Page 135 of Crowned By the Fae King

It was strange. Cass' body temperature was significantly higher than mine, so my arm went weirdly hot, but since we weren't taking any blood out of me and thus couldn't put much of his blood into me, it wasn't like it lasted long. Since it was Cass' blood, we didn't need to worry about blood types; he subconsciously would keep any clotting interactions from happening, using my power and the channels of my body.

We lay together while it took, a pressure bandage on each of our arms to keep us from bleeding. Slow ease stole over me, the aches of the day dissolving bit by bit. Even Cass relaxed, the knowledge of being a part of me again seeming to take the edge off his suffering.

With his head in my lap, I stroked my fingers through his dark waves, over and over. My poor soulmate. It will get better, I thought to him, even knowing he couldn't hear it. We're going to get through this.

Cass went still, the ceaseless tremors stilling and the tension in his face falling away. "I heard that," he said in a thick voice. Cass turned his head to look up at me with gleaming eyes. "Say something else, sunlight?"

I'm here, I sent him, my heart hammering. I'm— I'm here.

He covered his mouth with one hand, biting off a sob. "You're there. It's not— We're still bound. We're—" His voice choked off.

"Of course we are," I said, though tears stung at my eyes from the utter relief of having proof of it.

We weren't broken. This wasn't permanent—I was sure it wasn't. There was something standing between us, cutting our connection with the same finality of the opals Talien had put on my neck. With his blood in my veins, that distance no longer mattered.

Something between me and him. Something between him and the Court. Maybe something between me and the Court, too, though not as completely, as if I had some other way of accessing Mercy—

"You have a source," Cass whispered, coming to the same conclusion. "We're both cut off from the Court of Mercy, but you—" His throat worked. "Ruekh's mercy, Quyen. You're a mage."

"That's… how is that even possible?" I asked, frowning down at him. "It's not like I have healing, or breaking, or glamor, or whatever. I just have you."

A trembling smile flickered into being on his face before falling away. "The categories are for simplicity's sake," he said, his voice soft with exhaustion. "Names of common manifestations, in the same way that we might call one pair of soulmates 'lovers' and another 'betrayers.' Maybe there's not a name for what kind of mage you are, but…" Cass had to take a break to pant, his face lining in pain. "You have a source, so by definition, you are a mage. Just like I'm… not."

"Oh, sweetheart," I said, my heart breaking all over for him. "It's going to be okay. We'll figure out what's cutting the Court off from us, and we'll fix it, and it'll be okay."

"Not 'til my channels are healed, though, alright?" Cass asked, giving me a weak smile. "Even if I have to do it as a conduit, I want to be able to heal."

I smiled for him, putting my heartache to the side. "Wouldn't want to waste Liyn's hard work."

"Or all this suffering." He slumped down against me again.

I could hear the tension in his breathing—could feel it in the slight ache of my throat and ribs, I realized with a sharp sense of relief. Cass was always casting, and always channeling. In the same way that I'd been able to hold open a door to the Veiled Castle with only my hand in the Clement Palace, the tiny amount of Cass inside of me was still a healer. He didn't need a source of his own. He had mine, and he had the Court.

It's going to be worth it, I told him through our bond, feeling him shudder. You're still a healer. You're still a King. We're going to make it through this.

On High

Long after Cass fell asleep, I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling with the warm weight of his arm draped across my ribs. I couldn't shake the sense that I had everything I needed in the fire of Talien's opals and the perfect sapphire of Tarra's eyes. All the pieces of the puzzle were spread out on the table, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the image was supposed to be.

At last, I couldn't bear it any longer. I extracted myself from under Cass' arm and wing, stumped my feet into a pair of fur-lined boots and wrapped a heavy down-stuffed coat around myself, strapped on my sword and belt-knife, and went for a walk to clear my head.

In the witching hours, the Clement Palace was a quiet place. This early in the morning, not even the servants were out and about. The only creatures moving through the hallways – aside from myself – were the palace cats, who gave me gleaming-eyed looks before bounding into the darkness.

My feet carried me to where I'd first met Cass, then down the hall and out into the sleeping forest of the heart of the palace.

Even in my warm clothing, the cold sank into my bones, making me shiver. Living in Long Beach, I'd rarely had the opportunity to get truly cold, and while I'd been hauled into Faery in the middle of winter, it had been a long time since I'd faced cold without Cass keeping my blood warm. Even though his reflex healing worked through his blood, I didn't have enough in me to combat winter.

I didn't get winded hiking up to the thrones. Though Cass' magic had made me tireless, it had still been my body doing all the work. The weeks of hiking and months of sword lessons had taken my already-fit body and honed me into a marathoner. Hundreds of icy stairs at altitude didn't faze me.

The vista from the top was starkly beautiful in the moonlight. The wind kept the flat surface mostly clear of snow, but the whole surface glittered as if it had been coated with shimmer powder. Someone had been up here at some point, probably to keep the stairs clear of snow; I could see the icy bootprints as glassy spots across the surface. They either hadn't bothered cleaning the thrones off, or there'd been some snow in the past couple of days, because there was a couple of inches of snow in the seats of the throne in an angled drift, with larger drifts of snow up against the sides of the thrones.

Even this close to the literal seat of my power, nothing felt any different. Whatever was cutting us off from the Court was doing a damn good job of it.

Since I was already up there, I walked over to my throne and started brushing the snow off the seat. It must have melted at some point, because there was a layer of bumpy ice on the bottom, white from the snow glued to it. Touching it left me dizzy and nauseous, and the cold gnawed at me, chilling more than my fingers.

A sickening feeling settled into my gut. Knowing what I would find, I pulled out my belt-knife and scraped off the crust of one of the frozen bumps.

Encased in ice, the fire of a black opal gleamed back up at me.

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