ARWEN
IHAD COME BACK FROM the dead three times in my life, and was certain it had been three times too many.
It wasn’t that I wished to die. Each time light sputtered from the darkness and breath yawned into my lungs, my first instinct was always to thank the Stones. But that rush of appreciation—the grasping of each of my limbs and swaths of flesh to make sure all was still where it was meant to be—never lasted long.
Each time, I was hit with a distinct sense of foreboding. A knowledge that each brush with that howling, bottomless void was just a mere taste of the looming inevitable. That fate was a mischievous feline, and my death was a ball of twine on the precipice of unraveling.
“Contemplating the nature of the universe?” Kane’s ragged voice still broke shivers across my back as if he had whispered the words against the sensitive shell of my ear.
He walked in quietly, closing the door of knotted wood behind him. The makeshift infirmary was entirely crafted with rounded logs, like a crisp mountain cabin.
“More like my fragile existence.” It was an attempt at lightness, but neither of us laughed.
Wisps of sable hair fell past his dark brows, and, despite his easy words, they were furrowed with pain as he beheld me. He’d changed out of his
stolen Fae armor and was in a slightly frayed brick-red tunic and dark pants. His hair wasn’t clean, his face still scuffed here and there with blood and dirt, but…he’d shaved. As if the most offensive grime that covered him was the beard he’d worn while I’d been gone. The souvenir of his grief.
Kane watched me from across the spare, warm room. Hollow bars of crimson sunlight drifted through the mismatched logs of the roof and painted his gracefully carved chin and folded arms. Kane made no move to join me in the stiff bed with its thin, moth-eaten blankets, and I sat up with a poorly concealed wince.
“Don’t rush yourself.” His eyes were a brand on my face, my bare shoulders—at some point whoever resurrected me had sheared my golden gown clean off. Good riddance.
Kane watched intently as my hand rubbed down my sore neck. “Where are we?”
“A hidden encampment built by rebels.” He sounded hoarse. Like he’d been screaming.
“Hidden?”
“Warded by a magic boundary, just outside that city I spoke of, Aurora.” “Where you told me to ask for…” My medicated mind couldn’t conjure
the name he had given me back in the palace. Back when he’d urged me to run. Guilt swirled in my newly stitched stomach. Had I listened, would he have had to endure whatever cast his face in such pained exhaustion?
“Hart Renwick,” Kane supplied quietly. “He’s a young Fae who’s built up an army of insurgents. The citizens of Lumera call him the rebel king.”
“Oh” was all I could manage.
Kane’s cheek twitched. But yearning—longing and remorse and unfiltered regret—was all that shone in those eyes.
“Kane…”
“I can’t,” he said in a rush.
Horrible, ice-cold fear sank through me. “Can’t what?” I whispered. Tears had already welled in my eyes. I was so, so weak when it came to him.
He shook his head, brows lowered in some kind of warning. “If I go to you…If I hold you…” His voice broke on the word and I began to cry in earnest.
“Arwen…” His next words were said so low, his tormented expression was the only proof I’d not imagined them. “It will break me.”
Something like relief loosened my shoulders just a bit. I’d thought… assumed he was saying something else. And I wouldn’t even have blamed him. To be together, when everything around us was constantly shattering… I wasn’t sure I was strong enough. But this…this fear was something else. Something I could handle.
“Come here,” I whispered, scooting to the side carefully. “And I will put you back together.”
I could tell by the way his brows met that my words weakened his already flimsy resolve. He crossed the room in three strides and gathered me into his arms.
We breathed each other in. His warmth, like home. His ragged breaths— each one a rhapsody. His leathery scent and sweat seeping into my entire aching body—I swore my bones groaned in pleasure just to be held by him. Kane pressed his lips to my forehead over and over. “I’ve almost lost you too many times,” he said. “And each time…I lose a piece of myself
each time, Arwen.”
“I know,” I replied, running my fingers up and down his powerful, shuddering back. “But maybe…if everything we face, we face together, the pieces will grow back even stronger.”
