The Frey Saga Book V Page 2

“You shouldn’t treat them here,” Steed told her. “No one wants to be headbutted every time they’ve got”—he gestured toward her side—“what is it you’ve got there?”

  She held the small, ruddy fruit aloft. “Apple.”

  The gelding reached his long muzzle up and took it from her hand.

  “That was the last one,” Thea assured Steed.

  “Good.” He nodded. After a moment, he asked, “Is everything well?”

  She shrugged. “It isn’t exactly what I expected.” He must have thought she was homesick, that she’d come to the horses because she’d missed it and wished she hadn’t joined the guard. “I wouldn’t change it,” she added quickly. “Muck cleaning and all.” She hated the way she raised her chin in defiance.

  “Muck cleaning?” He chuckled. “So you’ve been getting on well with your lead.”

  Her posture, that challenge in her, immediately melted away. She’d deserved it, then. And Steed hadn’t known. “They don’t”—she cleared her throat to squash the emotion tightening it—“they don’t report to you?”

  He shook his head. “Chevelle oversees all that.” Steed looked at her, his expression entirely solemn. “I’ve been asked to steer clear of the guard. Apparently, I’ve been a bit too approachable, and there’s some concern that my natural affability might bring about some problems.” He glanced over Thea’s shoulder at the darkened arches that led to the stables. “Wouldn’t do if I let slip someone breaking the rules.”

  “I see,” Thea murmured. Steed had been reprimanded, and she’d put him in a spot. “And so”—she swallowed—“I should probably…”

  Steed stared at her.

  “…go?” she said.

  Steed’s brow lowered in a warning.

  She bit her lip, trying to hide a smile. “I promise,” she told him, but her words ran out, because the first rays of moonlight caught his eye, and she wasn’t sure exactly what she’d meant to say. She would stay out of trouble—that would have been a good promise but one she couldn’t keep. She would stay away from the horses—no, probably not. She would try. She could have said that. I promise to try.

  She let out a breath that was nearly a laugh and ran past Steed to the wall. Her heart was alight with relief at narrowly escaping another rebuke, and she leapt to the top in a single bound. When her feet hit solid stone on the other side, she knew for certain that the castle was the only place she ever wanted to be.

  2

  Ruby

  Ruby had exhausted her supply of herbs and oils—what was left of them after the fey had busted into her rooms and destroyed years’ worth of stock, anyway—and still, Grey’s wounds were tolerable at best.

  “Quit fussing, Red,” he said, leaning over a strap of leather he was stitching into some sort of weapons belt.

  That was another thing the fey had destroyed, the best of their personal armor and weapons holders. She’d meant to replace Rhys’s, specifically, as thanks for managing the hidden blade that had saved them both. She glanced over Grey’s shoulder at the work then at his shirt, which sat in a wadded pile at his side. “Wait,” she said. “Who are you making that for?”

  He turned his chin to glance up at her.

  His face was smooth and clean, not scarred like the rest of him from her enemies searing his flesh. They’d wanted her to see his face so she knew it was him. They’d wanted her angry.

  He placed a hand over hers on his bare shoulder, and she resisted the urge to slip free of his touch. That was new, too, her permitting Grey’s easy touch and allowing him to be near her. He’d not pushed it. He’d known her long enough to take small steps, to give her space. Letting go of the distance she kept—not just from the man who cared for her but from all those she might have put into danger—was not the simplest of things. But she was trying.

  She cleared her throat. “That’s enough remedy for today, I suppose, at least until my delivery from Grenval’s Peak comes through.”

  He let her hand go, not bothering to replace his shirt. Grey didn’t mind the scars, and he certainly didn’t mind the excuse to taunt her with his half-dressed nearness.

  Ruby brushed a feral curl back into place then decided on a plait to occupy her hands. Her wild red mane had been a badge of heritage as she’d grown, a warning that she was part fey. It did not matter as much anymore. She was of the high guard, one of the Seven to Elfreda, Lord of the North.

