Page 153 of A Fate of Ice and Lies
Those words replayed in my head, and I still couldn’t believe they were real.
Her features softened when she looked back at me. I was sure I looked like a love-drunk fool, but I was too far gone to care.
“Okay.” Nate yawned. “Did you wake us up just to?—”
“Like we were sleeping.” Ryenne scoffed.
“Trying to be polite to my future brother-in-law and not have him think about his little sister having sex.” Nate winked.
Donnie grumbled, and I had to chew the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. But here we were. All of us together. Brenton alive, and Teddy glowing. It was more than I could’ve imagined a few hoursago.
Not that I was suddenly okay with Teddy having fled to the astral realm where she could’ve died.
I still held it against Adela, even Nalari. It didn’t matter that Nalari had gone with the idea she’d help Teddy. She’d planted the idea of going in Teddy’s head. She’d risked her life just as Adela had. Still, Nalari wasn’t only my Guardian but also my friend. Her intentions had been good, if not misplaced. And in the end, she’d been willing to kill Adela, her Elder, for both Teddy and me.
I didn’t much care that Adela and Everly had made amends. Didn’t care that Adela forgave Everly’s actions enough to free Everly’s magic. A part of me wanted to begrudge Everly for forgiving her Guardian so easily. Still, I also understood what it meant to Everly to not only have a Guardian but also an Elder. Being granted an Elder was the highest form of compliment and was something only my parents and uncle had been given.
And although I would’ve preferred seeing Adela dead for what she’d done, Nalari reminded me several times that going was Teddy’s choice. And while I wanted to shield her from danger, I couldn’t help but be in awe of her bravery. It also made me realize that maybe she didn’t need me to protect her as I’d tried to do from the start, but trust that she was intelligent and competent. She was resourceful and had found three individuals in Everly, Brenton, and Death to do what I’d long ago promised to do and show her how to fight and fend for herself.
With Everly, Brenton, and Death, or Eiran, having set up a good foundation for fighting, I wanted to train her more. Ensure she could go to battle and win. Then there was the matter of her newfound magic we’d have to play with to see what manifested and then practice and hone it intosomething fun, as well as a weapon. By having magic and fighting skills in her arsenal, she could choose how to fight if fighting was what she wanted. Or what she had to do at a moment’s notice.
“All right, well, I’m just gonna start,” Teddy said. She slid onto the chair between Brenton and me. “We’ve already clarified that I’m a total badass.” She winked at me.
“Foolish,” Brenton countered, pushing his shoulder against hers, “but yeah, also a badass.”
“Whatever, zombie boy,” Ryenne teased.
No one but Teddy and I seemed to notice the way Brenton flinched. Teddy nudged the side of her leg against his. He stared at his knees for a long time before his focus shifted to me. He grinned, but there was nothing lighthearted or easy about it.
“Do you want me to start with the least surprising or most surprising part?” she asked.
“Least,” Ryenne said. “Builds anticipation.”
“Apparently, I’m part mage, which is how I have this.” She sent a spiral of peach magic in the air. It did little more than cause a small current of wind around us, but her face shone with pride. “It’s not as fancy as teleporting or harvesting vegetables at a speed that goes against natural law, but?—”
“We’ll teach you,” Brenton offered, his attention swinging back to me for approval. “You’ll have it mastered in no time.”
“That’s the other thing.” She wrinkled her nose. “Nalari, I hope you’re listening.”
“Always,”she replied through the connection she opened between the three of us.
“I need to learn how to use this a lot sooner than any of us are ready for. And you four”—she glanced between Everly, George, Brenton, and me—“are going to have to startchanneling your primal instincts more often. Learn how to control it rather than have it control you, which apparently is the way it should’ve always been. But”—she shook her head as if to clear her thoughts—“I’m skipping around. Let me start over.”
For the next hour and a half, Teddy spoke and explained what she could, but it felt as if Eiran had only given her bits of information, leaving us to put together the missing pieces. We still had Teddy’s journal to read, the only thing remaining after our homes burned down. Hopefully, it provided more about this upcoming war that fate apparently wanted us to win.
I couldn’t pretend to understand fate or prophecies, but it seemed like fate had gone through a whole lot of trouble to right a wrong that should’ve been settled in my own realm. Not here, where humans were not only fragile but also blameless. According to Adela, this was the way it had been foretold, not that she offered any more information.
So while it had been fate and not the dragons who’d bound Teddy’s and my soul together, I’d brought danger into her world. Into her home. Just the other morning, people, her people, had fired at Teddy’s home. They’d destroyed that home and almost killed one of my best friends. I wasn’t sure how to handle that, how to punish and ensure our safety when these humans now knew that iron was deadly to us, and how to shoulder this new development along with Leanora and whatever fate had in store for us.
I tapped my fingertips on my thigh. When Teddy took my hand, I kissed her knuckles. A light blush colored her cheeks as she bit her bottom lip.
“I think we need to tell my parents everything,” I said. “Maybe they can send an army over here.”
Going to Niev without permission was risky, but I was the king’s son for a reason, and when I passed through the veil, I’d demand to be heard.
“Commander Hudson should also be made aware,” George said.
I didn’t like the idea of involving him. Not after the many ways he’d changed since coming to this realm. But my father and the Elders had appointed him as commander because he was the best at what he did.
