Page 85 of Crowned By the Fae King

The low rumble of a derisive laugh filled the room. The god stepped into the light, stalking towards us with his head held low and jaws parted. His hot breath fogged in the cold air as the temperature plunged. "Well met, little game piece," the great Wolf's voice crooned from all around us. His feet crunched across the ruined floor, leaving ice and snow behind. "What glorious chaos you've caused. He didn't mean for you to have such a place of honor, but how fate likes to laugh at our plans."

Cass came to a halt in front of the high table, his wings mantled and his feet so close I could have reached out and grabbed his ankle. "Who, your glory?" he asked, his voice tight. "All of this. Me, Vaddy, Ayre… what is this?"

A low growl rumbled from Faerqen's deep chest. "You've caused no little harm to the ally of my favored prey, so I will grant you the answer to a single question, Merciful King," his directionless voice said. "And I will grant one to the clever mortal soulmate," it crooned into my ear, from inches away.

I jerked so hard I hit my head on the top of the table. Faerqen's laugh echoed through the room as I crawled out from my sanctuary and got to my feet. Unlike Cass, whose black velvet doublet was torn and slick with blood and whose embroidery shone red, my clothing was almost untouched. I walked around Cass' half-spread wing, keeping my shoulders back and expression cold. I put one hand over my heart, faery-style, and gave him a bow. "Your glory."

He licked his chops like a hungry dog. "Your questions, little ones."

Cass slowly lowered the sword until the tip rested on the ground. Frost crawled up it, the coating of blood freezing from the nearness of the god.

The steam of my breath froze on my lashes and my hair, and hung glittering in the air. Killing cold, I thought distantly, staring at what could only be the god of winter. Every inhale seared my lungs, but Cass' power still coursed through me, and I didn't freeze. I didn't even shiver.

"Sarcaryn. Your favored prey," Cass said at last, rasping the words. "What did he intend, if not… this?"

The enormous wolf started pacing, his serpentine tail tracing through the air. "I am not he, so I cannot speak with total certainty," Faerqen's voice purred, the sound all but caressing us. "Yet I have hunted him these many eons, and I know his patterns like my own." He growled again, coming to a halt in front of us, his breath pluming and the frost crawling up onto our clothing. "I do not care for the leash of a Court, but Ruekh holds the throne of the silver wanderers in my place, and Sarcaryn wants to take it from me. Yet what can Desire do against Battle Himself?"

Cass didn't answer. Blood dripped off his fingers and froze before it reached the ground, falling like sleet.

Faerqen made a sound of disgust. "He seduces others into doing his dirty work, Merciful King. He cuts off allies, one by one, and surrounds the enemy encampment with those who will stand against them. Lightning. Windswept. Stag," he said, snarling the word. His pale eyes flashed white. "Tell me, game piece. Who would have stood in your place had one of mine not interfered?"

A snarl lifted Cass' lip. "You're suggesting that he intended Vaduin to rule. For Danica to have a Court's power behind her at the Silver Coronation."

"Just. So." The god shook himself. "I doubt you were ever part of the plan. I doubt my prey thought of you at all." His massive head turned towards me. Those parted jaws were level with my head. His breath smelled like raw meat. "Your pretty mortal soulmate is surely nothing but an echo of his weight leaning against the strands of fate. Yet one more royal monster given a mortal to balance him."

"The pretty mortal soulmate has a question," I said, keeping my voice level.

He lowered his head to look me in the eyes. "Ask," he crooned into my ear. I could have sworn I felt his breath skim across my throat, the only warmth in his frigid aura.

I took a deep breath, feeling my lungs freeze and thaw in the same moment. "How do I protect my Court from a goddess like Ithronel?"

A low laugh rumbled through the room. "You find a stronger protector," his voice purred from inches away. The sensation of fingers traced down my jawline and onto my neck. "You make a bargain with a greater god."

Next to me, Cass went tense, his wings and nostrils flaring as he felt the echo of that touch. He turned towards Faerqen with a flat gaze. Glassy spires of ice slid up from the snow all around us in silent menace. "Don't. Touch. Her," he snarled through clenched teeth.

The massive wolf vanished without a trace—and shadow fell across me, cast from the shape of a man taller than Ithronel on one knee behind me, the fingers of his hand resting on my pulse and a dagger of ice pricking the soft spot beneath my ear. "Do not dare to challenge me, healer," he said, his breath kissing my skin and freezing in my hair. "I am the god of death and glamor. I hunt in the wilds and rule the frozen wastes of the high north. You cannot yet stand against me."

Cass' ears pinned back. His grip tightened on the sword.

Before he could say or do something impassioned, I said, "Bargain with me, then, your glory." I looked up into Cass' eyes with determination. "Bargain with us."

Winter

Faerqen trailed his fingers through my hair. In the brutal cold of his aura, the strands were so brittle that some of them broke, shattered pieces of my hair sprinkling down onto my shoulder like ash. "What do you have to offer me, lovely girl?" he asked, putting his face so close to my ear that his hot breath melted the frost in my hair.

That low purr and the possessive touch of his fingertips left no question of what things he might be interested in from a lovely girl like me. I doubted terrifying wolf monsters got a lot of pussy in the frozen wastes of the high north, and it probably would amuse him to fuck the soulmate Cass only had because of Sarcaryn's game—especially when Cass was silently snarling at Faerqen like he wanted to tear his throat out with his bare teeth.

"That entirely depends, handsome wolf," I crooned back, trying to buy time. "What are you willing to offer me?" On my hand, I traced, H-E-L-P-U-R-F-A-E.

Tell me like this, Cass said in my mind, his words clipped and cold and so focused that no emotion came along with them.

I don't know how to bargain like a fae. Help me, I said in the same way, even as Faerqen made a pleased sound and inhaled against my hair.

"I could give that angry goddess a different option," he said in a sing-song voice that reminded me of a howl. "I could show her a different trail to take, and different prey to feed upon. I could make it known that I find your vibrance entertaining, and imply that I might take it amiss were any of the Deathless to try to replace you with someone less greedy."

Cass took a slow breath, counting in the back of my mind, then shook out his wings and folded them behind him. All the tension dropped out of him—and out of me, the touch of his magic sliding through my muscles, easing the way my shoulders ached and hands trembled. "My very presence stymies the one you prey upon," he pointed out. One ear flicked in a dismissive gesture. "It behooves you to keep me in position until the Silver Coronation, to protect your interests in the throne of the silver wanderers."

To me, he added silently, I don't know what the throne is, but the silver wanderers are the comets. Ruekh is the god of battlefields and greed, and the patron of Raven Court to our south. My home Court. Alongside the words, a flicker of memory transferred, the image of two elegant, dark-haired fae, one with dark eyes and one with blue, both of them with the same full mouth and straight nose he had. His family; his mother and what had to be his older sister.

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