Page 31 of A Sword of Ice
She saw the moment Valerio’s patience fell apart at the seams. He didn’t raise his voice, but he was a prince, had commanded others since birth. He didn’t need to shout. It was in the tone of command in his voice, using just the right timbre to sound mocking and belittling at once.
“Are you arguing so vehemently because you really want to help or is it because you want to prove to yourself that you are not as useless as you believe you are?”
Shock reeled her back, had her sucking in a sharp breath. Somewhere off to the side, Ryker growled, but the sound went ignored. She didn’t want him to fight her battles for her, not when he’d said the same things about her not too long ago and with much more ire.
Her hands trembled again, and she was sure this time they could see it. “You all said it was my fight, too. You said it was my sacred duty as an Elemental to help save the Fae race. It’s why you took me in the first place. Now I am here, willing to help, and you want to leave me behind!”
Valerio growled and stepped forward. His hands closed around the map and he ripped it from her grasp. She let it go before the parchment could tear, but it felt like he was taking something from her. Some integral part of herself that she didn’t understand and had been trying to piece through the incongruity of it.
“Your sacred duty was to find the Fae, Shula. You are not a warrior and I will not have you trying to prove to be something you are not. So you will tell me where the Fae is and you will stay here. That is an order from your prince.”
His nostrils were flaring and she leaned away from him. For a split second, she was afraid of him, because she remembered exactly what type of magic he wielded and what he could force into her mind at any time. He’d done it once to keep her in line, poured wretched visions into her brain that seemed like reality.
She curled her fingers into her palms and let out a breath filled with smoke and the stench of burning wood.
“Fine,” she gritted out. “The map said she was at Porir City Zoo.”
Valerio didn’t utter another word as he turned and walked away.
16
Betrayals and Disobedience
The thing about Prince Valerio’s order was this: he wasn’therprince, and therefore she wasn’t beholden to his obstinate request. Just because she had joined the Resistance, it didn’t mean she was trading one tyrant for another.
She waited until they were gone, disappearing through Uric’s portal before she turned to Clay. He was staring at her warily and with eyes full of compassion.
It’s what made betraying him even harder.
“Valerio is—”
“An asshole,” she interrupted.
He smiled sheepishly. “Well, I got all the charm in the family and he got all the brood.”
Shula blinked at him. “Family?”
Clay slumped into a corner, dropping his head against the wall. “Cousins. Our mothers were sisters. Noble ladies from the Sapphire Court.”
Shula’s eyes widened. “So, you’re actually a lord. Lord Clay…” She broke off and snorted. While she could see him being royalty, she couldn’t see him being a good lord of a manor. His demeanor didn’t seem to allow the same veneration as Valerio.
“Yeah, make fun, get it out. Julius never ceases to remind me.”
She made her way to his side and plopped next to him, leaning back. “Where were you when everything went to shit?” she whispered.
It always seemed like such a personal question. To ask when their worlds turned upside down, who’d they’d lost, what they’d lost.
Shula wasn’t old enough to know. She hadn’t even lived those times. She’d lived her own brand of torment, she knew what these laws against the Fae caused, the hurt they weaved. But she didn’t know all of it because she’d been born into the cruelty.
Perhaps it had been a harsher punishment to watch the Fae’s downfall. To know paradise only to lose it soon after. At least her life had been consistent in its despair. At least she didn’t long overmuch for something she’d never had in the first place. Not like them.
“In the Seelie Court,” he said, a note of melancholy in his voice. “King Ashera called the lords of the courts away from their seats to advise him on what was happening with the humans.” He picked at a stray string of his cloak. “My father had died a few years before, which made me High Lord of the Sapphire Court. It was a job I didn’t want and was terrible at, but I went because my mother urged me to.”
She heard the note of respect when he mentioned his mother. If his mother was all he’d ever had, then it was no wonder Clay loved women. Respected them. She could glean all that from the wistful note in his voice alone.
“Anyway, it’s a long story. But while we were with the king, the Sapphire Court fell.”
He didn’t need to say the words for her to read between the lines. The Sapphire Court fell, along with his mother.
