Page 50 of A Beastly Court

“It’s unconscious,” Ame called, her voice tinny from the distance far below us. “I’m going to take this little spy somewhere safe and dark for the time being. Free your magic, Meadow Hawthorne! Redbud needs you.”

Taking the owl up once again in her jaws, the cat bounded off in what remained of the night.

Spy? She’d said it with such conviction that, once again, and not for the first time, I felt like I was playing a game of rummy with an incomplete deck. Something was missing.

Still, I dumped Sawyer onto the bed and yanked the window closed, as if launching oneself out into thin air was catching. I latched it and backed away, trying to process the events of the last fifteen minutes and coming to one conclusion.

“I don’t like her.” Something told me I never had.

“She’s still right, though,” Sawyer admitted begrudgingly. “You need to free your core.”

“I do. But first things first.” I glanced down at myself, taking in the smears and smudges on my dress and noting the general stink of unwashed skin and hair. “A bath.” I snatched up the little tomcat who was just as filthy as I was. “And you’re coming with me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Ossian stood in the center of the east wing archway with a single red rose in his hand. Fresh morning sunlight created a glow around his coppery curls, and the aura emanating from his flesh shimmered like a second skin made of a thousand tiny golden stars. Though barefooted and dressed casually in his tight buckskin trousers and white linen shirt, he still looked like a prince—a king—to me.

“Ossian,” I whispered, breathless as always at the sight of him.

Before becoming completely befuddled by his ethereal beauty, I had the good sense to shift my foraging bag with my cat from where it rested against my right hip to the small of my back in preparation of our embrace. I didn’t like keeping secrets from my mate, but I also had no intention of giving Sawyer up.

As I neared, the golden haze of our bond flooded into me, warming me inside and out against the December chill that pervaded the castle. I stopped an arm’s length away, swaying from the stupor of his presence. Half the gemstones on his necklace twinkled now, but maybe that was them just catching the morning light. It certainly shone in his jewel-green eyes, the corners crinkling as the fae king smiled down at me like a benevolent god. He didn’t move to touch me, instead lifting the rose to my forehead and caressing it down over the bridge of my nose, over my lips, and down to my throat where it came to rest against the center ruby there.

“Do you like my gift?” he asked softly, as if not to break the quiet spell of the morning.

“I love it,” I whispered, straining forward onto the balls of my feet. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you giving it to me. I really need to listen to you about the fairy wine.”

“Yes, you do.” Maintaining his distance, he offered me the rose. When I took it, his hand melded over mine. With a soft smile on his face, he gestured to the great hall with jerk of his chin. “Come along, love. I have something special for you this morning.”

The grizzly bear was already behind a copper-colored force field when we entered, and while it roared and beat itself against the magical shield, we heard nothing. Instead of bringing me to the trestle table, which was surprisingly already set with covered dishes, he led me to the wall of windows. Across the forested ravine, the waterfall caught the dawn and sparkled like molten crystal. The wide stone bridge into town was quiet of traffic, save for a few bluejays who used it to preen themselves between flights for insects. Ossian released me but continued forward until his reflection appeared in the glass. His broad shoulders squared as his hands linked behind him, chin lifted in the rays of the morning sun.

By the Green Mother, he was so beautiful.

“With your success, Meadow,” he began, still facing the waterfall, “my time here is coming to an end. I’ve been trapped in this realm for so long that it hardly seems real. But it approaches, and I find myself reflecting. Reevaluating my purpose. I realized I never told you how I came to be here.”

“You didn’t,” I murmured, risking a step closer. The sun blazing in his copper curls and against his bronze skin gave him such a radiant appearance that I couldn’t help but want to touch him and absorb some of that divinity for myself. To be joined with him and that marvelous light.

He glanced over his shoulder at me—a fleeting look filled with pain. “It was love.”

Blinking as the sun crested the trees and blazed fully into the great hall, I frowned. Why would love make him so sad?

“Relationships between high fae are strained and tenuous,” he continued, returning his gaze to the waterfall. “A balance of power must always be maintained, for the good of Elfame, you understand. There are enough threats in that realm that we needn’t add to it by warring amongst ourselves. The Blight had returned to our shores, you see, an ancient evil, and now more than ever, we needed to be united. And yet, for love, what wouldn’t you risk?”

I crept forward another step, reaching out and touching the hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t move to return my touch, but he didn’t shrug me off either. Ossian inhaled slowly, letting his shoulders deflate with his exhale.

“Her name was Shannon, the high fae heir of the River Court, a lesser fiefdom in the Court of Tides.” The corner of his mouth lifted as he thought of her, and I fought a stab of vile jealousy that lanced through my gut. “She was stunning—dark hair down to her feet, blue eyes, skin like moonlight. She was also kind and stubborn and fiercely protective of her court and people. We were to be wed, our union fortifying our two courts and the eastern borders of Elfame against the Blight.”

Tension returned to the fae king’s every muscle. “But she was stolen by another.”

With him lost in thought and glaring at the window with an intensity that would eventually melt the glass, I ventured, “By whom?”

“My brother,” he forced out, every syllable laced with venom. “Callan. He was selfish, putting his own needs above the court, above our realm itself! You see, when high fae marry and consummate that marriage, their powers join and amplify. Shannon and I were going to fight the Blight with that new power, rid our lands of its taint, but Callan…”

Ossian was trembling now, reliving the betrayal, and my own thoughts turned inward. To Lilac. My cousin by blood, but my sister in every way that truly mattered. She was as gorgeous as this Shannon and could have had any man she liked, and often did. Including Jeremy Rook.

While Jeremy hadn’t stolen my heart like Ossian had, he’d been my first crush. The first boy who’d ever made me blush, who’d chosen me over anyone else. And to someone who lost their individuality from living with what seemed like a hundred people every minute of the day, who was constantly compared to everyone else, to be singled out as special was intoxicating.

And Lilac had beguiled him simply because she could. Because I was the gifted one and she was the pretty one, and we mustn’t ever cross over into each other’s “zones.” It would’ve been akin to my mother suddenly deciding she was the family’s cook instead of Aunt Peony or for Buck the Livamprian to suddenly take over combat training. Lilac was the one everyone thought was beautiful, who everyone preferred in a sexual sense, and to lose even one boy like Jeremy to someone else? Unthinkable.