, “There is no blood.”
Zephyr saw Roan and went toward him with a barely muttered, “This way.”
There was a part of him that felt uneasy leading the Unseelie prince, but he needed to see the rest of the diamonds. He’d already lost Alkamy, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle losing anyone else. “Where is everyone?”
“Lily went with the queen,” Roan said, but his gaze was fixed on Eilidh.
“My father, Rhys, son to the Queen of Blood and Rage . . . and his sister, Eilidh.” Zephyr sounded more formal than he’d intended, but there were phrases that were hard to make casual.
The usually calm Roan, however, was oblivious. He scanned the remaining groups of people. “Right. Have you seen Will?”
“No . . . and I haven’t seen Creed or Vi either.”
“Vi must be with one of them if she isn’t with Lily.” Zephyr looked around, but the crowd was a mess of bodies. There were a lot of injured people. Emergency vehicles and armed officers added to the chaos rather than quelling it.
All Zephyr wanted was to find the others and get everyone to safety. Focusing on that mission was the clearest he’d been since losing Alkamy. It wasn’t undoing the pain in his chest, but it allowed him to ignore it briefly. That was what he needed: reasons to concentrate on anything other than his gaping wound.
“I need to find him,” Roan said.
He turned and walked away, and although Zephyr might have criticized him for impulsiveness a few days ago, he understood the fear Roan had to be feeling in that moment. Roan and Will had loved one another before Zephyr had realized his feelings for Alkamy. They were together, and the war was ending. To lose that now seemed cruel.
Then Zephyr spotted a familiar figure, the arsonist from the club. “Father! Over there.” He pointed at the smirking fae-blood. “There! The one from the fire.”
Even as he spoke, the fae-blood turned and faded into the swarm of people. There was no way that they could catch him, even if they could move through the panicking and angry humans. “We need to follow—”
“No. You take Eilidh home. Keep her safe,” Rhys ordered as he walked away, too, striding into the crowd as if he wasn’t surrounded by humans who found his very existence a crime.
Zephyr was left holding an unconscious princess.
There were hundreds of people milling around. Guards and police mingled in the crowds, seemingly interrogating everyone. Journalists were recording clips. Former classmates from St. Columba were staring at him. He had to trust that Roan would be safe, that his father would see to it.
That left Zephyr to get himself and his aunt to safety. It was a massive amount of trust that his father had placed in him. Zephyr looked down at his aunt. She was obviously fae, in a crowd of people currently terrified by their kind. Whether or not peace had been declared, the resulting events felt nothing like peace. He had declared himself to the new heir, his cousin, but he still had the fae loyalty to family first.
He carried Eilidh away from the crowd and to—he hoped—some measure of safety.
thirty-four
WILL
Will looked around for the others as best he could with a police officer holding on to him. He wasn’t sure whether it was better that he’d been separated from them or not. Somehow, he couldn’t picture Violet or Zephyr taking well to being arrested—or Roan coping well with the way the policeman was manhandling him, especially not while everyone was still grieving over Alkamy. Will wasn’t sure any of them would deal with his arrest particularly well.
Being arrested was not an experience he’d ever sought, but it was certainly one he’d pondered often enough. He was a fae-blood, a mercenary for the queen, and the son of an outspoken human politician. His odds of running afoul of the law weren’t negligible.
“We have flex cuffs so you won’t get burned by the metal,” the officer said, not unkindly. “The car isn’t avoidable though. Are you one of the ones who get throwing up sick from it or just weak?”
“I’ll be fine,” Will said, quite truthfully. The humans’ belief that steel sickened those with fae blood was both wrong and persistent.
The officer, a man who had the sort of round face and fluffy hair that made him look like he shared close genetics with koala, stared at Will in silence. His hands trembled ever so slightly as he slipped cuffs on Will’s wrists.
“You are making a mistake,” Will said.
“Is that a threat?”
“No. I’m not who you think. My mother is Senator Parrish—”
“You’re fae,” the officer interrupted. “You and your actress friend.”
“Violet?”
The officer tightened the cuffs just this side of too painful. He pushed Will toward the back of the cruiser. “Some of the others said I should gag you so you don’t trick me. I don’t want to, but if you keep talking, I will.”
Will sighed. There wasn’t a lot he could do. Attacking the man seemed stupid—not that being caged seemed particularly smart. Unlike some fae, he had no gift of charm or persuasion beyond that which any person might have. He was well-spoken, reasonably attractive, and his family had influence. In truth, he was not so different from any politician’s son in that regard. His affinities were, of course, an exception, but they didn’t lend him charisma. They simply meant he could work with the air around them.
He’d done so on the queen’s orders, but he wasn’t going to attack these people for doing their job. If he could avoid it, he would. If his mother got word of his imprisonment, she’d come for him.
“He’s not fae,” Creed said, his voice making Will spin halfway around. “I am. I am the faery king! I am the rightful king!”
