Lexa
“Now what?”
Kaleb moves in, reaching for me. I close my eyes as his fingertips graze my cheekbone, and I don’t fight it when my body instinctively leans into his touch. It’s short lived. His thumb grazes my cheek like he’s counting the freckles before he pulls away, and then I’m alone, in a kitchen so dated yet opulent, hungry and confused.
I find a little box of cookies, and that’s going to have to be enough unless Silas returned here with his entire staff, but… I think we’re the only two beings in the house as it stands.
I should probably gather the gown in that stairwell, but I have no idea where the stairwell is… but I’m sure, based on the raised voices I heard moments ago, that Silas is already well aware of the situation now.
He finds me after twenty minutes. I’m still in the kitchen with my knees tucked to my chest perched on a bench beneath a wide window letting in light from his back garden. He glances at the empty box of cookies before moving toward the stove, which he lights by simply moving his hand over the grate, and pulls a kettle to rest over the flames.
He has his wings tucked in tight along his back as he moves, searching the cabinets like he, too, isn’t used to being in this room, being the one making what smells like coffee, which I haven’t had in ages.
“I didn’t know fae drank coffee,” I say absently, picking fibers from my oversized pants.
He shrugs, pulling two mugs from a cabinet. “Based on what we know about your folk, in your mystical, theoretical lands, I didn’t know you even existed.”
I lean my head against the window and fix him with a glare, which he smiles at, rolling his eyes back to his task.
“In all honesty, Eastonia and the lands of shifters are supposed to be a myth. That's what we're taught in our school years. You can only imagine the surprise when our king began to rumble about–about–”
“Invading?” I rest my chin on my knee, arching a brow.
“I fail to understand, even years later, why it’s necessary,” he replies under his breath, and then he’s sitting at the table across from me, gently pushing a cup of black coffee in my direction. “I don’t know where they keep the cream and sugar.”
“Why’d you dismiss your staff if you knew you were coming back so quickly?” I want to ask where he went to begin with, but honestly, the last three or four days have been a complete blur.
“I wasn’t under the impression I’d be back so quickly, but I found something that might be useful to a friend of mine, so I came back.”
“That’s all rather secretive.”
He smirks, taking another sip.
“There are things you don’t need to know, things Kaleb wouldn’t want you directly involved in. This is, unfortunately, one of them.”
“Can you at least tell me where you went?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because I’m in a new world and trapped within walls meant to keep people like me caged. It seems like you have the freedom to come and go as you please.”
He’s silent for several seconds, lost in thought. “It’s not as easy as that, but yeah, I suppose that’s close to the truth. I had to go up north to what we call the Highwoods, but don’t repeat that to anyone. Except your mate, of course. It’s a kingdom outside of our king's control. Shifters and fae live there together in peace. It can be done.”
My cheeks prickle with a blush I’m totally sure is his doing. Just the word mate has my body on edge. It’s a strange feeling. That feral lust is gone, yes, but new feelings remain. It’s hard to describe. I’m sure it would be easier if I could feel everything in full.
“Why does your king not allow shifters to… be what they are? Why take those powers from them?”
“It’s a complicated answer.”
“I know enough, I guess. Kaleb told me it’s to keep everyone desperate.”
“That’s part of it. Shifters are often more powerful–in terms of raw strength–than fae. We’re whimsical.” He smiles with a teasing flutter of his fingers before that smile fades to a beaten kind of neutrality, like he hasn’t slept in days. “Shifters rely on the moon for their gifts, but I’m sure you know that–”
“Actually, no. What do you mean?”
He takes a sip before leaning back, tilting his head as he scans my face. “You don’t feel most powerful, most called to your lupine gifts, when the moon is full?”
“I mean, sure. It beckons, I suppose, but I can shift whenever I want normally. There’s never anything holding me back.”
That confuses him greatly, which confuses me.
“Really?”
I nod, taking an experimental sip of my coffee. It’s strong as hell and bitter but trickles through my system, awakening my sleep addled brain. Whatever senses I have left begin to wake up, and I notice the shielded look behind his eyes, like he’s silently begging for something. I’m not entirely sure what, so I say, “Did you think we could only shift during a full moon?”
“I… I guess so.”
“That’s silly. Whoever told you that knows nothing about wolves. It’s voluntary, too.”
“But the mate bond isn’t?”
“No.” I smooth a hand over the surface of the table. “It’s not.”
Silence swells. I resist the urge to talk about Chessie, to ask him if he’s all right, to be honest. His cries of anguish had been the only thing I’d heard or seen during those moments after her death before it all went hazy, and my mind clung to survival instead.
“Magic isn’t an infinite resource,” he begins after a few moments of heavy silence–heavy enough I can hear the groans and clicks of the massive mansion all around us. “It’s something that can wane, something that can be taken and controlled.”
“It's… not,” I reply slowly, meeting his eyes. “Magic is everywhere where I’m from. It literally bleeds from the ground in some places in the Deadlands. You can feel it in the woods in the Roguelands. It’s in the water that flows through Crescent Falls and Eastonia, all the way to Maatua, buried under the sand of Tarsian.”
Silas tilts his head, enraptured. What’s going on here? In Pantharas? Are all of these people trapped, unable to feel any of this?
