The King of Faerie (Stariel Book 4) Read online

  They bid him farewell; he’d come in one of the new kineticars, painted a jaunty blue. Wyn and Jack stood outside the Dower House in silence and watched it disappear. The fog was thinning with reluctance, but the dark peaks of the Indigoes were now visible in the distance. Snow still capped their high slopes, but Wyn didn’t let his gaze linger on them. Not that it made much difference; the place where his father had died was carved in him so deeply, he could have pointed towards it with his eyes closed even before he’d become magically connected to this land.

  Jack didn’t immediately climb onto the cart. Instead his attention went to a nearby ornamental cherry tree, just beginning to bud, and Wyn knew they were both remembering how the apple tree at the Heathcote cottage had burst into full, frothy radiance between one moment and the next.

  A furrow formed between Jack’s brows, tension in the line of his shoulders, in the way his hands balled into fists. He took a deep breath, coming to some decision, and whirled with a crunch of gravel.

  Given Jack’s obvious displeasure, Wyn wasn’t completely surprised at the punch that came his way. What did surprise him was how hard it hit; Jack hadn’t pulled the blow at all, and Wyn’s head snapped back under the force. Pain shattered out from the impact, and his magic jerked at its leash, urging retaliation. No, Wyn told it, alarmed at the impulse.

  He’d thought letting Jack land the blow might drain the anger out of him, but instead it seemed to be having the opposite effect. Wyn dodged the second attempt and danced out of reach, his cheek stinging as blood rushed to the surface.

  Jack stood panting, a dangerous light in his eyes. “Hetta’s breeding, isn’t she?” he accused, the old-fashioned term jarring, but Jack often fell back into old-fashionedness when flustered. And he was flustered now, flushed bright red despite his anger. Or perhaps because of it.

  Wyn said nothing.

  “Bloody hells, Wyn! What in Simulsen’s name were you thinking?”

  Wyn continued in his silence.

  Jack grit his teeth. “Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking, Prince Hallowyn Tempestren, because that’s damn well not good enough!”

  The use of his true name hit like ice water. How dare a mortal use his full true name so freely? He sucked in a breath and stifled the beat of primitive rage, wrestling for a control that worried him far more than Jack’s temper.

  “I was certainly not thinking of you, Jonathan Langley-Valstar,” he said tightly, wrenching his feathers back under his skin before they could manifest. “This is not your business.”

  Jack clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. “Like hell it isn’t. How far along is it?”

  Wyn reminded himself that Jack had reason for his temper; there were mortal consequences here that couldn’t be simply wished away, no matter how much they irked him or Hetta. “Two months, more or less.”

  Jack did the calculations and flushed a deeper red. “Meridon,” he said in disgust.

  “Yes.” Wyn couldn’t help adding drily, “Your mother is a very bad chaperone.”

  “You are not blaming my mother for your utter disregard for honour!”

  “No, I do not blame Lady Sybil,” Wyn said. “But also, I don’t agree that there is anything inherently dishonourable about sex between willing adult participants.”

  Jack winced. “She’s my cousin, Wyn. Could you not talk about it like that?”

  “You raised the subject.”

  Jack regrouped. “I don’t give a damn about what’s acceptable back in Faerie—here you don’t, don’t—”

  “Canoodle?” Wyn supplied.

  “Canoodle with women you’re not married to—”

  “And you never have?” A spark of anger flared again in his chest. Jack didn’t answer. “I don’t have much patience for hypocrisy, Jonathan Langley-Valstar. What you mean is that unmarried women should not, but that men may do as they please, so long as they do not touch ‘ladies’.” He drove each word in like a dagger, knowing he was being impolitic. “It has always puzzled me how such a thing is to be achieved, given that your society also does not allow relations between men—so who exactly are they to canoodle with, then?”

  There was a heavy silence. Had he gone too far? But he couldn’t take the words back; he’d meant them, after all. “I won’t let you punch me a second time,” he warned.

