30. Veyka

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe in, breath out.

Two more times and then I ran out of patience.

I shoved myself to my feet, forcing the tired muscles in my legs to compensate for my sweat slick palms and keep me from falling on my face on the flagstones.

Even without falling into lakes and beaches, my clothing was soaked through. I was so cold—I needed to get this clothing off. Needed a hot bath. Where were Cyara and Lyrena? I couldn't have been gone long.

I turned toward the door that connected the bedroom to the shared sitting and bathing rooms—

"Welcome back, Your Majesty."

I did not reach for my weapons. I did not dare reach for my power. She was not threatening me. She was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair against the wall. It had to be uncomfortable, but she still sat up ramrod straight. Not that I'd tried it myself. I had taken one look at the narrow seat with its high armrests and knew my ass was not going to fit.

But the Lady of Eilean Gayl looked perfectly comfortable, hands curved around the ends of the armrests, her silk skirts as smooth as always.

"Where are my Knights?"

"Here," Lyrena said from behind me. At the window. Planning some sort of escape route? "Cyara is with Percival and Diana," she added.

I took a step back, keeping both females in my sights.

"How long?" I asked Lyrena.

"Only a few minutes," she answered. "I came up here to tell Cyara what happened. Lady Elayne arrived just ahead of me, demanding an audience with you."

"Requesting," Elayne corrected, her voice calm but firm.

Lyrena ignored her. I could have kissed her perfect golden face. "I will not leave until commanded."

I clenched my teeth to keep from chewing my bottom lip. I was in no shape for this conversation. I'd nearly disappeared into nothingness forever, for Ancestors-sake.

Fuck the Ancestors.

Right.

But maybe it was a reminder, too. Without Arran, with me still learning to control my power… we were the only ones who knew the full truth of the succubus. Isolde, Lyrena, and Cyara did as well, but they were not rulers. They were not terrestrials. No one here would listen to them. And Morgyn probably knew more than either Arran or I, but she wasn't doing anything in her precious, neutral Avalon.

I'd been debating how to tell Elayne and Pant, how to ask for their help. Trying to judge if I would weaken my position by asking rather than demanding. I was so bad at strategy. I needed my Brutal Prince.

Instead, I had his mother.

That was something, I supposed.

"Go. Rest, eat, and then relieve Cyara of guard duty," I ordered Lyrena. "She's been stuck with Percival all day. I would not be surprised if she'd stabbed him in the eyeball with one of her sewing needles."

Lyrena laughed aloud at that, her golden tooth flashing as she passed me. By the time she reached Elayne, the smile had hardened into something different. A smile still, but one of challenge and promise. A surge of warmth filled my chest.

I did not bother trying to encase it in ice. That stupid strategy had failed spectacularly.

I should have squared my shoulders, shoved my ass into a chair, and met Elayne like the queen I supposedly was. But I was just too fucking tired to manage it. Instead, I unfastened the belt with my scabbards, slinging them onto the trunk at the foot of the bed while I scrubbed my hand over my face.

"I thought you would be better at hiding your feelings. You are an elemental," Elayne said from her throne.

I'd seen my own mother sit on the throne for twenty-five years. I'd stopped being impressed by it decades ago.

I sighed heavily, working on the harness that held my rapiers across my back next. "What do you know of elementals?"

The wood creaked as she shifted in the chair. "Before Arthur's birth was prophesied, there was every reason to believe Arran might one day become the terrestrial heir. I educated myself accordingly."

"How industrious of you."

Elayne chuckled softly. Not quietly enough for me to miss.

Weapons gone, I turned to face her, planting one hand on each hip. Exhaustion surely lined every feature and muscle, but I let her see it. I was so tired of playing games. The terrestrial court was supposed to be about strength. Well, here I was—strong, facing my problems, minutes after I'd lost my sanity and nearly myself.

Arran's mother was not smiling any longer. She appraised me openly. Probably the most honest expression I'd seen on her face since arriving. Maybe that was the true difference between the elemental and terrestrial courts. Here, they tried and failed to hide their feelings. At least in Baylaur, we knew how to lie.

A small sigh and then pity in her eyes.

