The Fae King's Ruin

Tunnels

After a very filling brunch made weird by Res and the cryptic remarks he was making all throughout that seemed to make Catteline tick like a timebomb, Aislin personally accompanied them up to the rooms she had hand-picked and decorated to their individual tastes.

While Aelthrys had been alright with the public displays of affection that she and the King had shared upon finally reuniting, this time, he made sure that she was chaperoned when they dropped the King off at his suite. Also, when he learned that Aislin chose rooms for herself that were practically right next to Avery’s he immediately had the butlers move them into her original rooms on the other side of the castle.

She did not mope; it was a good thing that Aelthrys had done what he did, given that they were back in the snake pit that was now her court. But, Aislin was also a step ahead of her cousin. She had fully expected him to act as a hindrance to her plans and had purposefully chosen rooms that he would get angry over.

The plan had always been to distract him with the false rooms and to keep her cousin from realizing that the set of rooms she had given Avery were ones that she had direct access to from her own via a secret door. All she had to do was wait for Aelthrys to leave her company, confident that she would stay in her old rooms, sneak into the secret door behind the floor-length mirror in her bedroom, and finally have the alone time with Avery that she had been seeking for days.

Oh, they could still get caught, but so what? She was queen now, and it was not as if she was getting frisky with just anyone. Avery was her betrothed; they should even be rejoicing the fact that she was happy with him despite the Treaty.

As soon as Aelthrys was off to do whatever he did on his own, Aislin pulled open the latch that closed the secret door and lit the torch that was sitting on the metal brace on the wall. She did not have to walk long. The tunnel was a direct path that cut through the castle so it took less time to reach it when accessed. Soon, she was knocking on the back of a rather large portrait of the waterfall they had back home in Cetha, and Avery was opening it on the other side, just as she had instructed him to.

Golden eyes peered up at her with amusement as he helped her out of the tunnel, snuffing the torch out and placing it back on the empty brace on the side of the wall.

“Your cousin will have our heads for this,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner, so sure of their doom but still pulling her in by the waist. He traced the line of her jaw with his nose. “But I suppose I shouldn’t mind if I am already in heaven.”

She wanted to remind him that the Fae do not have the concept of heaven and hell, only an Afterlife. But how could she do so when his mouth had already claimed its spot right between her neck and shoulder? Aislin tried to fight the moan that bubbled to her lips, tried to stop her body from arching against his touch, still it was all useless and futile.

In a snap of a finger, she was putty underneath the King’s hands. As if she did not have a mind of her own, Aislin gyrated to the rhythm he set. He was being slow, taking his time even if she could feel his own impatience lining his every muscle. She felt the rough material of his jacket before suddenly realizing that it was longer in cut than it should be.

Aislin broke through the haze of her passion for just a moment to look down at his clothes, choking between a gasp and a chuckle of delight.

“What?” he asked confusedly.

She pointed to his robes. “You are wearing Unseelie fashion!” she cried. “How did I miss this?”

He smirked. “Well, I do have distractingly good looks.”

“Oh, hush!” She swatted his arm before motioning him to turn around. “Come on, I want to see it!”

Avery rolled his eyes but eventually gave in, turning in place slowly like a mannequin in a*****e. She giggled, admiring the colors and the beading on his robes as he looked on exasperatedly.

“This is so unnecessary,” Avery half-grumbled. “And I was kissing you before you rudely interrupted me over robes that Res had lengthened for me. How is that kind?”

Giggling, she stepped back into his atmosphere and loosely wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, smiling at him. “I just got excited by the fact that you wore robes for— Wait, did you say Res had been the one to alter your clothes?”

“Honestly, Aislin, I have long stopped thinking that anything my best friend does is weird.”

He pulled her along backward until they were on the king-sized bed in the middle of the room. They laid down on top of the sheets and he tucked her underneath his arms loosely, holding her like that as they basked in the silence.

Despite her dress tangling with her legs, or the fact that Avery’s suit was not meant for lying down anywhere, she felt no desire in correcting whatever it is that was between them. For Aislin, she had finally found contentment in simply being this close to one another after the hellish week they had experienced apart. This, she thought to herself, was a blessing in its true and utmost form. After seeing all those who perished, and her people that would now never be able to hold their loved ones ever again until they also reached Death’s doors, it made this moment all the more precious to her.

Aislin clung to Avery a little tighter. Ever astute and attuned to her, he murmured, “What’s wrong?”

She took a deep breath. “I have seen so much death and destruction ever since I came back from Alfheim,” she murmured softly to him while she reached up to play with his curls. “It has been difficult, but it makes me so glad that you are here now.”

