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“Good call. Since I’m a life-bringer and whatnot.”
He chuckled. “I haven’t quite figured out what Vevol intended when she created them. If the harsh can also bear children, then it’s not that. Do you know what they were originally called? No one would give us any details.”
I forced my mind back to the day I’d found the fae women on that island, with Dakota, Mare, and North. “Light. The protectors were harsh, and the life-bringers were light.”
“A suitable title for you, then.” He sounded thoughtful. “I think Vevol will reveal their true nature in time.”
“Seems like she loves to be vague,” I agreed.
He gave a murmur of agreement. “Are you ready to shower and train?”
I groaned. “Not more training.”
He laughed. “You’re the one who wanted to learn, Iloli. I offered to protect you instead.”
“I know. Just let me grumble.”
“Alright. Grumble away.” He picked me up, crossing the room and opening the fridge a few inches from my bare body. I shivered as the cold air met my skin, but he closed it a moment later. He tucked the cold fruit between our chests and grinned playfully when I shuddered against him because of the cold.
“Bastard,” I complained, though I was still snuggled against him.
“Insult me all you want, Summer. I’ll still feed you fruit and wash your skin,” he teased me, stepping into the shower and turning the water on. It was already hot when it rained down on us, and I groaned at the blissfulness of it.
He adjusted our position so he was holding me with just the one arm on my ass. With the other hand, he easily peeled the fuzzy, lumpy red skin off the birth control fruit—the lilano. I tilted my head back, and he fed me a piece of the fruit.
I bit down, and was surprised by the creamy sweetness of it. “Shit. North was right; it’s basically ice cream.”
“Is it?” He popped a piece into his mouth. “Most unseelie love lilano. They grow all throughout the forest in our land, as you probably noticed while we were traveling.”
“I did,” I agreed, taking another bite of the fruit when he put it to my lips. It had filmy dividers between segments, like an orange, but otherwise it was completely foreign. “The seelie told us they stopped eating them a long time ago, because the fruit changed the texture of their semen.”
Remmo snorted. “Why did they care about that?”
I laughed. “I don’t even know. If they were trying to have kids, it would matter. Considering that they were single for centuries, you wouldn’t think it would even cross their minds.”
“The seelie aren’t very logical, but what many of them lack in critical thinking, they make up for in passion. Sometimes, I’ve envied the simpler way they live and see the world,” Remmo admitted.
“Technically, you joined them,” I pointed out to him. “You are seelie.”
He made a noise of disagreement. “I only joined them to spite Aev and his council. They required one of the women to mate completely with her male, on the threat of starting a war, and Naomi went through with it. Forcing any female to mate with someone is not only cruel, but extremely far from the rules all of us followed.”
“Then it sounds like Aev is going to get what he has coming for him when Fovea breaks Naomi’s bond to him,” I said.
“I suppose. He hasn’t truly been himself since that female showed up, though. All of the blame doesn’t belong on his shoulders.” Remmo continued feeding me the fruit as we talked.
“How so?”
“From the beginning, he knew Naomi was his mate. And she despised him, loudly. Her whole world had just changed, which we all understood, so he gave her the space she requested. But that space only grew wider, and being forced to remain away from your fated mate is very difficult on a male fae. It goes against your nature, and feels like you’re tearing off your own skin. He fought the bond for a very, very long time. Long enough that his personality seeped away, replaced by the desperation of ignored instincts.”
I grimaced. “How did you do that for so long, then?”
His lips curved upward. “I didn’t.”
I blinked. “I thought you’ve known we were mates for a while.”
“Since you moved to the new Stronghold,” he agreed. “I saw your feelings for Teris, and respected them, even though it nearly killed me. That doesn’t mean I stayed away from you.”
I remembered something Mare had said, then.