  “More’s the pity,” Jack said bitterly. “When in the hells is the wedding happening, then?”

  5

  Difficult Questions

  Hetta spent some time feeling sorry for herself in the bathroom. Thank goodness for translocation. Very likely Wyn would continue to love her even if she threw up on his feet, but she’d still rather not test that.

  It was also unlikely to impress the estate agent.

  She sighed and began to pick out the detail of the lavender-patterned wall tiles, tracing the cracks where the grouting needed repair—like so many things on the wider estate. It would take years to pull Stariel back to prosperity, years in which the unending list of needs and wants had to be carefully prioritised. Lavender wall tiles ranked somewhere far, far below elektricity, farming supplies, and insulation for the cottages.

  Distantly, she could feel other people moving about the house, the general sense of them vaguely soothing so long as she was careful to keep from focusing too hard on any one individual. She willed her stomach to stop roiling. Was it going to be like this for the duration? She thought again of her female relatives who’d know more about the business. Her stepmother would be kind. And maybe Phoebe would even keep it secret from the rest of the family, if Hetta asked—though she’d also fuss. A lot. Fussing, however, Hetta could deal with. It was more…telling Phoebe would also somehow make it more real.

  She snorted. As if it isn’t real enough already! She sent a bolt of irritation at Stariel on general principles. Had the land had a hand in this somehow? Of course, precautions could fail on their own, but they never had before, and the timing was too coincidental for her liking. If she hadn’t been pregnant, could they still have broken Wyn away from ThousandSpire and claimed him for themselves using that line of connection?

  Stariel curled around her with faint smugness.

 

  Stariel perked up its ears, concerned, but it didn’t understand, not really. She tried to explain while she traced the cool edges of the tiles. She still wasn’t sure; it could’ve been her fault for not taking Wyn’s or her magic into account with her precautions.

  Something like a question came back, tasting of storms and cardamom.

 

  That was the unsettling point, of course. Had this all happened because she wasn’t controlling Stariel as a proper lord should? Was it controlling her, rather? She thought of this morning’s experiment. Ought she to have let the land change her original plans halfway through? How had previous lords dealt with being so tightly connected to such a powerful yet alien sentience?

  And how did one deal with lordship and morning sickness at the same time?

  Stariel’s only response was to send its generic-reassurance impression of stony mountain roots again. Hetta blew out a long breath. It didn’t matter, ultimately, how this had come about; it wouldn’t change the fact that it had.

  Her stomach having resumed normal proceedings, she got up and brushed her teeth, then changed out of her working clothes and made up her hair and face, summoning a minor illusion to get her lips the exact shade of holly-berry red she wanted. The routine was reassuring not only in its familiarity but also as a much-needed bolster to her vanity. The face staring back at her didn’t look at all like a woman grappling
with situations not of her choosing, nor like a lord who couldn’t keep either her stomach or her land under control. She looked pretty and fashionable and free.

  Hetta determinedly pinned a ridiculous confection of a hat to her head, hissing at a moment of unexpected static, and set her shoulders back, deciding to let appearance become reality for today at least.

  She went in search of her cousin Ivy with a flicker of guilt for the estate agent. But Jack and Wyn would handle him, and possibly even better for her absence, if she were grimly honest.

  Normally Marius was the person she went to for anything involving searching Stariel’s library, but Marius wasn’t here. Aunt Maude was the family genealogist, which might’ve been the next best thing, except Hetta would much rather deal with her cousin than her aunt, and she knew Ivy shared her mother’s interest without being quite as eccentric about it.

  Ivy wasn’t in any of the obvious locations, and Hetta made her way down the Northern Tower, thinking of where else to search. Stariel curled around her, a casual brush of interest without any intent, like a cat reminding you that it was there, and Hetta debated whether to ask the land for help—it could certainly locate Valstars with ease, once she’d figured out how to describe which specific Valstar she wanted, but looking for people within the house was always more complicated and frequently left her with an aching head.