Kane coughed out one wet laugh and I wondered, my face pressed against his chest, if he was crying. “Your optimism knows no bounds.”
I smiled against his sternum, and murmured, “Isn’t that why you keep me around?”
“No,” he said, lightness finally returning to his voice as he tipped my head up and our wet eyes met. “I’m mostly in it for the banter.”
This time, when we kissed, we took our time. Soft, and salty with tears.
When my lips ached and my body had grown too tired to move, we stayed in the dusty bed, holding each other in peaceful silence. I buried my
head into the nook of his neck—I’d missed the comfort of his body more than I could articulate.
Kane’s fingers curled softly around mine. “Are you sure this is…all right?”
For a moment I didn’t know what he meant. That maybe I was too wounded to be touched?
But his face—the unbridled misery carved into every one of his beautiful features…
“No.” I shook my head, horror blaring in my ears at the realization of what he must have thought. “Kane, your father never…”
A single breath released from him and he pressed a hand to my cheek. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t wish to. I can’t imagine what you experienced there. If I could, I’d go back and rip the rest of the palace to shreds. I might, still.”
“He kept me in a tower for months, but aside from that kiss he never touched me—never even tortured me. They took my lighte every few days. His court witch did it.”
“Octavia.” Kane’s eyes narrowed to slits. “That scheming, treacherous bitch.”
I sighed. “Yeah, she’s a monster.” “She’s my aunt.”
My eyes widened. How had I not put the pieces together? Kane’s mother had been mostly Fae, but he’d told me long ago in his wine cellar that her grandmother had been a witch. And Octavia had Kane’s same unruly dark hair…That’s why she’d expected to be made queen. She had been the late monarch’s sister.
“She was envious of my mother’s throne and beauty, her closeness to Briar rather than her. Octavia always wanted to climb up the rungs of the court. But to serve the man who butchered her sister…” Kane looked as though his fury could capsize an armada.
I grasped for his hands and squeezed. “Your father is weak, Kane. That’s why he needs her. Why he had her take my lighte. He’s losing power, I think.”
Kane considered my words, his head tipping to the side in thought. “He ran out of lighte fairly fast when we fought. He punched me.”
“Your father punched you? Rather than using his lighte?”
“Perhaps he’s been supplementing his power for years.” A dark smirk curled at his lips. “Yours is more potent than anything else he’d find in Solaris. It might have made his dependance worse. Hart will need to hear this. I told him you might need some time, but…”
But every moment we stayed here we put Hart’s encampment at further risk of detection. We needed to leave this place—this realm entirely— before any of Lazarus’s men or his Fae mercenaries tracked us down. We needed to ready the Onyx army for war.
“No,” I said, pressing off his chest and taking a steadying breath. “I’m all right.”
I moved to swing my legs over the bedside, but he stopped me. “Stay put. I’ll bring them in here, to us.”
“Them?”
“Valery, the witch who healed you. She’s Hart’s right hand and the high priestess of the Antler coven. They’ve pledged themselves to him and his resistance.”
My raised brows must have revealed my surprise because Kane nodded. “Yeah, he’s something else.”
My burns from the explosion had already faded and I could feel my stomach wound healing rapidly. After filtering the dregs of replenishing lighte into my stitches, I brushed my fingers across all my jagged scrapes and multicolored bruises. I wondered if being in Lumera—the homeland that birthed the Fae race—heightened the regeneration of my lighte or the effectiveness of my healing abilities. I felt better than I expected to.
By the time Kane returned with the rebel king and his witch I’d even pulled on a worn-out cotton frock that had been left on the brass hook near my bed.
“For a woman who was clinically dead two hours ago,” the handsome man striding inside behind Kane drawled, “you look remarkable.”
The rebel king was not at all what I’d been expecting.
Not an old general, beat up and battle-scarred but…well, Hart Renwick was what Mari would have called a dreamboat.
