20. Idris

Chapter 20

Idris

W ide green eyes blazed with her rising power as she trembled in front of me. Chest heaving, heart thundering in her chest, she was magnificent, even if she was completely bonkers.

"What the hell do you mean, poison? What is poison?"

This woman had just thrown her plate and fork and slapped food right out of my hand. There had to be a good reason for it. Sure, she was almost always mad at me—usually justified—but Vale wasn't crazy. If she actually thought it was poison, I appreciated the assist, but I'd scented nothing on my plate other than the candied almonds on top of the fig and brie tartlets.

Tartlets I'd gone to the head chef and specifically selected just for her because she'd loved the cheese when she'd dined in my solar. Included in the limited information I'd managed to glean from her, Vale loved food. Having starved as long as she had, she enjoyed every morsel that passed her lips, and she absolutely hated waste.

She wouldn't throw food just to spite me. Right?

She straightened, fisting her hands on her hips. Yes, they were glowing with her power just like her eyes were. "The food, you idiot. Can't you smell it?"

Was she implying she could smell poison? Only shifters could do that. Maybe a vampire if they were old, but not Luxa.

"Of course I can smell the food, Vale. But what makes you think that you can sniff out poison? You aren't a dragon."

"Technically, neither are you," she growled, the barb hitting home. "But one of us has a dragon inside their head, and one of us doesn't, and we both know that's not you."

Gods, the woman was talking in riddles. "What the fuck do you mean by that?"

She really needed to start talking sense.

"Don't you know already? Didn't they tell you?" she whispered, confusion clouding her expression. "Rune speaks inside my head. He told me the dish was poisoned. He's the one who flung the plate away, not me. I didn't want you to be poisoned, so I slapped the food out of your hand."

I stood so fast, my chair tipped back in a great crash. Hands planted on the table, I steadied myself as my magic threatened to drown me, the puzzle pieces finally fitting into place.

When she'd finally told me about her sister herself, I'd just assumed that Rune hadn't killed her because she was honorable, because she'd stood in front of my men, because she was kind. That it didn't matter what I wanted or what I thought she was. She wasn't the curse breaker. She was just a beautiful, smart woman who'd tugged at the shattered pieces of my heart.

And I was starting not to care whether she could break my curse or not. Because being with her was the most I'd felt alive in centuries.

Now to find out that Rune spoke to her, I almost couldn't let myself hope.

"Rune. My Rune? He speaks to you."

"Yes. He led me to the cavern. He called to me, demanding I come to him. I thought it was you. I thought you were calling me. But when I got there, I figured it had to have been a trick. That I would die, but then Kian and Xavier stood in the way…"

I'd always wondered how she'd found the cavern entrance. I'd assumed it was Kian or Xavier who'd brought her there, but now it made so much more sense. Her power had called to me that day, summoning me to the caverns. When I saw her stand in between my oldest friends and my dragon, I'd known she was the one.

Somehow, after her attempted assassination, I'd almost convinced myself the opposite.

"He slowed the assassin down to help me get away," she admitted. "I would have died had he not intervened. And then afterward, I was so close to death that he shared some of his life force with me—to help me live. I thought…" She swallowed, eyes wide, stepping away from me. "I thought all Luxa could do that. Like the light, I thought…"

I lunged forward so fast, she flinched, but I would not let her go, her small wrist swallowed in my grasp. I couldn't. I needed her answers more than air. "I believe you," I whispered, "but I have to be sure. Tell me what he's saying to you right now. Please ."

She tugged at her wrist, but my grip was iron.

"Tell me," I insisted, needing to know if this was it or if two hundred years of searching was just the tip of the iceberg.

"You won't like it. He's not very pleased with you."

He never was. My dragon had often called me a bumbling idiot when I was being one, but if he could talk to her… if he could… if I could… " Tell me."

Vale winced, her beautiful face scrunching just a little as she tried to word whatever she was hearing into a more palatable version. Then she rolled her eyes and broke the seal.

"He says that you couldn't find your ass with two hands and a map, and that the only reason you were still breathing is because he's stronger than you. And it's your fault you and him are like this. And if you let me die, he will kill you himself and then go find your brother and finish the job you should have two cen?—"

Without thought, I captured her lips with mine. She could hear him. She was the one. She was the only one. Lifting her off her feet, I spun her in a circle, so relieved, so pissed off, so…

How long had my dragon been in silence?

How long had we been severed?

And how long had there been someone in my castle plotting to keep us that way?

I let her go, circling the table to her far-flung plate and lifted it to my nose. I caught the scent of bitter almonds disguised heavily under the sweet, candied figs.

It was poisoned.

I was sure of it.

I moved back to my plate sniffing the same dish. There was nothing, not that it would have mattered if it was poisoned. Cyanide wouldn't kill me. Not much would.

"My dish isn't poisoned but yours is. Rune saved your life." And to hear her tell it, this wasn't the first. My dragon had been saving her this whole time. He could talk to her. And a part of me was jealous as hell.