He put a finger underneath her chin, tipping it up until she was drowning in pools of honey. “I glad as well,” he said to her. “Coming here has made me appreciate Fate’s design. While I am not at all rejoicing the fact that a war happened between us, I do recognize that painful things had to happen before we could get here to this point.”

“I wish we didn’t have to, though,” she whispered to him. “I wish no one had to get hurt in the process.”

Avery smiled sadly. “Then we would have been two entirely different people. And I am afraid our paths would not have crossed if that was the case.”

She looked at him curiously. “You really think that?”

“We are the culmination of every single thing that has ever happened in our lives,” he answered. “I would like to think that the Cosmos had been stubborn and adamant enough to want our paths to cross, to make the two of us work, and all our lives we had merely been preparing for what would come after we meet.”

Aislin thought back on every loss she had experienced just in the past six months. While her brother’s death was not exactly a sad affair, he was still family. She had foolish hopes that he would wake up one day and stop his hate-mongering that was slowly poisoning the land and the people. Perhaps the Cosmos knew that he was a lost cause and decided to remove him from her life instead.

But her Aunt and Uncle had been good people. They were the only adult role models she had and she had to suffer through their loss as well.

“They would have loved you.”

Avery raised a brow in question. “Who would have?”

“Aelthrys’ parents. The people who raised me.” She shifted until she could stare at the ceiling comfortably. “They were not like the rest of the nobles. They cared very little about politics and very much about me and Aelthrys and their research.”

He was quiet for a moment, before he said, “My mother would have adored you.” Aislin felt her heart c***k as he continued. “She wanted to have a daughter and had been doting on Catteline even before I was born. She would have treated you as if you were her own. And my father… Well, he would have been impressed by you and your perseverance in training Catt in self-defense. He respected people who took progress into their own hands.”

She turned her head towards him. “They were lovely, Avery.”

“They were.”

His eyes let her go and instead began to travel, eyeing the pieces of furniture and the painting of the waterfall. “Do I even want to know why your room had direct access to mine?”

Aislin chuckled darkly. “My brother was a very paranoid person,” she drawled. “Also, he had a lot of friends— all married males— that could never stick to their wives and loved visiting the famous courtesans my brother had on his payroll whenever they were at court. I am afraid to tell you that this is one of the rooms where the females usually, er— entertained them.”

The look of horror on Avery’s face was comical. His eyes widened and his skin paled almost to her exact shade that he could have passed as an Unseelie and no one would be the wiser. Aislin hopped off the bed, giggling uncontrollably.

“Are you serious?” Avery asked, sitting up with his hands flat on the bed. “You had people scour this room of its filth, am I correct?”

She had an impish grin on her face as she relit the torch on the wall. “I think the most important thing for you to ask, Your Majesty, is whether I am cruel enough to make you stay in rooms that would cause you to feel discomfort throughout your visit.”

“Don’t give me that! I beg you, answer me!”

But Aislin had already closed the painting shut behind her, giggling as she ran through the tunnels back to her room.

By the time she had returned, she was struggling to catch her breath. She smothered the torch by dunking it in water from the pitcher she had put in the tunnel earlier, knowing she would not be able to make use of it later. She pushed on the mirror carefully and quietly closed it.

“Ahem.”

Aislin spun, her chest seizing as he stared up at the glowering face of Aelthrys and the confused faces of her three maids behind him.

“Gods!” she gasped. “Aelthrys. You scared me to death!”

“I knew it,” he hissed. “I should have known you would have something as reckless as this up your sleeves.” Her cousin shook his head. “Fine, do what you will. But the minute someone catches the both of you, or you have people counting back with dumb looks on their faces, I’m not cleaning up your mess.” Then he turned his back to her and nodded his head at her maids. “From this point on, she will be your problem. If I were you, I would start asking for a raise for all the hell she’ll put you through.”

Periwinkle, however, who always had her back, only smiled at the General. “We enjoy serving the Princess, sir. You do not have to worry about her.”

Aelthrys harrumphed, much like an angry old grandpa, and exited her room. Aislin sagged on the wall beside the mirror, catching Ola’s curious observation of the tunnel behind it.

“Are you okay, miss?” Periwinkle asked concernedly, helping her up and to the bed. “You look… Well, if a person could look both pale and flushed at the same time, you did it.”

Aislin chuckled, sighing in relief. “Oh, gods, I missed you three,” she said to them, grinning. “We are going to have so much fun!”