Page 74 of Crowned By the Fae King

"Isn't that what you said?" he asked, with purring satisfaction. Someone cried out louder than the others. His head jerked to the side, spine going stiff. "Shit," he muttered under his breath.

I turned to look where he was, and caught sight of the way the flowers at the edge of the road had bloomed in our wake—and how the reckless worshippers were trying to shove past the guards to grab hold of them. One man thrust his child through a gap in the soldiers. The little boy staggered and came to a halt in the middle of the road, staring at us with an expression of awe.

Cass snarled as a guard snatched up the child. The pebbles on the road shivered as the ground vibrated underfoot, the horse prancing with its eyes rolling. "Hold on," he said grimly. "I'm going to try to get us out of here before someone gets hurt."

It was all the warning I got before Cass kicked the horse into a trot, and then some sort of thundering pace that had me jouncing out of the saddle. He moved with the animal, leaning forward. One arm went around me to hold me against his chest.

I hung on for dear life, the fear driving away any ability to see what was going on around me. My pulse hammered in my ears. Trees flew past us on either side of the road in an evergreen blur. Fuck, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die—

Cass' magic wound through me in a deliberate touch, softening the blind panic. His confidence settled into me: the strength of his body, the focus as he steered the enormous animal down the road, the sounds of the near-rioting crowd of petitioners vanishing behind us. People cleared the road ahead of us, not because they knew we were coming but because Cass was driving them off with his magic, making them want to be anywhere but where they would get trampled.

Oh, I thought, very softly. I was suddenly no longer afraid.

My whole body relaxed into his movement. This was the man who had healed a landscape while in agony—while overwhelmed by every stone and stream and living thing in Mercy. This was the man whose bone-deep understanding of bodies let him control his emotions and mine; who had been a secret weapon in a brutal war and who hundreds were flocking to worship as a god.

My fucking soulmate.

A heartbeat later, Cass reined in the horse. The animal slowed, breaking into a bone-jouncing trot, then dropped into a plodding walk with a heavy snort. Cass sat back down into the saddle. His grip on me eased. He dropped his hand and patted the horse on the shoulder, and it stopped breathing in such heavy gasps, the effort of the sudden run erased by a healer instead of time.

"Wow," I said, still dazed.

He tensed behind me. "I know it's not fair to others to affect them like that when it makes me so unhappy to consider that you might do it to me—"

"Oh, hush," I said with a laugh, leaning my head back against his chest. "Don't expect me to be weird about you keeping innocents safe. You didn't do anything different than clearing the streets with guards. You just did it with magic instead of manpower."

His wings chimed softly as he resettled them into a better position for riding. Cass didn't say anything for a while, but he relaxed, piece by piece.

I didn't mind the silence. Away from the encampment and the lingering collection of coronation celebrants closer to the palace, the road to Taeskana was a pretty one, overhung with ancient evergreen trees and with interesting chartreuse-green lichens clinging to the branches and bark. Black-furred squirrels darted through the dense canopy or dangled from branches, eating their way through pinecones. Even this late in the year, there were a few songbirds, drab wrennish things that warbled prettily from their perches.

I got to admire it all while sprawled back against Cass. If he could keep me on a galloping horse careening down the hill while also working complex magic through the Court, I didn't have anything to fear while we ambled the rest of the way. He had his arm around me and his thighs framing mine. The tension of fleeing from his erstwhile worshipers had put a damper on the sexual heat, but he was still male and my hips were still grinding against his with every step the horse took. By the time we turned off the main road onto the temple's spur, Cass was half-hard again, and I had my eyes closed, enjoying the feel of his body against mine.

Cass rested his face on my hair. His thumb kept steadily stroking my side, a gentle rhythm that soothed instead of roused. "This is nice," he said in a low voice, his breath warming my scalp. "It's a pity that we ought to fly back. Or maybe a mercy," he added with a soft laugh, "since I'll probably be anxiously re-assessing this whole ride from the time we dismount until the next time I have you in my arms and can tell, without a shadow of doubt, that you're enjoying being there."

"So self-conscious," I murmured back. I started tracing curves on his thigh with my fingertip, appreciating the echo of sensation I got in return. It felt like my skin was glowing in the wake of my touch, a glittery, glimmering feeling.

"It's been a week, and I've had five centuries of experience with how people typically react to my touch," Cass pointed out, sounding amused. "Is it my fault that you're a bizarre exception to the rule, who apparently enjoys an unfettered dose of my command healing?"

That got me to laugh. I gave his thigh a pat and sat up straighter, watching the world around us again as the temple came into view. "Fair enough. I guess I'll give you time to get used to having the one weirdo in the world who's into that sort of thing, sitting in your lap."

"Very kind," he said in a mock-serious voice. He stopped the horse outside of the entrance to the temple and gave me a gentle squeeze. "Shall we?"

Religious Fervor

Iwasn't sure what I'd expected for a faery temple, or one to a goddess of mercy. Something Greek-looking, maybe, all tall marble columns and beautiful statuary, or like a medieval painting. The palace had always reminded me of how European kings had filled their fancy halls with Greek statuary; there were a lot of stone carvings and mosaic inlays, and the statues I'd seen were all naturalistic marble.

The Clement Palace was a place that people lived in, though. It changed as they changed. The temple?

It was ancient.

A set of four standing stones, each about ten feet high, framed the dark mouth of a cave. They weren't the same color as the dark stone of the mountain; more of bluish-gray, like a stormcloud turned into solid rock. Moss and lichen grew over them in a shroud, obscuring the weather-worn carvings on the surface. Along the rock wall of the cave, a massive thicket of what had to be willow rioted, the leaves turning yellow.

About thirty feet into the cave, in the dim shadows, a flat-topped boulder squatted, covered with cut-off braids of hair and other small offerings. A brazier stood on the altar, partially obscuring the fresh, glittering stone where something had once stood. The statue that walked away, I thought, eyeing it. Smoke drifted lazily up, carrying the sweetness of incense and the acrid scent of burned hair.

Cass helped me down, then dismounted behind me. He gave himself a shake that rattled his wings. The sense of him receded, until all I could feel was what I always felt, the beat of his heart and the casual control of his magic. "The sacred places are deep inside the cave," he said in a hushed voice. "They're forbidden to the uninitiated. As Monarchs, we have the right to enter any place in our Court, but it's polite to enter only by the invitation of the cave's guardians."

I looked over my shoulder at him as a heavyset mortal dressed in dark green came and took the reins from his hand to lead the horse away. "So we pay our respects at the altar?"

He nodded. "It's safer," he said quietly. "Caves are a pathway between worlds. The lights of the sky and the darkness of the earth rule wild magic and hold us between them, but while we're creatures quite used to the sky, it can be very overwhelming to be embraced by the earth." Cass exhaled slowly. "Especially for someone like me."

---