Will’s mouth dropped open at the ludicrousness of Creed’s words. The idea of declaring himself a faery king was dangerous at every corner. The actual faery queen was vicious in her best of moods. The former heir wasn’t much better, and one of the Seelie princes had stabbed Creed not too long ago. Plus, of course, possessing any faery blood at all was illegal.
“You’ll see! They all act like they’re someone, but I’m the real thing.” Creed was playing it crazy, looking around at everyone with a strange madness that seemed far too realistic.
“You’re insane,” Will said loudly.
He saw Erik in the crowd of onlookers too. There was a moment where Will thought Erik was going to draw the weapon he had hidden under his jacket. He glanced at Creed, who obviously was watching Erik too.
“Get out of here,” Will said, staring back at Erik as he spoke although he used words that could be thought to be in response to Creed: “You need help.”
Erik faded into the crowd. That, at least, was a crisis averted. There were enough human deaths today, and having a criminal firing bullets at officers would be a step too far.
“I don’t need help,” Creed replied, as if Will had been speaking to him. He stumbled forward as the officers rudely jerked him. “It’s not like I haven’t been hassled before.”
Like him, Creed was bound and being dragged toward the opposite side of the car. Unlike him, the cuffs on Creed’s wrists were obviously metal. There was no pretense of kindness in their treatment of Creed Morrison. His swelling eye and split lip made obvious that the officers were not above excessive force. For all of Creed’s recent progress with being more tractable in general, he was still who he was. The whole “rock star with a bad attitude” t
hing wasn’t an act. Creed was often a jackass. They all acted like he’d only turned to drinking because of the things that they’d done for the queen, and Will could allow that Creed’s swing to heavy drinking was due to that, but he’d always been the one in primary school who was last to volunteer, first to test a rule, ready to raise a fist, quick to deliver cruel words. It was as if there was an edge of darkness in him that could only be restrained, not eliminated.
“He’s probably drunk,” Will said. “Drunk or looking for headlines, as if his new girlfriend’s lineage isn’t enough.”
Creed grinned, looking vaguely grotesque because of his split lip. “Yeah, and you were just hanging around me trying to get attention. Now you’re trying to pretend you’re fae-blood? No one’s stupid enough to believe that.”
“Shut it.” The officer restraining Creed jerked open the cruiser door and shoved him inside.
Before he could reach for Will, the other officer opened the passenger door and nodded. Will slid in as carefully as he could with restraints on him. “Can you remove these while we’re in the car?”
The kinder officer said nothing; he simply closed the door.
Creed was trying to kick the officer who had shoved him into the car. “Screw you.”
Once the officer had managed to get Creed’s feet in the car and the door shut, Creed looked at Will and winked.
“What are you doing?” Will asked in a whisper so low that only another fae-blood with an affinity for air would hear it.
“Keeping their attention.”
“Because . . . ?”
Creed smiled. “She’s my girlfriend, man. You think they’ll believe I’m not fae-blood? You can get out of it if we stall long enough to keep them from testing you.”
Will stared at him.
“I don’t have a problem with it being crystal clear that I belong to her,” Creed added, rolling his shoulders. “Old man can hit fairly well. Guess they don’t worry about bruises on anyone with skin as dark as mine.”
“Bruises still show,” Will muttered.
Creed twisted his lips into a wry smile before pointing out, “I resisted arrest. Got injured as a result.”
Will leaned back in his seat and shook his head. Antagonistic or not, Creed was trying to look out for him, and he was willingly sacrificing himself in the process. Will wanted to argue, to suggest that it was a huge mistake, but that wouldn’t undo what was already done.
Then he heard words spoken so softly that they could be mistaken for a breeze drifting into Will’s ears. “Don’t let her come after me. You need to make sure of it when you get out, okay? She storms in here after that coronation, and she’ll be in a cell.”
Will glanced at him and nodded once. Creed was taking the weight, but he’d asked Will to do an impossible task. Lily was going to be a nightmare once she found out that Creed was in jail.
He closed his eyes and whispered a prayer to St. Ninian that there was a way for this not to be a complete disaster.
thirty-five
EILIDH
Eilidh woke to the strange sensation of being kept away from sea and soil. Neither waves nor plants were holding her. Instead, she was held in someone’s arms, cradled as if she was a small child. She was going to choke if she didn’t get to either earth or water immediately.
“Down. Now.” Her eyes were unfocused, even as she tried to look at the face of the person holding her. She blinked and squinted. “Rhys?”
“Close.” The voice was one she’d only heard a few times, but it was familiar enough even so.
“His son,” she said. “Family.”
To the fae there was an order. One’s family was the most important. After that, it was one’s land—or perhaps one’s birth court. The opinions varied there. For Eilidh, as she was born of both courts, she ordered it as family, fae, and land. It was often all one and the same, but family was still somehow more.
“Soil. I need the soil,” she told Zephyr.
Carefully, he lowered her legs so she could stand, but he kept an arm around her, steadying her. The moss under her bare feet was like medicine. For a heartbeat, she could’ve sworn that she had roots as a tree or vine would, sinking into the soil, sliding past rock and creature, winding toward trickles of water that flowed deep in the heart of the earth.
