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The energy building between them was so intense it had pressed everyone against the walls of the chamber. It overwhelmed Keldwyn's initial restraint on Cayden, such that the captain was there with the others, no way to get to his queen's side. Since sometimes those walls were conjured to be sheets of moving water that disappeared into a knee level mist, it was good that today they were simply walls hung with tapestries. Their audience would have been soaked, though Keldwyn reflected the water would have absorbed blood spatter better.
"If you want my head, Your Majesty, it is yours," he said between his teeth. "You do with it as you will. But I will not see history repeat itself. Not for something as trite as your feelings."
It was the final trigger. A burst of ice and cold met fire and earth. The reverberation that shook the room blinded and deafened their audience, knocking them to the ground. Cracks ran across the floor and glass rained from the ceiling. The Fae advisors fled out the side doors. Without glancing that way, Keldwyn shot a burst of energy toward Jacob, shoving him from one of the larger cracks before he fell through and was trapped in the moat. Daegan yanked Gideon into an alcove to protect him from the shards of glass which rained down on his own shoulders. Kel was sure the vampire hunter would give his Master hell over that move. But protecting the one you loved was second nature, wasn't it?
Then it was over. He and Rhoswen stood a few feet apart, staring at one another, the residual magic drifting around them like smoke from fired pistols.
"Fine. Go then," she said through stiff lips. "Go to your vampire lover. Perhaps I will leave you both in the Shattered World and you can wither and die there. All that awaits you here is banishment. Forever."
His laugh was contemptuous. "You have not been listening if you think there is anything you can do to me that would hurt worse than what I have endured. When will you ever grow up and decide the past is the past, and had nothing to do with you? Nothing." She flinched as he fired the words at her. "The things that hurt the worst are inflicted by those who do not intend you harm at all. Because you are not the center of their world. We never were."
He stepped back up to her, toe to toe, but this time there was no anger left in him. It was that way with loving someone, that vacillation of passion. Now he could see the traces of vulnerability beneath her strength, the fragility in the tight set of her jaw. All of those qualities came from Reghan. It was just her curse that his stubbornness tangled with Magwel's bitterness in her genes.
"But when you find someone to whom you are that important, it heals some very deep wounds, Your Majesty. You will do anything to claim that love." His gaze shifted to Cayden, then back to her. The gravity that had kept the others away was gone. As soon as the captain had realized it, he was back at her side. He stood only a stride away, his gaze pinned on Keldwyn, though he did not interfere, sensing the change of mood.
"How long will you let the love you feel for him burn inside your ice heart before you let it melt and heal your soul?" Keldwyn said quietly.
Cayden was almost as good as his Queen at concealing his thoughts, but Kel saw the brief slip. He would always stand at her side, protect her, love her, care for her. Yet if Rhoswen allowed that love to become an open thing, growing without restrictions, it could change everything inside her soul. Cayden knew it, hoped it, wished for it.
Keldwyn knew it would, because it had for him.
Rhoswen was now looking into the space beyond Keldwyn's shoulder, away from everyone. She was barely breathing, it seemed, her energy glowing blue around her. Keldwyn passed his fingers through that aura, making it curl around his fingers and dissipate. He'd done that when she was younger, making her laugh, snapping her out of a tantrum.
"Most of my life, I've watched over amazing, powerful and supremely frustrating children. Uthe is no child. He is my equal." He met her gaze when it shifted to his. "Just as you know that Lyssa is yours, with or without Fae blood. He is balance and intelligence, steady as the earth itself, and I have ever been a creature of earth. For me, he is the fire in the center of it."
She turned away from him. The unbroken tiles beneath her feet changed to cracked ice as she stepped upon them. A blast of cold air whistled through the chamber, rustling the tapestries on the wall and frosting the skin of those left in the chamber. Stopping in front of her throne, she tipped her head back. A ripple went through her body, a hard shudder. Cayden moved to her side, closer this time. Once there, he stopped, paused. After a long moment, he dropped to a knee and bowed his head, but he put his hand at her waist, long fingers wrapping around her hip. It was an intriguing mix of messages. She tilted her head away from him, but her fingers touched his, curved into them and held. She said something too low to be heard, and Cayden rose to his feet. As she turned and faced him, the two of them exchanged a long look. Then she brought her attention back to Keldwyn.
