Queen of Blood and Vengeance (Secrets of the Faerie Crown #4)

56. Veyka

56

VEYKA

I woke in the dark hour before predawn. Just before the shift, where the promise of tomorrow did not yet linger in the air but the worries of yesterday had faded. I lay still for several long minutes, waiting to see if Arran was still awake. Every time I’d rolled over or reached for a sip of water, I'd found him watching me. He did not even pretend to sleep. Merely pressed a soft kiss to my lips and pulled me tighter against him.

But his breathing was even and steady. When I fluttered my eyes open to examine him from beneath my lashes, his own were closed despite the footsteps only a few feet from the opening of our tent. I’d learned quickly that an army camp was not a quiet place, nor a dark one. With so many bodies encamped together, there was always someone up seeking a place to relieve themselves or a bite of food. Or slipping from one warm bed to another. Then there were the patrols. Flora-gifted sent vines to creep around the perimeter, while the fauna-gifted patrolled on four legs or from the air.

I suspected Lyrena had taken a shift outside our tent. This one, at least, was roomier than the low-slung, single-poled contraption we’d used when traveling across the continent for the first time. A proper army camp called for a proper tent—especially when it housed not only that army’s commander, but its king and queen.

Sliding from the bed was easy. Disentangling myself from Arran was harder. I’d barely managed to get off my clothes before falling into our bedrolls. I tugged on a pair of trousers—failed to get them past my hips— nope, those are Arran’s.

A little more digging and I found my own more generously cut leggings. I pulled on the first tunic I found, a small purr of appreciation sneaking out of my lips when I recognized Arran’s scent clinging to the wool.

“Where are you going?”

My teeth sank into my lower lip, stopping just short of drawing blood. If Arran caught a whiff, if his beast scented my blood, I’d never make it past the tent opening.

A low, sleepy growl brushed against my consciousness. “Veyka?” he hummed.

The urge to reach for him was physical. A tug at the center of my chest, radiating through the sinews of muscle to my hand. My fingertips curled for the silky tendrils of his hair, my palm heating for the burn of stubble across his jaw.

But I forced a fist.

“Not far,” I promised.

“Hold on,” he rolled over. “I’m coming with you.”

No! “Camping does not leave much dignity. At least let a female relieve herself in peace.”

That earned me another growl, less sleepy this time. But he did not stand.

“I will be back,” I promised, careful not to append the word ‘soon’ out of habit.

The Ancestors must have decided to pay attention to me for once, because Arran did not move again as I slipped out of the tent.

Barkke had taken Lyrena’s spot just outside. He sat in his huge hound form, hind legs folded behind him and front two straight, his proud head on a constant swivel, ears perking now and then at distant sounds.

I forced my hand to remain at my side. I’d never asked whether terrestrials found it offensive if you stroked their beast forms. I had simply touched Arran because from the very beginning, he’d belonged to me, no matter what form he took.

Giving the same excuse to Barkke as I’d given to Arran, I headed for the small gap between our tent and the one Lyrena was sharing with Isolde. Though I doubted I’d find the white faerie inside; she’d been busy with the other healers when I’d come into camp earlier. While the terrestrial healers were skilled in their use of plants to create tinctures and salves to treat the ailments our soldiers would eventually heal from, only Isolde possessed the true power of healing. She was invaluable in battle, and even more so after it.

I waited a few more steps, for the darkness beyond the camp to swallow me fully, before stepping into the void.

The temptation to linger was stronger each time I stepped into that glorious swirling dark. Without the pull of Arran, the golden thread that connected us through all the realms of creation, I knew I would have given in a long time ago.

The witch in the Spine had told me the price of my magic was already paid. But there was an element to the power of the void which she did not understand. The power itself had built steadily since that first time I’d been flooded with it in the moments after my Joining to Arran. First my own ability to move through the void, then to take another along with me, until it culminated in the portal rifts that allowed me to move entire armies from one realm to another. It was a mighty gift, and I did not face a coma like Lyrena or aches like Cyara in the wake of using my power.

But it was not entirely without cost.

To have access to so many realms, beautiful and dangerous and infinite, but be unable to linger in them for as long as I desired—that was a cost all its own. To be constantly saddled with the knowledge that there were worlds beyond the ones I knew, to see them and taste them, but never fully experience them, because there was the tether, always pulling me back.

Unless I brought Arran with me.

That was not a choice.

Or… I supposed it was. But I was prepared to pay the cost the prophecy required of me to save my kingdom. Even if my mate was not ready to let me go.

Tonight was not for that.

I slid out of the void and into a world of endless golden sand. Two suns hung in the sky, rather than one. They glinted off of the turquoise blue water, more vibrant than any natural color I’d seen anywhere in Annwyn. I laid in the sand, letting the tiny granules fill the space between my toes, soaking the heat from those suns into my delicate skin. When the heat began to burn, I slipped into the void once more.

This time I emerged into a world drenched in rain and mist. But unlike the cold gray that had enshrouded us during the battle with the succubus hours before, this world was made wholly of light. Rainbows formed all around me, curving and swirling. I reached out into the mist, eager to feel if it was cold or warm. It was neither—it was alive . I trailed my fingers through the haze, leaving furrows that turned to rainbows in that glorious ever-shifting light. But I did not remain long in that realm, either.

Back to void. Enjoying, savoring. But always searching for the one realm I had not yet found.