25. AMBROSE

25

AMbrOSE

THE SOUTHERN COAST OF NEVERMORE

" F uck!" I swore loudly.

Cassinda laughed, and the sound made me stiffen. It was like glass shattering or a distant scream and knowing instinctively that something was about to go very wrong very quickly.

"Aren't you happy to see me?" Cassinda asked, in a tone that implied she knew the answer already.

"Not really." There was no point in lying. We both knew this was not about to be anything close to a happy reunion.

Oddly, Cassinda laughed again. "I would have thought you'd at least be grateful to get a ride back into the city. We've been out looking for you for over an hour."

My face twisted in confusion. "You have? Why?"

"Your brother arrived earlier. He's very handsome, and so polite too."

I laughed. Scion was anything but polite, but he'd undoubtedly realized it would be foolish to offend the ruling family of Nevermore so soon. Especially when we were so likely to offend them later, anyway.

"Scion would destroy you," I snapped at her. "Anyway, he's mated. Leave him alone."

She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, so he told me. It was the strangest story. Apparently, you were all supposed to arrive together but somehow you ended up way out here with your brother's mate. I'd say I was surprised, but I know you too well."

"You don't know anything about me," I ground out.

She smiled, and it didn't reach her eyes.

"Excuse me," Lonnie snapped angrily. "What the fuck is going on?"

I looked down at her, and only just then realized we'd been speaking the old tongue the entire time Cassinda had been standing here. Shit.

"I'm sorry, love," I said in the dialect of the mainland. "I forgot."

"Clearly," she replied dryly, still looking annoyed. "What's going on? Who is she?"

I bit back a groan. I didn't want Lonnie anywhere near Cassinda for numerous reasons, but I couldn't think of any way around it.

"This is the Lord of Nevermore's oldest daughter," I told Lonnie, trying to sound as impersonal as possible. "Scion reached the keep and sent everyone out looking for us. She's offering to take us back to the city."

Lonnie's eyes narrowed. "What were you two talking about?"

I ran both my hands through my hair, biting back the urge to let out another string of profanities.

Cassinda seemed to take my pause as her opening. "Hello," she said to Lonnie, in heavily accented common tongue. "Welcome! Is cold, yes? You come to castle now?"

I shot Cassinda a venomous glare, and continued to stare her down as I bent to speak to Lonnie. "Don't fall for this shit. She speaks the common language just fine."

Cassinda glared back at me for half a second, before she grinned. "He's right," she said to Lonnie. Her accent was still heavy, but the words were sharper and more confident. "I learned it many years ago when I believed I'd be going to live on the mainland."

"Why were you moving to the mainland?" Lonnie asked as she climbed into the back of the open carriage.

"Well, when I was going to be the queen, of course," she replied, her tone sickly sweet. "Didn't you know? He ran away to Aftermath to become some sort of radical only two months before our wedding."

Lonnie stopped, and looked over her shoulder at me. Her expression was a mixture of shock and anger. "You were going to marry this woman?"

I closed my eyes, and drew in a deep breath through my nose. This could not be fucking happening. "Unfortunately," I growled out, finally.

Cassinda scoffed as she climbed into the front of the carriage and took up the reins. "Come!" she said to Lonnie brightly. "I'll tell you about it on the way back to the keep."

"I can't wait," Lonnie replied bitterly.

I gnashed my teeth as we trundled up the dark road toward the keep.

The sun had set, and the temperature was steadily dropping by the second. Beside me, Lonnie was shivering so hard her teeth clacked together, but I didn't dare reach out for her. At the moment, I thought she might hit me if I tried.

On the bench seat in front of us, Cassinda kept up a steady stream of chatter. She mostly spoke in old tongue, seeming to realize it annoyed Lonnie, but every so often she would throw in a phrase in the common language just to needle her further.

I kept having to resist the urge to strangle her.

I was well aware that part of my rage at Cassinda had nothing to do with her and everything to do with what she'd interrupted.

In fairness, my mood had been erratic today, anyway. I'd barely been in control of myself since nearly the moment I woke up in the barracks.

I'd known the moment Bael left for Underneath because his future changed, becoming far more clear. I was grateful for even that much foresight. Bael's current trajectory implied this all might be over in a matter of weeks rather than months.

I had a strange sense of anticipation. I'd been working toward this moment for decades, and while it could easily end in my death I was still anxious to get to the end.

When Scion had come down to the den in search of breakfast, I promptly went upstairs to the townhouse. I was sick of arguing with him. It was difficult to maintain the animosity when I didn't hate him nearly as much as he hated me. I didn't hate him at all, actually.

