70. Veyka

It should have been impossible to be as aroused as I was while also in mind-numbing pain. My leg ached terribly, to say nothing of the pokers of hot fire that shot through my shin if I shifted at all. At least my head had stopped hurting. I'd never missed Isolde and her bright, beautiful healing magic more. And still, the heat of Arran's body pressed up against mine was slowly devouring me from the inside out.

His throaty groans were certainly not helping things.

I forced myself to focus on the communication crystal in my hand.

I muttered the incantation quickly, sighed with relief when the crystal began to glow bright white.

I felt Arran's sharp intake of breath, then the slower release as he caught himself, trying hard not to move me even a fraction of an inch for fear of causing me pain. Brutal Prince, and overprotective skoupuma mother. High King of Annwyn… and my love. My mate.

Cyara's tentative voice spared me that line of thought.

"Veyka?" she said into the darkness of the cave, the crystal quivering with light. It didn't do much, illuminating our thighs pressed together. The light did not reach past my knee—thank the… whoever. I did not want to see the mess Arran had had to sort out.

Nor did I allow myself to look up at his face.

"Yes, I am here," I said, fingers closing tight around the crystal. "As is Arran."

Several beats of silence. "And everyone else?"

Arran made a sound low in his throat. He wasn't the sort to shift about under the weight of other's judgment or expectations. But I could tell from the way his muscles tensed that he was uncomfortable.

And I could not resist needling him. It was almost as good as kissing him.

"We are alone," I told Cyara.

"And you are contacting me?"

Arran's chest contracted as he stifled another groan.

"We are trapped in a solabear cave," he said.

Several months of silence passed. I heard the soft sound of Arran opening his mouth, but the words came directly into my mind, rather than my ears. Will she hear everything we say?

Are you worried? I shot back.

Before he could respond, I spoke aloud. "We will be out by the time you can send help from Eilean Gayl."

There was no pause in Cyara's response this time. "Why can't you get yourself out using the void?"

Shit.

Now I was the one leaving long, heavy pauses.

"She is injured. But she will be fine." Arran spoke with such certainty—as if he had not been begging me to wake mere minutes before. I had barely let myself believe it, the yearning in that plea that had echoed in my heart in the half-conscious moments before opening my eyes. It almost sounded as if he…

Nope. No way. I could not allow myself to go there.

Maybe there was something resembling trust beginning to grow between us again. Mutual respect, perhaps. But not love. Not yet.

I fought back the sob that rose in my chest. "See," I ground out. "If Arran says I will fine, you know it is true."

Arran tensed—recognizing the strain in my voice.

If Cyara did as well, I could not tell over the chastising. "In all the time you've been in my care, you have never once been injured. As soon as you leave me behind, you are trapped in a cave and hurt."

I did not remind her about the Joining, where I'd fallen through the void, crashed onto the floor of my bedroom, and broken nearly every bone in my body.

"You asked to stay behind to monitor Percival and Diana," I said. "And a handmaiden is not the same thing as a nursemaid. Though we could have used your harpy to fight off the solabear."

"She is a harpy?" Arran asked sharply. Reprove, disappointment.

I had not meant to keep it from him. But there were so many things that we'd shared, it was impossible to remember them all, to apprise him of them all. I did not want to remind him. I wanted him to remember. I wanted my mate back. Suddenly, I wanted to jerk away, to sit by myself, even if it meant shivering all night. But my blasted leg held me in place.

"Shall I leave you two alone?" Cyara hummed through the crystal.

I focused all of my attention on the glowing white crystal, refusing to note Arran's movements in the periphery of my vision. "Tell us what you have found out from the priestess."

Cyara reported like the observant, competent sentinel she was quickly becoming. "Percival is the most useful he's ever been. He knows a lot of human history and can match up events with the histories of Annwyn here in Eilean Gayl. They have several legends about the Nightwalkers, but we are still trying to figure out how those fit with Annwyn. If they do at all.

"The priestess and her acolyte have taken to Diana. Most of the time I only understand half of what they are saying. There are several mentions of a book called The Travelers, but it is not in the collection here at Eilean Gayl."

Percival being helpful. I almost snorted again. But if there was one thing to motivate him, it was his sister. And Diana was moldable; Cyara had proved as much. Maybe it made me ruthless to use the two human prisoners like this. Or maybe it just made me a queen.

"So... not much progress," I said after I'd finished digesting.

"Nothing that changes our course of action," Cyara agreed. She did not sigh—she was much too practice for that. She did add, "Diana has an idea, but…" Another long pause, "We can discuss it when you return."

If I had looked up, I would have seen Arran's jaw ticking. I felt certain. Not being able to see was sharpening all of my other senses. I could hear the subtle inhales and exhales he tried to modulate. He had not missed Cyara's implication.

Cyara, ever faithful, spared me from having to defend myself either way.

"Did you get the amorite?" she asked.

I nodded, even though she could not see it. "Yes."

Vera and Kay were already preparing the first shipment. When we arrived back in Eilean Gayl, we would send back more terrestrials to help with the transport. In the meantime, we each carried bags full of as much amorite as we could carry without impeding our movements.

"Thank the Ancestors," Cyara said through the crystal.

"We should be able to outfit all of the males at Eilean Gayl with amorite amulets or earrings. But beyond that, we shall have to decide who and what. There will not be enough."

