Page 138 of Wolf Caged
“Do not believe everything you read in the books there. Some are a rather… abridged… history of this land and its people.”
“Well, it didn’t mention your blacksmithing hobby, so I believe that.” I looked at the ring again. It truly was beautiful. Probably the most beautiful gift I had been given and one that spoke to me on some deep level. A moon ring. A present fit for a wolf shifter. “What’s your favourite thing you’ve made?”
He pursed his lips, expression growing thoughtful and pensive.
And then he said, “I have made many things in my life, but the most important to me is my sword. I spent months crafting it and imbued it with power through ancient spells.”
“The same language that’s on here?” I lifted my hand and he nodded. “Ancient fae. I can’t read it.”
“It is a language few know, and one we do not share with others. It is almost… sacred to my kind. Wait here a moment.” He pivoted and walked away before I could stop him, heading back inside the forge, where he retrieved something from the blacksmith.
I frowned at the bundle of worn brown leather he held in his hands as he returned to me.
He held it out to me. “My apology, for branding you without your consent.”
“Another gift?” I took the supple bundle of leather from him and unwound the thin strap that had been wrapped around it, and then unrolled it.
Revealing a beautiful dagger that was as long as my forearm.
The silver metal gleamed in the low light as I closed my hand around the black leather wrapped hilt and lifted it before me.
“I admit, it took me longer than I had expected. I began working on it when Vyr started your training.” The lightness in his deep voice stole my focus from the dagger, the warmth in his eyes as he looked at it stirring an echo of that warmth and lightness within me. “I had considered a sword, but my sister mentioned your speed and agility, and I thought perhaps a dagger might be more suitable, especially given your slight frame. It is a weapon you could easily wield and would not slow you down. So I set about crafting you one that would complement your skills and work with you, rather than against you.”
So much passion.
This male before me was so different to the fierce, hard king I knew him to be.
He was passionate, warm, and animated as he talked openly about the weapon he had made with me in mind, his love of blacksmithing on show for me to see.
I wanted to keep him like this, even when I knew it was impossible. A court needed a king, and the mask would fall back into place before I knew it and I would lose this warm, bright male. I had read enough about the courts now to know how they ran, and about the kings of the other courts, each more brutal and ruthless than the last.
But a few of them were warm and kind.
Like the king of the frigid Winter Court, who had loved and lost his seelie fated mate.
I stared at the dagger, at the delicately carved wolf head that acted as the pommel and the cross guard beautifully inscribed with ancient fae. At the reflection of Kael in the blade, his handsome face warm and beautiful, alight with his passion as he spoke so openly with me.
“I read about your court,” I murmured, unsure whether I wanted to go there, wanted to bring up what I had read and what I had seen with my own eyes. I was overstepping, I knew it, and if Vyr were here, she would warn me not to do this, but I wanted this male before me to remain. I wanted his people to see this side of him. “You said you closed the borders, but what you didn’t say is that you did it when your parents died. I didn’t realise just what that meant until I read about it and then some of the things I’ve been feeling during my visits to the city began to make sense.”
His expression gradually darkened, a slow death of the warm male reflected in a dagger crafted of his passion and a need to protect.
He remained deathly still and quiet, the power he radiated growing darker as our shadows on the cobbles grew restless, pooling in the cracks between the stones.
Nerves threatened to silence me, but I squared my shoulders and lifted my eyes to meet his, because someone needed to say it. I needed to say it.
“Are your people happy?” I echoed the question I had asked him before.
And just like before, he was quick to say, “Yes.”
“Are they though?” I looked around us, that feeling that they weren’t growing stronger within me as I looked at the blacksmith where he stood at the doors of his forge, watching us with a cautious air, with a touch of fear in his eyes. I shifted my gaze back to meet Kaeleron’s. “Because I can’t see it, Kaeleron. Everywhere I look in this town, I see my own reflection. I see people who are smiling on the surface, to hide their pain. Their fear. Their resentment.”
He growled and I stiffened, but I wouldn’t back down. Not this time. I knew what I was seeing, because I had lived it. I had been the one who felt trapped in their home, unable to come and go as they please, who had been cut off from the world.
“You closed the borders, Kaeleron. What does that mean for the people of your court? What does it mean for those who had come to work here from other places? Some of the people here aren’t from Lucia.” My breath hitched as the ground beneath my feet trembled and the blacksmith behind Kaeleron stepped back into the shelter of his home, slowly shaking his head. I couldn’t do as he wanted. I couldn’t stop now. “Are they trapped here?”
“They are protected. They have everything they need.” The same bullshit he had told me before.
“And what price are they paying for that protection? How many of them have families outside the walls of the Shadow Court? How many of them don’t know what has happened tothose people? How many people come to your borders, wanting to find their family, and are turned away?” I felt like a bitch as I asked those questions, as I ruined the moment we had been sharing, driving that warm male further from me.