My throat threatened to close with emotion. I ordered it to remain open.

"You have enemies here, Your Majesty," Elayne said.

Truth. I could read it in her face easily. But it wasn't her warning that struck me.

"I thought you would call me Veyka." I hated the vulnerability, the honesty. I was not good at it. Nor at strategy. Hell, what was I good at?

My hands fisted against my hips.

Elayne's eyes softened, but she held her silence, waiting for me.

I swallowed past the emotion in my throat. "Arran said Eilean Gayl would be a safe harbor."

This time, she laughed aloud. "Arran said no such thing." She pushed herself up from the chair with an ease that belied her advancing age.

I held her gaze, unflinching. "He implied it."

Truth for truth. Arran had spoken of Eilean Gayl with such love and affection. I had assumed this would be a safe harbor for me and my companions. We'd been welcomed, yes. But formally. As a queen visiting a distant noble, not a daughter-in-law visiting her husband's family. No warmth.

Why? What had changed here? Or worse… what had I done wrong?

Elayne waved her hand as if stating the obvious. "Arran has not been to Eilean Gayl in decades."

I was too well trained to let my jaw drop open in surprise. But the tell must have been there just the same, because Elayne frowned and said, "He did not tell you that."

I shook my head—not in agreement, but in disbelief. "He was happy here."

Another sigh from Elayne. "He was a child here," she allowed. And I was reassessing everything. Had I misunderstood Arran's recollections of this place? Had he lied to me? No, Arran did not lie. It was endemically contrary to his nature. He was who he was, and he did not apologize for it. It was one of the many things I loved about him. But why… why paint me a picture of a place, a reality, that no longer existed?

Elayne watched me closely. And even though I had relaxed my guard, I knew that I kept most of the emotions off of my face by habit. Despite what she said, I was good at hiding my feelings. My survival in the elemental court had demanded it.

"Arran has not been happy for a very long time," she said quietly. Sadly.

"That is not true." It cost me to say it. But it was the truth. We were happy.

Even with the threat of the succubus hanging over us, the mystery of my powers and all of Arthur's lies and what that might mean for Annwyn… I'd never felt happiness like I did when I was in Arran's arms. Or when I was kicking his ass in the sparring ring. Or trading pointed barbs that turned sharper and hotter until we were clawing at each other in desperation to get closer, to join our bodies along with our souls.

I opened my eyes, realizing for the first time that I had closed them. Maybe I'd been standing there for minutes, rather than seconds, letting myself get lost in the memories. Only weeks separated me from the faerie pools where we'd finally consummated our mating bond, and yet it felt like years. Decades. Maybe another lifetime entirely.

Elayne watched me with such sadness in her dark eyes. Eyes that were familiar. Arran's eyes.

"Why did you come to Eilean Gayl?" she asked. I watched her throat bob as she swallowed. Now was the time, then.

I sucked in a breath and shoved my sadness, my heartbreak, all of it to the side. "How many amorite blades do you have?"

Elayne's dark brows joined together, arms coming across her body as she stared at me like I'd grown a second head. "Amorite blades?"

I unsheathed one of my daggers, then one of the rapiers, holding the blades across my palms non-threateningly. I held them out into the light, so that the swirling gray and silver of the blades was easier to see. "Like these."

Elayne examined them closely—touching neither. She leaned down, cocked her head to the side to get a different angle of light coming off of the braziers pegged into the stone walls, but she did not reach for the blades. Interesting, given Arran's comfort with them. But that was an observation to be analyzed at another time.

"We have finely made weapons, to be sure. But nothing like this…" she said, shaking her head. "Why?"

I sheathed the blades once more, exhaling slowly. Giving her my back, just for a moment, to gather myself. "The amorite blades are the only weapon that can kill a succubus."

Her voice did not shake, but her body was stiff when I turned back to her. "What is a succubus?"

I told her all of it.

The darkness that we had first seen in Baylaur—the human messenger from Eldermist and then the witch in the Tower of Myda. I left out the details of Arthur's murder, the betrayals of Gawayn and Roksana, their attempted coup. I was not ready to bare those parts of myself to her yet. She was Arran's mother, and she'd shown more openness in this conversation than the two days since our arrival. But I was not ready to give her those parts of myself.

