Page 56 of Crowned By the Fae King

"Eugh," I said, giving her an over-exaggerated look of disgust as I took the offered escape from the topic of Cass. "That sounds way worse than keeping yourself from getting turned on."

She laughed again at that, shaking her head with amusement. "To be fair, it's a lot more obvious when men get turned on than women. I bet a lot of men would love to be able to have total boner control."

Her delight was infectious. We held our straight faces for about five seconds before bursting into peals of laughter.

"Gods!" Her grin lit the room. "There's definitely pros to being a woman. Vaduin's got super basilisk smelling so he can always tell if girls are turned on, but for pretty much everyone else, it's a tightly-guarded secret."

I snorted at that, a smile still playing across my lips. "I'm fairly sure all Cass has to do is pay attention to know, but not because of any super-sniffing."

Dani laughed again. She had a nice laugh, bright and carefree, the sort of woman who knew how to cut loose when the time called for it. "Nah, he's all fae, save for the stymphalian wings. Maybe eagle-eye vision, too, but he's mostly just got the wings."

"Stymphalian?" I asked. "Paloma called him that, too. I'm guessing that's some sort of fae monster?"

"Oh, yeah, they're like… battle-herons?" she said, wrinkling her nose. "Their feathers can cut through any metal almost like it's not there, even iron and steel, and they, uh, have poisonous poop that makes it deadly to wade in the marshes they live in." Dani started turning red. "I, um, haven't asked Cass if he's, uh…"

"Got killer shit?" I asked, unsuccessfully trying to smother my amusement at the thought. "I'm going to assume a 'no' on that one."

She bit back a laugh and nodded, her blush only succeeding in making her look prettier instead of like a tomato. That was so unfair. "He's one of the later-made Furies, so he's a lot less monster-y than some of the others. You can really see it when he and Vaduin are side-by-side like this. Vad's the first official Fury Ayre made."

I raised one brow. "So they were made?"

"Right. Duh." Dani bopped herself lightly on the forehead. "I keep forgetting you're a relative newcomer. Zooming out." She took a step back and held up her left hand like she wanted a high-five. "Okay. If my hand is our region of Faery, my fingers are Mercy and my palm is split about sixty-forty between Raven Court and Stag Court, Stag on the right, with some smaller Courts sprinkled around, and my thumb is Lightning Court."

"Okay…"

She tapped the middle of her palm. "A little over eighty years ago, Raven and Stag Courts fought a really bloody war, which people now call the Annihilation War." Her face grew grim, an expression that gave her the look of someone who had seen more blood than she wanted to remember. "It ended when the Stag Prince – now the Stag King – razed a city to the ground. Personally." Dani clenched her jaw. "Those two Courts are still pretty fucked up about it, obviously, but during that war, the youngest Raven Prince got into a fight with a manticore and ended up merging himself with it using his amalgam magic. His father had him do the same thing to others, and make people into… well, bioweapons."

I stared at her, horrified. "Vad and Cass."

"Yeah, and maybe like eighty other people," she said, dropping her hand. The corner of her mouth tugged back in a sad-looking smile. "There's about thirty of them left. A lot died in the war, and some of them were human, so…"

"Fucking hell," I muttered. I glanced back out over the revel, expecting to see Cass, but he'd vanished again. Must have finished talking to the important people. Guess that's my cue to escape. To Dani, I said, "Was it… I mean, did they choose it? Or were they…" I trailed off. I wasn't sure how to ask it.

"They were all volunteers, if that's what you're worried about," Dani said, her voice kind. "Ayre – the manticore prince – he struck a bargain with his father. Anyone who became a Fury would be freed of all their debts and oaths to the Crown at the end of the war, and all of them received a fairly large heap of gold for their trouble."

"I wonder why he did it," I said, mostly to myself.

Dani gave me a soft smile. "You should ask him."

"Yeah," I said, closing my eyes and asking the palace to find him for me. "Maybe I will."

Close the Distance

Ifollowed Cass to our stupidly massive bedroom, stepping into the lamplight with a sense of comfort. The palace answered me so easily already. I didn't think I could open rips in the air or make beautiful inlaid floors at a thought, but I could find people and I could open doors. That felt pretty good for only having six days of experience.

He was waiting for me, pacing across the open floor between the big four-poster bed and the collection of couches. Cass stopped when he saw me, everything tensing, then looked away with a pained expression, his jaw clenching.

"I'm sorry," I blurted out, my chest wrenching from it. "I didn't mean to—"

"How long?" Cass asked roughly. "How long have you been doing that? Hearing my thoughts, and, and, changing them?"

Horror thudded into me. My stomach twisted, acid on the back of my tongue. "Cass," I said, nauseous at the very thought. "Oh, my god, no. I haven't— I would never—" I had to stop, hand over my mouth, swallowing back my nausea. "I heard you for the first time today, after you let me touch your wings, and then again a little later, right before you opened the door to take us to the revel. I wasn't trying to change your thoughts. I was trying to send you mine."

His mouth trembled. I could feel the shift in his power and that of the Court's as he examined me, my body easing towards calm from the touch of his healing magic. "You're not lying," he whispered. "Gods. You're not lying." Cass fumbled for a chair and sat down heavily, then buried his head in his hands. The claws of his jewelry dug into his scalp. "Do you have any idea what you did?"

I wrapped my arms around my chest, feeling small. "I… no," I admitted. I wet my lips. "Did I hurt you?"

Cass breathed a sharp laugh, something edged with pain. "No," he said softly. "No, you didn't hurt me." He rubbed at his face before sitting back up and looking at me. Weariness dragged at him, his wings and shoulders sagging. "I'm used to being inviolable," Cass said after a moment. "I'm a battle-trained reflex healer. It's very rare that someone can break through my natural defenses and affect my body without me allowing it. Even when I'm drained, it's very difficult for healers to get past my defenses if I'm not assisting them."

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