  “What are you plotting now?” Grey set aside the leather she suspected was for Rhys.

  She frowned. “Nothing. I’ll be a right proper guard and behave just as I’ve been ordered to.”

  He snorted.

  She resisted the urge to smack the back of his head. Tucking the end of her last braid into the others, she added two small folded leaves from the ironwood tree. Ruby felt safer there than she’d ever felt in her life, but that was no reason to stop taking precautions. Pitt was still out there—she knew it.

  Rumors after their battle on fey lands had spread faster than their own return to the castle. The fates had danced, the high fey lord’s guard had betrayed him, and the changeling Pitt had tried to cheat the highest-held ceremony among the court. Veil’s heliotropes had used their gift to take Veil’s will, to freeze him in place while Pitt destroyed him. But the fey and Freya had come to Veil’s defense. They had set right the ceremony in time for the high lord to be spared.

  There had been an explosion of power. The keystones had been shattered to dust. And Pitt had disappeared.

  The changelings had never given much regard to the court or their ceremonies, but Pitt had been especially indifferent. He’d had an agenda, a way to save himself from the blight the humans had brought to their lands. He’d stolen a potent ruby, stolen Ruby herself, and attempted a trade for her mother’s diary, a document that told of magic and power and the means to keep him alive.

  Pitt didn’t care what happened to the other fey. He didn’t intend to stop the humans from deadening the base power that was the lifeblood of his people. He simply meant to learn to harness it inside of himself in the way Ruby had been born doing, the way that came naturally to her because she was half elf. She didn’t know if he could succeed, but he’d been clever enough to set into motion a plan from before she’d even come into being, so he was clever enough to escape with his life.

  She wouldn’t believe he was gone until she’d seen the husk of his corpse—no, not seen, because the changelings had the power to shift into other forms to fool the eye. She needed more. She needed to drive the dagger through his flesh with her own bare hands.

  “Red.” Grey pressed behind her to slide a palm over the fisted hand straining at her side. His voice was soft and low, his breath teasing her neck.

  She sighed, letting Grey’s touch ease her grip on the phantom blade. She would save the anger for later.

  3

  Frey

  I circled slowly over the castle grounds, relaxing into the mind of my best hawk and seeing through its eyes. The wind swept beneath the bird’s wings, the air calmer and weather warmer as the season began to change. Beneath the bird and sky and beneath my own body where it waited in my rooms, everything had fallen into comfortable order. Gone was the chaos of the previous years, a time when another ruled and brought his people pain and strife. It was my place now, and conflicts were resolved by sense and law, not the whims of a man obsessed with power.

  Granted, there were a few loose strings that needed tidying. We’d barely scraped by disaster with the fey, and as a result of my decisions, they were caged by ancient boundaries on one side and a small half-human girl on the other. No one had missed that I’d given Isa the duty of keeping the humans in check or that I’d nearly lost my throne in pursuit of my half-fey guard, Ruby. Taking on the fey and their problems was risk enough to our skin, let alone the shifting opinions of my people, given their distaste for halfbloods and my own heritage. But we had made it—we’d survived, and we’d gained the loyalty of Camber, the rogues, and most of the North. The realm
was at peace.

  My mother was gone, her memory finally laid to rest as the Council who destroyed her had been repaid the debt. And her aunt was head of a new Council, one I had hope for even if its people were not yet settled with the events that made it happen and the loss of so many of their own. I had my Seven, my Second, my home, and my birds.

  Chevelle’s soft breath hit my cheek, and I drew back from the mind of the hawk, peering out one eye to find him watching me.

  “What are you smiling about?” he whispered.

  I bit my lip, rolling toward him in the quiet dawn of our suite. “I’m happy. It’s strange, isn’t it?”

  He traced a finger lightly over my cheek. “This is the way it should have been all along.”

  I kissed his palm then laced our hands together. “I don’t think it will take me long to get used to it.”

