Page 17 of Crowning of the Sword

The forest was just as light and loamy as ever, and her worries flew out of her head, heart lifting, as she passed beneath spreading boughs and heard the faint trills of birds flying through the canopy.

“This is my favourite place,” she commented happily, and Ashe lifted an eyebrow in confusion, as if he couldn’t quite believe that she preferred the dirt of the jungle to the elegance of the great hall.

“I haven’t been here since I was small.”

She smiled to herself. A little Ashe! All dressed up in a black soldier uniform with a frown creasing his little boy face.

“Have you met Alena yet?” He had lowered his voice to a hush, and she wondered at that. It sounded as though he might be in awe of her.

“Yes. I liked her.”

Ashe gave a little shake of his head, as if in disbelief. “She can choose to be likeable,” was his cryptic reply.

It was Ember who led the way this time, and when they came to the columns of the kingdoms, he gave a little sigh and rocked back on his heels, hands behind his back, as he gazed at the four towering pillars and the heap of rubble.

“Where is the column for the Kingdom of Swords?”

He gave her a surprised look. “You only see the Sword Column when you’re in another kingdom. They all have an area where the columns stand. They’re doorways.”

“You can use them to get into another kingdom? How do they work?” The columns had been fashioned from smooth stone. There were no seams showing a door that she could see.

“You have to be fae,” he told her, and she frowned. Of course.

She retrieved her canvas from behind the rubble where she’d left it and presented it to him, suddenly shy. He looked at it with no hint of any reaction on his face. “You made the Shields whole again.”

For an instant she wondered if she’d misinterpreted some other cultural rule she hadn’t known about, and when he eventually said, “It’s very good,” she gave a mock ‘whew’, wiping a hand over an imaginary sweaty brow and smiling at his obvious puzzlement.

He raised a hand over the canvas, and she gave a cry of delight. It was as though he’d turned the picture into a three-dimensional window. The leaves on the trees moved gently in an invisible breeze and birds flew from branch to branch. Insects darted in and out of the flowers, while the columns themselves glowed with a soft inner light.

“What did you do? That’s amazing!”

He looked pleased, but also disconcerted, as though he hadn’t expected her delight. “It’s just a glamour, a way to manipulate the senses and make you think something is there when it isn’t.” His eyes flickered over her, pausing at the gold and diamond necklace around her neck, and then up to her face again. “It’s a way of controlling someone.”

The smile froze on her face. He’d made a simple, pretty trick into something horrible, perverse. She couldn’t prevent the emotions passing over her face, and he frowned, waving his hand over the painting again, restoring it back to what it was. She took it back in silence. The painting that she had been so happy with suddenly appeared flat, uninspiring, amateurish. Carefully, she placed it back among the stones; it was still a little tacky and wet in places.

“I think I’d like to go back to my room now.”

“Come now, Ember,” he said, and she looked up at him in surprise, not used to such gentle tones from someone so habitually terse. “Don’t run away when things don’t go your way.”

She started at that and blinked. “I’m not. I’m just tired.”

Although … perhaps he had a point. She’d chosen to run from Bruno, rather than stand up to him and continue living her own life on her own terms in the town she’d made her own. That wasn’t her fault though, she argued with herself. Bruno was a violent abuser, and he would have made her life a misery even if she had thrown him out. She’d never reported him though, had told no one else, not even those she’d thought of as friends. She’d never gone to the police, insisted they help her. She had felt embarrassed, ashamed. Besides, everyone said how difficult it was to get help through official channels, and so she hadn’t even bothered to try. Why fight when you can run? Despite that, Ashe’s words cut to the very core of her, as though she was in the wrong, and she didn’t like it.

He considered her for a moment and then shrugged. “Very well.”

He beckoned to somewhere beyond the trees, and a ball of light came zigzagging through the forest toward her. It hesitated as it became aware of Ashe, and then glowed brighter and brighter, growing larger and larger. Ember watched the swelling ball of light in some alarm, but with Ashe’s words still ringing in her ears, she didn’t take so much as a half step back.

Ashe, however, was smiling with wry amusement. “I think we may be in trouble.”

Suddenly, the light exploded in a blazing fountain of sparks, and there stood Cole.

Chapter 16

Cole’s jaw was set, his eyes hard, and the corner of his mouth flickered, the only physical betrayal of his tension. His blond hair looked almost bleached bone white, a match to the shadowy aura that hung around him, a cloud of smoke, fury made tangible. He didn’t so much as glance at Ember, but she still had the urge to cut and run back to her room as fast as she could. The only relief she felt was that his temper wasn’t directed at her. Ashe was the sole recipient of his anger.

“She is mine.” His voice was deathly calm. “Mine.”

As apprehensive as she was, Ember shot him a frown at that. She wasn’t anyone’s. No one owned her. She was about to open her mouth and refute him, but she held back. He had rescued her from Bruno after all—sort of. And he had given her that gorgeous room and the beautiful clothes, and the gold necklace around her neck. But it wasn’t just that which made her hold her tongue. There was a warning glint in Ashe’s eye that told her it might not be the best idea if she interrupted Cole while he was in this mood.

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