After the conversation we'd had about Lonnie, I thought things might improve. And they had, for a short period of time, but now the tension was thick in the air once more. I knew he resented me for not being more helpful, directing our every move as Grandmother once did. I resented myself just as much, and if it wasn't for the fact that Lonnie was the one getting in my way I'd be resentful of her too.

I wandered the halls of the townhouse aimlessly, unsure where I was going. Then, I heard Lonnie's voice and the sound of crying.

I raced upstairs, my pulse racing. My immediate wild thought was that she was hurt, before I remembered that Bael had left overnight. Perhaps she'd just realized what happened. If so, I was just as much to blame for her misery as Bael was.

I found her on the floor of a guest room wearing nothing but a damp towel. My mind froze. I knew I was a prick for staring at her, wanting her, when she was so clearly upset but I couldn't make myself look away. I wanted Lonnie more than I'd ever wanted anything. The tantalizing fact that I could have her if I were only willing to tell her we were mates constantly beat at the back of my mind.

Maybe I was a masochist.

I could tell her. Even Scion–one of my greatest obstacles–wanted me to tell her. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. Telling her felt wrong. Like trapping her into something before she'd had the time to consider it.

Lonnie was shockingly oblivious to her own feelings, even now that she had more time and space to consider them. She'd fallen in love with Bael long before she knew anything about mating or magic, and still had to be convinced their bond was real. It was even worse with Scion, as both of them lacked self-awareness. They'd gone as far as sealing their bond several times over before either acknowledged its existence.

In other words, she'd been able to form real connections slowly because she had no understanding of what a mating bond was supposed to feel like.

Now that she did, I could tell her and she would undoubtedly believe me. But I would never know if she really wanted this, or simply believed it was inevitable. Worse still, there was the looming possibility that I wouldn't live past the battle I knew was coming, and how cruel would it be to leave her as a mate rather than as an estranged in-law? Even as I came upon her in her towel, I resolved not to tell her.

But then she kissed me and every promise I'd made to myself imploded. It was like she was breathing life back into me. Like my heart beat for the first time in a hundred years, and it only beat for her.

I'd never wanted to stop, but I made myself leave anyway. She was confused and overwhelmed and not looking for a mate, even if her long dormant instincts were pushing her to let me claim her.

That should have been the end of it, but of course it wasn't. The Gods clearly had an agenda today, and that plan involved fucking with me to within an inch of my sanity.

I'd shadow walked miles off course because I was distracted by Lonnie's very presence next to me. Then, she was attacked by the sirens and I had to withstand every instinct I had not to overreact to her injuries.

Then, she'd looked at me like she wanted me for more than the healing I'd offered her. She looked at me the way I looked at her whenever she wasn't paying attention. Like it physically hurt her to look, and she made herself withstand it because it was more painful to look away.

I waited, knowing that if she didn't take my blood soon, I was going to make her do it. I was ready to tear into my own flesh for her, and then I'd fuck her, claim her, make her mine right there on the fucking ground.

But then my worst fucking nightmare appeared in the form of Cassinda, and if I didn't already hate her as much as it was possible to hate anyone, I would have just because of her interruption.

I didn't know what my former betrothed was playing at. She hated me quite as much as I hated her, but for some reason she had fixated on torturing Lonnie from the very second she set eyes on her. It made no sense.

Pulling me from my thoughts, Cassinda herself glanced over her shoulder at me. "So, are you going to marry her?" she asked in the olde tongue.

I drew back, rattled by her change in tone. Did she know Lonnie was mine? Did it matter if she did? "Why would you ask that?" I hedged. "She's my brother's mate."

Cassinda raised her eyebrows so high they nearly disappeared into her hairline. "Right, but I know you. Are you going to marry her?"

I closed my mouth with a snap.

I'd entirely forgotten about how much Cassinda really did know. She'd spent a lot of time at the obsidian palace over the years, as we'd been betrothed nearly from birth until the day I left for Aftermath. Even if she hadn't been the daughter of the Lord of Nevermore, she would have had to be both blind and stupid not to notice something was wrong with our family. Unfortunately, she was neither.

The Everlast family had a long sorted history of rejecting our mates for fear of becoming too happy and triggering the curse that kept us all in a constant state of misery. But that didn't mean no one ever found their true mate. In fact, most of us did.

The common wisdom within the family had always been that we couldn't seal a bond, but that said nothing of keeping mates close. More often than not, a true mate was married off to a sibling or cousin, so they could be kept close.