  He grinned, leaning forward for a lengthy kiss. When he drew away, he looked regretful but not unhappy.

  “Castle duties?” I asked.

  He hummed agreement. “My lead is relentless.”

  I narrowed my gaze on him. “You’d better hope she doesn’t hear you say that. I’m sure she could come up with more that needs tending.”

  He laughed, nipping my neck as he rolled past me to step off the bed. “Nothing would please me more.”

  I blushed, and it earned me a wicked flash in his gaze, but he backed away, knowing my delaying tactics well. I didn’t try as hard as I might have—I had my own duties to attend. The kingdom had my days, but Chevelle had my nights. There would be time.

  When I arrived at Anvil’s study, Rhys and Rider were well into their day’s research, leaning over documents with a pile of discarded scrolls centered on the long table between them. They stood, because even if I kept forgetting, I was lord of this castle. I waved them down, but Rhys remained standing.

  He inclined his head briefly before meeting my gaze again. “I thank you for the staff, Lord Freya. It is an honor that I will cherish.”

  I nodded, chagrined that I somehow had to express my emotions on the matter after I’d had Chevelle deliver a replacement for the one the fey had destroyed. “It is the least I could have done,” I managed. “It is I who am grateful.” I let my gaze fall to his brother, afraid to say more. The realm was settled, and I was at peace, but that didn’t mean I could easily delve back into the turmoil that had nearly cost everyone I cared for their lives. Replacing a broken staff was the least of it. “How do you fare in your research?” I asked.

  “Not much of interest as of yet,” Rhys said. “There seems to be a lack of openly available information on the matter.”

  It was as I expected. Asher had been a hoarder of secrets, and even if his private vault was filled with documents, that didn’t mean what we aimed to find would be easily secured. There was a variety of items on my research agenda, not the least of which were the methods the ancients used to secure the boundary between lands. We needed a more permanent solution because the wolves—ancients themselves in mind but not body—had to keep watch on the magic and methods, holding the boundary from breaking down, from all fey being able to cross at will into our lands.

  The fey had found a way to use the humans who had brought them so much harm. There was a dampening about the humans, some thing that deadened the base magic running beneath the fey lands, and it was affecting the boundary magic as well. It had not been permanent at the boundary, but where the humans had encroached outside the fey forests, the base magic did not feel as if it could ever return. At some point, the humans would overrun that unknown threshold, and the power that gave the fey life would be gone.

  I wasn’t even certain the humans knew it. The elders had thought them low, so beneath regard that they were akin to animals. But I’d met a human, and I’d been inside their minds. They were not like animals.

  “Rider,” I said, thinking aloud. “There was a note in my mother’s diary, something about the elders and their fear of humans.” He nodded, and I did not elaborate—there was no need to explain that the note had referred to when the elders had found I was half human myself. “There was emphasis on a word I remember. ‘Consume.’” Her harried script flashed in my mind, the emotion plain in her words. The elders had wanted to keep me from the others. They’d kept saying that she didn’t understand.

  They will consume you. The humans will consume us all, my mother had recounted. I shook off a chill, remembering her assessment and her shaky script near the end of the diary, written before the massacre of the North. It is the want for power that will consume us. She hadn’t been wrong.

  “I’ll look into it.” Rider scratched some note on a scrap of parchment.

  “There is a legend in the ice lands,” Rhys told me, “one of power lost and barren lands.” I let my interest show, as I’d not heard much of the brothers’ homeland and because barren ground seemed not unusual in the frozen realm from which they’d come. The ice lands did not host fey because the fey had to follow the vein of base magic beneath the earth. They could travel outside of their lands but not without cost. They needed to carry stones or risk forgoing access to their power while they were away. It was the lifeblood of their people. Those more powerful had less concern—the fey lord had ventured onto our lands without worry. Veil was powerful enough to be deadly even there, but with access to that untold energy, he was a force of nature.

