Wicked Crown (Shattered Kingdom Book 2) Read online

  She wasn’t proud of it. No. She was very much embarrassed that her emotions had gotten hold of her like that. To her defense—she was only human. And Nehelon was Fae, having had more than one lifetime to perfect being annoying and cryptic and prone to not care.

  Gandrett told herself that, not excusing herself, not excusing him, but finding it easier to dull the edge of anger that threatened to boil up again when she thought of Nehelon, not as a human man of twenty-something but of the immortal he was. Nothing of what he had experienced with her could be new to him. After—how many centuries had it been exactly; she still hadn’t asked again since he had turned her down the last time—a long, long time walking this earth, nothing could be new to him, nothing surprising, she thought. And it somehow calmed her. It gave her some room to breathe, to know she couldn’t have been the first magic-wielder to have exploded before him, or the first person—human or Fae—whom he had upset. Or the first woman he may or may not have kissed.

  Involuntarily, her mind recalled Ygri, the Phornian woman he had loved … and lost. An image of Surel flickered through her thoughts. Onyx eyed and dark-golden-skinned with lovely features and curly black hair. So beautiful. The image brought joy and sadness. Her dearest friend at the Order, whom she had shared a room with for ten years, whom she trusted to take good care of her brother once he arrived at the priory. How she missed her. Surel would have known what to make of Nehelon, of his enigmatic nature, his brooding, his bantering and flirting. For he had flirted with her. She might not be allowed to go down that road as a Child of Vala, but she had experienced enough since she had left the priory with the Fae male that she knew when someone was flirting.

  Great. Now her thoughts were circling around his bare chest and the sweat trickling along his muscle-corded body. She loosed a sigh of frustration.

  No. Nehelon hadn’t flirted. Not really. He had taunted her with his behavior, the same as he had provoked her with his bantering, with his coldness, to free her magic. It had been all.

  Now, that thought helped her. At least for the moment. For she had reached the tent, and while Riho was frantically fluttering to safety at her scowl, Nehelon—who had skipped ahead, waiting at the entrance to their shelter—didn’t balk from her as she stormed into the narrow space and sat on her leaf-bed, arms folded over her chest and ankles crossed, back leaning into the uneven walls.

  She studied the Fae as he followed her inside and pulled out a basket of berries he must have picked this morning. The sight of the supple, blackish-red fruit made her frown deepen as did the sight of the warrior carrying the fragile wood-woven thing which, in his broad hands, looked as if it had been borrowed from a doll-house.

  As he settled down on his bedroll, setting down the basket between them, he ran his free hand through his hair as if becoming nervous under her stare. He should. For Gandrett was no longer defenseless against the moods of the Fae. She had magic of her own, and she had seen his face clearly when she had ripped the earth open with her power. Nehelon Sterngrove had been afraid.

  Gandrett rolled the thought over in her mind, wondering whether he would ever have dared to attack her that first day at the priory if he had known what she was capable of. And as if her thoughts were clearly written on her face he said, “Don’t get cocky because you made a dent in the lawn.”

  Gandrett reached into the basket and grabbed a fistful of berries, not acknowledging he had spoken. He didn’t need to say the words for her to know that even with her magic, she was no real match for him. She might have surprised him with the canyon, but he was Fae. He was stronger, faster, his senses keener. And even if she would be able to land a blow … he would heal it with that wonderful arsenal of powers he held. She had seen it when he had chosen to let her burn him. Had stomached that pain for her—

  Nehelon held her gaze, and while her own brows were still furrowed, his face held nothing that would allow her to read what he might have been thinking. He didn’t turn away. Not when a long silence settled and Gandrett’s heart accelerated. From frustration, she told herself. From strain.

  But the headache her magic had given her over the past days lifted almost entirely now, and she knew that if she asked, she would get the truth. The truth that the Meister—that Pete Nemey could sell her to anyone he pleased, and Nehelon might be a Fae and a self-adoring bastard. But he had proven not to be the monster she had thought he was. If it wasn’t for her brother, following the male back to Ackwood might be a choice she would freely make if asked to choose between the priory and this.

