13. Restitution

Restitution

W hether it was Danica's or some other unfortunate noble lady's, clothing had been found for me, and the three women did a good job getting me ready. The Feast of Bronze Voices apparently had something to do with temple bells, and my jewelry corresponded. I had anklets and hand-flowers with tiny bells on them, all in bright silver. A set of body-chains ran from a heavy collar necklace across my decolletage, down my cleavage, and off the backs of my shoulders to lie in sultry, bell-lined arcs along my bare skin, emphasizing the curve of my hips and shape of my breasts.

The dress itself was designed with the body-chains in mind. The dark violet-gray silk was cut in a deep vee down the front that hid the outside curves of the chains, making it look even sexier by tantalizing the mind as to exactly where those chains lay. At the base of my ribcage, the dress went under the chains, so that they lay across the dark silk in silver arcs. A slit ran up the side of my left thigh clear up to the top of my hip, baring another set of body-chains curving over my thigh.

Even though the hem fell all the way to my ankles, that slit meant that if I wasn't careful, my whole pussy would be out. It was obviously intended only for slinking around sexily in, or maybe sitting in while carefully posed.

It did manage to make my mediocre cleavage look rockstar hot, though, so there was that. I could handle not running or jumping around for a single night if I could look like a femme fatale.

Guards had apparently been assigned to me while I'd been sleeping, because four were standing outside my room when some sort of event manager arrived to take me to where I needed to go. They peeled off to walk with me like bodyguards, which left me marginally uncomfortable for about thirty seconds, and then smirkingly pleased with myself, as if I'd done something to earn the retinue.

To my surprise, the event manager didn't take me to a banquet hall, or even a staging space for one. He took me to a small, luxuriously-appointed room, ushered me in, and abandoned me there .

With Cass.

My soulmate was sitting on a backless couch with his head in his hands, his bronze-feathered wings hanging over the back. Bowed back, slumped shoulders, weariness in every line of his body… it was a posture of total misery.

"Hi," I said, unsure of what to do or say.

Cass looked up at me and tried to smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes. "Quyen. Hi." He sat up and rolled his shoulders back, settling his wings behind him. "Are you feeling any better?"

Not great, but I didn't think that was a useful answer to give him. Cass was overwhelmed by circumstances and buried under guilt, and he desperately wanted this to work, with no idea how to make that happen.

I didn't know how, either, but it seemed cruel to leave him drowning.

So I smiled at him, and I walked over. Instead of taking a seat next to him, I pulled over the ottoman and sat down facing him, leaning back on my hands so I could look up into his eyes comfortably. I searched his expression, trying to figure out how to deal with my soulmate. "Better than expected, all things considered. But you're really fucked up about the past six weeks, aren't you? Worse than I am."

He closed his eyes in a pained expression. After a moment, he nodded, looking down and away. Even his wings slumped, the weight of shame dragging at him. "Soulmates have to meet for the bond to form," he said in a low voice. "True contact, not simply passing in the street. The meeting of eyes, or purposeful touch." Cass sighed, dropping his head. "I remember falling. But it was so much. Every inch of Mercy wanted me— was me. Is me," he added in a whisper. "I should have known. Shouldn't have forgotten. Instead I hurt you, because I was overwhelmed and didn't take the time to figure out why I kept dreaming about forests and having nightmares about falling."

Even more than me, I imagined that falling would be a nightmare for a man with wings. At least when I was midair, I expected to be falling. For Cass to fall, he would have to be badly injured, knowing he could save himself and unable to act.

"I'm not hurt," I said softly.

Cass flinched and didn't say anything, his ears lying flat against his head in an automatic denial. Well, that matched what Danica had said about fae. I wanted to reach out and take his hand to try to comfort him, but I didn't want to push him. Maybe we could figure out the touch thing later.

"I get that you don't believe that," I continued, watching him, my brow furrowed as I tried to puzzle this out. "But the sex stuff… honestly, it wasn't that much different from living next door to a couple who's enthusiastic about going at it, at least once I figured out what was going on." When he looked sidelong at me, his expression wary, I flashed him a smile. "I hear fae fuck in public. What's so different about this?"

