Page 81 of A Sword of Ice
“You have found her, then?”
He likely already knew the answer thanks to Weylyn, but Valerio answered anyway. “Yes, Your Majesty. We found the Fae Elemental.”
There was a pleased hum on the other end of their connection. “And where is the next Elemental?”
“We do not know yet, Your Majesty,” Valerio answered, his own voice echoing oddly across black air. He sucked in a breath, debated on whether or not he should mention what Iona said. For a moment, he was glad that only Weylyn could read his mind in this state, and not his father. “The Elemental did, however, give us distressing news.”
“And what news is that?”
Valerio told his father what Iona said, about the theories that, once he said aloud, did not seem all that far-fetched. By the time he finished, a part of him was itching to look for the Fae in the camps and save them.
He cleared his throat when his father did not reply. “Perhaps they could—”
“No.”
His voice had Valerio clamping his mouth closed.
“I rue the day your mother gave birth to such a foolish child.”
Valerio felt the words like a blow, though they were not new to him. His father always insulted him, and even more so Valerio’s mother.
The Queen of the Seelie Courts had not been his father’s mate, and so there had been no love between them. Their marriage had been a contract and nothing more, a female of noble birth given to the prestigious Ashera line. As if that should have made up for her happiness. It hadn’t. And in the end, it was what got her killed.
Sometimes, Valerio thought it was a good thing he was the spitting image of his father, or he would have faced death that day too.
He’d been a child, sent off to the Obsidian Court to stay with the noble family there. It was where he’d met Uric, where Uric had been given to him like a gift from a strange pale family as was tradition with the nobles.
Every prince needed a lord at his side, a guard, someone of prestigious blood. Uric was the last born of his family. They always said he would not amount to much, so they’d discarded him to become the Seelie Prince’s plaything at a young age, without knowing the two would become the best of friends.
Uric had been there with him when they’d gone back to his own court only to find his mother gone.
“I gave you orders. You will not change them or I will flay the flesh off your back, boy.”
Boy. King Ashera liked to call him that. To demean him, make him feel like he’d never amount to half the king that his father used to be.
People respected him. Listened to him. Feared him.
While Valerio found it difficult to control one little group.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he answered, though the words felt hollow.
“I refuse to repeat myself. I will not keep reminding you what your duty is. You will find the fucking Elementals like I asked, and you will bring them to me. Nothing less, nothing more. I do not care how those miserable Fae in the camps help our numbers. They are not important. The Elementals are. And once we have them, we will use them against the human emperor, and I will take great joy in watching him die.”
Then his voice was gone, and Valerio’s conscious was slammed back into his body. He blinked his eyes open, sucking in a heavy breath. Rage flew through his emotions, mimicking the hysteria and violence from earlier. He stared at Weylyn, but the Fae was already turning away and prowling up the steps.
Valerio watched the Fae go with a curse stuck in the back of his throat. Saving the Elementals was the smartest decision. That much he knew with certainty, and yet when his father said it with such hatred and cruelty, it left a sour taste in his mouth.
Valerio always felt balanced between doing what was forced on him and what was right. Because the decisions a king made were not always the right ones. He never tried to lean too much to one side or the other, out of fear of what he would become. That he’d be too kind and virtuous, too cruel and careless.
His father tried to shove him on the same side as him, and Valerio always told himself it was what he wanted, it was his legacy that would be cemented into the new world they meant to forge after the war was over.
Still, it felt wrong. Like cruelty didn’t particularly belong within the spaces of his heart. He could scream and use his magic to pretend to be cruel, to be feared and drown in the sorrows of the decisions afterwards.
His mother and Uric always said his heart was too big. What he called love, his father called foolishness.
What made his father a revered, vicious king made Valerio a kind, sympathetic prince.
The fool prince.
