Gage slumps, pressing his hands against his temples, as he murmurs, “Belle. It was her death that sent me to Yris.”
Magic ripples out of Soren, a harmless reaction but I glance at him quickly to be sure it’s not the first sign of danger. His eyes burn, his jaw flexing as he grinds his teeth, but he watches Gage as the goblin prince rubs his temples. With the tension in his shoulders and the way he’s sitting so rigidly, it’s clear he’s reaching out to his mate to confirm her safety.
I share a look with Gideon, his mouth a firm line, and when Gage doesn’t move, he sighs deeply. “As angry as I am at him,his fate has been centuries of enduring torture… the worst kind, feeling the terror and pain of his mate and being commanded by the Fates to do nothing. Even Vahro will find mercy for his stupidity. The fact that he didn’t run to Yris the second you arrived at the border of our lands was an act of strength none of us anticipated.”
Wincing, I struggle to find an answer for him, and Soren surprises me by answering Gideon himself. “The Fates had important lessons to teach. There are too many generations of unrest within the kingdom to set out clear paths for us all, and instead we had to know the true price of failure.”
A shiver runs down my spine as the screeching echoes of the Ureen sound clearly in my mind, though years have passed, because the monsters of the Fates will never truly stop hunting me.
Eager for a distraction, I reach my hand up again and, with a pop of light, reveal the ring that Sari secreted to me in my palm. Soren turns to stone next to me, and I hold it out to him. He stares at the ring before finally, hesitantly, taking it from me. Sari made it clear that it was his mother's.
“Princess Sari gave it to me and said it was the best that she could do without rousing suspicions, though I don't know enough of Unseelie high-fae traditions to understand what that means.”
Soren looks down, his lips pressed firmly together, but Gideon looks at his brother before murmuring in a somber tone, “High-fae royals are expected to have members of their bloodline present at their weddings and receive their blessing over the union. It’s stupid—they marry only by the Fates’ command—but tradition demands it. In lieu of their direct blessing, an object of their bloodline can be present instead.”
Soren wraps his fist around the ring and moves his gaze to the fire before us. “That tradition began the first war within theSouthern Lands. When the Briarfrost heir was first given the fate of marrying a goblin, none of his family would give their blessing.”
Gideon studies Soren, his eyes guarded, and the soldiers around us remain quiet as they listen in.
“His name was also Prince Gideon—the high-fae tradition of honoring the First Fae has held the names of our ancestors safe from fading with the passing of centuries. When none of his family would give their blessing, he married his wife without them and disappeared into Aysgarth with her. A few soldiers of the Briarfrost bloodline went too, but most of his family stayed in Yris and claimed he was a traitor to us all. Another high-fae prince took over his seat on the Unseelie Court, which he successfully contested, and eventually those Briarfrost who stayed in Yris rode back out to the territories to try to claim it back from Prince Gideon and his family.”
He looks up at the Prince Gideon before us with a quirk of his eyebrow and drawls, “They weren’t very successful, clearly, underestimating their own blood… as I have.”
He doesn't say that to point out the superiority of their kind, as other high fae might; instead it’s in the same way that he bluntly agreed that Sari’s sisters are all his cousins, regardless of his uncle's opinions. His pandering to the Unseelie Court in years past had very little to do with his own opinions. Every choice has been fraught, a delicate line he walked to keep himself in their good graces, the only thing stopping his uncle from wresting the throne from his grip once and for all.
I murmur to him, “Your cousin is very talented at languages and at acting, and she’s protecting her most loved ones with elaborate performances that—as far as I can tell—have become her entire existence. She told me the regent plans to kill you after we complete our fate, and she was ready to help secrete us all out of Yris and do whatever we needed that she could provide.She’s also quite angry at you, so when you’re reunited, I’d avoid reminding her that you put me in a dungeon, if I were you.”
Gideon chuckles, the first time he’s done so at Soren's expense, but my Fates-blessed mate ignores him in favor of staring at me with a heavy gaze.
His hand tightens on the ring again before he holds it back out to me, clearly for safekeeping, though my heart threatens to skip a beat at the action. Taking it, I get my first proper look at it before I hide it away. Closer to an item I’d choose for myself than most of the jewelry I’ve seen the Unseelie Court display, the filigree band mimics branches woven together to clasp around a large sapphire. Perfectly Celestial blue, the stone, on closer inspection, is flecked with tiny white dots that perfectly align with the stars of Soren’s family crest. It’s beautiful, painstakingly crafted, and though the flecks might be imperfections to others, the effect is stunning to me.
“Do you truly intend to marry at the winter solstice? It's that requirement of the Fates alone stopping your uncle from killing you,” Gage says, lifting his head finally with somber eyes.
Soren’s eyes narrow dangerously. “I don't care what my uncle's plans are. Nothing is going to stop our marriage. Even if he crawls back here with the legion he's sold his daughter for, Rooke and I will be wed.”
As Gage’s gaze moves in my direction, a pulse of magic bursts from Soren, and the goblin prince freezes. His face pulls into such a look of caution that I begin to wonder what their time in the dungeons looked like, and I cast the high-fae prince a careful look. Gideon shoots Gage a disapproving one at the same time, as if both of us are scolding unruly children. There’s a fraught moment, tension in every line of each of the males.
Gage turns from his brother and says, in a careful but urgent manner, “We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss concerns for thatlegion the regent has been promised… especially if there are bloodwitches amongst them.”
“What’s a bloodwitch?”
Even Gideon looks at Soren in shock, finally breaking his scowling at his brother. “You don’t know what bloodwitch is? How is that possible?”
Soren glances at me, but I’m also shocked at this gap in knowledge. He says, “Unseelie high fae barely recognize that different covens exist, let alone that there are different types of witches.”
I groan, running a hand over my face, but after sharing a look with Gage, Gideon nods slowly. “My brother was right; this explains much of your behavior. This is good news—Father will be relieved.”
When my eyebrows raise, not the response I was expecting, Gideon shrugs back to me with a crooked smile. “Prince Soren had no idea what a Favored Child was when he put one in the dungeons. He doesn't understand magic or the passing of the rites. How can you blame him for disrespectful actions when he's ignorant to them in the first place?”
I nod slowly. “It’s one of the reasons I found my anger at the Yregar household softening, and how I've made peace with the path our fate has taken us on. Most of the high fae I've encountered—outside of Yris of course—have treated me far more agreeably after some carefully thought-out lessons.”
When silence falls around us once more, Soren stares at each of us until finally, Gage speaks. “Each forest in the Southern Lands has a coven attached to it and bears the name of that coven. A few have changed names thanks to the high fae, such as Elms Walk, but considering that coven’s name is the Elmswyrd… they’re not so difficult to figure out. The Blood Valley has bloodwitches within it.”
Soren nods slowly for a moment before shrugging. “So, it's the name of a coven?”
Gage holds his gaze as he shakes his head. “No, it’s not just a name, like Favored Children aren’t just Ravenswyrd witches. Witches born directly from the Bloodwyrd Coven, the line of the womb unbroken, are also bloodwitches. The magic they wield is… barbaric, to put it mildly, and those red witch marks they bear? They’re trophies of their most heinous acts. The tales of their coven’s warfare are… well, if even half of them are true, they’re second only to the Ureen in rampant bloodlust and maniacal destruction.”
I level Gage with a warning look. “The Favored Children were created by the forest first, but the bloodwitches came next, and they were born of the same magic, at the dawn of the Fates. Their Mothers have never forgotten our traditions, no matter the battles they’ve waged.”
