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I swallowed the anger down and silenced the building howl. Delphine deserved better. She’d been living on the streets, far away from her family home where she’d been treated like a princess all her life. It couldn’t be easy out here. Everything she’d become had been out of necessity, as survival had become paramount.
Delphine deserved tenderness and patience so that she could become a soft and gentle woman once more, and I truly hoped that I had it in me to offer that to her. If I couldn’t help her return to her princess nature, then I wouldn’t be a fitting husband.
You need a woman to quench some of that fire in you, my brother had said. I could recall Calen’s look. It was pleading but also terrified. Even he was reluctant to approach me.
What had I become?
The elven kingdoms were never not at war. Each heir thought that they had a right to rule as lord of all, and so when one war died, and a new heir reached a throne, the battles would start all over again. I’d held my throne for decades now, but only through cruel means.
Rumors of my cruelty had spread. They’d doubled and become horrifying stories. Those rumors had become something of a curse. The word of my enemies and the word of my people had come back around and bound me in a magic that I could not escape.
Sometimes, I thought it penance for the things I actually did do in the name of my kingdom. Other times, I raged and destroyed entire wings of my castle because I could no longer hold back this fire in my stomach.
2
DELPHINE
“What a self-absorbed piece of shit,” I grumbled to myself from atop a nearby roof.
While Arven had his head bowed, I’d pushed into the crowd on the street and walked in-between to get up to a place where I could watch from a distance. I lounged across the back of a rooftop gargoyle and watched Arven look all around for me.
With my glamour dropped, I blended into the lichen-covered gargoyle. Even if he looked up here, he wouldn’t immediately notice me. It would give me enough time to step in-between and escape again.
From here, I safely observed Arven like he was the target of a hunt. The man had broad shoulders and hands that looked rough from years of fighting. Even if I hadn’t heard the rumors of what he’d become, I would have deemed him too dangerous to deal with up close. Were I hunting him, I would have kept my distance and relied on my crossbow to take him down.
The thought tickled the edge of my mind. I could do it. I had the advantage of height and stealth. He wouldn’t see me if I summoned my crossbow and aimed it at him. Then I would be taking care of a problem for all elves, not just myself.
Sometimes, when I closed my eyes for a little too long, I could see his house banner being raised as my court was burnt to the ground. I could hear the screams outside of the basement pantry. I could feel the heat of the flames above while I covered my ears with my shaking hands.
Before I knew it, I had the crossbow aimed at Arven’s heart. I didn’t know what kept me from pulling the trigger, though. My finger hovered over it as my breath trembled.
Instead of inspecting this feeling, I shoved it back and pushed off the back of the gargoyle. Alone on the roof, I lifted my face to the sky and pulled my glamour around myself again.
Elves weren’t like fae. We had something like a soul in us. It wasn’t quite the same as a human soul, but more like we were the bridge between fae and humans. Fate made us the human prototype, and turned us into a bunch of feral little creatures in the process.
The Eveningwind court had been beautiful. Dark tapestries of the constellations covered our walls. I knew the name of every star and loved the beaming face of the moon as she watched over us. The Eveningwind court had been gentle academics, never fit for war.
But the other courts wanted only power. They shoved aside knowledge and love in favor of flames and destruction. It made me hate all of them. When I finally crawled out of the basement pantry in the Eveningwind castle and saw the destruction around me, I’d vowed that I would never come back.
I would never let Arven D’Or find me.
But here I was, watching the man search for me on the street.
He didn’t look anything like the monster in my dreams. He barely even matched the rumors of what he’d become. The elves whispered of a man who had a black fur ruff around his shoulders and red horns that protruded from his forehead. They said he was triple the size of a normal elf and roared while lashing his beastly tail in the air.
This was just…a man. He had a bend in his nose, perhaps from a fist fight. I could see the beginnings of a tattoo peeking out of the collar of his shirt. And the only fur ruff on him was part of his winter jacket.
I rocked back on my heels and wondered why I’d ever been so scared of him. While I knew the truth, I felt so far removed from the day my court fell that the fear was so small now.
Okay, that was a lie. I could feel it screaming in the little locked chest in the back of my mind. I’d kept it in there for so long that the lock had rusted shut. The only person who’d ever opened it had been Beryl, and that’d ended horribly. Needless to say, I was never going back to Lakesedge or Syracuse.
That bitch had won the war, and no one would ever be able to challenge her for her throne ever again. Sometimes, I considered tracking down Rhoan if only to see if I could free him from Faust’s Sluagh army.
Faust shouldn’t have terrified me, but the man had his own locked box of nightmares in the back of my head, too. He’d found his way into my mind and brought out everything I feared, because that was his domain. Together, he and Beryl had pushed me out of the only other place I might have ever called home.
I missed Rhoan and Cerridwen sometimes. Cerri had been a no-nonsense kind of woman, and I’d appreciated that. The love that Rhoan had for her had made me envious because I knew that I’d never find that kind of affection anywhere.
I thought of Arven again.
