Page 144 of Faeling
Vallek didn’t end up liking the plan, but it was all far too late now. Standing on a serpentine sandbar in the middle of the narrow mouth of Dyfan Bay, orcish territories behind him and the faelands just yonder, he watched as a dozen fae ships bobbed in the shallows. His own ships, ordered west from the Spearhead to meet them here, had been beached behind him. They were still manned should anything happen, but the majority of his berserkers waited in formation.
Somewhere amongst them stood Asta, guarding the reticent Leita. Disguised and glamoured, the fae woman was still shackled; in the four days since her capture, Leita still hadn’t come round to Ravenna’s plan. Not for lack of trying, of course. His mate wheedled, cajoled, coaxed, and threatened, anything to bring the fae heir onside.
He bore a sliver of sympathy for the woman; it was clear she wanted nothing to do with Amaranthe and the faelands—and she couldn’t be faulted for that. From the scraps Ravenna had been able to glean from Leita’s sparse answers, she’d been alonefor almost five-hundred years, wandering the wilderness with her unicorn.
Still, Vallek wasn’t above using her as bait. She was here to entice Amaranthe, for while disguised and glamoured, her magic would still be on the wind. It would serve as a distraction from Ravenna’s own magic, distinct, she said, from a full fae’s and noticeable to them. Even if their senses would be somewhat dulled away from the faelands.
While that may have all been true, Vallek still wasn’t sure he supported Ravenna’s final plan.
Before assuming her guard of Leita, Asta had taken a small raft, just her and Ravenna. She helped Ravenna hide somewhere on the sandbar before rowing back. Alone.
Not even Vallek knew where she hid.“It’s better that way,”Ravenna had reasoned.“You can’t give anything away if you don’t know.”
He was man enough to admit that he found the insinuation that he’d give away her location offensive—and that his annoyance with her was really an easier emotion to have than this worry.
Plans were all well and good until they went to shit in the face of the enemy.
And what a face it was.
Vallek had never seen the Fae Queen in person, just likenesses in statues and stories. From Ravenna’s warnings, he knew that the face she wore was false, a glamour just like the one his mate had used to pass as human.
Still, even knowing that, he wasn’t prepared for the sight of the Fae Queen gliding across the sand to meet him. Unbound hair streamed behind her in soft white ringlets, nearly touchingher bare feet. Robes of the palest blue velvet and silk hung from slender shoulders, accentuating a supple figure. Hands as pale and delicate as roosting doves were folded demurely before her, shell-pink nails elongated into elegant claws. With her long, graceful neck, winging brows, and small mouth, she resembled an exotic songbird. Her robes rippled behind her, and her iridescent wings gleamed opalescent in the late-morning light.
Her beauty was ethereal and terrible—and devious. Although not a fae, Vallek could sense the power radiating from Amaranthe as she stepped across the sand, hardly leaving footprints behind her. She was small, pale, and utterly deadly. Her form as beautiful as the finest blade and just as lethal.
Indeed, for all her beauty, the effect was marred somewhat by her forbidding expression.
She came to a halt about two body lengths’ away, two warriors on either side of her. Vallek nodded in greeting as Mattias, on his right, bowed his head lower.
None of the fae moved. The warriors stood silent sentinel, their dark eyes trained forward. Vallek was unsettled by their statuesque posture, as though they were drones, merely awaiting command.
“Your Majesty,” Vallek said in faethling. “Thank you for meeting me.”
“The faelands suffer without their queen, so we must keep this brief.” Her gaze, dark as the night sky with indigo irises and black sclera, flicked past him to assess his forces.
“I wouldn’t make such a request were it not important.” Using the excuse to look at Mattias, Vallek scanned the sandbar for any sign of his mate. There were a handful of barnacle-clad boulders and a shelf of long-dead coral for cover, but none seemed deep or wide enough to make an effective hiding spot.
He had to trust she would strike when the moment was right. They’d spent hours going over the plan, how Vallek would do his best to lure Amaranthe as far from her warriors as he could. Distract her with promises, get her attention focused entirely on the chance at capturing Ravenna or Leita, and in that moment when she thought she would triumph, snatch it all away.
The plan had a certain poetry to it, at least in theory, but standing there with his boots in the sand, across from the frigid stare of the Fae Queen, Vallek could only pray that his mate’s instinct and aim were true.
“In the summer, you sent messengers to a coastal village. To warn of a half-fae criminal.”
Those dark eyes flashed with interest, and if Vallek wasn’t mistaken, her expression bordered on smug. The message Eydis drafted to lure the fae here hadn’t outright stated that they had more than possible information on whoever Amaranthe hunted, but the Fae Queen had to have suspected. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have come herself.
Had Vallek sought someone so dangerous, so prized, he’d have come himself, too.
That he’d not only agreed to but followed through in bringing his own mate right to the being that wanted her dead hadn’t escaped him. He’d lain awake for long hours the night before, pondering this very conundrum.
“I did,” Amaranthe confirmed. Her gaze again skittered across the lines of berserkers. “Passing along fair warning seemed the neighborly thing to do.”
“Indeed. It does make me wonder about the safety of our borders and whether or not a…renegotiation of them might be in order.”
One of her brows ticked up infinitesimally. “And underminecenturies of precedent and good will? I think not.”
“With so many renegade fae in my territories, I hope you will reconsider. I too have a kingdom and people to make safe.”
That arched brow lost a bit of its imperiousness as she searched Vallek’s face. He held perfectly still when he felt tendrils of magic begin slithering up his legs.