The other part of me?

It was a possessive, crazed animal that wanted to rip the men who'd tried to take her from me wide open and bathe in their fucking blood.

"So much for eating," Vale lamented, collapsing back onto her chair. "And here I thought being in a big fancy castle would mean I wouldn't starve. Joke's on me, huh?"

I knelt at the side of her chair, cupping her face in my hands.

"You will be protected," I vowed, resting my forehead against hers. "No one will touch you. No one will harm you. I promised you anything before, and I'd meant it. I owe you everything. My kingdom. My life. I will owe you for the rest of forever."

She drew away, her gaze searching. "I can hear more than just you and Rune in my head. I can hear Kian and Xavier when they're in dragon form. They can speak to me."

Reality threatened to swallow me up. There was a reason she was so drawn to them. And it was one I couldn't deny, couldn't refute, and couldn't stand in the way of.

Fateborn mates.

There hadn't been a single set of them in two hundred years—not since the curse tainted the continent. Every curse had a remedy, and this one was designed by Fate herself to fuck with me in the only way that would teach me the lesson I should have learned two centuries ago.

Vale was born to be not just my mate, but all of ours. Ours.

My gaze fell to the shoulder with Kian's mark. The skin was pristine, but the glowing magic hidden under her lace sleeve told a very different story. It was faint, barely there, not a full mating mark, but still…

She was not only mine. If she could hear not just me and Rune, but them as well…

And she had no idea. Why would she? Arden wouldn't tell his people, and they were so isolated in Direveil that it would be impossible for her to know.

She is ours. Ours.

And if I wanted to break this curse—if I wanted that peace that only she would bring, if I wanted her at all , then I would have to understand that my selfishness, my jealousy, my greed would have to end.

It was a lesson I should have learned by now, but only she could teach me.

"Isn't this just like the dream walking? Can't all Luxa do this? Freya called me the curse breaker because of the sheet I took from your room in the dream. She?—"

I didn't need to be reminded of her strength, but shock made it hard to keep my power in check, made it almost impossible not to let it out so it could answer to the call of hers. This was why us being together while I was still under the blight of the curse was dangerous.

The floor shook so hard, the candelabras toppled to the stone floor. The chandeliers swung violently as my emotions got the better of me.

Vale pulled away from me, leaning back in her seat as her brilliant green eyes widened. "What's going on?"

"Freya was right. You are the curse breaker. And it isn't Fate or circumstance that is trying to keep us apart. It's someone in this very castle."

She shook her head, her eyes filling as her jaw firmed. "Not necessarily. The man who tried to kill me had been spelled. I saw it. Someone was using him like a puppet. They might not know what they're doing."

That theory had merit, but there were too many things wrong with the timing. How could someone know about a dinner I hadn't decided to put on until this morning? How did they know Vale would be with me if they weren't in the castle watching? How would they know which plate was hers if they weren't in the kitchens themselves?

Someone could be a puppet, but they were someone with a fuck load of information and the means and opportunity to get the poison right on her plate.

I didn't want her to see what I was about to do but leaving her alone just wasn't an option.

"Come with me." I latched onto her hand, pulling her out of the chair and sneaking behind the tapestries that led to the servant hallway to the kitchens. This was faster than going through the main corridor, and if someone was waiting for her to keel over and die from poison, they would likely be in the corridor, prepared to make a scene because yet another Luxa had dropped dead.

A part of me thought it was complete idiocy that I hadn't realized what was going on before now. Maybe it was because Rune had killed so many of the Luxa himself that I didn't put it together.

Someone really didn't want me to break this curse, and other than my brother, I couldn't think of another person who needed me brought low that much.

There was a small office outside the main kitchens where the only person left in this castle I trusted spent most of her time. I didn't trust the council, Kian and Xavier were gone, and Freya had that look in her eyes that said that she was in the middle of a hunt when she dropped off Vale, so that only left Briar.

Fist pounding on her office door, I vibrated with rage as I tried to get myself together.

"Where are we? What is going on?" Vale whispered, her gaze darting around, her dagger clutched tightly in her hand.

Before I could answer, Briar whipped the door open, her silvery hair and ancient half-moon spectacles the only comforting thing right about then, aside from the woman to my left.

"Vale, I would like you to meet Briar. She has been with my family for as long as I can remember and is just about the only person I trust right now."

Briar was a brownie and had been the steward of this castle since before it was built. She originally served under my grandfather before the turn of the millennia, helped raise my mother, and kept this place afloat while at war. Her grandson currently ran an inn in the town proper, and her daughter owned one of the finest shops.

She looked Vale over, her genial face assessing in a way that made me straighten in pride. Vale was strong and beautiful and whip smart, and Briar could see it. A blind man could see it, and Briar was anything but blind. Despite her age, there wasn't much that she missed.