He was tall in that lanky, masculine way. Not necessarily broad or muscular, but so lean and wiry you knew he could outrun a gazelle without breaking a sweat. He had the same slightly overgrown hair that Kane did. The kind that fell past his ears and hit midneck, bits drifting across his cheekbones unless he brushed it out of the way or tucked it behind his ears. Kane was always running a hand back through his hair to clear his face, but Hart just let the auburn strands cover his eyes like a shaggy, unbothered dog.
And that smile. Nobody’s grin held a candle to Kane’s, but Hart Renwick could steal runner-up. Despite the circumstances that had led us here, and no doubt the resources he and Valery must have expended to save my life, Hart’s eyes crinkled around a pleasant, relaxed grin that showcased endearingly imperfect, pearly-white teeth.
“Thank you,” I managed. Despite my accelerated healing, I didn’t quite
feel remarkable.
“Of course,” he quipped, prowling past Kane and deeper into the room toward the only furniture beside my bed—a creaking wooden sideboard, which I assumed was filled with medicinal instruments and ointments.
Instead of leaning on the credenza, Hart leapt atop it in one graceful movement and let his feet dangle over the edge. “My father used to tell me, never miss an opportunity to tell a woman of her beauty.”
Kane followed him inside and took a seat at the foot of my bed with a frown.
“I meant,” I said, cheeks growing warm, “thank you for healing me.” My gaze found Valery, still in the doorway, who made no move to enter the cabin. She was tall and sharp-boned, with the posture of a dancer. Her many necklaces cluttered a thin, narrow chest. When I offered her a grateful smile, her flat expression didn’t change.
“You cleaned up.” Kane’s words were deceptively casual, though everything from his breathing to his posture was lethally focused on the mischievous rebel.
“Didn’t want to scare your lady.”
My stomach twisted as I contemplated what he’d been dirtied with earlier.
Kane raised a brow. “What had you gotten yourself into?”
“Just a Fae merc who’d followed after you. What can I say? I do enjoy the kill.”
“How did you build all of this, Hart?” Kane asked, one hand falling casually across my ankle, still tucked under the threadbare blanket. His warm, broad palm over the sensitive skin—even through a layer of cotton— sent a shiver up my spine.
“I had a lot of help,” the rebel king admitted, eyes finding Valery’s.
Her expression warmed for the first time, and she entered the cabin in earnest, closing the door behind her.
“In the beginning, inspiring one man to find the courage to join the revolution was difficult. Then, amassing a handful of real, sturdy weapons. Training peasants and mill workers to fight like soldiers…”
“Sounds impossible,” I croaked.
“I grew up in one of the worst slums in the realm.” Kane raised a brow. “Celeste?”
“The one and only,” Hart said with a smirk. “Lost my parents to harvesters at six. Lost my sister to a pox a few years later.” Nausea swamped me at the thought, and Kane’s grip tightened on my ankle. If those tragedies still broke his heart at all, Hart didn’t let it permeate his casual demeanor. Maybe that aggressive playfulness was as much a shield as the ward around his encampment.
“Somewhere between that and stopping a Celestian woman from smothering her toddler rather than fail to feed him, I figured nothing could be more impossible than making it as long as I already had. Somebody had to put an end to your father. Why not me?”
Kane’s gaze was grim with understanding. “Where do you expend the majority of your manpower?”
“Valery and her coven keep us dissenters safe, and we focus on destroying his battalions and outposts in steady increments.”
“The outposts,” Kane considered, leaning forward. “That makes a big difference?”
Hart unleashed that crooked grin once more. “Huge.”
“He can’t pay his mercenaries, power Solaris, or fuel his army without the stolen lighte.” It was the first Valery had spoken, her voice low and reedy. I searched her face for any hint of emotion and only found cold, unwavering resolve, eyes trained on her rebel king.
But it was Kane who grinned this time. A small smile, but those dimples and curve of his full lips still quickened the pulse in my veins. “Arwen destroyed Lazarus’s entire repository. Engulfed half the castle in firelighte.”
Hart leapt from his perch on the sideboard. “Well, shit—we’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this.”
