The Fae King's Ruin

The Princess and the Shards

Aislin stared at her hands in disbelief, not quite convinced that she had caused the earthquake and broke all the windows and glass in the room she was in. This wasn't supposed to happen. The iron's sole purpose was to prevent these kinds of things from happening, especially when her emotions were running high.

She looked at her bracelets. There must have been something wrong with them. Maybe they were too thin, or they weren't working well because there were diamonds embedded in them— whatever the reason was, the irons weren't doing what they were supposed to and she needed to do something about them.

Vaguely, her mind registered Aelthrys kneeling in front of her. The worry in his eyes was evident and visibly rapidly rising every second that ticked by. His mouth was moving but the words were not registering. She wasn't even hearing anything from him despite the fact that her cousin seemed to be screaming right at her face.

She shook her head slowly, trying to clear her head but it only caused the room to spin terribly and her ears to ring.

Aislin took a slow, deep breath, willing herself to calm down, except her heart continued to beat as if she was running a marathon. Avery's life was in danger and she was caught in between telling him and dealing with the problem herself.

The right decision was to do both, but while she could trust Avery– and Res, to some degree– his advisers would be a different story altogether. Their trust in her people, she had an inkling, was tenuous at best and she didn't want to give them more ammunition against her. Plus, this was something that she could work out privately with Aelthrys. Right?

Suddenly, she turned to him. "He can't die," she said in a desperate, quiet rasp. "Aelthrys, he can't."

"I know," he murmured back, cradling my face between his hands. "I know, and I won't let any harm come to him."

She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling and forced her tears to stay where they were. 

"What do we do?"

Aelthrys sat back on his heels and held out a hand. When he clenched his fingers, a wall of hard wind surrounded the drawing room, making it soundproof while simultaneously blocking all entryways.

“Here’s what we are going to do,” Aelthrys said in all seriousness. “I’ll keep attending their meetings and gathering shreds of evidence against them as much as I could. So far, I only have with me a few handwritten, signed letters from Castley and Mulder but we both know they’re dumb as rocks. You need to be extra careful around them whenever you’re in their presence and they can’t get suspicious of me.”

Aislin nodded. If they ever even began suspecting Aelthrys not being loyal to their plans and the one actually thwarting it all, they would all turn against the both of them. And her uncle? He’d be worse than a cornered wolf. 

This was why the Treaty needed to be signed at all costs. The magic that would bind the contract would effectively hinder any Unseelie Fae to hurt any from the Seelie Court in any kind of capacity and vice versa. Its law would be absolute and strongly binding, starting from her marriage with Avery.

So if there was no Avery, there would be no Treaty.

A thought occurred to her but she set that aside for now. She turned her head and found the broken bits of the window. 

“Will you be able to fix that?” she whispered, eyeing all the small, sharp pieces that littered the carpeted floor. “I don’t want to let anyone know that was because of me.”

“I think it’s too late for that, Aislin.”

Sound from the outside entered the room, and before Aislin could react, she found the King rushing to her with a wild look in his golden eyes. Some of his curls were sticking to his forehead from the sweat and she could hear his breath rattling in his chest as he knelt next to Aelthrys. Her cousin gave her betrothed some space, blinking in what looked like enormous shock, to see Avery like this at Aislin’s feet. 

“What happened to you? Are you hurt? What—? Where were you—?”

Guiltily, she laid a hand over his that was on her cheek, gently turning her head both ways to look for any sign that she was harmed. The concern written all over his face made her stomach turn uneasily knowing she did not deserve any of it.

“I’m fine. I’m not hurt,” she said to him softly. “How did you know to find me?”

She watched him sigh a breath of relief and take her cold hands. “The patina has never let anything as destructive as an earthquake through its magical barrier. No one and nothing could have caused it but you.”

Her guilt increased tenfold. She quickly got up and scanned the lands, past the Lake of Memories shimmering orange with the setting sun, through the bridge and the river that separated the two main landmasses of Alfheim, and to the fae village beyond. More people were outside than usual and she could basically hear their confusion amidst the faint cries coming from within the palace itself. 

Hands pulled her back gently. “No one was hurt,” Avery assured her. “The palace is still in one piece.”

“Not the windows,” she mumbled. 

But even as she said the words, Avery merely waved his hand and the windows fixed themselves. The shards littering the floor had also disappeared. Forgotten and stowed away into the vast nothingness. 

Avery gently nudged her chin, forcing her to look at him. “It’s all right, Aislin, there’s no need to beat yourself up over this.” His gold eyes flickered over to her cousin. “Seeing as that you’re with General Aelthrys, I will assume that nothing hurt you physically. So I don’t see what could have triggered something like that shockwave.”

She shook her head, eyes dropping to her lap. She couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even come up with a lousy excuse to give him. Aislin knew it would all make her feel even more of a wreck and she could not lie to Avery anymore. She was already going into this marriage omitting a lot of things from him and lies of omission were not really any better. 

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I don’t think Aislin can answer any question you might have for her right now,” Aelthrys said on her behalf. “Let me take her to her room so she could rest. She’d been working ever since you both came back.”

Avery frowned at her. “I thought you were going to rest after brunch. This might be exhaustion, Aislin. Please, General, make sure she gets some sleep. I’ll have the physician send up a vial of sleeping potion again.”

“Thank you,” she whispered as her voice broke. “I’m sorry.”

Before Avery could say anything, Aelthrys quickly scooped her up in his arms and left the room. Despite the guilt gnawing at her conscience, there was no real need for a sleeping potion. Sleep claimed her before they even reached the stairs, and Aislin dreamed of gold, lifeless eyes all throughout.