43. Arran

"She said what?"

"If he wishes to speak with me—"

"I heard you the first time," I growled, slamming my fist down on the broad wooden desk. The oak groaned beneath the force but did not give. Less could be said for the messenger quaking before me.

He'd been sheet-white when he re-entered the chamber, one of my father's unused studies. The place I'd chosen to meet my wife again, on my own terms.

Wife, mate, queen. Fuck. It was too much. My head was already pounding.

I'd chosen to focus on the latter—queen. High King and Queen of Annwyn. Surely there were matters of state to attend to. Hence, the desk. I could not imagine Uther Pendragon, the former High King, ever sitting at a desk.

I could not have imagined any of it.

Which was the best justification I'd yet found that this might all be real.

"No one summons the High Queen of Annwyn," I repeated under my breath. I could just imagine the words leaving her full, lush lips. Lips that begged to be bitten. Lips that were far too clear in my mind for someone I had only met once.

Who was my mate.

Fuck.

The most grating part was that she was right.

As High King and Queen, we were co-rulers. Equals. It was how the balance between our two kingdoms was kept, generation after generation, for seven thousand years. I hadn't been an attentive student of history, but I knew that much.

That was bullshit.

I'd lost my Ancestors-damned memory. The least she could do was meet with me and explain… something. Everything.

"Fuck!" I slammed my other fist down.

The guard in front of me shivered. Little use he would be in a fight. I'd speak to my mother about having him reassigned. I would not have trusted him to guard my breakfast, let alone my home.

My fists clenched tighter.

Eilean Gayl had not been my home for many years. The Brutal Prince's only home was a war camp, a battlefield, with my battle axe in my hand.

The ever-present ache in my chest intensified. Home. I pressed my fist into my chest, rubbing in vain. I'd learned on my bounding trek to Eilean Gayl that nothing would soften it.

Someone would.

The beast inside of me yanked at his restraints.

It took more energy than it should have to shove my beast back down. When I looked back out of my fae eyes, I found the guard framed in the doorway, back pressed flush against the wood, as if he hoped he could melt through the ancient cracks.

"Where is she now?"

I could taste his fear. So could my beast.

"Her Majesty was going to the training yard, I believe," he mumbled. More coherent than I'd expected.

I walked to the window. It faced the wrong direction for me to be able to see her. But even through the leaded glass, my fae ears could hear the clash of metal.

I fingered the head of my axe, then the jeweled scabbard that had been on my belt since I'd awoken on the misty isle.

The queen wanted a fight?

I'd bring one to her.

The ache in my chest eased with every step. I wanted to resent that pull she had on me, but my beast would not allow it. As soon as the feeling rose in my chest, my beast devoured it. I tightened the restraints I held, ever present, to keep him in place.

I was so preoccupied trying to master myself that I did not realize where I was, how quickly I was walking. I was in the courtyard before I meant to be, quicker than should have been possible. Had I run through the hallways of Eilean Gayl without realizing it?

Then I saw her, and everything else ceased to matter.

The thread around my heart was so bright, so hot inside of me that it burned. My fingers tingled, my muscles tightened. I was burning from the inside out. Burning for her. Veyka.

No one had told me what to expect from my queen. But as I watched her move around the courtyard, I reassessed every presumption I'd made in the last twelve hours.

Last night, she'd worn a revealing gown that highlighted a luscious body meant for one thing. But in the gray light of morning, she'd put it to a different purpose entirely.

She was still breathtakingly beautiful, her moon-white hair swirling behind her as she swung and parried with such speed, unnatural even for a fae. Jewels studded her ears, from the soft lobe to the pointed tip, and there were gemstones braided into her hair as well. A queen, yes. But something else, something more.

A warrior battled before me, deadly curved blades held with loving ease as they swiped at her opponent. She'd traded the revealing gown for leather leggings and a cropped tunic that revealed a swath of pale skin around her midsection. The longer I looked, the more I recognized. The leather armor she wore was an approximation of my own, modified to fit her luscious curves.

