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

60. Veyka

60

VEYKA

I wanted to go far. To the Spine. Beyond, past the lakes of Eilean Gayl to the uncharted north. Or to the far south, where the fabled witch isle waited off of Annwyn’s southwest coast. I wanted to go as far and as fast as my power could take me.

But I’d promised Arran. On the bridge outside of Eilean Gayl, I had promised that we would not be parted again.

I was going to break that promise in the end. There was no way to avoid that. But in the meantime, I would do everything I could to keep my word. So I took myself up to one of the striated ledges of the cliffs overlooking the Crossing. But I chose one high above the terrestrial camp, where no two or four-footed fae would be able to reach me. Arran could if he tried hard enough. There was nowhere I could go to escape him, he’d made that clear months ago.

No place but one.

But it got cold up on the cliff and I did not have a cloak. I wasn’t ready to go back to our tent and retrieve one, even for the brief second it would require. I ended up exactly where I’d started hours before—in the middle of the Crossing, looking out over the Split Sea. This time I sat down.

The waves lapped at the stone, a deep gray blue that mirrored the sun as it began its evening descent. I’d never dangled my legs over the lake at Eilean Gayl. The snow was a decent deterrent. The beasts that lurked beneath the surface an even bigger one. But here, I was unafraid. If sweet, even-tempered Mya was not afraid of these depths, I would not be either.

I removed my boots and rolled up my leather leggings, but I stopped just short of actually dipping my toes beneath the surface.

“I won’t bite. But I cannot speak for the other denizens of the sea.”

I snorted. I should have known she was lingering nearby. “Isn’t that precisely what you do with your ethereal power?”

A splash split the water and Mya emerged fully, pulling herself up onto the shore. It took more than a little maneuvering to get herself up to where I sat on the edge of the land bridge, but she did so without shifting to legs.

This must be what she considered her true self. It was more than impressive. Her thick sapphire blue tail was covered in tens of thousands of tiny scales. Each one shimmered as she moved, iridescent in the light.

She braced her arms behind her, leaning back and letting her eyes become heavy, but not close entirely. She had limited days remaining to her, just like me. Of course she’d want to spend them staring out at her home.

“I must physically touch individuals in order to gauge their heart and intention. But for large groups, or the sea itself… it is more of a feeling that builds.” Mya dug her fingers into the sand as she explained. “It has gotten stronger in the last few months.”

Probably in response to the growing strength of the succubus. And my own powers. “How long have you had your ethereal powers?”

Mya’s eyes opened enough for her to look at me. “I was born with them.”

I did not explain how my void power had awoken. None of them—Agravayn, Gaheris, Evander—had questioned that I was the queen of the void. If word of my power had spread ahead of me to the terrestrial kingdom, then it had certainly reached them as well.

The conversation ebbed, but I made no effort to revive it. I stared at the sea. The sea stared back. The tips of Mya’s fin skimmed the water, sending out rings of gentle ripples that were swallowed by the ever-present waves.

Emboldened by her presence, I slid one foot down toward the water. The next wave came, up and up and up, cresting just below my toes. My heartbeat quickened, but I held my foot in place. The next wave came, faster than the one before. It would reach me. Up over the sand it climbed, closer and closer and closer—until it crashed past my toes, curling up and around the arch until it reached my ankle.

It felt… fucking cold. And also glorious.

But then there was another, coming up faster, at an uneven interval. It splashed right past my foot, curling up my leg and wetting my leathers. I jerked my foot back, shrieking.

Mya laughed, flicking her fin in the water.

“Are they always so unpredictable?” I said between laughs. I was just brave enough to slide my foot back down and allow my other to join it.

Mya’s smile softened. “No. It has only been like this since I sealed the seas.”

Sealed the seas? “I do not understand.”

Mya’s smile disappeared entirely, her lips drawing together. It was difficult to see in the falling light, but I thought that the blue color on her cheeks deepened slightly.

“On land, you pass between realms using rifts,” she said. “But the sea is ever moving, ever changing. The rifts are not static, nor are the realms really separate. There is the human realm, and the fae realm, but there is one sea.”

Now I understood. She’d closed the rifts—changed the very nature of her kingdom. Sacrificed. There could only be one reason. “You sealed the sea to prevent the succubus from using those ever-changing rifts.”

She nodded solemnly. “My ancestors refused to seal the seas and it nearly cost them everything. Our population was decimated in the Great War, and we did not fight a single battle on land. All of it took place beneath the waves. I understand why they did not take that last drastic step. Sealing the seas limits the full breadth of my magic, and the magic my people command. I call to the sea to summon my power, but only a small fraction of it answers.”