He gave me a look like I should know better. "You had to feel it." Cass swallowed and dropped his eyes again. "You couldn't turn away. That's more than hearing someone through the wall or seeing them in public, when you can leave if you so choose."

"Fair point." I reached up with my foot and nudged the cushion he was sitting on. "For what it's worth, while it was, um, mandatory? It's not like I was entirely unenthused. I was having a shit time of it in the wilderness, and it felt, um. Pretty incredible."

His ears dropped down into a self-conscious-looking pose. "Ah… That's…" Cass laughed, the sound one of a man burning off nervous energy rather than one of amusement. "Gods. I don't know how to navigate this with you. This isn't the first time someone linked to me has experienced that, but they always knew what it was. Who I was. I always had their knowing consent. With you…" He sighed through his nose. "You do realize that if we were anything other than soulmates, you could claim the sort of debt from me that would take centuries to pay, yes?"

"You saved my life," I reminded him. "Not just once, and not from things you were also causing. Butcher knife through my chest, remember?"

He went very still, a sense of controlled calm washing through me. The floor shivered underfoot. Thorns jutted out from the stems of the cut flowers in the vase on the coffee table.

My eyes widened.

Cass took a careful breath. "Of your kindness, don't casually remind me that people in my Court put a knife into my soulmate. At least not with such flippancy," he said, his voice held level. He inhaled slowly, looking back into my eyes. "The palace is far too willing to respond to my hand. My control is very good, but…" One corner of his mouth twitched. "Until I became King, I never had power like this at my command. You saw what happened when I channeled it unfettered and unwarned. I could do that again. I could do worse than that. At least I only healed what was already broken."

"…Aren't you a healer?" I ventured, eyeing the now-thorny daisies. "Why would you do something worse?" As eerie as the weather reflecting his unhappiness was, it was still normal weather. It wasn't like he'd been calling down tornadoes. The Court was just trying to rain us out so we didn't have to be there anymore.

He flashed me a tight smile, discomfort in every line of his body. "Even a typical healer can stop hearts and wipe minds, and I'm a command healer," he said. "I can make people's bodies eat them alive. Rot flesh off bone, make them feel endless pain, grow their bones through their skin or open weeping sores on every inch of their body." Cass exhaled through his teeth, shoulders sagging. "Everyone in this Court is at my mercy, Quyen. Everyone."

I swallowed, nauseous from the mental imagery. " Oh," I said, too shakily for him to miss how upsetting that knowledge was.

"I don't think I can hurt you accidentally any more than I can hurt myself," he said quietly, jaw working. "My reflexive healing makes it effectively impossible to cause myself harm without deliberate, focused intent. But for everyone else…"

"So don't do things that'll make you see red, huh?" I asked, trying to sound playful—to leaven the mood, at least a little bit.

I got a bleak smile in return. "I'd like to believe I'm not a disaster waiting to happen. I spent three hundred years training to be otherwise. But I have strong defensive instincts." Cass' expression went rueful. "I don't handle injury to my people well, and as my soulmate, you're automatically in that circle."

I pursed my lips, digesting that. "I'm guessing that applies to the sex stuff, too, huh?"

His ears leaned back, not quite pinning. "Yes. It's worse, actually, that I'm the source of damage. I ought to be protecting you, not hurting you."

"Not hurt," I reminded him. "I do get it if you'd rather do chastity for a bit instead of, uh, setting a schedule or whatever. It's your call." Even though it made me uncomfortable, I added, "If you really feel like you have to make it up to me, maybe I can think of a couple ways?"

Those pointed ears of his perked right back up. Cass sat up straighter, nervous hope lighting his face. "You can?"

I breathed a laugh, tipping my head back until I could feel my hair against my bare shoulders. The movement made the tiny bells tinkle and the chains catch the light, and I got to watch Cass realizing for the first time that I was dressed to entice.

