Page 20 of Flame and Starlight

I stopped him. “Yes, well, I am, Your Highness.” His title dripped off my tongue with malice. “I was just trying to help you as you were lying there, chest ripped open by Gods knows what! You are seriously the most ungrateful person I have ever met!” I swiped at the hair that had fallen in my face.

“I would’ve been fine, and I didn’t ask for your help.” He tried to sit up but winced and slunk back down into the cushions. “Your injuries could’ve been far worse than they are! You are human. I could literally crush your bones to dust if I wanted. And look at you!” He looked me up and down. What looked like disgust flashed across those dark eyes, and gooseflesh raised across my legs as I remembered just how little of me was covered. “You are covered in blood and barely clothed.” I crossed my arms as Mavka made her way over to me, trying to escort me out of the room. He chided me like a child, and suddenly, I didn’t feel much older than one.

“Good to know. Next time I won’t lift a finger to help you, even if it means saving your life. I guess you can save yourself from now on.” I saw him roll his eyes and lie back down, not up for any more of a fight tonight. I turned on my heel, letting Mavka lead me out of the room, and flipped him off over my shoulder.

“Oh, my cloak,” I said as we entered the hall.

“Maybe best we leave that for tomorrow,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Wouldn’t want to ruin it.” I shivered against the cold but agreed and let her lead me away and back into my room.

“Has he ever come back injured that badly from Mayassar?”

“Only once. His first time, he was young and distracted.” Her voice was hushed like he could hear us. “It must have been an unspeakable soul to be able to harm him that badly. But,” she said, a bit lighter as we made it back to my room, “he will be fine. He will still be a bit sore tomorrow, but overall, he’ll be fine.” It sounded like she was more trying to convince herself than me.

I ran myself a bath while she stoked the fire and added some more wood. By the time I emerged from the bathing chamber, no blood left in sight, Mavka had the fire roaring and the bedsheets turned back. I sighed and started to braid my wet hair to the side.

“He’s never been the easiest person,” she said, taking over, her thin fingers moving deftly in and out of my hair. I scoffed. She turned me around when she had finished and smiled at me. “He knows his strength. He knew tonight he could have killed you. That’s why he was angry.” She patted my cheek. Her weariness seeped into me through that touch. Her worry tasted sour.

“I was just trying to help.” I climbed into bed, throwing back the vial the healer had given me like a shot of apple vodka. The thought suddenly had my heart hurting and missing home. I missed having people to confide in. I missed Tom’s laugh. I missed Aoife’s hugs. I could have really used a smile and a hug right then. The elixir went down much more smoothly than the apple vodka. It tasted like honey and made my entire body go warm, my headache barely there anymore. Tiredness hit me like a brick wall, and I practically fell back into the pillows.

“He’ll come to his senses,” she said, tucking the covers up under my chin. “Hopefully, anyway,” I heard her laugh. “Stubborn as a mule, that one. Get some sleep.” The tone of her voice betrayed the love she had for him. She spoke about him like my mom used to speak about me.

“I’m not holding my breath,” I said, slipping into sleep. I didn’t hear her close the curtains or close the door on her way out. I fell asleep replaying memories of my friends back home. The memories blurred into dreams, and then the dreams twisted into nightmares. Aoife’s hugs turned into vise grips, and her laughs turned into threats. Her ears were pointed, and her fingertips were black as coal, snaking up onto her palms and wrists. Fire flew from her hands and creeped its way around my neck, branding me the Autumn Court’s property.

And then there was Asher, stepping in between us to save me and pushing me away, hurdling me across the room in the process. This time when I heard my skull crack, everything faded into black. And I had no more dreams.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The next couple of weeks passed uneventfully. The healer, Kyrin, kept me in bed for three days after that night with Asher. I was surprised at how worn-out I actually was. My body had a lot of bruises and bumps to heal over those few days, and I had slept through most of them. The handprint on my throat took the longest to go away, but there was hardly any pain thanks to the elixirs Kyrin had left me.

