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It was my turn to stiffen. He was right, of course, and I still was not sure I wanted to acknowledge it. Still wasn’t sure it was something I could accept. “Tell me about how it works,” I said as I tried to swallow another yawn.
I closed my eyes and felt him pick up a lock of my hair, twisting it between his fingers. Mating bonds are sealed through sex and sharing blood on both sides,” he explained. “You could do that with anyone, I suppose, and share their power. It would create a bond, but it wouldn’t be a fated bond. That’s taboo, though, even among married couples.”
“Why?” I asked, eyes still closed.
“Because fated mates have comparable power levels. An unequal bond almost always results in the death of one partner. Like, you remember the story of Aisling?”
“Mmmhmm.”
I was not sure I ever wanted to hear about Aisling again. I’d gone my whole life knowing only the barest amount about history, but since moving into the royal area of the palace, I’d had more lectures on history and politics than I ever would have imagined were possible…and I suspected we were barely scratching the surface.
“Aisling had three mates because she was the most powerful queen of her age,” Bael continued. “She was powerful enough to sustain the power of three other Fae kings, but I suspect they were not fated mates, merely a political match, or else they wouldn’t have died. I presume that they drained themselves to save her.”
His words were starting to blur together into a dream tableau, where I felt as if I could see what he was saying. The queen. Her mates. The attack of the Unseelie…
“But there were four of them,” I mumbled. “Were her mates not also bonded to each other?”
I felt him shrug. “I don’t know, little monster. This was, of course, seven thousand years ago. However, I have always suspected that they were not. If all four were bonded to each other by blood, then that’s unlikely to have happened, but they were probably only bonded to her. You have to remember that she mated with the individual kings of three separate nations to bring them all together, so I can imagine that perhaps they were not a perfectly aligned family unit.”
I thought I asked another question. I felt myself slipping away into sleep.
* * *
Smoke filled the air,blinding me, choking me, as I ran.
My feet pounded a familiar, violent rhythm against the stone floor of the corridor that I knew led to the kitchens. Screams followed me. Screams and crying, the sounds of crumbling stone and metal against metal. The air was hot and oppressive, and I coughed, feeling as if my lungs were scorched from the inside out.
Ahead, shadows moved—people running, half-obscured by the smoke. There was light behind them. The door, I guessed, and yet I didn’t run toward it.
Turning a sharp corner, I thundered down another hall, even as my head swam. The nausea still churning in my stomach threatened to send me to the ground, but I willed myself to remain on my feet. Just a bit further. Only a few more steps.
I—we—would not die here.
I ran, faster, faster, reaching a familiar door and shoving it open. Darkness engulfed me. Shadows. Spinning. Falling.
I slammed too hard into something solid, arms coming around to catch me. I looked up and recoiled—the face of the stranger, unusual. Unclear.
Hidden, as if by a mask.
10
LONNIE
THE ROAD TO EVERLAST CITY
In the morning, I barely remembered my dreams as we packed up the camp and departed for the capital. In short order, the procession of fairy horses walked in a perfectly straight line carrying all the lovely High Fae through the Waywoods—a perfectly straight line that was marred only by me.
Fae horses did not like human riders. It was a universal truth that had managed to derail many journeys before now and would hold true today. My horse bucked and kicked, veering off the path more times than I could count, stopping the party over and over as it tried to dislodge me from my saddle.
“At least we know you’re partially human,” Bael drawled, riding up beside me on his own enormous chestnut horse. “Would you care for assistance?”
I clung to the horse’s neck for dear life, peering at her through its mane as I swung back and forth like a leaf in the wind. “No, I’m fine. It is the beast that is having the difficulty, not me.”
Upside down, I watched Bael’s lip twitch as if trying not to laugh. “How did you make it all the way to the quarry in the first place? I am shocked you didn’t die on the way.”
A gasp escaped my lips as my horse turned in a circle, jumping and bucking wildly. “You would know if you had been there.”
“I assure you, I am regretting missing the show.”
