7. Archangels

Archangels

I had to slow down once I hit the city. It was maybe four in the morning, and a mud-splattered, sweaty woman in ragged clothing running at full-tilt through the city roads would have raised eyebrows. Given that anyone beelining it through the city would also set off alarms, I didn't even go up to the city gates, veering into the woods a couple miles to the north and swinging back west onto the main road.

There were more people than I expected along the road, including in full-on encampments—not the kind you see under city overpasses, but like something out of a big music festival. There were some people who looked like straight-up cultists, wearing robes and waving feathers around while chanting, and a bunch more who looked like medieval peasants getting ready for a party.

Entrepreneurs hawked wares along the road. I bought food at three separate food stalls that were already open, despite it still being at least an hour before sunrise. One even had coffee, which I welcomed like the elixir of the gods. The press of people thinned, though, before I made it all the way up to the gates of the palace, and then vanished. The empty road in the dark of night seemed more forbidding than even the deepest forest.

Gnawing on my last muffin, I started slowing, a sense of dread settling onto my shoulders. I couldn't tell whether it was mine or Cass'. Maybe it was both.

The forest opened again before I reached the palace, and not in a natural way. This land had been kept clear for what had to be millennia, and it was obviously groomed, in the way of city parks and grassy spaces around reservoirs. It gave the men standing guard at the foregates of the drawbridge plenty of time to see me coming.

"State your business, traveler," one of the four said in a bored tone, as world-weary as any cashier repeating their company's script for the umpteenth time that day.

I took a deep breath. "I'm here to see the King. Xarcassah Marys."

His companion snorted, but didn't move, blocking the way to the drawbridge with his body and spear .

"Commoners are welcomed into the Clement Palace for open court on the dextral and sinistral days of the lunam, save for when those days fall outside of risva or on other celebrations," he said, still in that droning voice. "The palace is barred to outsiders for the next six days in celebration of the glorious ascension of His Splendor, Xarcassah Marys—"

I held up my hand, peeved. "Look, I have no fucking clue what any of that means." I glared at him, trying not to let the irritation of having been awake for the past four-plus days make me do something stupid. "I've come a really fucking long way, and I really need to see him."

He rolled his eyes. "Miss, half the Court's come a really fucking long way," he said, some heat coming into his voice. "You're no exception. The King, in his graciousness, has provided food and shelter at four sites towards Taeskana—"

"For fuck's sake!" I threw up my hands. "Just let me through! What do you want? Money? I have money. How much do you want?"

My sense of the Court – of Cass – itched under my skin. I snapped my head up towards the sky, as if he'd be flying overhead, and jerked my eyes back down before I could look like even more of a crazy person.

"Look, lady," the second guard said. He was mortal, too, and he looked even more annoyed than his partner. "This isn't a negotiation. You're not allowed into the palace. Everyone who's invited is inside already, and you crazy pilgrims don't get to waltz in just because you're filthier and more obsessed than everyone else."

He thought I was one of the fucking cultists.

A pale flicker caught my eye. Some people in white started walking towards us from the other end of the drawbridge, going past the guards without pausing.

Shit, they were absolutely going to throw me out.

The urge to do something about them curled under my skin, a deadly promise of death and rot. I shoved it way, way down, desperate to keep from slaughtering people at the King's doorstep.

"I really, really have to see him," I insisted, my voice going too shrill. "If you could just let me through. I promise I'm not a pilgrim, or a cultist, or whatever. He's the only person who can help. The Court—"

"You're just in time," a lilting female voice said, bright with humor.

I darted my gaze towards her, shocked. At first glance, she looked like something out of a religious pamphlet, all white and gold and lovely, as did the man next to her—until it sunk in that she had sharp gold horns jutting through her dark hair, and he had clawed wings, tattoos, and the sort of smoldering eyes and smirk that scream "bad boy." If they were a painting, they were one made by someone who had something to say about devils and angels.