After those three days were up, Emric showed up at my door bright and early every morning. We sank into a routine pretty easily after my body got used to it the first week. I was able to run around the entire lake in one go, so Emric had started pushing me to do it twice. I started lifting heavier weights, so Emric added more. I actually learned how to throw punches, so Emric started teaching me how to really fight. I was actually learning pretty quickly, and my strength was building faster than I thought it would.

No matter how hard he pushed me or how exhausted I was, my Fae side never kicked in. I was long past the point of frustration. If this was going to be my new life, I needed to not be this fragile little human. I was too weak and vulnerable against their strength. Emric had to hold back with every move he made when we fought just to make sure I didn’t go soaring across the room.

I told him so many times that I needed to be able to fight with him at his full strength because every Fae I’d be up against had at least five times the strength any human did. Every time I brought it up, he would just roll his eyes and tell me he wasn’t going to risk breaking my bones.

Some days, different Fae that Emric trusted would join us, giving him a break from taking my hits. Ideon was Emric’s second-in-command and was often stationed outside my room. Some days he would take over for Emric and let me take jabs at him, and other days he would merely lie on the floor and make snarky comments about my stances and moves.

One day while we were taking a water break, Ideon stood with his back to me, talking to Emric. If Emric saw me creeping up behind Ideon in my bare feet, desperate not to make a sound, he didn’t betray me. And the moment I was close enough, I swung my leg out and kicked Ideon hard in the back of the knee. He didn’t fall, but it knocked him off-balance and backwards long enough for me to reach up and grab his tunic at the neck and pull him down. He landed with a very satisfying thud, and Emric and I burst out in laughter.

“Touché, Wheezy,” Ideon had said. He’d adopted the nickname Emric had given me as well, even though I was far past wheezing at physical exertion anymore. He jumped back to his feet and gave me a hard pat on the back. “Maybe we underestimated you. Care to have a fair fight?” He got into position, and I tied my boots back on, ready to try again.

Every day I woke up at sunrise and trained with Emric until lunch. I took to eating lunch in my room after a bath, and I went exploring in the afternoons. A guard always followed me, making sure I wasn’t getting into trouble or that trouble didn’t find me. I got a sense of where pretty much everything was from the kitchens to the many, many guest rooms. There were a few great rooms that were covered in dust. It must’ve been a long time since anyone had danced in them.

Early on, I’d stumbled across a library that had to be filled with thousands and thousands of books. The English major inside of me melted at the sight when I first found it. There were rows and rows of them filling up the entire room. The ceiling was curved, and the big windows arched to match it.

Most afternoons after I had made some laps around my new home, I would make my way there to curl up in one of the deep cushioned chairs against a window and read until the sun began to set. It smelled like old leather and yellowed pages in there, and I wished I could bottle it. From the library windows, I could see the lake slowly icing over more and more each day, completely covered except a few spots in the middle where it was deepest. The mountains in the background sat there collecting snow under the soft pink-and-blue sky.

I hadn’t seen Asher a single time since the night he came back slashed to hell. After a week of dining with Emric in that massive room, my temper flared and boiled over. Asher had brought me here and then dumped into a big empty castle with little to no answers and hardly anyone to keep my company.

“Is there a reason I’m being ignored by him?”

Emric looked at me and smiled. “He’s away taking care of things. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows here all the time,” he said, taking a long drink from his wine. “There’s unrest in our world right now, and he’s trying to keep it at bay.”

I sighed and went back to eating. I had come to learn over the past couple of weeks that Emric was willing to answer a few questions here and there, but he wasn’t an open book.

It was lonely. Yes, I had Emric, sometimes Ideon, spotted throughout the day, and Mavka the few times she came to my room. And even though there were plenty of Fae walking around all day every day, none of them dared even look at me, let alone talk to me. I started to wonder if Asher even had any friends. Did anyone have any friends? No one came to visit, and the only Fae I could see around were either staff or guards.

I missed having someone to talk to. I missed going to school, to work, and going out with everyone. I hadn’t shared a real connection or conversation with anyone in over two weeks now. Granted, I had Emric to talk to during our training. We joked around and laughed with each other, and I felt friendly towards him, but I couldn’t really trust him. I had to assume everything we talked about was promptly reported back to Asher.

---