His eyes dropped to my cleavage, down to my mostly-bare thigh draped with delicate chains, and jumped back up to my breasts. He swallowed, adam's-apple bobbing. His fingertips dug into his legs, and Cass managed to yank his eyes off the silver chains back to my face.

My body stayed in regimented calm. The only inward proof of Cass' outward interest was the tension in my thighs, but his battle with his eyes told me plenty. He could control his physical arousal all he wanted. He was still a man, and he liked to look.

Smirking, I raised one brow.

Cass swallowed again. "You look…"

"Ravishing?" I supplied, trying not to grin. Getting that reaction from someone who looked like him was gratifying, to say the least.

One corner of his mouth lifted. He looked a bit disbelieving. "That works."

I bit my lip. The threatening grin spread. "So you're a visual guy, huh?"

Cass let out a breathy laugh. "Very. If you'd like admiration, I'm happy to lend a roving eye." He reached up and rubbed at his temples, making a playful grimace. "You're truly not angry at me?"

"I'm really not," I said. I nudged his couch cushion with my toes again, making my anklet chime. "Not right now, at least, and definitely not for you getting me off."

That phrasing made his thighs tense again, but in a sexy way. Cass looked back over at me, covering his mouth like he was hiding his expression. "For other things, though?"

Not wanting to make him feel worse, I shrugged, a little uncomfortably. "It was a pretty unpleasant six weeks. I really…" I sighed through my nose, looking away. "It would have been nice to have been rescued instead of having to bushwhack my way here. There were a couple times I got caught up by the Court, too. For days, maybe. That was pretty existentially scary."

"But there's things you want from me?" he pressed. He leaned forward, dark eyes searching my expression. "Things I could do as restitution?"

He's so fae , I thought, watching him. That visceral desire for balance was alien to me. It seemed so self-centered; focused on one's own ledger instead of that of one's family or the world as a whole. It made me uncomfortable, even – or especially – knowing that it was in his very nature.

"Ehh." I got up and sauntered over to the small table of snacks, browsing through it. "I don't really hold with that sort of thing, and even if I did, I don't feel like you owe me anything for it, so… kind of hard to tally the ledger for it."

"There aren't any true debts between us. I know that," he offered after a moment. "Those bound soul-to-soul cannot owe each other anything, because everything one possesses, the other does as well. There's no measure of debt between us for me to feel weighing down on me. It doesn't work that way." Cass let out a tired sigh. "Yet I've mistreated you, even by ignorance, and that shifts the balance between us towards an oppositional one."

I turned, toying with a bite-sized nut pie. "Aren't they all supposed to be good? That's what Danica said."

The corner of his mouth tilted up into a self-deprecating smile. "As valuable as opposition can be in one's life, I admit that I'm desperately envious of what Vad has in Dani, and I'd much prefer we found our balance in alignment."

"Hm." I tilted my head to the side, enjoying the way the ends of my hair felt against my bare shoulders and the way Cass' eyes kept flickering down to my cleavage. "I don't mind a bit of sparring in my life, but if you want something softer, you could get me flowers or something. I like pretty things and fun adventures. Shiny jewelry. I dunno."

One ear tilted towards me as an expression of puzzlement settled on his face. "Flowers hardly seem like an equal repayment for six weeks of suffering. "

"So?" I countered. "It can be a good start, or whatever. You can't argue me out of liking the things I like." I shook my head and put the pie back down, not really hungry enough to snack before dinner. "I guess I'll look forward to seeing what you decide to do about it."

His brows pulled together in an expression of mild confusion. "But we haven't concluded a bargain."

I made a face at him. "I haven't really had a great time making bargains with fae thus far, splendor," I pointed out. "Besides, relationships are supposed to be conversations, right? Not formal negotiations."

"I'm fae," he said, sounding lost.

"And I'm mortal," I replied. "Don't like your measure of our balance? You know how to change it. We don't need a bargain for that."