  Gandrett was ready to listen. Even if she already knew that what he would tell her would probably drive the wedge between them even deeper. The wedge that Gandrett knew both of them so desperately needed for some reason. Something to cling to so as not to fall into those depths of sorrow that awaited them if they let go.

  “So what did you want to talk about?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  For a moment, all Nehelon did was stare back at her, eyes gleaming in all facets of blue diamond, his glamour flickering, letting her glimpse that even more beautiful face beneath. Gandrett stopped chewing on her berry, no longer tasting the sweet-sour juice filling her mouth. He was flaking out. She could feel it. He had baited her into forgetting her anger by letting her believe he would actually talk.

  Bastard.

  Gandrett took a deep breath, searching for her magic and finding it unusually cooperative as she considered unleashing it on the Fae before her.

  And just as if he could read that on her features, Nehelon sighed and said, “I met Pete Nemey when I was an acolyte at the order.”

  The magic slipped from Gandrett’s grasp and dropped back into the depths where she had dragged it up from. “What?”

  She wondered what her expression was like because Nehelon chuckled, and his glamour slipped a bit more, letting Gandrett see the smooth features of the male, not the man.

  “An acolyte, you know”—he gestured at his body as he leaned against the wall, copying Gandrett’s posture—“uniform and all.”

  “When?” Gandrett tried to imagine the glorious immortal mingling with the kids at the priory. How far did his powers go? Could he glamour his age? Could he look like a boy? She shook her head imperceptibly. One glance at him, and she knew that no glamour, no matter how strong, could hide the powerful body that was obvious even with his leathers hiding the details. “How?”

  He smiled. A slightly pained expression that allowed her a peek at what lay beneath his otherwise schooled expression.

  “Long story.” A low sigh escaped his lips before he continued. “Pete had just taken over the priory as its Meister, as the head of the entire Order”—a sideways glance at Gandrett—“but I don’t need to explain the hierarchy system of the Order of Vala to you, do I?” He paused until she shook her head.

  Of course he didn’t. The priory at Everrun was the headquarters of the Order of Vala and the only place in all of Neredyn where the acolytes were trained, and its Meister the leader of the entire Order. Of course, there were temples in most towns. Some even in smaller villages, which lay in strategic positions throughout the continent. But those were run by the priests and priestesses of the Order of Vala—Vala-blessed who led the prayers and ceremonies where worshippers of Vala went to clear their souls, to ask the goddess for forgiveness. And to beg for a supple harvest, for enough rain, for the health of their loved ones.

  Gandrett’s lips hurt as she bit the inside, preventing herself from asking how the fighters of the Order fit into that system exactly. She had never given it a second thought, but now that she had seen what kind of missions awaited her after she had completed her training…

  Nehelon’s gaze weighed heavily on her as she followed her own thoughts despite the tingling curiosity that had spread through her entire body. Nehelon, an acolyte.

  “I was an uncommon novice as you can imagine.” He grimaced at Gandrett as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. That he must have been like a spire between th
e kids of the priory. “But I was in need of help, of direction. And Pete was kind.” He laced his fingers together, eyes wandering across the artwork of tent he had created for them. “After centuries of searching, I was tired and couldn’t stomach the thought to spend one more day on the roads of Neredyn. I had seen them all; the towns, the villages, the mountains, the forests. Even the White Desert in the South where supposedly no life can exist—” His expression turned thoughtful for a moment, but he wiped it away with a quick breath. “When I came to the priory, for the first time in centuries, I felt like I could find some peace.”

  Gandrett didn’t interrupt despite the many, many questions that were already forming in her mind. Why had he been traveling all those centuries? What had he been searching for? What was he still hoping to find… For something in his eyes told her he wasn’t done looking.

