Page 68 of Crowned By the Fae King

It wasn't hard to read between the lines. If Cass was controlling all of Mercy's power, Ithronel might come for us with the same territoriality of a starving wolf.

I wasn't sure why the high priestess would warn us of that, but I definitely appreciated the heads-up.

"I will. It's been a pleasure, hierarch," I said, giving her a slight bow.

"Likewise," she said with an incline of her head. "One last thing about the gods, your majesty?"

I raised a brow.

Her lips turned up into a bladelike smile. "Only religious administrators like Paloma are referred to as 'hierarch.' A high priestess is referred to in the same way as the Tuath Dé she aspires towards."

"And that is?" I asked.

"'Your splendor,'" she said, her eyes as hard as steel.

Found Family

Ileft the wall with my gut churning on my anxiety. My list of troubles seemed to keep getting longer instead of shorter, and at a week in, the roster was grim, indeed. Murders, cultists, assassination attempts, pissed-off religious leaders, scheming dukes, a soulmate on the verge of losing his grip on himself, an angry goddess…

And you thought it was bad when you were a slave at an opal mine, I thought to myself, amused. My sense of scale had been dramatically altered.

At least now I couldn't get burned to death in a bunkhouse or suffocated by a mine collapse. That was a plus.

I wandered around for a bit, getting predictably lost, and finally ended up making a door back to my bedroom when I started getting bored. The transition from the carefully-appointed hallway to the haphazard setup of the monarchal suite caught me up short. I'd been getting used to the white walls and general emptiness, but that was silly when it didn't have to stay that way.

Hands on my hips, I surveyed the room. The sitting room and entry room were nicely set up as formal reception areas, but the bedroom was an unfinished mess. The smattering of seating wasn't well-organized, the walls were bare, and there was so much open floorspace that someone could have held dance practice between the couches and the monolithic bed.

Cass had obviously abandoned it for the bond-servant's room shortly after it had been stripped of King Omahice's things, but if we were going to live here, it needed to be livable.

And, I thought, a bit disgruntled, if we're maybe going to have an angry goddess breathing down our necks, we ought to know what to do with all the Court's wild magic that we're not feeding her. Maybe if we had some productive things to do with it, Cass would have a better time of things.

I didn't think playing nice with Ithronel was in the cards. Cass had described the experience of having magic running through him while bound with opals as bleeding out. I couldn't imagine someone who healed by reflex being able to tolerate the sensation of an open wound like that. Whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to learn how to play on the same field as the gods themselves.

I supposed that meant I would have to learn, too. Melting people was probably only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Court-related abilities.

A knock on the door startled me out of my reverie. Vad leaned against the doorframe with an easy smile. "Hungry enough for dinner?" he asked. "Danica and I plan to head back to the Veiled Castle tomorrow, and I thought it might be nice to have a family dinner before we leave."

My mouth tilted up. "Family, huh?"

He shrugged, entirely unconcerned. "Why not? I love him dearly, and as we're both Furies, one could say we're part of the same family; brothers-in-arms, perhaps. We were made by the same man, after all." He flashed me his teeth in a reckless smile. "As you're his soulmate and Danica's mine, I think calling us 'family' isn't that far off the mark."

"Hm." I couldn't keep my lips from twitching. I liked being folded into their inner circle. "I guess I'll accept that. What were you thinking?"

"Well, if you can convince him to pick you up, I thought we could fly down to Taeskana for a meal."

I perked up. "You don't think the cultists will be an issue?"

Vaduin laughed. "You mean the collection of petitioners across the moat? No, I expect we'll be finished with dinner before any of them get wind of us being off palace grounds. There's a lovely rooftop restaurant I discovered a few weeks back. If we send a flicker-bird and reserve it, we'll surely have all the privacy we want."

"Alright," I said, starting to grin. "Let's do it."

Vad walked me through the palace to the training grounds, giving me various bits of palace trivia as we went. I got the impression that he was all but giddy about getting to know me—not for his sake, but because he loved Cass, and was delighted to see his friend getting the opportunity to find the same joy in me that he had in Dani. That was a bit intimidating. Even though Dani had told me I was Cass' perfect match, and even though I could feel the pleasure of the Court when Cass and I were working together, it made me nervous to have expectations on me.

What if I fucked it up? If soulmates could be anything, there was a pretty good chance that Cass and I weren't going to be trueloves like Vad and Dani were. What if we were allies, or friends? Hell, what if we weren't even aligned at all, and ended up clashing: the Queen who wanted to defy a goddess and save a Court, and the King who wished he could fade into the background?

Would they be disappointed in us—in me? I hoped not.

As long as Cass isn't disappointed, I thought, feeling glum. I don't think I could bear having him look at me and wish that I was someone else.

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