Page 140 of Lady of Ashes

Stellan and Ilyas left the sand cave, and Arianna leveled her gaze on Talwyn. “I cannot say I am surprised you shifted into a wolf,” she mused, slowly circling Talwyn. “You have Maliq as your spirit animal. You are bonded to Celeste, and your mother’s other form was a wolf.”

At the mention of her mother, Talwyn was on her feet.

“I am going to assume you only have one other form like Queen Henna did, which is why Sariah is here. How I shift is different from how others with only one form shift.”

At her name, Sariah slunk forward, only coming to a stop when she was nose-to-nose with Talwyn.

“But,” Arianna continued, “you can shift energy, matter, ether, which is something most Shifters cannot do. So go to that place, your Majesty. However you shift energy at will, go there.”

There was another ?ash of light, and Sariah was kneeling before her, the female’s face as close as it had been in her feline form. “There is a thread,” she said softly. “It connects your animal form to your Fae form. Look for it. Hunt for it in your soul.”

Talwyn let out a huff. She’d done this before. She’d known she should be able to shift her form. It was in her blood. It was in her being as her mother’s daughter. She’d spent a ridiculous amount of time searching her well of power for something that could help her shift her form, but had never been successful. For years she’d done so with no success.

“It is there,” Arianna said softly, as though she had read her thoughts. Talwyn felt her hand run along her side. “You think it is not, but it is the thread back to yourself.”

“It hides because you are in pain,” Sariah added. “It is hidden because you do not wish to ?nd it.”

“But you must,” Arianna said, her hand continuing to glide along the fur of Talwyn’s wolf form. “Most of us shift for the ?rst time due to some sort of fear or trauma. For me, it was when my father died. I stayed in the form of a small fox for nearly a week. Stellan shifted for the ?rst time after he made his ?rst kill with a sword.”

Sariah had shifted back into her jaguar form, sprawling out on her side on the sandy ?oor, as if settling in for a long wait.

Jamahl had shifted into his human form and had his arms wrapped around his Beta’s waist from behind. Arianna had stopped petting Talwyn, reaching up to loop a hand behind his neck as she studied her a bit more.

“This will take many hours, possibly days, Prince,” she commented, addressing Azrael, who was standing off to the side, his arms crossed and looking pissy as always. Talwyn bared her teeth at him when he met her gaze. Arianna glanced between the two before she ventured, “Perhaps you should go, Prince. You will make this more dif?cult.”

“As I have already said, I am not going anywhere. She will shift and leave before giving me a chance to speak,” he replied, his stare ?xed on Talwyn.

He wasn’t wrong. That had been her plan.

Talwyn plopped down on her achingly empty belly, her head coming to rest between her paws. She closed her eyes, looking into that well in her soul. She dug beneath the winds and the breezes, the ?owers and the soil. She let everything fade away around her. She drowned out the voices of the others. But there was no thread. Nothing that would pull her back to her Fae form.

She didn’t know how long she lay there before the smell of braised meat reached her nose. Her eyes snapped open, her mouth watering.

But she went still when she found Azrael holding the platter of food, everyone else having disappeared.

“We need to talk,” Azrael ground out. “Or rather, you need to listen while I speak. Perhaps you being stuck in your wolf form is for the best right now.”

Talwyn snarled at him, snapping her teeth, but he didn’t acknowledge the action. He simply set the platter of food down on the ground before he slid down the wall of the sand cave. Herested his forearms on his bent knees, clasping his hands loosely in front of him.

“My grandfather was born in Avonleya. He came over during the Great War. He was a warrior in one of their armies, a commander. As I told you, he was a quarter Avonleyan. Fae used to reside over there and lived among the Avonleyans. Whether or not they still do, I cannot say. There are so many different versions of history now, it is hard to say what is truth.

“I never met my grandfather. He met my grandmother here. A powerful, earth-wielding Fae female. He’d been stationed in the Earth Court for most of his time as a commander from what I was told. My father was born during the war, and it was when things were beginning to turn in the favor of Deimas and Esmeray that my grandfather decided to take the Royal seat of the Earth Court. My father was young. Too young to understand the politics. Our bloodline was always strong in earth magic, but because of the Avonleyan power in his blood, my grandfather easily defeated the sitting prince. Why he found the middle of a war to be a good time for such political upheaval, I do not know, but he won and became the Earth Prince.”

Talwyn didn’t acknowledge Azrael as he spoke. She just ate the steaming beef and chicken that had been prepared for her. But she was listening, hanging on to every word.

“My grandfather prized power, presumably because he would have been considered less powerful in Avonleya due to his heritage. I cannot say for sure, but based on the fact that he immediately set out to ?nd the most powerful earth female for my father to marry, I can say it is a safe bet, especially as my father was obsessed with the same. One can only assume he was raised in such a manner. It is why an arrangement was made between my father and Eliza’s father, before either of us was even conceived. I was born a century before her, but my father waited to see if her family would produce a female.”

She looked up at him at that. She had known, of course, that Eliza had been promised to him. She didn’t know all the details, only that her power had manifested as ?re rather than earth, and her father had disowned her. But not before Marking her to be unable to bear children, to carry on the ?re magic in her veins. He killed her mother before leaving Eliza in the Fire Court.

Azrael seemed to sense where her thoughts had gone, becausehe said, “I tried to ?nd her. When I learned what her father had done to her, I tried to ?nd her. It had never mattered to me. Marriage was …” He paused, as if trying to ?nd the right wording. “It was a political alliance. That is how I was raised to view marriage and relationships. Any relationship worth putting time into was for alliances only. Marriage was for producing powerful heirs to maintain our control of the Court. Beyond that?” He shrugged. “But I was not outraged to learn of her magic. She certainly did not deserve what her father did to her. By the time I had tracked her down, she had already been found by the Fire Court, further straining relations that had been tense my entire life.”

Talwyn had stopped eating. She didn’t look at him, but it made sense, she supposed. His focus had always been on what was best for their Courts, what was best for her throne. This wasn’t new information. It was just an explanation as to why.

And had absolutely nothing to do with him not telling her of his Avonleyan bloodline.

“That is getting off topic, though,” Azrael continued. “My father and mother were killed by Esmeray before everything with Eliza happened. Sorin and I may have ascended to our thrones at the same time, but I still had a century on him. I had been working at my father’s side for decades. The power transition was nothing for me. Not like it was for the other Royals.”

He spoke so casually about it all. Talwyn wanted to ask if he’d even grieved the death of his parents. Had he felt anything at all?

---