Page 51 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
It had been only a little over a week since I saw the stars, but still, something about them made my heartbeat still. A feeling of awe swept in where fear had been a moment earlier as our furious pace slowed and then altogether stopped, Icarus’ wings beating slowly, methodically as they worked with the wind he commanded to keep us afloat.
I was so accustomed to the darkness of his court that here, beneath the light of those far-off heavenly bodies, I could seeeverything.
Miles upon miles of wicked forest spread out around us on every side. Overhead, the moon had begun to rise above the horizon, it’s great silvery white glow outlining Icarus’ face as he once again looked down at me, cradled in his tight embrace.
My stomach suddenly dropped as his grip began to loosen, but he didn’t drop me. He nudged his feet beneath mine, releasing me only enough that I felt my soles pressing into the tops of them. He held me still, but softly now, using just enough pressure to keep me from falling back and plunging through the hole in the forest canopy now below us.
I wanted to be furious with Icarus, still, but it was hard to concentrate on anger with all the world beneath my feet.
“You know this little party trick of yours doesn’t make up for what you tried to do to me,” I managed, finally, now that his grip had relaxed enough for me draw the breath to speak. “For all you talk of wanting me to come willingly, you sure do have a way of forcing your hand.”
His face grey stony. “What are you accusing me of?”
“This…thing, you’re doing right now, it isn’t some kind of gift. You’ve trapped me, forced me into a corner I can’t escape from just so I have no choice but to hear you out.”
His face softened slightly. “I couldn’t let you simply go without you hearing me out,” he said. Icarus’ claws dragged along the back of my arms, the fabric thin enough for the gentle touch to send tingles across the places where he touched me.
“Tell me this, Aurra…” he said, voice careful and practices. “Would you have agreed to study with me if I told you the truth?”
I narrowed my eyes up at him again.
“I told you I planned to use you,” he continued. “I also promised to do nothing to force you to stay in my court while you studied with me. You remember the deal? The one that’s the only reason you’re still here, tonight, and that you haven’t already left?”
I pressed my lips together, but I didn’t deny what he’d already guessed.
“Are you telling me youweren’tgoing to claim I was a Wildness fae?”
Icarus looked deep into my eyes again and said, “I’d have let you draw the connection yourself, but I never would have forced it on you, whatever you might think. You would have figured out the truth eventually, but I’d hoped with time…”
I let out a laugh at the absurdity of it all. “You know that’s still a lie, right? You’re as bad as Shiel,” I said. “No, worse. At least he wasn’t trying to trick me into doing something that was just going to get me killed.”
“I would never have let the glamour do to you what I let it do to myself.”
There was a sincerity in his voice that I really, really wanted to believe he couldn’t fake. But I knew better.
He must have sensed my disbelief, because suddenly one of his hands was sliding up my shoulder to rest on the back of my neck. He gently wound his hand around it, using his fingers to support me, to keep me from falling back while his thumb nudged my chin up to look at him.
“Aurra, I just want to help you. I can show you hownotto become as I am.”
He looked down at himself and grimaced. “You have the chance to avoid this…perversion…that has taken over me. My Storm, with my help, you could harness a glamour other fae could only dream of.”
He nodded towards the night sky above us, and then back down to the shifting trees below, their leaves shuddering in the cool night air.
“This is how to feels to be as powerful as we are,” Icarus said, drawing me back to him. “I know you’re afraid of your power—”
“I’m not afraid of my power,” I said, thinking it was a lie, but realizing as I said it that it wasn’t, not entirely. “I’m afraid of what you want me to do with that power,” I said. “Of what you want to do with my power.”
For a moment, the only sound was the beating of his great wings. He looked over me, into me in that way that only he could.
“Please, Aurra,” he said, something thick in his voice. “Don’t let my mistake stop you from reaching your full potential.”
There was a plea in his eyes that might have once been convincing.
But I knew something he didn’t, something that made it impossible for me to fall for his honeyed words. He was fae, through and through, a creature to which trickery came as natural as breathing.
“You know, you’re coming awfully close to breaking that deal you made with Shiel.”
“Am I, now?”