“You did what is best for your kingdom.” A statement, not a question. From one queen to another.

But Mya’s eyes were no longer on me. There was no more laughter. Her eyes drifted out to the horizon, where the sun was just about to kiss the edge of the water.

She did not ask about the grail or the Sacred Trinity and I did not speak of it. I would not dangle a fool’s hope in front of her. Not when I expected she’d already accepted her fate, as I had. Was trying to.

“Arran does not understand.” I said it without expecting a response. Mya did not know me. She owed me nothing. I did not want to know what conversations she and Evander had endured on the subject. But I still could not stop myself from letting the words out, from saying them to the one being in the entire realm who had a chance at understanding.

Mya exhaled slowly. “Does that surprise you?”

“Yes. When he first came to Baylaur… he accused me of being lazy and selfish. He told me I’d failed in my duty to Annwyn. And he was right.” The worlds spilled out of me, and I began to realize how afraid I’d been to say them, but how desperately I needed to. Everyone around me was so intent on saving me, on protecting me. I could not be honest. My hands curled to fists, sand squeezing out of them as anger sharpened inside of me. “How can that same male ask me not to do my duty? To be selfish and choose my own life over the very existence of my kingdom?”

Mya waited. I thought she might reach for me, to try and use her power to find an answer for the questions that were unanswerable. But after several loaded moments passed, she only shrugged.

“You changed,” she said quietly.

So did he, my heart finished.

“How can you be so calm?” Because she was. I was the Queen of the Elemental Fae, a race famed for our ability to control our emotions even to a fault. And yet I was coming apart at the seams, while my Aquarian counterpart was the picture of composure and grace. It made me like her just a tiny bit less.

“There is no other option,” Mya said.

“Ha! I am anything but calm.”

One corner of her mouth lifted into a slight but still lovely smile. “Fulfilling the prophecy is the only option. It is the only way to save my kingdom. I never imagined that my queenship would end like this,” Mya admitted. “But if this is my one real act as queen, then it is enough.”

Yes, I understood her perfectly. I’d never imagined ruling at all. First, because there was Arthur. Then later, because I’d planned to leave Annwyn rather than saddle the kingdom with a powerless, dangerous queen. Now… now I would die to save my kingdom. And somehow, it was enough.

Except for Arran. There would never be enough time with him. Not even if we had a thousand years. But less than one seemed like a cruel bargain.

“I don’t want to die.”

“Neither do I,” Mya admitted. “But I am not thinking of it as dying. The prophecy refers to a sacrifice. Perhaps it will require something else. Something other than my life.”

I laughed, because the idea she posed was preposterous. Of course, our lives were the price. The carving on the standing stone had been clear, even if the words of the prophecy were not. Those two queens depicted on the stone were there, and then they were gone.

“That is quite a risk to take,” I said quietly. Not with her life, but with her heart.

She smiled and I recognized it for what it was—the lie she told herself to make it okay, to give herself the courage to go through with it. She knew. Of course, she knew.

That sad smile lingered as Mya turned back to the sea, quickly blending with the sky in an endless black expanse. “Your Arran will not want to trust Evander. I have heard the history between them and seen your own mistrust. But I am intimately familiar with the depths of my husband’s soul.” There was that slight change in the blue of her cheeks again. “He can be trusted, Veyka. I promise you.”

I swallowed the lump of emotion in my throat. Hearing her speak of her husband made me long for mine. I’d been gone long enough. “I will tell Arran.”

I pulled my feet through the sand, leaving deep channels that filled with water as I stood. Mya made no move to leave. Part of me hesitated to leave her here alone. But the sea was her home. She was much safer here than I.

“Veyka.”

I paused, boots in my hand.

“I… I can help you, if you wish. It is what I do… what I did, before I became queen. I helped people. By laying hands on them, I was able to see the emotions and fears they could not articulate for themselves and help them sort through them.” She turned to look up at me, blue eyes turned almost black by the night. “I can help you, before… before.”

Before we died.

Instead of waiting for her to touch me, I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “I know who I am, for better or worse. And I know what I want.” Who I want.

Mya nodded in understanding. “In two days, we will go.”

I huffed a sigh. “I suppose we can use those two days to figure out where and how. We do not even truly know what to do, how to make this sacrifice.”

“No,” Mya agreed, her eyes already back on the sea. “But I know who to ask. We must go back to where this all began. Avalon.”