  “That night, the guards of the priory let me pass, not knowing what they had let into their sacred walls, and when they led me to Pete, he took one look and knew.” Nehelon absently lifted his hands to his face, rubbing across his eyebrows, his eyes, his cheeks, as if he was wiping off the tiredness that had settled in his features—even his Fae ones. “One look, and he knew he had a broken man in front of him.

  “Pete asked me only one question: if I believed that the life I was leading was the life I deserved.” He lifted his gaze at Gandrett as if asking if she thought it was. “And when I couldn’t give him an answer, he offered me to stay until I figured it out.”

  Gandrett didn’t know if Nehelon was talking about the same Meister who had beaten her, chained her, poisoned her. And all of it with the excuse to make her a better, a stronger fighter. She was almost about to voice her thought when Nehelon loosed a dark chuckle before he continued. “His condition was that I train with the other acolytes. The same schedule, the same training, the same punishments if I didn’t function.

  “As you can imagine, it was quite an image, a grown man between the seven-year-old novices. I had never been made fun of like that before in my life.” His chuckle spread into a tormented grin. Gandrett hid her own smile behind a handful of berries. “Kids can be cruel.”

  “You didn’t forbid them to mock you the way you did with me?” A memory of Nehelon pinning her against the wall in her chambers, his predatory instincts taking over, every fiber of him ready to kill.

  Nehelon raised an eyebrow at her as if to ask if she was being serious. “You won’t believe it, Gandrett, but I do have manners. I can differentiate between who doesn’t know any better than to be hurtful and those who—” He pulled up his knees in frustration, resting his elbows on them and stared at the greenery outside. “I have rules I live by, not to harm people,” he eventually concluded.

  “You do?” she asked pointedly. “I am surprised even one of the children who trained with you is still alive. If you used the same techniques you did on me. If you slung your invisible hand around their throats to incapacitate them”—Gandrett reminded the Fae male of the moment she had found out his secret, how he had locked her in place with his magic—“or brought your sword down on them with your inhuman strength.” There. There it was. She had spoken the words, acknowledged how he had hurt her. Even if she had promised herself back then that she wouldn’t show weakness. But they had long crossed that line where that could be hidden. “Because if you treated them like you treated me, and I wasn’t your enemy—not really—” She searched for words. “I am having troubles believing, Lonnie, that you live by those rules—“

  “The rules don’t apply to you, Gandrett,” Nehelon interrupted with clenched teeth, eyes hard and tone so sharp she didn’t dare breathe. Last time she had called him Lonnie, he had darted across the room, practically charged her, and pinned her against the wall.

  Gandrett didn’t ask why as she surveilled how he took one hissing breath after the other. All that was missing was foam dripping from his mouth.

  “I am not—” He closed his eyes, locking those livid diamonds behind a curtain of black lashes, and shook his head before he gazed at the ceiling as if he was besieging Vala for help—Vala, or Shaelak, or even her himself. It wouldn’t surprise Gandrett. “I am not that man—male,” he corrected, centuries of living among humans and hiding his true face having rubbed off on his choice of words. “Not who you think I am,” he tried again. And there was something in his features, as Gandrett studied him from the side, that made her wonder if he knew at all who he was—or who he wanted to be. If all of his words, his taunts, his moods, they were all part of the same search he had been on for centuries.

  So she bit her tongue, letting him tell his story, and prayed to Vala for guidance. Nehelon was finally offering information, and it was in her best interest to let him speak.

  “Pete oversaw my training personally, never asking why I had ended up on the doorstep of the order. He gave me tasks to clean the stables the same as the other kids do, to harvest the fruit and vegetables in the fields, to set the tables in the common dining hall.” A smile tugged on Nehelon’s lips as he remembered. “It was a simple life, and I was only a man, lost and broken, but a man and nothing more. For a while, it was what I needed.

  “Then, the Fest of Blossoms came, and with it, the crying and the horror of the new arrivals.” Gandrett’s stomach churned at his words. She had pushed those days so far aside. She did every year, but that day—the day of Vala—it came mercilessly, and with it, the new acolytes who were just children … the same way she had been just a child.

