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I didn’t need the mating bond between us—I knew Veyka. I knew the guilt that must have roared to life in her gut at the implication. Because it was the same one I’d been living with for months now. I stepped up to her side, pressing one palm to the small of her back.
I saved her from answering. “Can you truly help, or are you going to continue speaking nonsense?”
The priestess’s mouth stretched into a grin—but there was no happiness in it. Amusement, yes. At my expense. “Hello, Brutal Prince. You can take your own journey if you’d like.”
Veyka was having none of it. She stepped fully into the alcove, dominating it easily with her height and width. Not to mention the gleaming weapons that were always strapped to her beautiful body.
“We are only here because Isolde vouched for you. If you truly have nothing to offer, then we will go.”
She didn’t even wait for a response. She grabbed my arm as she turned, giving the faerie her full back. Not even deigning her worthy of notice.
“I can help you,” the silvery voice said. “Sit. I will speak as plainly as I can.”
Veyka’s face was trained in a carefully unmoved mask—the sort of disinterest she hadn’t needed to feign when I first met her. But she sat, cross-legged on the ground on the opposite side of the hearth. I dropped down beside her, though I pressed my back to the edge of the alcove and settled my battle axe across my lap.
I wasn’t leaving our backs unguarded.
“You are a priestess,” Veyka said, looking carefully over the crystals then back to the unlit hearth and finally the faerie. “I have dealt with witches before.”
The seer’s smile flickered. “Priestesses exist in many forms, many races. There are human priestesses, fae and faerie priestesses. And of course, the witches.”
“What remains of them,” I said.
“Indeed.”
She didn’t offer an opinion about that—whether she sympathized with the other beings that had been driven from Annwyn at the same time as the Faeries of the Fen. Or whether she recognized the witches as dangerous.
What she thought didn’t matter.
Helping Veyka did.
“How does your power work?” Veyka asked, eyes drifting back to the crystals.
“That would take longer to explain than you or your mate will tolerate.” The faerie reached behind her, selecting a pale pink crystal veined with streaks of darker scarlet that looked eerily like blood. She held it out in one hand. In the other, she produced a small vial of liquid.
“The Faeries of the Fen are gifted with physical appearance to match their power. I am the starlight, the heavens, time itself. I can move beyond those restraints which bind you to the here and now.”
Like Veyka’s void power. Too similar. Unease began to unspool in my stomach.
She looked directly at Veyka. “What do you wish to see?”
My brother.
I heard Veyka’s heart answer as clearly as if she’d spoken the words aloud. Maybe it wasn’t the bond connecting us. Maybe it was simply that after all these months, I knew her so well, I knew what her answer would be.
For although she’d let go of revenge, she hadn’t let go of Arthur. Especially not with the revelations of the past few weeks.
“What can you show me?” she hedged.
The faerie’s smile did not waiver. “I am merely the conduit for your journey. What—or who—you see is entirely determined by you.”
“I wish to see Avalon and what awaits us there,” Veyka said.
My hand tightened around hers.
Strange—I didn’t remember reaching for her.
But hardly surprising. The bond demanded constant closeness. Or perhaps I was getting better at comfort.