“And,” I added, my voice still raw, “I think he might already be weakened.”
“How so?”
I cut my eyes to Kane, who gave me a subtle nod.
“I’m not sure,” I admitted to both of them. “But he can’t seem to regenerate lighte as quickly, or hold on to his power quite as long. He seems to need to infuse some of the harvested lighte into his own body just to maintain his power.” I swallowed acid. “He prefers my own, since I’m full- blooded.”
“Magnificent.” The corner of Hart’s mouth ticked up with malicious glee. “The all-powerful, true Fae king of Lumera is a sniveling lighte addict.”
Kane couldn’t help a sly answering grin of his own. “I think it has more to do with the purged land. I can ask the researchers back in Willowridge to look into it further, but my assumption is that by destroying the natural balance of lighte in Lumera, he’s weakened himself.”
“And the more lighte he needs…” Hart said.
Kane finished his thought. “The worse he’ll get.” Hart turned to Valery. “This is…fan-fucking-tastic.”
Valery only raised an incredulous brow. Not a big talker, that one.
“But that means he has reason to take Evendell sooner than later,” Kane added. “He’ll need fresh land to begin again.”
“Valery.” Hart motioned to his witch. “Ready the others. We’ll fly for Solaris tonight.”
“Done.” Valery spun with grace and made for the door. My heart only leapt in my throat. Tonight?
“No.” Kane released his hold on me and stood from the bed. “No attacks tonight.”
Hart’s brows lifted but Valery halted in her steps. That was the strange thing about Kane. No matter where he was, who he was with—friend or foe or stranger—he was always the commanding authority in the room.
“We must work together,” Kane said. “You need Onyx’s army to defeat him. You need us.” Kane motioned to himself and to me. I didn’t feel very violent and powerful under the covers of this thin, dusty bed, but I nodded anyway.
Hart only snorted. “You’re going to cross the channel with thousands of men?”
Kane shook his head. “We’ll use our witch. She’s the one that sent us to you.”
“You have a witch that can portal an entire army across realms?” Valery asked.
Hart smirked. “Do you also have a unicorn and a troll that will turn my shit to gold?”
Kane didn’t grin this time and Hart’s eyes flared with understanding. “Creighton?”
Kane sat back down on the bed beside me and gave a single definitive nod.
“Briar Creighton…” Hart mused, leaning against the scarred wooden sideboard. “A brilliant witch and an even more brilliant fuck.”
A noise sputtered from me, and I realized I’d choked on my own spit.
Briar had been alive for hundreds of years; I guess I couldn’t fault her for sleeping with some of the most handsome, roguish men alive. For whatever reason, my eyes cut to Valery before anyone else, and saw she had
turned a little pink. I hadn’t taken her for a blusher, but I wasn’t surprised. Hart probably had that effect on people.
Kane ignored Hart’s crudeness. “Once we’re back, we’ll rally our troops and return here, to your encampment. Then we can storm Solaris as one.”
“With all due respect, your kingliness,” Hart said, hopping back onto his makeshift perch and bending up a long leg to lean an elbow on. “There’s nothing stopping me from hitting him tonight without you.”
To my surprise, Kane only cocked his head appraisingly and asked him, “What are you, half?”
“My father was full-blooded. My mother mortal.”
Kane nodded to himself, assumption confirmed. He wasn’t a halfling—a mortal with trace ancestral amounts of Fae blood—but he wasn’t nearly as powerful a Fae as, say, Griffin or Wyn. Or as Kane had been, before being remade.
“Hart, your following is impressive. The work you’ve done…Having led a rebellion of my own, once…” The rueful smile didn’t reach Kane’s eyes. “I’m aware just how impossible this must have been. How much trust these people have in you, and you in them. But none of that will matter when you face Lazarus. Weakened or not, he’s full-blooded Fae. You’re half. You don’t stand a chance without us. In the end, only I can kill him with the Blade of the Sun.”
“Or me,” I supplied.
“No,” Kane said, low and authoritative. “It will be me. And only me.”
