“He seemed intent on alerting the entire continent to our plight, but I couldn’t allow it. To do so would cause panic and chaos. We’d been trying to find a solution to save our land quietly and discreetly even though some fae had begun to notice the decline in our continent’s orem, so I did what was expected of me when your brother came to the court. As the Death Master, I did my duty.”
He turned to face me. In the dim light, his eyes burned like sapphires. “I understand you hate me for killing him. Even more so because your parents presented themselves several weeks later and suffered the same plight.”
“But why?” A sob shook my chest. “Why did they have to die? They would have remained quiet if ordered to do so.”
His jaw tightened, so slightly that it could have been a shadow—a trick of the light. “I had to.”
“You didn’t.” I shook my head back and forth rapidly. “You didn’t have to. You chose to.”
He turned back to the window, the aura around him pulsing so high that it threatened to swallow me, yet his face remained impassive. Completely blank. “It doesn’t detract from what is expected of you. We need you to save our land, Ilara. Your parents’ and brother’s deaths don’t change that.”
He said it all so matter of fact, so businesslike, as though sucking souls from my family was part of his daily duties, and that was that.
“How can you be so cold?” Nausea rolled through me, and I collapsed onto the nearest chair. “Do you feel nothing?” I asked quietly as all of the fight went out of me. How did one fight a fairy who was as hard and immobile as stone? “Do you feel anything at all when you take a life?”
I blinked, and he was sitting on the couch across from me. He’d moved silently, like a phantom.
“What I feel is irrelevant.” He sat as still as a statue, not one muscle moving or twitching.
Such control. Such perfect control of any outward expression.
My shoulders slumped. He would never care what he’d done to me or my family. And even worse, as the crown prince of the Solis continent, he controlled anyone his heart desired, so unless I played the game and danced the dance, I would never be free of him. I would never be free to return home. To Cailis. To my friends. To my small, meager life but a life that was mine.
Rivers of ice slid through my veins as I balled up that aching chasm of pain that had existed within my chest since the death of my parents and brother. I wrapped it into a ball. Wound it so tightly that it couldn’t loosen again and make me do something stupid. I couldn’t snap again.
I had to stay alive, return home, and be smart so I could see my sister once more.
Which meant that I had to play the Death Master’s game, even if I wanted to end the gamemaster himself.
Leveling the crown prince of the Court of Winter with a weighted stare, I said, “What is it that you want me to do, my prince?”
CHAPTER 16
“It’s really quite simple,” the prince replied. “You need to learn how to control your affinity and replenish our continent again with orem.”
I stared at him and blinked, then blinked again. “Our continent is millions of square millees.”
“It is.”
“And you want me to create orem to replenish all of it?”
“Correct.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “You’re insane.”
“I’ve been called worse.” His lips kicked up in a humorless smile.
I stood and began pacing. “What if you’re wrong? What if I don’t hold strong magic, and I’m unable to do as you request?”
“You do have immensely strong magic, and you can do what I’m requesting.”
I whipped back to him, my long hair flying over my shoulder. The prince had leaned back on the couch, his arm propped over the back. One leg was kicked across the table, the other crossed at the ankle on it. He looked relaxed, powerful, and so very sure of himself.
Something stirred inside of me at his image. He was so beautiful that I wanted to soak up his appearance, but then anger at myself kicked in, and I whirled away. The beautiful Death Master. It was such a waste of male perfection.
He inhaled, then said quietly, “You’re angry again.”
“I will always be angry with you. You murdered my family.”
“And you hate me for it, just as many others do.”
I paused by the bar, grabbed a bottle of alcohol, and poured myself a generous drink. “Does it bother you to be hated so much?”
“Would it matter if it did?” He stood and glided to my side, his walk so smooth and easy that I had a feeling he was often asked by angry family members if he had a heart at all.
When he reached me, he took the bottle, and I thought he was going to pick up my drink next and dump it down the sink, but instead he grabbed a second glass and poured himself a dose, just as full.
“Solls.” He clinked his glass to mine before I could say anything and downed the entire cup in one swallow.
His throat worked, the muscles in the column of his neck as sculpted as the rest of him. When he finished, he set his cup beside mine. “Is there anything else you would like to get off your chest? Any other words of hatred or anger for me?”
My throat bobbed, my lips dry from his matter-of-fact persona. “No,” I finally said. “I think I’ve made my point. For now.”
“Then we’ll need you to begin training your magic first thing tomorrow. We can start—”
“Wait.” I held a hand up, then brought my glass to my mouth and drained half of it. The liquid burned in my throat, cutting a path like fire. Wincing, I set it back down. “How long will training take?”
He shrugged. “That, Ilara, is up to you. Affinities can take weeks, months, or full seasons to train. All fae are different, and each fairy dedicates themselves to mastering their affinities in different ways, but I suggest you devote yourself to this. We don’t have full seasons.”
“Do we have months?”
“We do. For now.”
“What does that mean?”
“That means that at the rate our continent’s orem has been dying, we have approximately one full season until it’s completely vanished.”
“Really? It’s that bad?”
“It is.”
“So I have twelve months.” Blessed Mother, that would be the biggest undertaking of my life.
“Correct, unless our orem dies at an increasing rate. At the territories’ current stores, there’s enough food to last the continent until next winter.”
I drained the rest of my glass, and flames burned down my throat so vehemently that I coughed. Suppressing another cough, I said hoarsely, “I hope I can actually do what you’re asking.” If I couldn’t, we would all starve.
“You’ll be able to.”
“You sound so certain of that.”
“Because you can. This realm has never seen an affinity like yours. I imagine its bounds have no limits.”
“But you said your mother’s like me.”
His eyes shuttered. “She is. Her magic is as powerful as yours, but her affinities are different. She can’t create orem.”
“Where is she now? Does she really have black hair too?”
“I imagine she’s in her wing, and yes, her hair’s also black.”
For the briefest moment, I pictured Prince Norivun as a toddler standing by a female with hair the color of onyx. “What are her affinities?”