  But the drainage experiment had been a success, hadn’t it? Even if it hadn’t gone entirely to plan. And even if it had felt, for a second, as if Stariel had made the decision on moving the cottage for her, as if she’d been merely a channel for the land’s power rather than her own agent. Stariel had only been trying to do what she’d asked of it; they simply needed to work on their communication. Which wouldn’t improve if she avoided opportunities to practise.

  she asked Stariel, pausing halfway down the stairwell. She drew up Ivy in her mind’s eye. Ivy was only a year younger than Hetta, dark-haired and grey-eyed, leaning on the cane she sometimes used, thanks to a deformity affecting her right leg. Stariel puzzled at the description for a bit before eagerly pulling Hetta up to the west wing.

  She became the curtains in her Uncle Percival’s gloomy bedroom, a moth scratching at her worn brocade as she reeled from the sudden change in perspective. Her uncle was still asleep, a lump beneath the bedclothes, his snores loud as a saw. It wasn’t sight, exactly, this sense of the world, more a disorienting awareness of location. She could feel the water flowing through the pipes of the central heating in the walls as strongly as she ‘saw’ the room.

  Thank goodness Uncle Percival was doing nothing more interesting than sleeping late; she’d so far managed to avoid the worst invasions of her relatives’ privacy, though she feared it was only a matter of time.

  she allowed. She tried to feel her way back to her body, not liking how strongly and quickly she’d been sucked out of it, but instead she bounced locations again, like a ball thrown from one end of the house to the other.

  “Can we pleeeease have one now?” little Laurel wheedled the cook, looking longingly at a plate of fresh biscuits. Willow, Ivy’s youngest sister, stood next to her, wearing a similarly begging expression. “Just one?”

  Hetta qualified. Perhaps age wasn’t a good method of identification for a thousand-year-old faeland. She attempted to pull her attention away from the kitchen. Perhaps if she pulled back far enough, she could get more of a sense of who was where in the house. All the Valstars gave off a spark to her land-sense, more so than other humans. Almost a little like—

  Fae, a flock of them, crowding in the Tower Room. The piskies chittered and dove, and she was part of their giddiness as they danced between rafters, performing for their audience, the slim, golden-haired girl—Alexandra, murmured a tiny voice at the back of her mind, but the name washed over her, meaningless—who was sitting on the window ledge with a sketchbook and laughing at their antics.

  She streamed up and out the window into the golden sunlight filling the courtyard, dancing on air currents with the flock, weightless as a bird.

  Something shunted her out of balance, and the warp and weft of the magic wavered.

  “Hetta!”

  Meaningless sounds, but the world kept shaking, and suddenly she was no longer part of the wind but back in a lump of flesh, slumped against the wall as something—someone—shook her shoulders.

  “Henrietta! Can you hear me? Wake up, girl!”

  Worried brown eyes in a wrinkled, kindly face. There was a long, stretched moment without meaning or familiarity, and then awareness and recognition both slammed into place. She was still in the stairwell, and she didn’t seem to have fallen so much as slid gracelessly down the wall, her legs sprawled on the steps. Grandmamma was leaning over her, hands shaking Hetta’s shoulders.

  “I’m fine, Grandmamma.” Stariel swirled around her, and she could sense its confusion and concern. she repeated mentally, for the land’s benefit.

  Grandmamma stopped shaking her, though she looked extremely doubtful. “You didn’t respond for half a minute, love. What were you doing?”

  “I was talking to Stariel, and I got a bit… caught up.” This wasn’t the first time she’d had trouble after immersing herself in the land, but previously she’d always eventually found her own way back. Would she have, this time? What if Grandmamma hadn’t found her? A shiver went down her spine.

  she asked Stariel. The land didn’t know. It brushed up against her like a parent soothing a fretful child, sending stony foundations of reassurance. She was growing tired of that image.

  she told it irritably. It didn’t disagree, exactly, but that sense of being brushed strengthened.