  Rhys leaned against the table, recalling the tale. “On the eastern reaches of a long-ago shore, before the water’s rising ate away at the land, beings from beneath the waters would break the surface, heading over land in search of prey. They were long, dark water dragons with low, slithering bodies and spiked tails, and they fed on magical beings who strayed too near the shore.”

  I glanced at Rider, who listened nearly as intently as I. It sounded like one of Ruby’s fey tales, and we all knew those were mostly true.

  “One season, when the ice had melted far into the eastern plains, the creatures came in hordes. They poured out of the high waters, hungry for power in a way they’d never been. It is said there was a drought, that the magic had been stolen from its very core. And because of it, those creatures spread onto the ice lands, taking lesser creatures and elves alike.”

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  Rhys sighed. “A hero, of course.”

  Rider grinned at me. “Our legends all have similar endings.”

  “The righteous versus the untenable,” Rhys said.

  I thought about the brothers and the story they’d told about when they were boys—before the wolves had brought them to us. They’d been too young, Rhys had said. They’d not understood the superstitions of those around them, how the kingdom feared the power they shared. Their king had played upon that, and mere boys were suddenly to blame for all the misfortunes of their realm.

  “There’s something else,” I said. “Your old staff, the one from your homelands.” At Rhys’ nod, I asked, “Could it be only coincidence that the frost monsters and winter sprites were so enamored with it?”

  Rhys lifted a shoulder, an easy gesture that seemed more to fit someone like Steed than either of these two. “Coincidence seems unlikely, but they may have merely been drawn to the cold.”

  “Cold” was not how I would have described it. The brothers’ magic felt different but not simply in its temperature. There was something else, something that lacked the bite and tingle of my magic—or, more precisely, the magic of those who had surrounded me.

  My magic was something else entirely. I was of the light on my mother’s side—her mother had been powerful, her magic radiant. And then there was Asher, one of the strongest beings in the realm, who was capable of harnessing the dark energy of his kind even before he’d gambled with spellcasting to garner more. I had an unusual heritage solely because my mother had been of both light and dark, able to access both. The fact that she’d carried me to term despite my human father was more than rare.

  That had been Asher’s doing. The previo
us Lord of the North had spent a century studying and learning from his failing attempts to cross bloodlines. There was a reason halfbloods were disdained. It wasn’t natural. It never worked. The children of those couplings had died before being brought into this world, and so often, the mother had paid with her own life—except for Asher’s children, several of whom had survived. And me, who’d surely had help from Asher and the elders when they’d brought my mother through childbirth, both of us alive.

  Things had not gone so well with Ruby. Even though her mother had discovered the secret to bringing her to term, she’d miscalculated Ruby’s uniqueness. It had not been only power Ruby had gained from the crossing. It had altered her very being, turned something fey into deadly venom. Ruby had poisoned her own mother.

  I sighed, shaking off the thought. It didn’t hurt the way it had before, but there was nothing to gain from living in the past. We would look forward. We would deal with what was at hand.

  “So,” I offered, “we continue to research base magic, the deadening of magic, and the possibility of the fey being able to use a connection to energy outside of that which resides beneath their lands.”

  Rider nodded. “And the humans.”

  I bit back a grimace. I had no interest in letting my guard study the humans, especially given the warnings of the elders and what they’d done at the boundaries. “It seems unsafe,” I reminded him.

  He inclined his head. “Old knowledge, then.”

  I raised my brow at the pile of scrolls on the table before him and smiled. “Seems like that will keep you busy for a while, in any case. I know you understand the importance of this. But if something were to happen to me and to Isa”—I swallowed hard, thinking of all the possibilities—“there would be nothing preventing the encroachment.” Veil had been betrayed, trapped by his own willingness to bargain with me and to save his lands. But his heliotropes had turned on him, likely in no small part because of his favor toward me. But the fey were fools if they thought they could have done without him, because the bargain he’d made with me was the only thing capable of preventing their downfall and keeping the humans at bay.