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“Where the sun shines through the trees, blessing the ground with light, I will always be. Remember me, and I will come to you.”
Rian nodded, shuttering his eyes against the tears that threatened. The unfairness of his situation slapped at his sense of justice. He’d always believed the Danula Fae to be fair rulers, and now he couldn’t wrap his head around what was happening to him. The guard pulled him through a narrow door that led to a secondary room where the council waited.
Whereshewaited.
Rian’s chin came up when his eyes landed on Terra. She met his challenging look with a smile. It seared him, melting some of the ice, only to allow his rage to flood through.
“You smile for the fate of an innocent,” Rian spat.
“Justice is served.” Terra shrugged a shoulder. “Breaking a fated mate bond brings great harm to not only the immediate family, but to the rules of our society. There is no stronger bond than that of fated mates.”
“If she was bonded, then why was she lying with another man? Did you ever think to accuseherinstead of her lover?” Rian grit out as the guard pulled him past Terra.
“Enough.” The head council member thundered.
“I will avenge this wrongdoing. Of this, I promise you.” Rian spoke to Terra.
A considering look entered Terra’s eyes, but Rian was already being forced into a narrow corridor. The last thing he saw was Terra opening her mouth to speak, when the door slammed shut, and his world went black.
1
three years later
“I say we fight.”
Terra raised her eyes to where King Callum paced in front of the stream, his wife Lily having instead chosen to sit with Terra in the soft moss that coated the gently curved riverbank. The King of the Danula Fae’s shoulders were rigid with tension, and she appreciated him meeting her out here instead of inside the castle. Walls made her feel like she wanted to bounce out of her skin, and she much preferred conducting business beneath the sky where the wind blew their words into the ether.
“But how? Are we aware of any organized advancing armies?” Terra asked. “Thus far, the Domnua Fae have been insidious in their actions, and all we’ve been able to do is react. Unless you choose to go to their realm?”
“We might have to.” King Callum whirled, his hands at his hips, his face stormy.
“Our people are restless,” Terra said, threading her fingers through the springy moss, feeling the worries of her people communicating through the roots in the Earth. “They know of the attacks on the Fire and Water Fae, and now look at each other with suspicion. We don’t know if a Domnua has infiltrated our midst. What’s their end game? Can we cut them off there?”
“It’s Domnu,” Lily, a lovely human who’d had the unusual good luck of being King Callum’s fated mate, murmured. “The Dark Goddess will never rest until she can leave her realm and rule Ireland … if not the Earth. Essentially, she’s a toddler having one big tantrum. She doesn’t like being told what to do, and she certainly doesn’t want to compromise. Even though she’s been given her own realm to rule, it’s not enough. It will never be enough.”
“But you can’tkilla goddess,” Terra protested.
“We can contain her. We can weaken her. We can take her powers from her.” King Callum ticked the points off on his fingers.
“So the option to fight is to capture the Goddess Domnu?” Worry creased Lily’s forehead. “Surely there’s a better route?”
“Can we turn her people against her? Maybe show the Dark Fae how nice it is over here?” Terra mused.
“That would take a massive campaign that I’m not sure we have time for. All they know is Goddess Domnu as their leader. I’m not sure we’ll have the strength to change that.” King Callum crouched by Lily and pressed an absent-minded kiss to her forehead. Lily’s eyes softened, and Terra couldn’t help but smile in the presence of their love. Their love story had been fraught with danger and troubles but, somehow, they’d still found their way back to each other.
Terra suspected her own would be much the same. Her heart twisted as she thought about her fated mate, the man who’d been shown to her through the scrying stream. If it was the same man she thought it to be, well, it wasn’t likely she’d be finding her happily-ever-after anytime soon.
Exiled.
In an awful twist of fate, Terra had heard her fated mate singing their heartsong in her dreams one night. It was the first time she’d heard their song, and when she’d awoken, excitement coursing through her body, she’d hurried to the stream to finally get a look at her mate. Her excitement had quickly shifted to dismay when the clear waters of the stream had shimmered to reveal her sworn enemy.
The man who had torn her family apart.
Bitterness filled her mouth as she thought about the aftermath of Rian’s trial, his exile, and how her brother, Eoghan, had fallen apart at his fated mate’s betrayal. Not only had his heart been broken, but the breaking of a fated mate bond had sent confusion and uncertainty through her people in a time when they needed to rely on consistency and foundational truths.
For the Fae, a fated mate was a singular truth that defined the course of one’s life. The magick was so powerful, that once two Fae claimed each other and accepted their fated bond, not only did their own magicks grow stronger, but that of the entire community of Fae as a whole. If one Fae claimed their fated mate, and the other refused, the first Fae would eventually die from the unrequited claim.
A bit archaic, Terra supposed, as she’d often chafed against the confines of the fated mate expectations of the Earth Fae, instead largely enjoying her life untethered to another. Who said she needed a partner to be happy? She hadn’t always thought that way, but watching Eoghan unravel at his wife’s unfaithfulness had started her down a path of convincing herself that perhaps fated mates were an outdated and unnecessary construct.