  “It’s a cruel tradition,” Nehelon commented, clearly reading her expression as the berries in her stomach threatened to heave out of her. “But—” He stopped, face guarded even with the glamour down, and he turned to the side until he faced her. “You won’t like it when I say that I understand.” Gandrett’s hand flapped to her lips as she felt the berries making their way. “I don’t like it, but I understand.” Gandrett swallowed the bile and took a deep breath through her nose, thinking of the wildflowers outside by the stream, but all she could see was her mother and how that hooded man had torn her out of her mother’s arms.

  “You wouldn’t think like that if you had ever been part of the consecration ceremony. If you had been the one paraded through the crowd and shorn like an animal, half-drowned to gain the goddess’s blessing—” Gandrett’s breath was labored as she suppressed the memories.

  “You are right, Gandrett.” Nehelon lifted a hand as if he was going to reach for her but stopped midair, his eyes darkening. “I was never on that dais, I was never shorn, never consecrated in the name of Vala. I chose to stay at the order because it was the only place where I could find peace. I am sorry you had to endure those hours of fear and pain.”

  Hours? Mild ringing filled Gandrett’s ears, and then, just like that, she was back. Back at her family’s farm just before it all had started.

  The snow had fallen so thickly that winter that it was still covering most of the fields at Vernal Equinox. An imperfect blanket over the village of Alencourt. So they stayed inside, reading.

  Gandrett was watching the remains of white melting in the shadows by the stables. From her position by the window, she could see the street, the villagers preparing for the Fest of Blossoms, which that year would have to do without many of the latter.

  A crackling fire was heating the room, Mother right beside in a chair, reading, her woolen scarf draped over her shoulders, while Andrew was playing on the ground with Father, both of them lining up carved miniature horses for a parade in Vala’s honor. Gandrett smiled at them, at the pride in Andrew’s eyes as he counted the horses, at her mother who looked up to touch his curly hair with a gentle hand, at her father who smiled back, gesturing at the sun. “The snow will be gone in no time,” he said and got to his feet to join her by the window. But he only got halfway before a knock on the door made him stop dead.

  His gaze flickered to her mother, who was now sharing the same anxious expression as she jumped to her feet, dropping the scarf in the process, and gath
ered up Andrew prior to waving Gandrett to her side while her father hesitated before he headed for the door.

  Her mother’s hand grasped her by the shoulders. She pulled her closer just in time to hear the voices at the door, the shouting of orders as her father was shoved aside and the hooded men stepped in, towering over him as he besieged them to reconsider, offered them their farm, their land, anything if they turned around and left.

  But they didn’t leave—

  “Gandrett,” as if piercing through from another dimension, Nehelon’s voice saved her from reliving the worst moment in her life.

  She blinked and found moisture on her cheeks when she wiped at her face as if she could erase that memory.

  “What’s going on?” Nehelon pushed, his face now so close she had no chance but to look at him.

  Gandrett shook her head. “Nothing.” If she could make him continue talking, he wouldn’t ask questions. “It’s nothing,” she repeated. And Nehelon didn’t ask again.

  But his face changed, glamour back in place, masking the stunning beauty of his Fae features with the handsome face of the human man he pretended to be.

  “How long did you stay?” Gandrett’s voice was hoarse, but mercifully, Nehelon didn’t comment. She would have liked to think he hadn’t noticed, but his senses were too keen, his Fae nature too attentive to miss how she had caved in on herself.

  “Two years,” he answered, settling back onto his bedroll, giving Gandrett space to breathe. “After one year of trying to forget who I was, what I was, Pete asked me how I was feeling about deserving the life I was leading now. And this time, I had an answer.”

  Gandrett, still recovering from the memory Nehelon’s story had triggered, held her breath as Nehelon turned to her and said, “The answer was that I didn’t deserve that life. That I wasn’t worth serving anyone but that I would gladly do it until the day I was.