"Lord Keldwyn, you have ever been a thorn in my side. I have imagined many ways to destroy you, yet I am not so caught up in the pleasure of such visions that I overlook a crucial truth. I rely on your counsel, your arguments and your clever insults that veil wise advice."
"Though you are a pain in my ass, Your Majesty, I would not offer counsel unless I thought you were a monarch worthy of my time."
"Proof that your arrogance is one of the least charming things about you, my lord. But..." She took a step toward him. She seemed to be struggling with something. Cayden moved a step closer again, and his proximity steadied her. She straightened, met Keldwyn's gaze. He caught a breath, for in the pain, resolve and raw honesty he saw there now, he remembered Reghan's face in their last days together, when so much had been about baring the soul, and saying their good-byes. He also thought about Uthe, calling him Master as they stood outside the Shattered World, admitting his desire to be Keldwyn's.
By the gods, he needed to go, now. He was quivering inside like a wolf in desperate need to go on the hunt. But she was his only gateway back to him.
"You have been the constant in my life since my father's passing. You loved him." Rhoswen's lips tightened. "I knew that. Countless times, when I felt the pain of his loss touch me from some passing memory, I saw it had touched you also. Since you hold so much away from the rest of us, I could only imagine how deeply that emotion ran. It changed, hurt and remade us all, didn't it, my lord?"
Her voice had become soft, her eyes weary. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He thought of Uthe, asking, "Was he the love of your life?"
"You have stayed by my side to help me learn to be a better queen," she said. "You have counseled me in ways large and small to keep my baser emotions from dictating my rule. Mostly. I think there were times you deliberately made yourself a target so I could channel my anger toward you rather than toward the responsibilities of my throne."
He didn't deny it, and her lips twitched, though there was no humor in her face. Pain was still a living thing in her eyes. "You watched over his other daughter as much as you were able, cared for her interests and brought us together. You suffered guilt over her mother choosing to meet the sun, because you felt you owed that to him as well, to protect the happiness of the woman you despised for taking him from you. But you figured that out, too, didn't you? He loved us. Just never as much as he loved her."
"Yes." Keldwyn spoke through stiff lips. "We cannot help wh
om we love, my lady."
"Nor whom we don't." She sighed. "That's the dark side the poems do not address. You have now given your heart to a vampire, and you are willing to let that love take you from my side. Forgive my reaction to that, but it opens old wounds."
"You are true Unseelie Fae, my lady," Keldwyn said slowly. "You have trouble understanding that the confession of love for one is not a denial of any love for another. You do not have to be the center of my existence to have my love, my regard, and my care for your wellbeing." Her gaze lifted to him, and he nodded, meaning every word. "If it must be done from the human realm, it will be no less strong or steadfast."
"I do not want to lose your counsel," she said after a moment. "But our rules on this are very clear. I am not of a mind to try and change them yet. Too much has changed, too quickly, between our world and the human one, the vampire one. There must be boundaries."
"There must." He dropped to one knee and bowed his head. If this was the last counsel he would ever give her, he knew what needed to be said. What Reghan would want him to say. "You are a fair Queen, my lady. The past is relinquishing its hold on you, the present moment notwithstanding. With every step you take away from it, you become an even better ruler. I wish you success and joy."
He lifted his head, met her ice-blue eyes. "Now send me back to Varick, damn it, before I lose my mind."
High spots of color appeared in her pale cheeks, but her countenance held something other than anger.
"One day you will learn you do not order a queen to do anything. Goodbye, Lord Keldwyn."
* * *
He only had time to bow his head in acknowledgment. He experienced the familiar disorientation of a portal transition, and then he was in the castle ruins once more, surrounded by bodies, blood and a scattering of weapons. He scrambled to his feet.
The Templars and Saracens were dead. As he moved among them, Kel saw they'd either been taken by the fight or, once the fight was over, their purpose done, the Shattered World had no more claim on them. Curled up on his side, Jacques looked as if he were in his bed. He held his sword, his lips pressed to the blade.