"We need your help," I began, gently pushing inside her office. It was a moss-covered alcove with a domed ceiling and plants growing in every available crevasse. Butterflies danced between flowers, jumping from petal to petal, and tiny pixies flitted from bookshelf to bookshelf.

"Of course, tell me what it is, child." Briar's gaze went from me to Vale and back. "I mean, my King."

I waved away her attempt at decorum. It would be pointless if I couldn't trust anyone. "Someone in the kitchen staff tried to poison Vale. Cyanide. If she hadn't smelled it, I?—"

Briar's lined face—once genial and kind—hardened to stone. Her large hazel eyes narrowed to slits as a pair of gossamer wings sprang from her back and she rose in the air to look me in the eye.

" What did you just say?"

This was like the time she'd caught me fighting with my brother in the garden when we were ten. We'd shifted and burnt down the topiaries, the arbor and one of the outbuildings because we'd just learned how to breathe fire. She'd made us rebuild the arbor and outbuildings by hand with no magic and re-grow the topiaries ourselves. It had taken months, but Briar was not a brownie to be messed with.

At least this time, I hadn't done anything wrong.

"Poison in my kitchen? From my staff?" she growled, revealing her sharp, pointed teeth.

Brownies were a loyal species. By nature, they wanted to protect those under their care. It had nearly torn Briar in two to have my brother and I at odds for so long, but she'd remained with me because of what he'd become.

"Just her dish, not mine. Because of who she is, I have to think…"

Briar's eye almost started twitching. She snapped her fingers, and the door flew open. She zoomed through it, her fluttering wings beating so fast I could barely see them. It wasn't until she was outside the dining hall, did she return to the ground.

She pushed through the double doors and walked straight to the plate on the floor. Not even getting within three feet of it, she froze.

"Poison. In my house? My food? My people?"

Spinning in a circle, her hazel eyes darkened to black, her faint-blue veins bleeding to red as they crawled up her neck and down her frail arms. Her fingertips blackened as she reached for the sky, and every single kitchen staff, chef, server, maid, laundress, and attendant was pulled through space and time, landing on their asses on the stone floor.

"I will hold them here, my King. Do what you must."

I shot a glance at Vale, who was staring at the large group of staff as if she might be sick. The jeweled dagger fisted in her grip. Her gaze swept through the crowd until she froze on one attendant—the one who'd delivered her plate to her. He didn't look any different from the other attendants, perfectly nondescript, but her nostrils fluttered like Rune's did when he was sniffing.

Her green eyes began to glow, and she pointed the dagger right at him. "Rune says to detain that one. He smells of death magic and poison."

The crowd backed away from him, his mousey brown hair and eyes, his hunched shoulders clouded slightly with a magic I couldn't quite see. I knew him. Geoff. He was a rather standoffish attendant, but he'd never shown me he couldn't be trusted.

Vale moved closer to me, her hand latching onto my forearm. "There's magic coating him. He's been spelled, for sure, but if we don't keep him breathing ? —"

Shock had me staring at her anew. She was speaking inside my head like she was born to it, like she had known of her powers since birth.

"Quit staring at me like that. The last assassin killed himself before we could question him, which is probably why Freya couldn't find anything."

Out of all the things she could have said, that got my head back on straight. Before anyone could move, my magic shot out, latching onto the attendant and wrapping around him like a snake. I drew him to me, scenting the death and poison for myself.

As he got closer, he started struggling, his powerful glamour melting away. His irises turned milky as black magic curled around his head so much like my own power. But where I was life, this was worse than death, worse than the grave, worse than a putrid afterlife.

He wasn't undead or a revenant, but the magic that had consumed him could only be accepted willingly by its host.

"Tell me who sent you, and I will let you live," I growled.

Almost instantly, he began foaming at the mouth, and it didn't matter what I tried, I wouldn't get anything out of him. The spell clouding his eyes had its own self-destruct sequence. I knew the magic well enough. I dropped my power and watched the attendant convulse on the ground, his life ending before my very eyes.

"Raise the wards, Briar. No one in or out until I say otherwise."

Briar's power shimmered over my skin almost instantly, and not a moment later, the dining hall doors slammed open. Kian's amber eyes were brimming with his power as Xavier's magic crawled like blue flames over the ground.

I pulled Vale to me, whispering into her mind. "Stay with them. It seems like every time you're apart, someone tries to fucking kill you."

Shame warred with determination in my chest. I needed to get a handle on my kingdom, or the whole fucking thing would fall down around my ears. I met Kian's gaze. He knew exactly what I wanted, offering a small nod of acknowledgment.

I pressed a kiss to Vale's forehead as Kian reached for her. "I'm going to protect you, Vale. And when it's all said and done, I'm pretty sure you're not going to like how I do it."

Reluctantly, I released her, knowing before the night was through, there would be more death.

"What does that mean?"

I couldn't answer her—not now.

I had a promise to keep.