Page 116 of A Song of Air
Blackness shrouded her and she was sucked inside with his magic. Facing him in her mind, she could see him clearly like she couldn’t physically. Every worried line etched over his features was clear as day. Everything she thought that made him beautiful was torn into grave downturns. Gone was that mischief that made his eyes bright and in its place was something else.
Bryson swallowed as she took him in.
“We cannot speak aloud, little mate,” he explained, taking a step closer to her. His hand reached out only to pause, almost as if he were thinking better of touching her.
She couldn’t be sure why that hurt, why she’d even want him to touch her at all. But she craved it. Craved his palm against her skin and his fingers in her hair.
So she closed the space between them herself. Stupidly. Bravely.
She didn’t even know if she could trust him. Not when he was disguising himself as a High Fae within the Resistance. Not when he hadn’t told her the truth of who or what he was. But what truth did he even owe her, when she’d made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him or the mating bond between them?
He owed her nothing.
Yet the feeling sat there in her chest just the same.
Bryson clasped his hands in hers. They felt cold even in this mindscape. “What is happening, Weylyn?”
He swallowed, staring deeply into her eyes. His fear only served to unnerve her when it wasn’t something she saw in him often.
“We are in the Unseelie Court. At my mother’s court.”
“Yeah, I got that bit when we were out there. You’re aprince?!”
His lips kicked up into that smirk she was all too familiar with. “A title that is unimpressive when I am disinherited from ever taking the throne.”
“Well, still. An Unseelie prince. Fuck, this is wild.”
“Not as wild as things are about to get, little mate.”
She eyed him curiously. “What do you mean?”
“My mother knows we are mates.” His hold on her tightened.
“Yeah, I got that too.” She’d sniffed it off Bryson’s body. Was their bond that strong, even if they hadn’t claimed each other at all?
“She did not kill us, but that does not mean she will not.”
Her breath halted in her throat. “So that animosity I sensed between you—”
“She despises me.” His golden eyes flared like they held fire within his depths. “Loathes me. She wants me dead. The fact that she kept us alive only means she will toy with us. She will toy with you to get to me. She will make a show of our suffering. Donotget comfortable, little mate. It will be the last thing you ever do.”
“I wasn’t really planning on it.” Bryson hoped her voice portrayed more bravery than she felt inside. Inside, she was a quivering mess of fear. A part of her wanted to crawl into a puddle and drift away. Another part wanted to unleash a tornado so powerful, everyone was blown away.
Predator or prey, her familiar had said.
In the Unseelie Court, they were prey.
But they could be predators in disguise.
Weylyn’s fingers grasped her chin, much like his mother’s had, only his hands were far gentler, the cold of the rings contrasting the sudden warmth of his palms. He made Bryson look up at him and she found features of the cruel monarch in him. The slight curve on the bridge of the nose, the gleam in the eyes, the smile...
But Weylyn was somehow different. Maybe it was because he was half-Unseelie. Because his other half was High Fae and he hid the wildness inside better than those around them did. It was a very telling difference. The way everyone was at the edge of their seats, waiting with gleaming teeth and razor-sharp claws.
Bryson could always sense the wild in Weylyn. Never to that extent.
“She will parade us around her court,” he whispered. “Let her. Do not speak, give nothing away. And whatever you do, never make a deal with an Unseelie, is that clear?”
Making deals with Unseelie was an older, more dangerous form of magic. Being trapped in a deal with an Unseelie Fae with no way to get out of one was worse than death itself.
