Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court)

“She doesn’t,” comes the wry response from the shadowy corner where the bed is. “She probably expects you to burn her enemies to a crisp.”

My mouth goes dry and my heart spasms so painfully I actually raise my hand to press it against my chest, which fills the air with a god-awful din. “Roark? You’re awake?”

“As if I could sleep through your entrance. Practicing your promenade before you officially take on the mantle?” he asks drily as he rises from the bed, clutching a sheet around his hips while he peruses my new outfit. “Bridget caught me up.”

The longer he stares, the tighter his jaw becomes. This was the outcome he’d fought so hard to avoid and now I’ve waltzed into his room, flaunting his failure in his face. The chest plate of my armor is a freaking billboard of my allegiance. The Unseelie seal, the skeletal branches of a tree done in some kind of obsidian, stretches over the pale metal like a grasping hand. And then there’s the rest of it, the pale, frosted links of chain mail falling to mid-thigh, the blue-and-silver gambeson hitting my knees, the vambraces and greaves etched with the hoarfrost pattern that declares my place in the Winter Court.

The spaulders encasing my shoulders were the only pieces not fully detailed when I’d arrived in the smithy. I managed to talk the blacksmith into giving them a pattern of feathers instead of hoarfrost. It was worth the battle of wills because when Roark notices that touch, he swallows hard. I wonder what he’ll say when he learns I’ve requested my non-ceremonial battle armor be made up in the same raven pattern as his.

He takes a tentative step toward me and the fire and candle light falls fully over him. His skin may be healed, but he moves with the caution of a man who fears his body will give out on him. It shows in his face. The skin around his eyes is tight, and every now and then, the corner of his mouth twitches as he tries to contain a wince. I know the ley line healed his injuries, but I doubt the aches and pains will vanish as quickly. That kind of damage always leaves some kind of mark, even if it’s invisible to the naked eye.

Worse, I sense his glamour guttering as he tries to maintain his hold over it.

“Hey,” I say quietly. When he raises his gaze to mine, I hold up my hands, trying to soothe him even though he’s so angry with me he can’t speak. “It’s you and me here.”

When he hears those words, the same I’d said so long ago in our apartment before the world went to shit, he gives a low huff and shakes his head. His glamour shivers and drops and, as that strain leaves, his body relaxes.

Something tries to burst its way out of my chest. Roark with glamour is handsome. But until now, when he’s too exhausted to maintain his mask, I never realized how masterfully he wielded it. It gave his face sharper lines, the black of his hair more intensity. The Roark standing in front of me shouldn’t look so different.

Except, his mouth is softer. His cheekbones are high and arched, but no longer capable of cutting glass. His midnight hair has lost the blue-and-purple sheen, replaced with warm, auburn undertones that remind me of a perfect bed of campfire coals. The only thing that remains the same is the damn color of his eyes.

I must be looking too long at him because he drums his fingers against his leg and some stiffness returns to his spine and shoulders. He seems almost nervous for me to see him like this.

This real him.

It’s like staring at the sun. Blinding. It burns itself into my memory because something whispers I won’t be capable of staring at it for too long.

“Stop,” he snaps.

“Stop what?” Even his frown can’t keep me from grinning when I think that I am the only person who gets to see him like this. No m

atter how angry he is, I doubt he’s ever let his guard down this much for anyone else.

He points at me and the metal of my chest plate becomes uncomfortably cold when real frost begins to curl over its surface. “You are a fucking idiot,” he says. “The Knighthood, Finn?”

“Yes, Roark, the Knighthood. It’s not a big deal. Ouch!” I swear and rip at the clasps holding the vambraces on. They fall to the floor where the thick layer of ice coating the metal shatters and skitters its way across the stones like broken glass.

“How is this not a big deal?” he asks, trying to sound cold and regal, but not quite managing to hide the tremble in his words. “All I have ever wanted was for you to be free and in the few hours I’ve been unconscious, you’ve managed to throw my carefully laid plan to hell.”

“In the few days,” I correct. “You were kidnapped and tortured and I found you and brought you back here.”

“I remember being tortured,” he growls. “And I vaguely remember thinking I had lost my mind because there was no way you could have found me there. Not without—”

Moments when I manage to surprise Roark are few and far between, so I can’t help preening a bit when he rears back. Confused, he stretches out a hand and his glamour sails toward me. The ley line instantly rises and rushes back to meet it.

“How?” he whispers when our magicks meet. “You walked away and refused it.”

“That doesn’t mean it stopped being there.” I shrug at his incredulity. “You’d been kidnapped and I had to find you. And once you were back here, I had to know you’d be safe from anything like that ever happening again, so I made a deal with your mom.”

“At what cost?” He must have been saving up his energy for this explosion.

I yelp when the spaulders and chest plate freeze over, channeling the ley line to keep the ice from spreading down to my skin while I fight to get the armor off. When it finally falls to the floor, I glare at Roark. “Knock it off, Lyne. I don’t go around melting your shit, so you don’t get to go around freezing mine.”

The air around him sparkles with frozen motes of dust and water particles. Even though he looks about ready to keel over, I’m kind of wishing I’d kept my frozen armor on in case he decides to try to spear me with ice like he did that stupid kraken.

“What did you do?” he bellows and his voice cracks in the middle of the question.

He has to step back to the bed because he can’t stand anymore and when I try to reach for him, he holds his hand up in warning, like he’s holding his rapier even though he’s too weak to summon it. When he repeats the question, it’s little more than a broken whimper. “What did you do?”