51. Inlaws

Inlaws

I got the story out of Kat while she put me into the slinky midnight-blue dress and did my makeup. As Cass had once told me, the former King had killed himself to put Cass on the throne. What hadn't occurred to me at the time was that, if King Omahice had been blood-linked to Cass, it should have been all but impossible for him to kill himself. Cass would have reflexively intervened, and kept him alive.

But Omahice had been suffering from a fae condition called "deliquescence." Put too much magical power into a living creature, it turned out, and they'll literally start dissolving from it, coming apart at the seams as they liquefy. Cass had been trying to revert that , burning away magical power by healing near-lethal damage to himself and using that narrow window of time to command-heal the King's body back together. It meant that when he wasn't actively burning magic, he had to focus on not healing Omahice, in the same way he stayed up to keep from healing the land itself.

That gave Omahice the slimmest chance. He needed to die in the space between heartbeats, faster than Cass could detect and combat.

The Raven Crown Prince had provided the tool: a rare dagger made with the clipped quill from a still-living manticore, one Ayre Brouwer née Xirangyl, his younger brother and the half-manticore King of Windswept Court. Omahice had used it, and as he'd wanted, Cass had become King.

Now here we were.

I joined Cass in our staging room with some trepidation. Up until seven weeks ago, Pelleas wouldn't have shown his face in the Court of Mercy. Cass had very little reason to like him, and a lot of reason to take out his ire at being the Merciful King on the obvious target the Raven Prince offered. But we'd made our bargain with Faerqen to give hospitality to Pelleas for the next fifty years, and the prince obviously knew about it.

Cass and I came in by the normal door, strolling in with me in front as if this was a casual encounter and not an ambush. Two women sitting at one of the gaming-tables stood when we came in, but my eyes were drawn magnetically to the man sprawled like a panther on the central couch of the room.

Pelleas had obviously arranged himself for maximum impact, with an eye to the artistic. His bat-winged cloak fell across the seat of the couch and dripped to the floor as if it was poured ink, and he had his shiny black riding-boots propped up on the coffee table. Deep royal purple brocade several shades darker than his violet hair fit his lean body to perfection, the gold in it matching the gold edging of his cloak and the gold rings in his nose and ears. All of it had to be actual gold, though I couldn't place the brilliant black gems dangling from his lobes and in the diadem on his brow. They had as much fire as moissanite, but it seemed weird for fae to have lab-made gems.

At my back, I felt Cass go still, a shocked halt that came with sweat prickling down my spine and under my arms. A shark's smile turned up the prince's full mouth.

"Mother?" Cass said, his voice catching. "Tarra?"

Oh, shit .

"Well met, your majesties," Pelleas purred from his position on the couch. He swirled a wine glass, his long black-enameled nails gleaming in the light. "I hadn't anticipated returning to the Court of Mercy so soon, but. Well. Princesses deserve a royal escort, don't you think?" He held the wine glass up to the light, looking through the red wine with a desultory air. "Oh—" he added, as if he'd almost forgotten to say the next words, "Ithronel sends her regards."

My blood ran cold. Without even thinking, I put my right hand on the pommel of my sword, getting a languid, heavy-lidded smile from the prince. Swordmistress would be pleased , I thought distantly. I didn't take my hand off the sword, though I let my grip ease until only my fingertips rested on the hilt. Against glamor, the only defense was steel.

"Ithronel?" I said pleasantly. "I'm surprised she managed to build herself a body so soon."

"Gods can be so troubling, can't they?" Pelleas said in a croon. "Especially when they have such devoted followers, and such easy access to places of power."

Paloma , I thought, and the caves .

A petulant sound drew my attention over to the two women for the first time. They were certainly dressed like princesses, I'd give them that. Whoever had seen to their wardrobe had done a great job; the evening gown made entirely of crystals appliqued on cloth that matched the skin tone of the taller of the women exactly looked like it could have come off a red carpet, and the soft green tulle on the petulant one emphasized her full curves and plunged down to bare a décolletage worthy of a courtesan.

The taller woman had an elegant bearing and a cold expression. Her warm brown skin was a shade darker than Cass,' and the black waves that tumbled down from her updo had the same curl. She looked a great deal like him, actually, down to the flat brows, dark eyes, and the strength of her hands, but unlike my powerful warrior-angel of a King, she was willowy, and stood maybe five feet ten inches—tall for a woman, but hardly the outlier Cass was.

The other had striking sapphire eyes shrouded by dense lashes and a full mouth pursed in a moue. Her black hair fell in perfect ringlets around her soft face, and what had come out in brawn for Cass had turned in her towards the sort of womanly shape men pant after like hound-dogs. She was, if I was being honest, even more drop-dead gorgeous than Danica, which was saying something. Dani looked like an old-timey Hollywood bombshell. This woman, with her flawless tan skin and lush body, looked like she'd walked out of a sultan's harem.

"You're being so rude, Xarcassah," Blue-eyes whined, her lower lip sticking out. "Darling Pelly-welly brought us all the way here through those nasty caves and you can't even say 'hello' properly."

Pelleas' expression didn't change one iota. His hand didn't tighten on the wine glass, nor did his shoulders so much as tense. But I felt the raw disgust dripping off of him, seeping into the floor of my palace like spilled wine into a carpet. Darling Pelly-welly despised the beautiful woman standing there. I was willing to bet any amount of money that he would have preferred to leave her in the nasty caves rather than suffer her company all the way here.

