The Fae King's Ruin

The King and Bridges

Avery shoved the vial of sobering potion at his best friend and currently his worst headache. 

“Drink this. I want you to be sober before I give you a beating.”

Res nodded morosely. “I don’t want you to lose to me while I’m at a disadvantage, too.”

Catt groaned. “For Ilyn’s sake, I told you that making him Hand was a bad idea.”

“You are a bad idea,” he replied without missing a beat.

“Stop it! Both of you!” Avery snapped. “Gods, you have been at each other’s throat since you were in diapers. When will this end?”

Res pouted. “Ship her back to where she came from and I’ll stop.”

“Res,” he sighed. “How the hell did you manage to convince Aislin to drink with you in the first place? She told us she had work.”

He held out a finger, popped the cork off the vial of potion Avery had given him, and chugged the whole contents in one fell swoop. He watched him shiver as the potion took effect and the cloudy sheen in his eyes slowly went away.

Then, happily, he turned to Avery. “I told her she should skip the workday with me. To our credit, though, we managed to squeeze some tutoring in along with the little game we played.”

“You played a drinking game with her,” he all but shouted. “That is not something that you should be proud of.”

Blue eyes trained on him with all seriousness, unfazed by his temper. “Avery, you know me. I would not have done such a thing if I did not think she needed it.”

Avery pinched his lips together and unthinkingly glanced at his cousin whose veneer broke all for one single second and showed a flash of shame before that carefully crafted mask slid back into place.

He’d been denying it all morning, especially when Aislin felt the need to become defensive against his cousin. She was never defensive, not even towards Countess Edith, and on top of that, she had been quiet and pensive. 

At first, he had chalked it up to shyness. He should have seen it sooner.

Noticing his knowing gaze on her, Catteline’s shoulders slumped. “You honestly expected me not to size her up? She will be your wife.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, already exhausted. It didn’t help that Res was smirking in triumph that he had been right all along.

“Catt, Aislin and I are just two people making the best out of the situation that we have,” he explained, willing her to understand. “Whatever you did, it was uncalled for and you need to apologize.”

“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “But before I do that, I need to ask you something.”

“What?” Avery asked tiredly.

“You love her. Or at least you’re getting there. That much is obvious. But does she love you?”

He lifted a brow. “Are you kidding me, Catteline? Whether she loves me or not is none of your business.”

“That might be so, but why can’t you answer the question?”

He sighed in frustration and angrily ran his hands through his hair. “Because whatever happens in our relationship is none of your business! This whole thing is none of your business, Catt! I’m fairly fu*cking sure that if the Treaty didn’t require our marriage, she would never have considered being with me in the first place.”

“Hey, mate, I don’t think that’s true,” Res interjected. “I’m sure you would have charmed her somehow. You aren't that hard on the eyes.”

Both cousins ignored him. Catteline went to him concernedly, touching his shoulder. “Is that really what you think?” she murmured.

Avery gave her a bleak look. “I did think that before,” he told her. “But lately, I have started to grow hopeful that she’s slowly catching up. I’m holding out for that someday, she’d finally meet me where I am.”

A soft smile slowly made its way onto Catt’s lips, curving it gently upwards. He knew she was familiar with the word since ‘someday’ was a promise she had already heard before with his parents. It was one of their most sacred oaths, one that his father kept even after Avery’s mother had passed on. Even in his final days, it kept him hopeful, just like it did Avery now.

Catt’s hand dropped from his shoulder to his hands. “I’ll apologize,” she said softly. “You go and see how she is and invite her to lunch.”

Avery frowned. “She’s mad at me,” he said. “Don’t you think I should leave her alone for a while? Talk to her tomorrow?”

His cousin sighed heavily. “Ave, one thing your parents never did was drag out arguments. And she’s not really mad at you. That’s all me. Go on up to her and get the moment of privacy I so rudely interrupted this morning.” She gave him an impish grin. “Don’t worry; I’ll apologize for that, too.”

Casting a doubtful look at her, Avery stood. “All right,” he said, then looked between his cousin and his best friend. “Perhaps you two should stay in separate rooms, too. I don’t trust you to behave yourselves.”

Res held up a hand. “Don’t worry. I'll go. I do not fancy recovering from my day-drinking episode with my potential murderer in the room.”

Catt smiled sweetly up at him as she lounged on the couch. “I was going to do you a favor and let you die beautifully. I guess that will never happen now.”

His best friend made another smart-ass remark that Avery chose not to stay for just to hear. He quickly got out of his suite and half-jogged the distance that would take him straight to Aislin’s door. Once he reached it, he lifted a hand to knock but his hand stayed there in the air, suspended for a few seconds, and debated what he would do if Aislin decided he didn’t want to see him.

He would leave, that much was already a given. But what if the events of the day had already convinced her that Avery was not worth the trouble? That everything they had worked towards in building a relationship for themselves was folly and they should just focus on the work aspect of it?

That thought scared him the most. He was not ready to face the fact that he might have wasted his chance at having a marriage that was just like his parents’ and that he would have to now go through the rest of his life without having known that joy.

