8. The Ruined Palace

It wasn”t exactly easy to settle into life at the Ruined Palace, but neither was it as hard as I”d anticipated. In some ways, it was like a vacation at a shi-shi resort; the servitors responded to my will and instructions as if they”d been made for me, and aside from the limited set of food ingredients, I could basically live in the lap of luxury if I chose. I didn”t, of course, preferring a little adventure to total decadence, but I liked having the option.

It didn”t hurt that Key obviously worshiped the ground I walked on, either. The adoration gave me a place to exist and smoothed over the jagged transition from my old life to this one. He was a perfect companion in a strange new world—a devoted shadow who seemed to be able to read my moods with ease. Key spent most of his time in the same room with me, even if that was just taking a nap on a couch while I did things, but he moseyed off elsewhere often enough that I never managed to take his presence for granted.

I could always find him, if I wanted to; Nuada”s power saw to that, and it got easier as the days passed.

After the first few days, I started getting irritated that Nuada”s power was all I saw of him. He seemed content enough to have me in the Ruined Palace, and he never turned me away when I hunted him down to talk to him, but he also never sought me out. I didn”t feel like I could bitch about it to Key – and I really didn”t want to pit the two of them against each other – but it was annoying that the goddamn Master of the Wild Hunt refused to do any hunting. I liked feeling appreciated, and he did exactly zero pursuing or wooing.

Keilain was wonderful, the sunlight that greeted me in the morning and the laughter that buoyed my soul. I loved being able to spend every day with him. From that first day, he was a fixture in my life and in my heart. I wasn”t sure that I wanted to live in the Ruined Palace forever, but wherever I went, I wasn”t going without Key. If that meant being here, well, then I would be here.

I had to be careful with what I asked of him, though. Once I got the servitors to make me shoes, I started aggressively exploring the palace, and twice led him on treks that left him limping. He didn”t seem to mind, but it drove home the point that he would willingly break himself if I asked him for it, and he didn”t seem to have the capacity to tell me when something might hurt him.

After that, I tried to limit myself, even as I grew more restless. The Ruined Palace was beautiful, but with only Key for company, it was hard to stay entertained. It wasn”t all ruined, of course – only maybe about three-quarters was significantly damaged – and there were a lot of fascinating places full of ancient objects, ranging from chapels to libraries, but art can”t really replace social interaction.

The palace was seriously large, at least. I got the sense that it was more of a sprawling estate than a palace in the sense that I was used to. Rather than a single building meant to house a royal family and hordes of servants, the Ruined Palace reminded me more of an ancient settlement than anything else. I supposed that was only reasonable. Modern-day palaces like the American White House didn”t have to do things like breed horses, house whole families, and grow their own food. Even the grounds of older palaces seemed to have gotten eaten up by tourist attractions and heavily-landscaped gardens.

There was only one horse in the stables. The black stallion regarded me like I was a beetle when I found him the first day, being tended by the golem-like servitors, and I didn”t bother attempting to make friends. Keilain told me he had once been a brook horse, like Nuada, but that things had gone the other direction for him—that Nuada had lost his horse”s form, and his horse had lost his man”s form and intelligence.

That struck me as both terribly sad and terribly kind. In a way, Nuada and his stallion were opposite sides of a coin, but rather than despising the horse for having what he”d lost, Nuada had given him an eternal place in the world. When the two of them were together, it could almost be like they were one creature again, a brook horse reborn as a god and his steed.

I sought out Nuada a few days later to ask him about it. Though I was fairly sure Key could have told me, I wanted Nuada to be able to give me what looks into his soul he wanted to. Using Key as an information source about his Master seemed both underhanded and cruel.

Nuada looked pensive, sitting on a bench watching skimmer-bugs striding across the water of a quiet pond. The black length of his horse”s tail switched behind him. ”Your world was wilder, once,” he said at last. ”I”m sure you have many myths and legends about what came before. You knew the name ”Dullahan”, and me and mine were no strangers to you.” He sighed and glanced at me sidelong. ”As our worlds diverged, less and less power spilled into yours from mine. Creatures whose lifeblood is wild magic became… less.”

”You”re not less,” I said, cocking a brow at him. Key snorted from his position at my feet, his warm head lying heavily on me.

”I am not,” Nuada said, giving me a sharp smile. ”I am much more than I once was. Rest assured, Lexi, that I have fought and wandered and suffered for such. I am not to be bridled.”

”I wouldn”t dare,” I said with a laugh, tossing my hair back over my shoulders.

His eyes tracked down along my throat before flicking back over to the water. ”Is there aught else you desire to know?” he asked idly. The claws of his left hand dragged along the bench, leaving tracks in the algae growing on it. ”I”m willing to be… investigated,” he said, with a dangerous purr on the last word.

I remembered running my fingers across the clean wound of his severed neck – remembered the shape of his stiffening cock lifting his battle-skirt – and shivered. ”What about your arm?” I asked, settling my weight back on my hands as if I didn”t care about the answer.

”This?” Nuada asked, lifting his skeletal silver hand. He held it in the air, turning it so it caught the light, flexing his hand and moving each finger in a way that had me imagining how that cold metal would feel stroking along my skin. ”I lost my arm in combat with another King when I sought to conquer the green island upon which I caught you. He claimed my arm, but I claimed his kingdom.” The Hunter”s smile grew vicious. ”There is power in the blood and bones of faery things. A healer of the Tuath Dé took the bones of my arm and fashioned from them this one. My body remembers it, and so…” He closed his hand into a fist. ”I was made whole again.”

”Would you feel it if you touched me?” I asked, regarding him through my lowered lashes.

Nuada”s ears turned towards me in focus. ”I would,” he said, his voice dropping deeper.

Key huffed another sigh. I bent down and scratched him behind the ears, giving Nuada a view down my robe—but he turned away, looking out towards the garden again.

Well, fine. If he wasn”t interested, I wasn”t going to throw myself at him. ”C”mon, Key,” I said, lifting my foot to shift his head. ”I want to go check out that chapel again.”

His ears cocked. ”Of course!” Keilain got to his feet and gave himself a shake, tail wagging. ”Whatever you want, Lexi.”

”Fare well,” Nuada rumbled, not looking at me.

”You, too,” I said, more out of politeness than anything else, and left.

Keilain pranced at my side, my hand on his shoulder and his body close enough that my leg touched his side with every step. It was harder every day to shake my frustration, but I made myself let it go. It wasn”t Key”s fault that Nuada was about as open as a sealed vault. There was no reason to punish one soulmate for the sins of the other.

We went to the chapel, Keilain playfully coming up with stories for the paintings on the wall and laughing when I tried to act them out. It brightened my afternoon, at least, and when we ambled to the dining room to eat what the servitors had made for us, I was almost content.

Though the hounds ate in the kennels, even the ones who knew how to talk or remembered being people, Key ate with me. I liked it that way. I had nothing to do with procuring or making anything he ate, but having him eat with me made me feel like I was providing for him, somehow. I”d never imagined I would like something like that, but I did. Key was mine – my devoted hound – and it pleased me to take care of him.

The days kept scrolling past. Even though the Ruined Palace was huge, it didn”t take more than ten days to get a solid map of it in my head. I found more things to do, getting to know some of the other hounds a little and rearranging rooms to my liking, but the confinement itched at me more and more. I wasn”t a tame girl. I liked adrenaline and action, whether that was obsessive research or active motion. Idleness didn”t suit me.

But they were my soulmates. I couldn”t leave without them. I kept circling back around to it. Key was my soulmate, and Nuada was my soulmate. That had to mean something—it had to mean more than this.

Didn”t it?