At least I had an answer for how he'd ambushed us with them, and verification that the militant Ithronel faction had escaped through the caves. They might very well have gone to Raven Court. Why not? If Faerqen had done as he'd suggested he'd do, and given Ithronel another source of power, it was possible he'd even orchestrated the whole thing himself and sent her to his buddy Ruekh. An ally of his prey turned into his own ally seemed like something of a coup.

"Well met, Tarra," Cass said, like a man who'd seen a ghost—like a man in a nightmare, the words falling off his tongue because he had no other options. "Welcome to my home, and to my hearth. I offer you the hospitality of my Court." He swallowed hard enough that I could hear it. "And welcome to you, too, Yllana Kovaiy." A harsh breath. "Mother. It's been a long time."

"It has," the taller woman said. Her dark gaze slid over to me. "We accept your hospitality, of course, even if it should have come sooner, and the invitation from your hand. Introduce us to your companion." The imperious words hit like arrows. Yllana was used to being obeyed. She was used to Cass obeying.

What do I call her? I asked Cass through our bond, giving him a mental nudge. Cassie. What's her relationship to me?

He looked at me, shock and pleading on his face. He really needed to work on his poker face—but given that the alternative was the whole Court shouting his emotions, I wouldn't complain. It was an enormous testament to how far he'd come, and to how relaxed he was after our time together, that the only thing showing his unhappiness was his face.

"It's…" he said out loud. Mother-in-soul , he thought to me, the words tinny. She's— That's— "Mother, Tarra," Cass said aloud, still sounding dazed. "This is Quyen. My… my soulmate."

Tarra's face scrunched up like she'd stepped on a bug with her bare foot. Yllana's expression remained chilly, the sort of polite expression movie stars wear when they get cornered by paparazzi and have the tolerance for it.

"What a pleasure to meet you at last, Mother-in-soul," I said with a smile, as if I was delighted by this change in circumstances. I gave her the same bow I would have given a woman like Bà, trying to smooth things over with respect even though the sight of the woman who'd tortured my Cass for her own convenience made me want to bare my teeth like a wild animal. "We were hoping to have the Court in some semblance of order before we asked you to join us here. Things have been so troubled—"

"Gods, of course you ended up with a mortal soulmate," Tarra said with a little ugh on the tail end, cutting me off. Her nose wrinkled up like she'd smelled something bad.

"Now, Tarra darling, what would make you say a thing like that?" Pelleas drawled. He glanced over at Yllana, his pale gaze shrouded by dark violet lashes. "Don't tell me you're a seer."

"Well, just look at him, Pelly-boo," she said with another practiced pout. "He's such a bru—"

"Powerful. King," Yllana said, cutting in with sharp command. "Isn't he, pumpkin?"

Tarra jerked backwards. Her eyes darted between her mother and Pelleas for several seconds, until it slowly dawned on her that she was the only one on the make-fun-of-Cass-to-his-face train. Her whole demeanor melted into sugary-sweetness, all the petulant cruelty leaving her expression. "He is," she said, in the way of a sycophant repeating the words of her goddess. Tarra turned and gave Cass a brilliant smile. "You are, brother."

Cass had his eyes closed and teeth clenched. I could hear his meditative count in the back of my mind—could feel sensation of rivers freezing and snow falling as he tried to find somewhere, anywhere, to spend the tumult. The corners of his mouth trembled, and the nausea of his agony and turmoil made the back of my throat itch.

Knowing I would get all that and more, I gently laid the backs of my fingers against the rich sapphire cloth of his fitted sleeve. He was such a storm inside that I didn't even get any thoughts from him, only raw emotion and flickers of memories, a hundred thousand unhealed wounds from a family that had never deserved him. I knew what being called a brute meant to him, and I knew, too, that he must have heard that exact same barb a thousand times over when he'd been with Dellaphine, all those years ago.

M-I-N-E , I traced on my thigh, heart in my throat. I couldn't be anything but mortal. He couldn't be anything but what he was, either. It was up to him if he could step past how that looked to people like Tarra.

He reached over slowly and covered my small hand with his. Cass took a deep breath, then very deliberately turned away from his family and met my questioning gaze with his wounded one. Eyes on me, he lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles, then turned my hand over and pressed another to my palm. Carefully, he closed my fingers around the kiss. "Yours," he murmured back. "I'm yours, first and forever. Don't pay their petty cruelties any mind, my Queen."

I could only stare up at him with my pounding heart threatening to escape the confines of my ribcage. He'd just… Had he really said that in front of everyone? They were his family —

You picked me over yours, and mine are awful. Don't act so surprised , Cass said to me through our bond, a half-smile slanting his mouth. The stress seemed to fall away with his skin against mine, the rest of the world fading into the background. He straightened and swept his eyes across the trio. "We were to have dinner with Kettekh Alair, the Misted Duke," he said in a placid voice, the one he used when he was about an inch away from losing his grip on his leash. "I feel certain he won't mind being introduced. Why don't the three of you join us."

It wasn't a suggestion.

Tarra simpered and Yllana smiled, but it was Pelleas who answered. "Of course, your splendor," he said, regarding us with interest. "It would be my pleasure to dine with such fascinating soulmates."