It propelled him to knock, quite frantically in fact, on Aislin’s door. He did not stop until Periwinkle’s wide, brown eyes were staring up at him. Gently, he pushed past her and found Aislin leaning against the safety rails of her balcony in the shivering cold but not seeming bothered by it one bit.

She turned in confusion before surprise made her eyes go wide. He didn’t stop stalking after her. He didn’t even allow her to speak and just grabbed her close to him and kissed her with all that he had.

Avery knew he had made the right decision when having her in his arms felt like finally coming home.

Out on the cold winter day, Avery felt his passion for her burn like a thousand different suns within him, igniting even more when he felt her lips move tentatively from underneath his. This time, he wanted more.

He pried her mouth open with his, those butterfly lips opening with a gasp that stirred the magic in his blood. His tongue lashed out, exploring her depths, tasting the brandy whose taste still lingered in her mouth, on her lips. Avery found himself very intoxicated by the idea that he was drinking in his own personal brand of spirit. 

She reached up, tugging at the hair on his nape and he obliged her when Aislin pulled him closer. She moaned and all thoughts and manner of thinking fled his mind.

Aislin said his name.

He was so surprised that he pulled back, eyeing her with wonder that she returned with a curious look of her own.

“What?” she asked rather breathlessly. It made him smirk. 

“You said my name.”

She gave him a stare that told him he was acting rather dumb. “Would you rather that I said someone else’s name when you’re kissing me like that?”

The growl that slipped past his lips embarrassed him, but it made the pupils of her eyes dilate slightly. “You just try and pull a stunt like that and you will wish you had not even dared to.”

Aislin bit her lip, grinning, before she pulled him out of the balcony to sit on one of the couches in her parlor. He noticed that her maids have made themselves scarce and he made a mental note to give the three girls grander gifts for the New Year. With any other maids, he was loathed to admit, how he entered and pounced on Aislin would be circuiting the rumor mill right about now. He was glad that he’d assigned maids into Aislin’s service good-natured and loyal girls.

“Look,” she said, taking a breath. “I’m so—”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Avery said, cutting her off mid-sentence. “Not for anything. In fact, I am the one who needs to say sorry to you. I should have realized how my cousin was affecting you and done something about it sooner. I won’t make any excuses on her behalf, but she does want to apologize to you herself. At dinner.”

Aislin blinked at him, and he realized the words might have come out of his mouth a bit rushed. He debated whether he should repeat it, but when she looked down at their interlocked fingers, he knew she heard and understood him loud and clear.

“I can’t say I wholly blame Catteline for jumping to conclusions,” she muttered to him, laughing self-deprecatingly. “I did tell you that other people would see our relationship differently than how we see it. Not everyone would understand right away.”

“Nonetheless, she shouldn’t have been quick to judge.”

She patted his hand. “That’s quite all right. Some things just get the better of us when it comes to the people we care about. Which is why I must have agreed to Res and his idiotic games.” Midnight-blue eyes slid to his golden ones. “How is he, by the way?”

Avery chuckled. “He is feeling much better than he deserves. But it’s his birthday, so I’ll let it pass. He should not have gotten you drunk in public, however. A bad person seeking trouble could have stumbled upon you, realized you and Res were not in any condition to fight and hurt you both.”

It was partly why he was so concerned and had come running when one of the guards mentioned to him that she and Res were drunk and skating on the rink. The other part was because he was rather hurt that Aislin lied and preferred Res’ company over his. He was jealous, but he wasn’t going to admit that out loud to her.

“As I said, the whole thing was idiotic,” she said to him drily. “But I did miss ice skating, so there was that.”

He chuckled, laughing along with Aislin. He pulled her closer to him until her head was resting on his chest, and for a long while, they both listened to the sound of their breaths and the fire crackling beside them in the hearth. He could not express how much he wanted this moment to last forever. He wished that he could spend all of his days just sitting on this couch with Aislin, never feeling the need to fill the silence with banal chatter and allowing him to just appreciate what he had.

But they had real physiological needs that they needed to satisfy and he was already guilty because Aislin barely ate anything during breakfast and they both skipped dinner last night.

When she went to go change, he insisted that what she wore was fine and started tugging her out her door while she made her half-hearted attempts at reasoning with him. Outside, Aislin’s three maids were grinning at them from ear to ear and he felt an odd sense of approval coming from them. He thought about it while they made their way to one of the smaller dining rooms and found Catt and Res already waiting for them with six feet separating the two.

Avery squeezed Aislin’s hand in support as Catt slowly approached them but neither said a word for a very long time. It made him grow nervous as the two, very dear females in his life stared each other down in a weird stand-off before finally, finally, Catteline offered her hand.

He watched as Catt’s green eyes widened from their slits and glanced at him before she said, “Avery has been like a brother to me ever since we were younger and I do recognize that I get a tad overprotective when it comes to him.” They all ignored the snort of derision that came from Res. “And I apologize for giving you a hard time instead of just trying to get to know you. If you please, I would like a chance to do that.”

He glanced at Aislin, at the inscrutable mask that she had on, and prayed silently for any kind of divine intervention. But with bated breath, he watched Aislin’s adorned grasp his cousin’s lightly and shook it once.

“I would love that,” she murmured, before the two females smiled at each other genuinely.