Page 47 of Crowned By the Fae King

I searched his expression, my skin prickling with sweat from his remembered pain. My chest trembled as my heart fought to race. The sensation was awful enough that I pressed the heel of my hand to my breastbone, trying to still it.

He flushed with shame, ears dropping down, and all of the biofeedback reverted to still calm.

The fucking floor shattered.

Vad and I jumped as the stone tiles beneath our feet broke into a thousand pieces, going from wide panels of marble to sharp teeth of ivory stone, rushing out from Cass like a sunburst. It didn't stop until most of the way down the hallway, the whole floor destroyed.

Dazed, I crouched and touched the floor. My whole body broke out into a cold sweat, adrenaline flooding my veins and my vision tunneling. The raw emotion clawed up my arm like a drowning man climbing his rescuer in desperation. "Cass," I said, his name falling off my tongue in a heartbroken breath.

"It's getting worse, isn't it?" Vaduin said.

His voice was thready. I looked up at Vaduin's pale face and saw Cass' mouth tremble.

"Yes," Cass said in an emotionless voice. "The palace is more attuned to me with Quyen here, and it isn't subtle."

My eyes fell back to the floor. I wasn't getting any emotion from Cass. I could still feel his control, my shoulders refusing to go tense and my heart beating in steady calm, half-drowned by the fear radiating off the palace. Shh, I thought, running my hand across the broken stone like smoothing down the lifted fur of a frightened cat. You're safe. I'm here. Vaduin's here. It's okay.

Soft clicking echoed down the hallway as the stone resettled—not into the same smooth panels of stone, but into a sun-in-glory mosaic centered on Cass, the pale marble turning a thousand shades of gold, fading out to match the rest of the floor where it met the undamaged stone. It answered me with the same sighing pleasure of the trees in the forest easing away from the people they had swallowed.

I took a deep breath and stood. My ribs ached for a moment before the tightness eased. "Those power-scattering gloves," I said, remembering how Cass had gone tense when Talien had presented them at the coronation. "It wasn't only that they were a reminder of the people trapped underground. You've worn those before."

A tight nod.

"Oh, fuck," Vad whispered. "Cassie. How old were you? How long did they…?"

Cass took another careful breath, inhaling through his nose. "I was six," he said in a flat voice. "My mother found me plucking the wings off a dragonfly and putting them back on. It was cruel, and I didn't know any better, and even though we lived in a city I had far too much power for any child." He exhaled, slowly, then opened his eyes. His expression didn't change when he looked down at me. "Opals are an excellent tool for keeping most young mages from causing harm. A classic tool, even. They scatter directed power into harmless forms, like prisms refracting sunlight into rainbows."

"Cassie," Vaduin said again, his voice heavy with sympathy.

"I don't understand." I looked up into his face with worry knotting in my chest.

"I told you I'm a reflex healer," he said quietly. "An opal set against the skin of the mage will only refract when he casts, but a reflex mage never ceases in—" His voice caught. He had to pause, lashes fluttering, to keep himself controlled. "I was always casting, and I was always channeling, so with opals bound to my hands there was an endless roar of magic through me, eating away at me. My parents either didn't know or didn't care, and they didn't listen when their little boy sobbed as he told them that he was bleeding to death." Another careful breath. "I learned control," Cass said, every word precise, "very quickly."

The only things I could feel from Cass were trembling sorrow and exacting control. But for my part?

Fuck. The hot rage under my sternum was all mine.

"So your parents tortured you," I said, my voice flat with anger.

Vaduin's tail cracked through the air like a whip. My eyes jerked towards his, but he was staring at the wall with a set expression. "You never told me," he said in a rough voice. "Your own fucking parents. I thought the Academy might have, but your parents…"

Cass shook himself like a dog, his wings rattling. "The Academy didn't, not once they realized what I was. They bound me, though, for transport to the Academy." He started walking again, measuring his pace for me. "It was unpleasant."

More than unpleasant. No child should ever have to suffer through something like that. No parent should ever be allowed to do such harm.

But Cass and I hardly knew each other, and whatever possessive instincts the soulmate bond gave me shouldn't override his own decisions about how to handle his life or his past. Me wanting to hunt down his parents for their crimes like a protective nghê defending her people against evil spirits wasn't on him.

"So no opals," I said, trying and failing to keep the anger out of my voice.

The whipcrack of Vaduin's tail sounded again.

Cass only drew his wings in tighter. "They're difficult for me to look at."

"No shit," I muttered, stalking down the hallway with enough vigor that I started outpacing Cass and Vad. He had to have world-record amounts of opal-related PTSD. His fucking parents. Mine were a deadbeat and dead, and I still wouldn't have traded that hand for his any day of the week.

A few minutes later, while I was still busy fuming, Vaduin started talking to Cass about nothing topics in a calm voice, the way people talk to injured dogs and children. Even though it wasn't directed at me, the pleasant lilt of his tenor voice soothed away some of the sharpness of my defensive anger. By the time we reached the monarchal suite I'd managed to simmer down to tired melancholy.

Vad stopped me from following Cass in with one hand. When I shot him a surprised look, he gave me a half-smile. "Be gentle with him, of your kindness," he said in a low voice, pitched so it wouldn't carry. "He very rarely talks about his family, his childhood, or the early years at the Academy. If he's snappish, it's surely only because the pain hasn't dulled with the years."

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