I spoke briefly of the Faeries of the Fen, giving minimal details about their locations and their caves. Whether they considered themselves my subjects or not, I knew they were mine and I would protect them as such. I would not risk exposing them to the terrestrials. But I did reveal what Taliya had told us about the first time the succubus had come to Annwyn.

And finally I told her about the Void Prophecy and my place in it. That it was my void powers that had allowed the succubus entry into our realm once again.

My fault.

I did not speak of Gorlois or Percival's betrayal. Or what had come after.

"If you cut off their legs, they will crawl. If you burn them with fire, they will pause. But the only way to kill them is to cut off their heads or stab them with an Amorite blade," I finished.

Around my recounting of the Void Prophecy, Elayne had sunk back into that hard, high-backed wooden chair. The silence stretched out between us as I watched her trying to comb through everything I'd told her. The world I'd turned upside down with little warning.

I forced myself to remain standing. If I sat down, I'd lay down. If I laid down, I'd close my eyes and lose myself in trying to forget this entire mess.

Elayne lifted one hand, pinning two fingers to her temple while her elbow rested on the arm of the chair. The weight of the truths and considerations I'd dropped too much to bear. A huffed exhale. "The Great War… it was not about elementals and terrestrials at all."

I jerked my chin to the side. "Or at least, not wholly."

Her next thought— "The amorite mines."

I nodded, more steadily this time. The erasure of our history was unsteady ground. Weapons and solid actions, I could handle. "We need weapons. And as many amorite necklaces, earrings, and trinkets as we can manage."

She was nodding along now, that arm dropped. Good—she was moving into acceptance.

"You are the queen from the Void Prophecy."

My chest constricted but I ignored it. "You must have expected it. You were waiting here, expecting me to reappear."

That earned me a half smile. Hell, even the shape of her mouth was like Arran's. Would our own children bear this uncanny resemblance? A dozen emotions roared to life within me at the musing I'd stupidly allowed to sneak out. I shoved all of them back down.

"I knew your magic was special," Elayne said. Maybe she'd supposed it some type of wind magic, like Arran had once suggested. Terrestrials did not come to the elemental kingdom. It was entirely possible Elayne, Pant, and the rest of their retainers had written off my strange power as an elemental oddity. That was easier than accepting vague historical prophecies as fact. "But the succubus appeared before you came into your power. How can they be linked?"

Exactly what I needed to get out of Diana and Percival. I rubbed the palm of my hand over my brow and down my cheek. Question Diana. Get the amorite. Warn the terrestrials. Figure out the nonsense with the sacred trinity and Arthur's secrets. Get back to Baylaur. Arran. Fucking hell. Tired? It was a wonder I got out of bed each morning.

For a long time, you didn't.

"Perhaps the Offering acted as some sort of trigger. From what I can glean, human minds are easier to take over than fae. But in the end, they will come for all our males. Turn them against us, rip us apart, until we are dead defending our children, and then they are carrion as well."

Morose. But it was the truth.

My heart ached for Maisri. She was safer in the faerie caves then she was here in Eilean Gayl. The succubus had not come here yet, not that Elayne had heard of. But that was a blessing that would not last.

"Perhaps," Elayne allowed, tapping her temple with those two fingers. She shifted in her seat, the struggle on her face evident.

Because she'd revealed all of her tells to me? Or because she'd decided on honesty?

Sadness, calculation… and worry. "Arran was with you at Avalon."

Don't ask.

I nodded.

"You came to warn us, but he did not. Is he seeing to some other task, something you cannot tell me?" Her voice was hopeful. The golden thread in my chest squeezed tighter, trying to protect my heart.

I shook my head.

Please, leave it at that.

But she loved him. I saw it in her eyes, recognized the emotion I'd seen reflected back in Arran's long before I'd been able to give him those words.

"Where is my son?"

I sank down onto the bed.

"Sleeping," I said, my voice a hollow, dead thing. And still, I could not deny the truth to this female who loved my mate. "The King sleeps in Avalon. And it is all my fault."