Not just luscious, but deadly. I knew precisely where I'd fit her in my legion. But she fought without magic… what was her power? The abrupt disappearance from the great hall—why did she not manifest that same power in battle?

The answer came to me as I watched the duel barreling toward climax.

She did not need to.

Thatwas how skilled she was.

She did not flinch when her opponent brought his blade down at a sharp, sudden angle. But I did.

My axe was in my hand before I formed the thought. Instinct guided my movements, experience paired with fury that sprang from a well inside of me deeper than any I'd accessed before.

The growl ripped from my throat, reverberating through the training courtyard. A fucking mistake, a warning to my enemies.

Her cry of ire battled mine, ricocheting off of the ancient, moss-covered stones. Her blade swiped across her opponent's side, the rich sent of blood flooding my senses. He staggered backward, out of range of my axe. I was so focused on him that I missed her attack entirely. She struck my chin with enough force to send my head reeling back. I struggled to right myself—Fuck! Pain sliced through my kneecaps.

I staggered, axe useless in my hand. I shoved it upward anyway, the instinct to protect my head and throat ingrained by three hundred years of battlefield slaughter. But no more blows came.

I kept my feet, but only just.

She'd tried to swipe my knees out from under me. The growl built in my chest, the beast inside of me insistent. Fine—I'd shift. I'd give in and—what? What would I do?

Fuck. Hardened battle commander? I was a fool.

This warrior queen had not only defended herself from attack, but she'd fought me off as well. She'd thought I was attacking her, not trying to save her.

What in the Ancestors' living hell did that say about our supposed marriage?

Our cries and growls had faded to nothing, leaving behind only ragged breathing. Mine was as tortured as hers, my chest moving in time with the rise and fall of her own as I dragged my gaze up her body to her face.

Her eyes—how had I not noticed them instantly? They raged with blue fire. She was an elemental, she ought to have been able to dissemble. But either the emotions were too much or she wasn't bothering to hide them as they blazed in her eyes. Anger and frustration, but that was not all. A bright circle glowed around the center of the black pupils. The one thing she could not hide, even had she been trying. The glow of desire.

She felt it too.

The pull of her gaze was magnetic. My heart beat faster, the tangle in my chest solidifying into something almost tangible. If I looked down, I might see the thread that stretched from my chest to hers, connecting us inexplicably.

Except it had been explained to me. She was my mate. This feeling in my chest, this compulsion, was the mating bond making itself known. My fingers ached, urging me to reach out and touch her. That was ludicrous. She'd just shoved me backward, almost knocked me on my ass in front of half of Eilean Gayl.

Terrestrials lined the battlements. Her own companion, an elemental dressed in ornamental goldstone, watched us with arms crossed over her chest. The white faerie who'd dogged my steps since Avalon hovered at the golden one's side.

But I noted all these details without really internalizing them. They were part of the landscape, the periphery of relevance. I was aware in the way I might be on a battlefield of the fighting happening around me. Just enough attention to ward off threats, but not enough to distract from the challenge directly in front of me.

My mate.

To my right, someone scuffled and sighed. Her defeated opponent, sent sprawling across the flagstones on the far side of the training ring.

The male grumbled. "What the Ancestors—Arran."

Ripping my gaze away from her was almost painful. But I knew that voice. I recognized the figure clambering to his feet. "Barkke."

My longtime friend, sometimes rival, brushed the dirt off of his ass where she'd thrown him into the dirt. He winced as he stood, which is when I remembered the scent of blood. She'd slashed at his side. A minor wound, knitting back together even as Barkke approached, eyes wary. But his words belied the caution in his gaze.

"I would tell you that you looked well, but terrestrials don't lie," Barkke said, clapping me on the shoulder. Very few would have dared. Certainly not a member of the terrestrial armies. But Barkke had known me since childhood, and obviously felt himself entitled to certain intimacies. Which is why he dared to add, "You look like utter shit."

Slowly, so slowly, I turned my head to look at where his broad hand rested on my shoulder.