Her full mouth curved up into a wicked smile. "Let her through," she said, holding my gaze with the satisfaction of a cat. "His Majesty will want to see his soulmate."

I stared at her. So did the guard.

She raised one brow. "Well?"

"Ah, yes, Archangel," the man stammered out. He jumped to the side, jerking himself up into some semblance of attention. "Your… majesty. Welcome to the Clement Palace."

The woman flashed him a brilliant smile. "Lovely," she said, and glanced up at her companion, who looked bemused more than delighted. "You think you can find Cass?"

"You really think…?" he murmured. At her impish nod, he laughed and shook out his wings. "Well, alright. I'll see if I can hunt him down." He didn't waste time with niceties. He simply took a running start and jumped off the edge of the drawbridge, his wings catching the air with a snap! and sending a cold breeze across us.

"C'mon," the woman said, tilting her head towards the palace gates. "There's not a lot of time."

I went with her, because my other option was hanging out with some seriously nervous-looking guards, and she obviously knew Cass. She moved at a good clip; even though I was only maybe an inch or two shorter than her, I had to trot to keep up.

The palace was carved directly into the mountainside, with a bunch of outbuildings and a big wall that looked like it might have been a solid piece of bedrock. The Archangel didn't give me any time to appreciate it, striding past what looked like formal gardens and in through a pair of enormous double doors that a pair of footmen opened without needing to be told to do so.

"Okay," she said once we were inside, in the no-nonsense way of someone gearing up for a lecture, and didn't stop walking. If anything, she stretched her pace, moving with the determination of a commuter at rush hour. "You probably have a thousand questions, and I'll try to answer them while you get clean, but let me try to head some off at the pass. I'm Danica. The Fury on the drawbridge with me was Vaduin. He's my soulmate and Cass' best friend. Cass is your soulmate, obviously, and he's also the King of the Court of Mercy, going on six weeks now, which makes you the Merciful Queen. Today is your guys' coronation, so, um, congratulations—"

"I don't know what a soulmate is," I blurted out, since she was obviously not going to give me any time to speak. The Queen thing seemed less pressing than the why . I'd already figured out that Cass was the King. What I wanted to know was why I was so aggressively attached to him.

She halted, giving me a surprised glance.

"I mean, I do," I said lamely, since anyone who'd ever read a fairytale knew about soulmates. "Like, in books and stuff. But if this whole weird empathy thing is what you mean, then, um. No. I don't know about that."

Danica pursed her lips, shook her head, and went right back to booking it down the shining, inlaid floor of the hallway. "You haven't been here long, then," she said, glancing over her shoulder at me as I trotted after her.

"Uh, seven—no, um, I guess like eight or nine months, now," I said, the anxiety making me jittery. If that emotion was from Cass – and maybe it was, given that it was his fucking coronation day – it was really annoying. "And, uh… super off-the-books. I know basically zilch about where we are, what 'here' even is, or any of the rules aside from 'never make a bargain with the fae.'"

"Black night," she muttered, taking a turn at enough speed that the person heading the other direction down the hallway had to jump out of her way. "Okay. That's fine. It doesn't really matter, since Cass sort of upended most of the rules when he became King. For the record, we're in the Court of Mercy, which is part of the Western Continent of Faery, which for all intents and purposes is like the Faery in books. There's a veil between worlds and everything."

She flung open a door and stepped inside, holding it open. "Shower," Danica said, pointing at another door off the suite. It looked like something out of a five-star hotel, all clean and neat, with furniture that was probably worth more money than I made in a year back home. "Hot water's on the right. You can use whatever soap."

"Uh…" I said, not moving from out of the doorway. "Why? Not that, like, I don't want to be less filthy, but, um… why?"

"Because in a little under an hour, you need to be presentable to both the Royal Seneschal and the high priestess of the goddess of mercy," she said in the patient voice people use when talking to overly-curious children. "And, honestly, because you look like you've been through hell and back, and while Cass is pretty chill with people who look like something a cat dragged in since he's a healer, he looks jaw-droppingly sexy in his coronation outfit, and you'll probably feel better about meeting him if you look nice, too."

