His brother had a point. Lach’s mind raced with possibilities, but only one made a lick of sense. “Torin’s found a way to kill you, hasn’t he?”
The sluagh frowned. “Torin seeks purity of race, and the Host is an abomination.”
Now he had them. “Tell me more.”
The sluagh sighed, leaned in, and began to speak.
Hours later, Lachlan felt the weight of all the planes on his shoulders. Torin was coming. He wouldn’t stop until the planes bowed to him.
The sluagh left, racing away to the caves where his brethren hid. All around him was quiet. The Seelie kings spoke to each other in whispers, Dante at their side. The rest had an air of shock surrounding them. War was coming.
“Son, you did well.” His father sat beside him, his weathered face a mask of care. There was a long pause, as though he didn’t wish to broach the subject, but knew he must. “How did you do it? How do you raise the dead? Is it a spell?”
Shim’s eyes rolled. “He did it the same way I call forth fire. It’s inside him. It’s the powers we came into thirteen years ago.”
“King Fergus,” Beck interrupted. “I may not know the Unseelie, but grant that my brother and I know what it means to be symbiotic twins. Neither Cian nor I had a whisper of power before we bonded. Not a hint.”
“Yeah, Beck here told everyone it was a myth. He still owes me a thousand gold on that one.”
The Warrior King slapped at the Green Man. “Hush. This is no place for sarcasm. Tell them, Ci.”
Cian became serious. “I would bet the kingdom I don’t have yet that they’ve bonded. They’re what? Thirty? By the time we turned thirty, we were beginning to fade. These boys aren’t close to fading. They’re powerful. What happened to your bondmate?”
Lach took a long breath. “She was trapped on the Seelie plane.”
Beck nodded. It was probably a story he’d heard before. “She must be strong if you can still feel the bond.”
“We’ve never met her, but we’ve dreamed of her since we were children.” Shim watched the Seelie kings.
The Seelie kings turned to each other, a silent conversation happening in their heads. Lach knew because it happened between him and Shim. After a long moment, Beck looked over, his face tense. “How would you bond with a woman you’ve never met?”
“I don’t know what it was like for you two,” Lach admitted. “I only know that since I knew what the word love meant, I loved her. She came to me and Shim every night.”
“In our dreams.” Shim took over. “At first we simply played because we were young. We couldn’t hear her. We just felt. She talked. She talked a lot, but we just felt her presence. It calmed us each night, and we knew she was the one.”
Lach remembered those times. Bronwyn had been a comfort even then. “We could see through her eyes. She’s a strong broadcaster. Sometimes, even during the day, Shim can see her. It’s how we figured out who she was and where she lives. When we were young, we would see and feel her when her emotions were strong. There was a river by her house. Full of fish. She would swim with her brother, her mother watching on. She would strip down to her shift and throw her body in, a wild cry on her lips. She would look up as she floated on the water and wonder where her other brother was.”
Lach was well aware of what he was doing. He was pulling from her memories. He was baiting the Seelie kings. But he had to prove his truth or they could side with his father. Bronwyn had to be saved before the war broke out.
Cian’s body had tensed. “Tell me more about her.”
Shim seemed to understand what Lach was doing. “She’s the loveliest thing in all the planes. Brown hair and brown eyes. A sweet laugh.” He turned to Dante. “You pulled her pigtails and called her a brat.”
Dante’s mouth dropped. “No.”
Lach didn’t wait for further denials. “We bonded with her on the night she died. We felt it. Shim could see it.”
“I saw her run to her mother’s room. She was so scared. I tried to reach out, but she’d taken a knife to her gut.” His hand drifted to his side, where he’d felt the knife sink into their mate. “She thought she was dead, and then you came, Cian. You held her. You told her you loved her. And she died.”
Tears fell from Shim’s eyes. He felt it more deeply because he’d been there with her.
Cian shook his head. “She died. Bron is dead. I couldn’t save her.”
The words slipped easily from Lach’s mouth. “But we could.”
The Seelie kings stopped, their jaws tensing. Their expressions were utterly identical, pained and haunted and b
eneath all of it, a breath of hope.