"Says the male who was just on his ass," I bit back. I lowered my axe, returning it to the notch on my belt. My control had snapped so quickly, I did not even recall drawing it. Instincts were one thing. Loss of control was another. Who had I become, that the mere threat of injury—an injury she could surely have healed from—had rendered the control I'd fought hundreds of years to master utterly useless? What was it about this female that unhinged every carefully moored tether of control?

"Not for long. Never for long." Barkke chuckled, retracting his hand and running it through his overlong hair. A few shades lighter than mine, it was just as long. He'd let his beard grow out, thicker than ever. But other than that, he looked the same as he always had. And he elicited the same feelings in me. Mostly annoyance, but buried deep within me, there was a grain of affection.

Not that I planned on showing it to him. I scowled. He just smiled broader. Ass.

"Come to claim your prize?" he said, nodding to the center of the ring.

She was not feigning any sort of indifference. She watched our exchange closely, the blazing blue fire in her eyes only slightly dimmed.

"I am not a prize to be won," she snapped. As she spoke, she reached her arms overhead, sliding the twin rapiers into their sheaths across her back with practiced ease. "Nor did either of you do any winning."

I felt the tick in my jaw, clenching my teeth together to still it. "He had you. I only intervened—"

"I know why you intervened," she said sharply. "I had him, and I had you."

Her eyes were still glowing. I knew that if there'd been a mirror to hand, I'd have seen black fire in mine as well.

"Spar with me."

Barkke had melted back, leaving Veyka and I staring each other down in the center of the training courtyard with two dozen terrestrials looking on. There was nothing to be gained by sparring. We valued strength above all else. If the High King and Queen dueled, one of us would beat the other, and that would leave the other diminished in the eyes of their subjects. But I didn't take it back.

Something inside of me wanted to tangle with her. Not just sexually, though my cock was tight at the mere thought. But I wanted to test myself against her, to see if my body would move in complement to hers. I suspected that it might.

Her chin cut a sharp, straight horizontal line through the brisk air. "No."

I stepped closer—compelled, again. My beast, the mating bond, the lust that was burning in my cock, it did not matter which of them was in charge. They were all in agreement as I lifted one eyebrow. "Afraid?"

Veyka threw back her head and laughed, planting her hands on her generous hips. "I don't want to embarrass you."

"You could try," I growled.

"I would succeed." Her voice slid over me like a lover's touch. The sultry whisper, for me alone, slid past every defense I had. Her eyes flared—she knew. She fucking knew how easily she was able to get inside of me, to appeal to my beast and my baser instincts.

"Prove it."

Her tumultuous eyes flashed once more, then shuttered. There was the cool, calculated fa?ade I'd expected from the Queen of the Elemental Fae. She lifted her chin a fraction of an inch, determination set in every line of her pale, angular face. "Not here."

"Not here," I repeated, under my breath.

Because she got to choose. She understood the stakes, better than I ever hoped to. The last few months of my life were completely blank. Yule had just passed. But my last memory was of a war camp on the eastern edge of Wolf Bay. Months and months ago. Now, King Arthur was dead, I was mated and High King, and there was more. I could feel it in my mother's gaze, in Veyka's careful aloofness. There was more at stake here than I could puzzle out, and I knew nothing.

I was so fucking angry.

I drew my battle axe. "Here. Now."

I did not care if it was a mistake. I did not care if it was politically infantile. I wanted to make her suffer the way I was suffering. I wanted to make everyone suffer. I tensed my muscles, ready to spring forward—

She disappeared.

Gone.

My axe did not even have a chance to fall before I felt her, my senses filling with primrose and plum a second before she reappeared at my side.

She grabbed my arm. The beast inside of me howled his approval at the contact, the blood in my veins rushing at such speed I could hear it in my ears. My entire being narrowed to that point of contact, everything else melting away. Not quite pain, but something close to agony. Memories swirled through my vision. A barren valley, a half-remembered male face. Pain. Such unbearable pain…

I forced my eyes open, unwilling to lose myself to the pain again.

But there was nothing to see but the swirling black void.