Page 35 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
He didn’t so much as look up at me as I entered. I felt like I was intruding on something private, that perhaps my summons by the three female fae had been a mistake, or worse, some kind of joke. I was considering leaving before I disturbed what was clearly more important work when one of Icarus’ ravens let out a loud squawk from over my head.
Only then did Icarus look up and see me, his features looking even more tired than they had before.
“Aurra, come. Join me,” he said, his voice hoarse as he beckoned me over to him. It took me a moment to step between the winding trees, my footsteps careful as I avoided more papers scattered across the floor. Either a great wind had blown over the treetops earlier, or—and more likely, judging by how many of the papers appeared to be hastily balled up and discarded—this was more of Icarus’ doing.
I stopped at the foot of his bed, hovering over him awkwardly as he continued to furiously scribble at the letter still in his hand. He didn’t look up again, just brushed some of the scattered papers out of the way to make room for me beside him.
I didn’t crawl up into the bed right away, however. I hesitated. It was one thing to awake to a vision of the fae lord in my own bed, another to willingly climb into his when I was certain, this time, that both of us were very, very real.
My hesitation was finally enough to make a deep, annoyed growl form at the back of Icarus’ throat as he tore his eyes from the paper in front of him to meet mine.
“Get on the damn bed, Aurra. I don’t have time for this,” he said, exasperation thick in his voice. “I’m not going to touch you, not unless you’re willing. When you come to me, My Storm, it will be because your need for me is so great that neither heaven nor earth could stop you.”
That betraying heat flooded through me, but I did as he said, crawling up over the claw-like appendages that cupped his mattress to settle beside him, my knees tucked up under me.
He’d gone back to scribbling notes, his face turned down to the paper, everything else forgotten.
While he was fixated on the words themselves, however, it was something else that caughtmyeye. I froze where I knelt, my gaze fixated on Icarus’ hand. His robe was pulled tight, not draping loosely over his torso as it had the other night. Only a little of his skin showed, but what did was now crisscrossed with deep, black veins.
It wasn’t just his hand, either. It was all of him.
I recognized it at once. I’d seen it in the moments after Icarus had cast the spell for me to see my sister, to be sure that she was safe. It was the sign his body was healing from a strong surge of glamour, strong enough that it had taken Icarus two whole days to heal this time.
My stomach curdled at the thought of how Icarus must have looked when he arrived back in the court. For it to have taken him this long to heal, for him to only be able to call on me now, whatever glamour he had cast, it must have nearly killed him.
Instinctively, I reached out a hand to touch the healing flesh, as if to be sure he was actually here, actually real, actually still alive.
The moment my finger touched him, however, Icarus flinched back so violently that his other hand knocked over the pot of ink he’d been writing with, sending the black ink spilling over the letter he’d been so desperate to finish. Icarus let out a string of curses and immediately pointed towards a stack of towels across the room.
I leapt up and hurried over to grab them, but by the time I’d once again reached his side, it was too late. He dabbed at the blackened paper, but there was no saving it—or the stack of letters that had been completed beneath it, each one peeling out from beneath the last, completely ruined.
Icarus let out another swear and threw back his head as that swear turned into an outright growl of frustration.
“Damn it! If only one of us had a single spark of glamour between us, then maybe we could spare these,” he snarled. “But I am spent, and you…” he finally looked at me, his dark rimmed eyes boring into me with an anger I’d never seen from him. “Instead of studying and practicing as I instructed, you chose to fritter away your time with another lord.”
It took me a long, shocked moment, to understand what he meant.
I shrank back a little, uncertainty causing my heart to race. “Are you…jealous?”
Icarus let out a half laugh, more of a scoff, really, but at least my question seemed to temper his momentary rage just a bit. That anger in his eyes softened into exhaustion, the kind of tiredness that weighed on his eyelids until they barely agreed to stay half-open.
“Jealous?” he said, with another half laugh. “Why would I be jealous of that little boy who calls himself Lord of the Western Court?”
He looked back down at the ruined stack of letters in his lap and sighed. “I was there when he was born, and I’ll be here long after he’s dead—unless, of course, this new glamour has changed that, too.”
His words struck me deep. “What…what are you saying?” I asked, my mind reeling as I tried to pull every wives’ tale I’d heard about the fae to the forefront of my mind, all at once. “Aren’t fae immortal?”
Icarus took one last lingering look at the letters and then set them aside, allowing himself to fall back into the bed, instead. I moved back to stand at its edge, my fingers wrapping around the spiked bedframe as if they were the teeth of some great creature preparing to swallow the dark fae in its maw.
The lord let out another, small sigh in the silence.
“Fae were immortal, once,” he said. “But then there was a war in the faerie realm, a place called Avarath. Our ancestors split from one of the courts there and fled to the human realm. But to escape the war entirely, they made a deal.”
I didn’t dare move, hardly dared to breathe for fear I might stop Icarus from continuing. In just a few short sentences, he’d already taught me more about the fae than I’d been able to glean in all the prior weeks. In my entire life, really.
“A deal?” I asked, finally, hesitantly, when Icarus’ silence stretched on a little too long.
He nodded, only to cringe as if even the small movement caused him pain.
