Page 111 of Atop the Faerie Throne
Guilt flares as I realise I never actually gave her an answer. If sheisbeing genuine, then I don’t want to turn her down, so I force a smile and say, “Yes. Hopefully, my next visit will be more peaceful.”
Her bow deepens a fraction, and then she turns and leaves without pressing the matter.
Goddess, I want her offer to be real. It would be nice to have some living female friends outside of Kitarni and Prae. Honestly, at this point, I’d settle for a minor royal who doesn’t want to play games just because they can.
“How are you doing?” I ask Bree the moment she’s gone.
“Claudri helped me put things into perspective,” he says, without really answering the question. “I think it’ll take some time to sink in. I’m going to oversee his burial myself. Hopefully, that will bring some closure.”
“Do you want my help?” I offer, but the tightness of his shoulders and the way he avoids my gaze tells me his answer before he even opens his mouth.
“It’s not a funeral, dragonfly. I’m flying over the sea and dropping his remains into the water. If I’m lucky, a passing kelpie will be hungry enough that he ends up as horse dung, decorating the bottom of the ocean.”
“Fitting,” Caed mutters. “Can we do that with Elatha, too?”
Lore doesn’t keepus waiting long. He scoops me up in his arms and blinks us back to Elfhame.
“For some reason,” he says, depositing me on the edge of the Temple roof, “Cressidick didn’t find me crumpling the note upand throwing it at her head amusing. I was told to deliver it, but the method of deliverywasleft completely up to me. Ashton at least threw it back a few times first.”
I take a peek at the ground below and the city beyond, but my ability to fly and trust in Lore has erased any fear I might’ve felt at this height.
“Do I even want to know how Aiyana reacted?” I ask.
Lore shrugs, dropping to crouch beside me. “She was boring. Didn’t even look up from the males fucking her.”
The fact that my redcap saw nothing wrong with delivering his message to a queen while she was enjoying her lovers makes me smirk, but the expression falls from my face as our location and the mention of Cressida tugs at my brain.
“Lore, I want to ask you a question,” I say, fighting to keep my tone neutral. “And I’d like it if you’d answer me honestly, without changing the subject or downplaying things.”
His cap shoots upwards, and a salacious grin lights his face.
“And no, I’m not asking to tie you up,” I tack on quickly.
Watching his hat deflate makes the tight discomfort in my chest worse.
“What do you want to know, pretty pet?” he asks, tone turning cautious in a way that’s entirely out of character for him.
Taking a deep breath, I turn so I’m facing him on my knees. “Did Cressida hurt you?”
It’s the only conclusion I can come to, after her comparison to Aiyana and Máel.
Lore’s cap shifts again, becoming tight knit and covering almost all of his hair. He says nothing for a long time, rocking across the balls of his feet.
“Sometimes…” he eventually says, “things are so far in the past that they’re boring, wouldn’t you agree?”
I don’t respond. I’m not sure how to. His lack of denial is as good as confirmation.
What do I really know about their relationship? That he was sworn to her service until his oath to me broke that vow, and that the two of them were lovers until Cressida found her three mates. Nothing more. No explanation for how he came to be her assassin in the first place.
He’s kept that part of his life quiet out of consideration for me, and truthfully, I think Lore is too in the moment to ever think about it properly.
“I’ve waited thousands of years for you, pet,” he says, giving me big, sad red eyes as his clawed finger taps my nose once. “I would rather we spent our time fucking away the past than seeking vengeance against a bitch-queen who’s one of the few minor royals who’d put cities to the blade for my mate.”
Flopping down onto his ass, he drags me into his lap and plops his cap back onto my head, where it becomes my favourite hooded poncho.
“Are you saying you’ve forgiven her for whatever happened?”
He shrugs; all traces of seriousness gone. “What’s a few decades of torture between friends? And—her questionable matchmaking abilities and awful inability to take a joke aside—she’s tolerable. I considered killing her as soon as my oath was broken, just for the giggles, but Kitarni convinced me that minorly inconveniencing her for the rest of all time was much more fun.” He winks. “Before you found me, I was blinking sand into her boots every night; and before that, I stole all of her cutlery, piece by piece, over several months.”