“My family has magic,” I say, practically involuntarily as a sweeping sense of unease curdles through my veins. “We’re still not sure how, or why, it came about. How some of us are so different from the others. My–I’m sure Kaleb has mentioned to you what I told him about my family when I first arrived.”
He shakes his head, which shocks me. “Whatever is said between you and Kaleb remains your business. He’s not that type of man.”
“What type of man is that?”
“You can trust him with your life.” He holds my gaze intensely. “It's a rare form.”
It is, even back home. My chest tightens around a fleeting warmth I’ve been desperate to hold onto since I woke up this morning and continue, “There’re two branches of my family. My great-grandparents united what we call Crescent Falls, a northern territory on our continent. They were the Alpha King and Luna Queen for a long time, and they had two children, my grandfather, Isaac, and his sister… Queen Ella.” I fold my hands around my coffee mug. “Isla was a witch.” I meet his eyes, sending my own silent questions into the space between us. Do they have witches here? Are we similar at all? “And Maddox had… according to our scholars… enough Firestone blood to… get the ball rolling, genetically.”
Firestone bounces through the room. Silas narrows his eyes and suddenly widens them, like the word is familiar–not just something he’s heard before. No, it means something to him.
I go on, “My great-aunt Ella pulled down the veil around Eastonia. Her mate, Ryatt, is what we call a Shadowsynger–”
“Oh,” Silas breathes, closing his eyes. “My gods.”
“What?”
A sideways, disbelieving smile touches the corner of his mouth. “Go on, please.”
After a beat of hesitation, I do just that. “A wolf of shadow. He was the King of the Roguelands and waged war against the last of the Old Kings, King Kane. They united Eastonia under one crown, which now belongs to my cousin Maeve, the first full-blooded Firestone Witch to take the throne again after… but you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
“The Great War,” he says softly, opening his eyes. “It’s just a legend.”
“Not where I’m from.”
He smirks, methodically rising, taking our coffee mugs with him. With his back to me, he says, “What do your people say about the era of the Firestone Queens?” He refreshes our mugs.
“Not a lot. There’s too much we don’t know. The Deadlands was a Firestone kingdom, they think, some believe it was the first, older than Moonrise, our capital.”
“I meant about the war,” he corrects, pouring fresh coffee into each mug.
I chew the inside of my cheek for a moment, waiting for him to return before continuing, “We don’t know enough to be sure. My mother’s people–the tribes–they have their own history. But it’s theorized now that… our enemies during that time were… possibly your kind.”
“You’d be correct if that’s what you also believe.”
“Then there were fae in Eastonia?”
“Yes. Our oldest ancestors. Our heroes and villains of every story told to fae children. The fact that you exist proves they’re not just myths.” He slides the coffee in my direction, and I accept it without hesitation. “We were not banished from your lands. We shouldn’t have been there in the first place. We invaded, tried to convince the Firestones to give us their magic. Our narrative about them is negative–they were evil, monsters of fire and seduction. But they had the shifters on their side, their beasts, so the fae took as many of the wolves as they could after a war that waged for centuries, and Eastonia faded away, never to be seen again, and our kings have wasted the magic of Pantharas, hoarding it, turning it into currency that cannot be replaced or regenerated, and you….” He brings his cup to his lips. “You have no idea what a fae king would do to have everything you have as his own.”
“They want our magic?”
“All of it.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he says, the saddest of smiles touching his lips, “We’re immortal, Lexa, but we cannot heal our own wounds. Children are rare–so much so that we are slowly dying out. We can fly, but only a few of us are granted the freedom to use any of the gifts of light and sound we should have naturally. It’s all for the king, and he wants more.”
I cock my head. “Does he have a name? He’s always just addressed as the king.”
“I’m sure he does, but I doubt he remembers it. He’s… at least a thousand years old.”
I pale. “So… a few decades to plan between when the veil fell and… now… means nothing to him, does it.”
“No,” Silas says slowly as the puzzle pieces begin to fall into place.
“He sent scouts, didn’t he? To look for Eastonia again?”
“Long before the veil was destroyed. Explorers, yes. First, halflings. They found Emberfyll and revolted.”
Now I’m the one closing my eyes, thinking of Logan. “They set up their own kingdom.”
“Centuries ago, yes. Those with strong fae gifts put a veil around it, and we lost them. Then the king sent fae scouts, his most powerful, loyal supporters, and they disappeared for decades, until recently when… Hannibal Arachnis returned home on what he said were the wings of Firestone magic. Few believed him.”
I think of the battle that took place on that distant island off the shore of Tarsian, of the Viper, and Maeve and Ryatt. “Maeve had no idea what she was doing.”
“She did not know fae can harness powers from others. He likely used her power to get home, sapping her energy while his comrade died, yes.”
“Your king wants to take Eastonia, doesn’t he?”
“Our kind placed kings in your lands before the last dawn of the war, when the Firestones fell. It was a last effort to take control, and your Goddess trapped them inside as punishment. Now, the veil is gone, and he sees it as ripe for the taking.”
“He will be sailing into hell,” I warn, and Silas nods.
“We will not let it get that far,” he says to me. “That’s why you’re here. The King of Pantharas’s reign will come to an end when your games do.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen it.”
I narrow my eyes. “How?”
“I made a new friend–”
“Lexa?” Kaleb’s voice echoes through the house, drifting into the kitchen, and Silas looks down into his coffee, his lips pinched shut.