  She got up off the floor, resisting the urge to press a hand to her stomach. “Did my father ever…” She wasn’t sure exactly what she was asking, but if anyone would know, it would be Grandmamma. “Or Grandfather? Did they ever get lost?” She didn’t remember her grandfather—her father had inherited as a very young man.

  Grandmamma shook her head slowly, her expression uncharacteristically serious. “Marius—my Marius—used to say there were times it felt like being a trout trying to swim upriver. But mostly the land was quiet, then. And Henry…”

  Grandmamma was nearer ninety than eighty, but Hetta had never really thought of her as old before. But now her shoulders drooped, and her eyes grew faraway and full of sadness. “The magic unsettled him; it got worse over the years. Sometimes I wonder if that was what started the drinking. But then, Henry never did need much excuse for that.”

  “No,” Hetta echoed softly. She thought of one of the last times she’d seen her father. He’d been drunk and shouting, No child of mine is going to bloody magic school! She’d been eighteen and shaking with anger, shouting back. Disown me then, because I’m going and you can’t stop me! I don’t need you or this stupid estate anyway!

  She’d left the estate not long after that argument, amidst the bitter shards of too many things said. He hadn’t come to the station to see her off.

  She put the memory away. “Do you know where Ivy has got to?”

  Her grandmother pursed her lips. “She’s in the rose garden. But the neighbour’s boy has come to see you.”

  Hetta blinked. “Angus?” Lord Angus Penharrow was no boy, but then, Grandmamma probably viewed anyone under fifty as such.

  “That’s the one.”

  Thank goodness I’m looking my best, was Hetta’s first, trivial thought, followed immediately by suspicion. Why was Angus here? They weren’t exactly enemies anymore, but that didn’t make them friends either.

  Ivy would have to wait.

  She found Angus in the sitting room, and he rose with casual confidence as she entered, all easy smiles, curly brown hair and broad shoulders. If only she could hate him; that wou
ld make things simpler. But the problem with the countryside was that you couldn’t avoid people as easily as in town; you kept meeting them while out riding or at the local fair or at someone’s dinner party. Or when they turn up uninvited at your house.

  “You could have warned me you were coming,” she told him. “I actually intended to be out on the estate this morning.”

  “I’m glad I caught you then,” he said, taking in her appearance with a distinct note of appreciation; at least her efforts hadn’t been wasted. In one hand he held a pretty cake box to which was tied a folded leaf of paper. “This is from my mother; she’s written down the recipe for your cook.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “Apparently it’s a sought-after one.”

  Hetta reached out with some confusion to accept the gift. As she did so, her fingers brushed Angus’s and a shock zapped between them—a literal one. She sprang back with a hiss of surprise.

  “Still a spark between us,” Angus remarked with a grin, setting the box down on the side table.

  “Mildly irritating static only,” she said firmly. She frowned at the cake box. “Angus…not that I don’t appreciate it, but—”

  “Why is my mother sending you cake?” he finished. She nodded, and some of the teasing drained out of him. He sighed. “She sends her congratulations on your engagement.”

  “Oh.” Of course the wider district would’ve heard of Hetta’s engagement by now, lack of official announcements notwithstanding; it wasn’t the sort of news you could keep quiet. Not that they’d actually tried. Hetta reflexively rubbed at her ring, which she’d started wearing openly because dash it all. It was a deceptively simple design in silver, containing a single stone that had once been part of a powerful translocation spell. Stariel’s influence had turned the gem into a sparkling gold and blue. “Please thank her for me.” I notice you don’t bring your own congratulations, she thought of adding, but that would be petty.

  Something about Angus stiffened, as if he hadn’t quite believed the news until she’d confirmed it—or as if he’d hoped for a different answer. Oh, Angus. But if he’d felt so strongly about her, he shouldn’t have betrayed her. Not that that would’ve changed things between them, ultimately, but it certainly hadn’t helped.