Page 48 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

Snow’s sleepless features pulled in a snarl. “Let’s hope the selfish bitch has tangled in enough cobwebs to think it’s a fly.”

“Selfish?”

“I said bitch, too.”

I was too tired to laugh but I did smile. “Why do you think her selfish?” Speak to me, just speak anything to me. Anything to hear her speak a little more.

“Adriatian, what do you call someone who was aware of the damage they were causing but caused it nonetheless without considering the consequences? If she had been unhappy warming Fader’s bed, she should have said so. Not go behind his back and cheat on him. With a human at that. Amongst all the godly cock she had available. Fader’s ego must have been bruised like an apple.”

That made me drop my head back and guffaw. “And if he hadn’t let her?”

“You think Fader didn’t have enough women and men riding him to let this one go?”

“And if he had been in love with her?”

“He wasn’t,” she said confidently. “Don’t two people in love share one heart? If you hurt, I hurt too? In that sense? Fader is written in holy scriptures and history as everything but a masochist. But he is written to be a man of law. Obey it and you shall thrive. Disobey it and you shall face wrath. How many stories are there in the History of Numen or Ithicea of others he has punished as such?”

“I think sleeplessness makes you quite the little philosopher.”

She sneered at my smile. “Trust me, if I had slept a little less before I came to you, I’d have convinced you to join my cult.”

“Already convinced. Been a follower for a long time.” A long, long time. I stood and kissed the crown of her head. “Goddess of my heart, it’s sunrise. You’re free from me.”

Her eyes rolled up at me for a moment before darting lost about the room. She sighed and stood, righting her short gown. “Not yet, Night King, not just yet. I am certain my full first breath in thirteen years will be when I am poking your heart with a skewer.”

Chapter eight

Tenebris

Snowlin

Alastair, Alaric’s father, moved slowly around his small sage coloured kitchen. The man insisted he lived alone at his dying age in a tiny house in the middle of nowhere in Drava. He’d tripped twice after abandoning his crane to move around the cabinets attempting to make me a cup of tea. And I was sentenced to just watch. The grumpy old man took great offence from help. This had started as a daily visit years ago and shortly turned to a weekly one. After his wife had died between Skye warriors during the night of the Draugr, he had decided to let his body age rather than live without her. And ageing had taken him fast and with sickness. The old Zephyr had lived over two hundred years and all two human lifetimes had caught up with him rapidly.

A thud shook the ceiling above us and then Penelope shouted, “I am fine. Totally fine. Ouch. Still fine…I think. This room is a mess.”

Sigh. I usually brought one of the servants to help with his chores, but the little carrot had begged me to take her by complaining that no one took her anywhere and that I’d imprisoned her inside the castle. She had not wanted any of the freedom I’d given her, and insisted she remained my helping hand despite all my protest.

Alastair chuckled and lowered a teacup before me, spilling half of it in the saucer from the shake of his hands. “You missed sending the new younglings to their climb of Valda.”

The blessed tradition. The journey every Olympian took once in their lifetimes—the climb of Valda Acme. The point where skies touched the realm. The place where the old gates to Caelum stood that now had turned to an altar of prayer.

“You missed this month’s rituals, too,” he continued, taking a sip of tea. “It will be good to show Olympians your face now that you’ve returned. Married at that. Ah, that reminds me. We have to get an Olympian priest to give his blessings.”

Pouring the spilled tea on the saucer back in the cup, I looked up at him. “I am not married.”

“You are married. You signed a certificate before a priest,” he said as a matter of fact. “By law that makes you someone else’s wife, hen.”

“So, I am married. And?”

“Crown the boy.”

Tea spittle flew out of my mouth. That made me laugh. Truly. No, it made me guffaw so hard that my ribs hurt. Crown Kilian? As what? The only crown I’d ever crown him with would be a gravestone.

“Hen,” the old man said quietly after I’d settled. “This kingdom is yours, meant to be yours and by blood it is yours. But people are what make this kingdom. If they are divided like you’ve divided Isjord, trouble will ensue. The Volantians will use this opportunity—”

“To dethrone me? I’d like to see them try. I will feed Foglings skewered birds for a whole year.” When Alaric had told me about Bayrd and his intentions of solidifying the Volant lands as a separate kingdom, I’d laughed myself to tears. Now, the more I heard it, the more the absurd suggestion annoyed me. Despite bearing the name of higher beings, they still remained my people. And they would all die as such.

“This is not something you can do by force and fear.”