Ironically, now that I'd seen this scenario play out between Lonnie, Bael and Scion I realized that we'd been going about things entirely wrong for years. It was a miracle that none of our ancestors had killed us all generations ago.

"Are you listening to me?" Cassinda asked.

"No."

She reeled back, looking offended. "You ass–"

"I meant, no. I'm not going to marry her. Not like you mean."

She narrowed her eyes at me, but said nothing, merely turning back around and focusing on the road ahead of us. I already knew that wasn't the end of this. I only wished I knew what Cassinda was trying to do.

It had started to snow by the time we arrived in the heart of Nevermore.

I'd given up and offered Lonnie my arm. Apparently, she was cold enough that she didn't care that she was angry with me. She'd pulled her legs up to her chest and curled her entire body into my side, and didn't sit up to look around as we pulled onto the main road.

The street was lined with round red-roofed houses, all with smoke rising from their chimneys and candles flickering in the windows. Here and there along the street, an evergreen shrub stood out from the snow, but otherwise everything was completely frozen over. Far up ahead on a snowy hill stood the keep–Nevermore's equivalent of a castle.

Unlike the other provinces, the island operated almost entirely independently of us, and governed themselves. They still technically answered to the crown, and the lord of Nevermore was not a king in his own right, but informally it was easiest to view them as a separate kingdom altogether.

As the reindeer pulled us up the hill and stopped in front of the huge stone keep, the wooden double doors flew open and Scion rushed out, trailed by a gaggle of servants who seemed to have been trying to make him eat something.

In a flash, he'd grabbed Lonnie out of the carriage and begun stalking back inside without saying a single word to me.

"Interesting," Cassinda said, a smile in her voice.

I whirled on her. I didn't care to know what was "interesting," I wanted to strangle her instead. "You drove slow on purpose."

She shrugged. "The reindeer needed the exercise."

My fingers flexed. I couldn't actually kill her. Right now, we needed Nevermore as an ally, at least as long as it took to find the jewel. I really wanted to, though.

"You do understand that she's the queen?" I bit out. "If nothing else, you should worry about what happens if the capital withdraws support from the island because you tried to freeze her to death."

"From what I've gathered, the capital is in a bit of an upheaval right now," she replied, still smiling. "I think I'll take my chances."

With that, she turned and stalked inside after Scion. I waited a minute before I went inside as well so I wouldn't have to walk directly behind her.

The Lord of Nevermore looked down at me from a platform in the center of his great all.

A large but relatively short man, ‘from a platform' was the only way Bran of Nevermore would ever be able to look down at me and he seemed to be taking advantage of it.

I'd always thought he looked a bit like a bear. He had long dark brown hair and a matching beard that covered most of his face. His eyes were small and dark, and I'd once seen him eat an entire turkey leg in two bites.

"It's good to see you, Prince Ambrose," he boomed, loud enough for the entire hall to hear.

I gritted my teeth again. It had been a long time since anyone had called me "Prince" and I didn't like the sound of it. I never really had, but that was a different story altogether.

"Bran," I replied, pointedly not using his title. "How have you been keeping?"

He made an exaggerated show of looking around the hall and gesturing, as if to say ‘Look around at all my wealth. Of course I've been doing well."

I forced myself not to sneer at him.

In a technical sense, Bran was a relative. He was my grandfather's cousin, which made him close enough to our family that he bragged about it, but not so close that we shared more than a dash of blood. He wasn't affected by the curse and neither were his children, which had made Cassinda a good candidate for queen consort. The fact that I hated her had been immaterial to the situation.

"Has my brother already explained what we're doing here?" I asked.

"Only in the broadest sense," he replied jovially.

"We're here because–"

"Wait!" he cut me off. "We can't have this conversation now. Why don't you all join me for dinner and we can talk it over then."

In other words, he didn't think he had enough of an audience and in case I said something he didn't like, or tried to attack him, he wanted there to be witnesses. It was all very predictable. Or, it would have been if I'd been able to see anything at all.

"Fine," I replied flatly, then glanced at the darkening window. I didn't know what time it was, and the sun set so early here that it might be midafternoon just as easily as midnight.

"We eat at 10:00," Bran added, seeming to sense my question. "Would you like to rest before dinner?"

"Please!" I said, enthusiastic for the first time.

"Wonderful. Cassinda can show you upstairs."

No absolutely fucking not. I'd die before going anywhere alone with that harpy.

"There's no need to bother her," I said. "A servant can do it."

To my great relief, he didn't press the issue. "Whatever you like." He waved me off. "You'll see her at dinner, anyway."

I couldn't fucking wait.