“Princess Eilidh? Can I . . . what should I call you?”
As the soil nourished her, flooding her with strength and stability, she felt her eyes come clearer. She’d changed. There was no other way to say it. Over the last few weeks, she’d become something more . . . primal. Today made that exceptionally clear. She had no memory of what happened when she let the sea take her. Eilidh had simply ceased existing. There was only the sea. She was just a part of it, drops of water within the waves under the surface.
“Eilidh,” she echoed. She could feel the sea tugging her back, but she was separate now. “Yes,” she told Zephyr, reaffirming her name, needing to hear it and speak it. “Eilidh.”
She stepped away from him so she could fold herself closer to the earth. She collapsed onto the ground, gracelessly enough that Zephyr lunged to catch her.
“I’m sorry. I thought—”
“I’m fine,” she interrupted. “Where is my brother?”
Zephyr scowled and glanced at the stone wall. As he did so, Eilidh realized that she was on the campus grounds, near where she had met Zephyr and discovered that she had a nephew, that Rhys had a son. That meant there was a gate home nearby. A part of her wanted to refuse it, to stay and give herself over to nature. That part of her grew louder and more constant with every dawning day.
Was this, she wondered, the cost of nature giving her life when she was first born? Was that life somehow not wholly her own?
“He went to find Creed and Will, and I was left to guard you,” Zephyr said, leaving Eilidh to try to remember the question he was answering. That very little bit of focus was nearly too much to ask. Words were not clear for her right now. The act of speaking felt like it took all of her mind to complete. It was not uncommon to struggle so, but typically, once she’d been released from sea or soil, she could regain some measure of clarity.
“We should . . . go home,” Eilidh said carefully, stretching each letter over her tongue and teeth, making them sound as they must.
Eilidh was unsteady as she walked to the gate. Earth and air offered her support. Soil and stone tethered her, reminded her that she was solid. They also reminded her that the human world was tainted. The sea she fell into in her own world was clean and pure. The water on this side of the sea gate was sickening.
As she led Zephyr into the Hidden Lands, she felt the change in the air like weight falling from her chest. This was as it should be. The purity washed over her, and every one of her natural affinities pressed against her. This was the world all should be like.
She could make it so.
With her affinities allowed full range, far more than those few at the pier would die.
She could wash them all away.
With her affinities guiding her, she could purify the earth, sky, and sea.
Shaking her head to find clarity again, Eilidh glanced at her nephew. Zephyr was looking at the twisted rock formations all around them. It was not shocking that they’d entered here. Both of them were earth affinity, and being surrounded by the towering rock formations was fitting. They were at the edge of the sea, but surrounding them on three sides were basalt columns. They stretched into the sky like steps for something too large to fathom.
Eilidh led him into the trail that twisted into a cave in the center of those columns. Inside was another sort of majesty. Stalactites and stalagmites reached toward one another like stony teeth in a wide grin. Eilidh could feel their hum of welcoming words and suspected that her nephew could too.
“I am sorry that you lost your beloved,” she said.
He stumbled.
“War is not kind.” Eilidh reached out and squeezed his arm. “I am grateful that you were
spared.”
“I’m not,” he said, and she heard a thousand tears in those two words. She couldn’t imagine the loss of Torquil, not truly. She’d sat at his bedside when she’d thought he might perish, and she’d run to his side in her fears. There was no reason to believe that Zephyr’s love for Alkamy was any less true simply because they were so young. True love, the sort that made your hearts beat in perfect time, knew no age. When your souls touched, it was everything.
“I understand,” Eilidh assured him. “And selfishly, I am still glad that you are not dead too.”
Zephyr kept his silence as they walked. He neither agreed nor argued. There was no need. Family wanted family to survive; lovers being severed wanted to perish. Neither of these were new truths. In time, Zephyr would find ways to hurt less and less, or he would take the sorts of risks that let him cross swords with death. It was what her family did. Her mother had been ready to slaughter the world at the loss of her beloved child. Eilidh would be no different if Torquil were to perish. Asking other of Zephyr was unfair—but that was what family did. Eilidh had schemed to find a way to make her mother surrender her grief. She’d offered LilyDark to her as an appeasement.
If there were one to offer Zephyr, Eilidh would do so. For now, though, she would present him with a home where he could try to heal.
When Eilidh and Zephyr exited the cave and walked toward the area where the fae lived, he remained silent. He stared at their watchers with the same haughty assurance that his father wore like a mask. All he said finally was “I do not know where we go, but I would speak to the queen.”
Eilidh let herself sink a little further into the hum of the voice of the land. It was harder to keep separate than it was to hear these days. “Mother is not here yet.”
He nodded, and Eilidh led him through the Hidden Lands. Here, it was as the world had all once been. Here, the fae had kept the toxins out. It was the only space that was truly as nourishing as the world was meant to be.