Page 37 of Crowned By the Fae King

Cass wet his lips. "It's complicated, and primarily because I'm a very unusual mage," he said, sounding uncomfortable. He rubbed at the back of his neck. "How much experience do you have with fae healers? More than for your life-debt, I mean?"

"Tch, I don't even have that," I said, lifting my lip at the memory. "Off-the-books mine, remember? We were off the books, too. I got tricked. He's dead, though, so," I said, viciousness coming to the surface. "That put paid to that."

He leaned back, ears pinning and expression going hard. "You were stolen?" he asked in a cold voice, and with such animalistic territoriality that I expected to see the floor growing fangs. "Who allowed that?"

It didn't, though. Nothing changed. He was angry, but the palace wasn't showing it—he was.

"I don't know," I said, watching Cass. "The Duke of Flies, maybe. At least, we were sending everything south to somewhere called 'Flies.' I'm assuming that's the same place."

The muscles in his temple jumped. "Well," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "That's good to know."

I made myself relax, trying to ease him out of his angry focus with my body language. "Fae healers," I said, looking at him from under lowered lashes.

"Hmm." His jaw clenched again, but the tension went out of his shoulders and mine. "Healers typically revert damage. It's…" Cass pursed his lips. "It's similar in some ways to glamor. The two truths lie alongside each other; the body you had and the one you have. We switch the order. It can be broken if we link it to an oath or bargain, and the healing is shattered, revealing the other truth."

He sighed through his nose again, and twitched one ear as if he was fending off a fly. "I can do that, of course, but I'm also a command healer, in that I can control the body itself and cause true healing, and I'm a reflex healer, in that I do it automatically."

"You mentioned the command healing before," I said, when he didn't continue. "Is that and the reflex healing why I'm getting affected by you all the time?"

"Presumably." Cass grimaced, lifting his lip. "It might also be because I have what's called 'blood-unity,'" he said with a self-conscious shrug. "Not many fae have it; perhaps one in three thousand. Magically speaking, I'm indivisible. If my blood's alive, it's a part of me, and distance doesn't matter. Which also seems to be the case with me and the Court, and if we balance, I suspect it will be the case with me and you," Cass added, my cheeks warming from his embarrassment.

"That doesn't seem bad," I offered. "It's kind of nice not having to worry about getting hurt."

Cass breathed a laugh, a smile tugging at his mouth. "That's generally the benefit of being blood-linked to me, yes." He gave me a lopsided smile. "It's all the rest of it people tend to dislike."

"It's not so bad," I said, smiling back at him, a warm sensation curling under my breastbone.

"Well, regardless," Cass said, his expression soft and almost… affectionate. "I used that combination of characteristics and my talent for channeling power to try to save King Omahice, who was dying from a nearly-incurable ailment called 'deliquescence.' I poured my blood into his veins to do so, which made his body mine. I even succeeded at the task."

He fell silent, his expression drifting back towards unhappiness. I reached out with one foot and nudged his ottoman, careful not to touch him. "King Omahice is dead, though."

He nodded, a tight motion. "He killed himself. My blood was in him, and his in me." Cass looked sidelong at me, his dark eyes unreadable but his grief and bitterness coiling through my veins. "He wanted me for an heir, and Courts follow blood, not birth. So."

"So." I watched him, waiting for him to finish, and not taking my foot off his seat. I liked the effect of my nearness to him. The halo of his senses radiating into me was so much better than the control that transferred effortlessly across the distance.

"Here I am, in all my upsetting glory," Cass said wryly. He braced himself on his thighs again, meeting my gaze. "I'm trying to balance the demands of the High Court with everything else." He made a face. "I suppose I'm trying to reduce the number of times people try to kill me without regard for who else might suffer. If I could abdicate, I would, but we're all stuck with me."

"What about the people underground?" I asked, bouncing my foot as the thought brought my anxiety back to the forefront of my mind. I'd dreamed about it so often, of being trapped in the dark, unable to move, swallowed whole— "Why couldn't you delay the coronation until they were all safe? We're just leaving them there. I feel gross going to fancy dinners and talking about fashion when there's people buried alive."

"Those underground are in stasis. They're not being harmed," Cass said, though his unease filtered into me, amplifying my stress. "They might even be safer underground than above it."

"His hand might get chewed off," I said. My stomach lurched even thinking about it. To be helpless, trapped in stone, all unaware…

"That's really troubling you, isn't it?" Cass asked softly. When I refocused on his face, he smiled at me, a gentle expression, and held out his hand. "Let's find him."

All the stress and anger fell away in the face of that smile. I reached out in a half-daze, but paused before I set my hand in his. "Just like that? You didn't want to touch me."

His smile stretched, the corners of his eyes crinkling and the sparks of gold in his dark gaze catching the light. "I don't want to overwhelm you, and I'm not very comfortable with casual touch when I don't know the person well," he said. Cass wiggled his fingers at me when I still didn't touch him. "I know I'm a lot to handle, and because of what we are, I doubt I can dampen it with you. The easiest way to find your friend would likely be with our bodies fully aligned, but I think we can do it with only skin contact."

"Aligned?" I asked. My hand drifted towards his. "What, like, sitting in your lap?"

Cass flicked one ear, looking uncomfortable. "You're small enough that the simplest would probably be you sitting between my legs, back against my stomach, with our fingers interlaced. But that's—"

"Okay."

He blinked, ears dropping down into a pose of self-consciousness. "Okay?"

I stood up and smiled down at him, a sparkling ebullience taking residence in my chest. "Okay," I said again. "I want to find him, and you're no more overwhelming than our Court. Let's do this the easy way."

---