The weight of that thought had settled upon my shoulders with each step away from Castle Chariot. How would we allocate the amorite? Who would be most important? Guards and warriors would be the most dangerous if vulnerable to the succubus, but fathers and brothers living across Annwyn could decimate their entire families in the span of a few minutes. The memory of the burning human village seared through my mind. It might have already begun in Annwyn. If word had been sent to Baylaur, or if citizens had petitioned there, I would have no way of knowing, sequestered as I was in Eilean Gayl above the Spine.

The guilt turned my stomach.

Arran cleared his throat. "Especially once we start making weapons."

Now the guilt threatened to choke me.

"I did not agree to that," I said sharply.

Hell—it was hell to be pressed together like this and unable to move. Unable to glare at him or bare my teeth.

"War is coming, whether you can acknowledge it or not. There is not enough amorite to protect all the males in Annwyn. We must be able to kill the succubus who do come," Arran said. He was not even being cruel, no disdain or superiority in his voice. Just a battle commander stating the facts of the enemy at hand.

It made me want to vomit.

"It will not get to war," I said. I would not let it. That was the reason Cyara was searching with Diana and Percival. We had to find a way to stop the succubus before it came to war—a war we could not possibly win. A war that would mean the death of thousands of fae to the succubus, both in possession and murder.

Seven thousand years later, we still called it The Great War. I would not allow history to repeat itself.

"This argument is immaterial at the moment. You are trapped in a cave," Cyara said through the crystal, her voice flaring around us. Chastising us like children.

It was about to become an argument. I could feel the tightness of Arran's arm where it curved around me. The fingers, which had held my arm with soft possession, were now stiff.

"We will be back at Eilean Gayl in a few days," I said. Cyara had given me an out—I would take it.

"Good," she said, voice already fading. "Contact me again if you need help."

The crystal went dark.

I wondered how long we would sit in silent darkness, both of us too stubborn or afraid to breach the chasm that had opened between us. We'd made no progress on this argument—defensive or offensive. Protect or prepare. We had no round table to sit around and hash it out. That should not have mattered, we should have been able to discuss it anywhere.

Except that we were not the High Queen and King who had left Baylaur months ago. Neither of us.

"She is quite formidable," Arran finally said when I moved to tuck the communication crystal back into my pocket.

I chuckled, careful this time not to jar my leg. "The former captain of my Goldstones was afraid of her."

I heard the sound of Arran's teeth clenching together before he wrenched them open to say, "The one who tried to kill you."

"One and the same," I nodded.

Neither of us expanded on that. Arran's reaction to my joking while eating croissants at Castle Chariot was burned into my mind. Part of me savored it, his protectiveness. But the other part… it was empty. An instinct borne of the mating bond, not of any real love for me.

With the crystal put away and darkness all around us, there was nothing left to do but sleep. Yet I knew that neither of us would be able to anytime soon. I knew Arran like I knew myself; better, probably. I understood the tension he tried to coax out of his fingertips where they were curled around my shoulder. I caught the soft, surprised exhale when I leaned my head onto his shoulder.

He wanted to give in, to let himself trust me. Maybe love me. But he was afraid. As I had been, before. It was torture, to have the roles reversed. Arran had been the steady one. I would have waited a thousand years for you to realize what was right in front of you, he'd said in the faerie caves. Yet, here we were, scant months later, and I was the one bursting with love while he struggled to parse need and the mating bond from real emotions.

I understood. I really did.

He had none of the last months together for context. He'd been dropped into a life wholly different from the one he remembered.

But understanding did not make it hurt any less.

I felt his throat working a second before he spoke.

"The solabear hibernates all winter," he said, quietly even though it was just the two of us. Something about the darkness hushed our voice.

"And I thought I was grumpy in the morning," I scoffed. But I understood the thrust of his thoughts. "Is it possible we got too close to its den? Woke it up?"

"Or someone else did." The cool veneer fractured with those words. Battling the succubus was one thing; threatening his mate was another. His beast responded on a primal level.

Those words promised death.

"I saw… something. An animal, or several, retreating into the woods. Right before I lost consciousness," I admitted. The images were vague, addled by my head wound. But my instinct told me they were real, not a delusion conjured by my mind.

Arran's arm tightened around me. Shockingly—thankfully—the slight movement did not cause a lash of pain. My leg was healing.

"Maybe you were not as effective at threatening Palomides as you thought,"he said.

"Or maybe one of the terrestrials in Eilean Gayl saw an opportunity to be clear of the conniving elementals," I sassed back.

Arran went rigid. "What do you mean by that?"

I should tell him.

The vines that had tried to pull me down on the bridge when we'd first arrived. The threat carved into the stairwell, bathed in blood. The looks that the terrestrials gave me. How I'd figured out that the guards Elayne stationed at our doors, the secluded tower suite she'd given us, were not to trap us but to protect me. The attack on Isolde. And finally, Palomides admission that someone within Eilean Gayl had reported about Arran's injury.

But it was so much to explain. And I was so tired. And if I did tell him… how could I know he would not take the side of the terrestrials, his own people, over me? The female who had been forced upon him?

So instead of the truth, I said, "Terrestrials hate elementals."

And I pretended like I was not part of the reason for the chasm between us.