A spike of jealous outrage surged in my chest at this other woman talking about Cass like that. That was ridiculous. The man didn't even know I existed , for fuck's sake.

I still headed to the shower, stripping as I went.

I cranked the water, and didn't wait for it to get hot. The cold water hit me like a blast of A/C on a muggy summer's day. It stripped away the tacky layer of dried sweat, and with near-hysterical relief I dumped shampoo onto a sponge and started scrubbing at my dirt-covered skin.

"Soulmates," I said, loud enough to be heard over the shower. "What the fuck are they?"

"We're perfect matches," she called back. I heard her rustling around in the room, and a sharp grunt as she moved something heavy. "It's some sort of big-'F' Faery magic, and fae treat it basically with the same reverence the gods get, if not more so. Something like one in a thousand fae have one, and probably less. Every now and again, a fae ends up with a mortal soulmate, like you and me, and we end up inheriting their immortality, and sometimes other stuff. It's, um…" More rustling. "It's not always a love match. It can be anything."

I shoved the shower door further open so I could hear her better, letting the now-hot spray wet the mat. "Define 'anything.'"

"Literally anything," she said, sounding distracted. "Could be anything from hated enemies to best friends to, y'know, fairytale love." A pause in the banging around she was doing. "The fairytale love is really nice, but I'm told rivalry is, too, so maybe it's all good."

I grunted at that and chose to focus on how nice it felt to have hot water pounding against my body instead of the chilly finger of fear running down my spine. Soulmates didn't sound like Long Beach was in my future. Soulmates sounded like a new life, one bound to a man I didn't know, with me plucked out of the world as his companion.

There were plenty of humans in Faery. Fae loved using us as a labor source. If only fae had soulmates, did that mean that he wasn't really my soulmate? Did the fact that I was painfully aware of him, and he didn't know me from a face in the crowd, mean that I was some sort of cosmic gift to him?

Obsessing about it wouldn't change anything, though, and given the fact that I was getting swept into coronation proceedings, I didn't think there'd be time to discuss until later. "Tell me the empathy thing gets easier," I called, because I needed a distraction. "How'd you deal with it?"

Danica poked her nose into the bathroom, looking rueful. "You're feeling what he's feeling?"

"Yeah, no shit," I said. I stuck my head back under the water to rinse out my hair for the second time. "He's hard to ignore."

She wrinkled her nose. "That's a Cass thing, not a soulmate thing," she said. "I've been blood-linked to him before, and that was weird enough when I knew what… was…" Her face suddenly paled, eyes widening and an expression of mild horror settling onto her fine-boned features. "So, um," Danica said, not-at-all casually, but with the air of someone trying to pretend they weren't about to freak out, "how much of Cass are you getting? And for how long?"

I paused in my scrubbing, giving the Archangel a sidelong look. Yeah. That is absolutely the look of a woman who isn't excited about her dirty laundry getting aired.

It did explain his enthusiasm two weeks prior.

I did my best to suppress the hot surge of jealousy. Cass having a life wasn't a crime. He hadn't even known I existed.

He should have fucking known.

I tried to ignore that bitter thought, too.

"Everything," I said placidly, "from the moment His Splendor became King."

"Ah," she said, sounding strangled. "How's that been."

I gave her another sidelong glance. "Enlightening."

"Cooool, cool cool cool," she said, and ducked back out of the room.

Even though I wanted to luxuriate in the shower, letting hot water carry away weeks of misery, I turned it off and grabbed the nearest towel to dry off.

"Does it have something to do with the Court?" I asked, giving her an out. There was no reason to antagonize her when she was trying to help me. I poked my head out of the bathroom as I toweled my hair off. "Because that's been…" I trailed off, not sure how to describe what it was like to feel the Court all around me, all the time. "It's been a lot."

