Page 42 of Pixie Problems
I froze when I saw him. Then I moved Dice aside gently and stood and bowed. “My liege.”
Virion scowled and waved away my obeisance. “Virion will do fine. I am a prince without a kingdom.”
I respectively disagreed, but kept that thought to myself. My liege Viriondidhave a kingdom. He just refused to rule it. I had heard Draven say that he was the high prince. While this was technically true because he hadn’t been crowned king at the death of his family and had abdicated the throne, in my mind and the minds of all high and low elves, he was king. He was just a displaced king. But it didn’t matter. We elves could be patient and wait for Virion to grow up some. He was young, after all. Barely thirty. Thirty was young when you considered that elven lifespans could literally be hundreds of years long. My father was in his four-hundredth year, my mother in her five-hundredth. While I was a comparatively young one hundred and forty-one years old. My sister would have been one hundred and twenty this year. I sobered instantly.
Dice turned to my liege and cocked her head, studying him. I was curious what her Insight was telling her about my liege, but I didn’t speak a single word to break her concentration. “You have two souls. But that’s impossible.”
My liege strolled in and sat on the couch facing Dice and I. “Ah, but it isn’t for most high elves. Our magic is sentient. It registers to some paranormals as another soul, but it’s really not. It’s a split soul. It carries half of my soul and has sentience or life all on its own.” My liege did not look at me as he said, “This is the case for most high elves.”
There was a sinking, embarrassed feeling crushing my chest at his words that I refused to acknowledge. Yes, I was aSilent One.Moving on.
Dice turned back to me, and then Virion. She kept looking back and forth between my liege and I until she made me dizzy and I pulled her down onto the couch next to me.
“Rhys is different, Dice,” Draven said kindly. As though his study and office getting a ton of late-night visitors was a thing he was well used to. For that matter, it probablywassomething he was used to. Draven was a vampire whose working hours were mostly in the evenings and at night.
Which made me feel less like an invader whenever I crashed in on him like this.
Dice turned back to me and I saw the thing I hadn’t wanted in her eyes: pity. It turned my stomach. “Don’t look at me like that,” I growled at her. It hurt my heart.
She turned away, but not before I saw her eyes flash. Good, a ticked off Dice I could handle. A pitying Dice I could not.
“Getting back to your statement, Prince Virion,” Draven said as he laced his long fingers together and looked at my liege next to him thoughtfully. “You said that Dice has the part of Rhys’ magic that speaks? That thinks and feels?”
My liege nodded. “It seems that is so.” He looked between Dice and I. “What happened?”
I slumped. My head was spinning and my stomach was churning and Dice was looking at me like I should be glad there were witnesses around us because she was a breath away from taking me out back and burying me in concrete. Stars, she might do it anyway. Mesmer would just cheer her on, bloodthirsty gargoyle that he was. I really had to disagree with Mia’s assessment that Mes was a big softie. So far, the evidence didnotsubstantiate this theory of hers. He was a gargoyle.
And I knew it was stereotypical, but gargoyles had gotten a rep for being bloodthirsty in battle. They went into a berserker rage after a while that was all kinds of terrifying to witness. Especially when you were the recipient. I was powerful, but it took a lot to get me to bring out my more lethal side. A berserk gargoyle on a rampage was one of those things.
I stared at Mes speculatively. Mia had a closer bead on him then I did. Shecheatedbut she seemed to know what I didn’t. I would have to take her word for it.
I cleared my throat. “To answer your question, my liege—”
“He kissed me,” Dice interrupted, giving me a dirty look.
My liege brought his swords from the scabbards on his back and set them in his lap. They sighed softly again as though they were quite happy to be on my liege’s lap, and I eyed them with awe. I was trying not to stare too much, but his swords werelegendary.
“I distracted you,” I clarified. “And I did a pretty good job of it,” I said with a grin.
Ooohyeah, she didn’t like that. Fireworks were going off in her gaze. If looks alone could burn someone to cinders, she would have just razed me to the ground.
I laughed. I loved it when she got feisty. And she wasn’t shaking in fear anymore. Mission accomplished.
Then her face went blank, as though she were listening to something or someone, and I froze, suddenly afraid of what she was hearing.
Virion knelt before both of us. “Do you mind?” he asked Dice with his hand raised.
“He’s a powerful healer,” Mesmer murmured, and Dice nodded with a look of trepidation.
My liege put his hand on the crown of her head and closed his eyes, then he reached over to me and put his other hand on my head as well. For some minutes it was completely quiet in the study. When my liege opened his eyes, he looked at Dice. “Would you mind kissing him again?”
Dice spluttered and I grinned. I was liking where this was heading.
“I just want to test a theory,” my liege said.
Dice glared at my liege, then glared at me, before she pulled me in by my leather jacket and gave me what I would call later an I-hate-you-but-I-have-to-do-this-and-I-will-get-you-back-later kiss. I didn’t carewhyshe kissed me, I just cherished her lips on mine.
Stars swirled, galaxies tumbled, planets exploded and were reborn. The inky black of the twilight night seeped into my bones and blood, and magic moved in me to such an extent that I felt like my hair was standing on end with the amount of power that swirled inside of me. Dice broke the kiss and looked at me in horror.