Danica was busily digging through a set of jewelry-boxes, holding up various glittering pieces before discarding them. In the plain midnight-and-tan decor of the room, she looked opulent, the gold-on-white brocade catching the lamplight and her dark brown hair gleaming. She had a sword, the pommel some sort of golden-apricot gemstone. I wondered if she knew how to use it.

A gown lay on the bed, the same dark, sultry silver-gray as distant thunderstorms and tarnished silver. It had little tiny crystals sewn all through the dense embroidery of leaves and vines, in a pattern like dew, and not the fake shit, either. If those weren't actual gemstones, and maybe actual diamonds , I'd eat my boots. You know. Assuming I had any boots, which I didn't.

"I'm not sure. If it's been half as bad as what he's dealing with, I'm impressed you're sane," she said brusquely, clearly relieved I wasn't going to chase down the specifics of her discomfort. Danica held up a necklace of pale gray stones gleaming with high gloss, but not a lot of brilliance. Spinel, maybe. The stuff was pricey. She turned back toward me, looking less upset, though I thought maybe she was simply good at hiding it. "I have no idea what particular combination of things is giving you the empathy, but he's really land-tied. So that's probably leaking."

"I don't know what that means." I didn't stop staring at the dress. "Are you seriously going to put me in that ?"

She laughed. "It'll match Cass' outfit well enough, and you're only a little smaller than me, so I'm hoping it fits. It's Faery, so you could go naked if you wanted, and that would probably make a hell of an impression, but this seems a bit warmer."

"I don't get cold anymore," I said, then gave myself a physical shake. "It doesn't matter. Tell me what I'm walking into, and get me dressed."

I didn't want to have to attend a coronation. I especially didn't want to attend my coronation. But I needed to talk to Cass, and I needed him to be willing to help me. If what it took was putting on a ridiculously expensive dress and pretending to be a Queen… fine.

Danica walked me through the events of the next couple hours while she laced me into a dress that had to cost the fae equivalent of at least fifteen grand, then draped gemstones that might have been worth even more around my throat. She was most of the way through doing my makeup when the winged man who'd been with her rapped on the door and came in.

"Did you find him?" she asked, not looking up from doing my mascara.

"And told him he was being irresponsible for having a snit, and made him go to the staging room like a good royal," he said, humor lilting his tenor voice. "Did you send someone for a crown?"

She froze. "Shit."

He chuckled. "One trip to the vaults, coming right up. Meet me at the staging room, princess? I don't want to miss his face when his soulmate walks in looking like a goddess."

"You've got it, babe," she said in an absent tone, focused on my eyelashes again. The door swung shut, leaving the two of us alone again.

"Your soulmate," I said.

"Yeah." Her whole expression softened. "Vaduin's the best thing that's ever happened to me." She sat back and capped the little pot of mascara. "There. Now you're ready to meet yours."

I looked down at myself, feeling very unready for my face-to-face with Cass. I might have been more comfortable naked than in a dress meant for royalty. At least I'd been naked in front of men before. Wearing something like this was a novel experience. "Sure."

She took me back into the palace at the same harried clip, casting nervous glances out of windows and picking up her pace every time. I managed to keep up, barely, mostly due to the fact that I was still barefoot. Danica's shoes hadn't fit me, so I could pelt along without skidding on the smooth inlaid wood floor, the delicate silver chains decorating my ankles and feet bouncing against my skin.

We came to a halt in front of an ordinary-looking door, dark wood with a little bit of beveling and a claw-foot door knocker in brass.

Danica flashed me a wicked smile. "Ready?"

I looked down at myself, then over at her with a wry look, jittery and stressed and entirely unprepared. "Not even in the slightest."

"Sounds about right," she said, wrinkling her nose at me, and flung the door open. She gave me a shove, none-too-gently, following on my heels so I had to walk into the small, opulently-decorated room.

Putting me face-to-face with my soulmate.