Caught in the Basilisk's Gaze (Monsters of Faery, #4)

by Mallory Dunlin

"Are you always this annoying?" I asked. "Asking for a friend." "She pretty?" he countered.

You told lies for fae… made them true.

"Once upon a time," he said in the same low murmur, a phrase I'd said so often while telling him stories that I suspected some of it might have gotten through to him, after all. He let out a slow exhale, his warm breath stirring my long hair. "I was a dragon's hoard," he said quietly, breathing against my skin. "The world was right, because I was safe in her lair. She counted my coins and slept on top of me and told me that my gems were the most beautiful she had ever possessed."

He smiled against my skin. "Sometimes knights would come. Then the dragon would climb down from the bed she made of me, and leave me in her lair. It would always fill me with terror." Vaduin swallowed, his fingers tightening on me. "I could do nothing but wait. Would she come back? Would men with iron swords come to divvy me up, tearing me apart until there was nothing left? But the dragon was always victorious. She always came back."

My soulmate subsided with a sharp hiss. "Your affection is a burden upon my weary shoulders."

"Unfortunately," the healer said drily. "In my experience, it's tail and teeth when he's cranky, hands and tongue when he's happy, and dicks by default."

"Not my problem if he'd rather starve than be attracted to me." Vaduin's spine went stiff. He looked over at me, taking me in: my reddened eyes, wet face, fisted hands. "Is it seriously so awful to want me?" I asked, unhappiness making my voice waver. "You're happy to fuck anyone else in the Eyrie, but not me?"

"What changed your mind?" he asked. "What made you look at the man you once loved and think, "never again"?" Cass exhaled, leaning down and resting his elbows on knees. "What let you run instead of stay?"

"Say it," Cass said. He rested his chin on his knuckles, his ears lifted and pinned back in killing anger but his eyes full of compassion. He wasn't angry at me. He was angry for me. "Tell me." "I wasn't strong enough to fight." My mouth trembled at the corners, the horrors of my life haunting the corners of my vision, as if the memories might spring to life. "But I was strong enough to run. To start over. I don't know how to… fight."

"Dani. Sweetheart. Sometimes running is fighting. When facing an opponent who outclasses you, often the correct decision is to cede the ground and retreat. No, listen to me," he said, grabbing me by the chin when I tried to look away. "Listen. The Furies were the nightmares in the night. We struck like lightning and left smoldering ruin in our wake. We. Still. Ran. We terrorized the Stag Army, and we ever ran before it. You know how to fight. You know how to recognize sweet poison. So do it."

I had to be aware of it at all times, the sort of casual comprehension that lets people keep their balance and talk—a control so bone-deep that breaking accidentally would be as unlikely as looking at words on a page without reading them.

All of them gleamed in my inner sight like the golden lines of kintsugi pottery, the repairs as beautiful as the man who wore them.

For the first time, I had no desire to break reality along those lines. Vaduin was perfect as he was. I might not have had any care for my own body, but his? I'd break every bone in my body before I so much as gave him a papercut.

The cracks in the world spread out from me, centered on the press of his tongue as he slid it deep inside me alongside his fingers. Every scar he wore. The ones I carried. The mortar in the walls and the fracture lines in the stone. But it didn't matter. He was there at the center, my soulmate, the only fixed point in the universe. All I had to do was look at him, focus on him, and the siren call of the void faded into scenery.

"Look at me," Vaduin begged. "Look at me, look at me—"

"I missed you," he said, almost whispering the words. One side of his mouth tilted up. "Isn't that strange? I didn't know I could miss people anymore, but I missed you."

"The offer of revenge still stands, in case you were wondering. I won't rescind it." That gave me pause. I leaned out of the water and raised a brow at him. "Ever?" His slow smile reminded me of a coyote cornering a rabbit. "Never."

"I want us to be lovers of some kind, so until that's no longer a possibility, or unless you choose to share me, I'm yours alone. It doesn't feel right to do otherwise."

"You missed me," he murmured, as if that thought was only just now settling in. "How strange. You barely even know me." I snorted a laugh. "Don't let it go to your head." "Too late," he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm considering that you might think I'm delightful."

"Better," he grumbled, shifting closer. "Now go back to bed." "Aye-aye, Captain," I said with amusement. He hissed at that. "I'm not your commander. We're soulmates. Equals." Vaduin gave me another nip, this one a little sharper. "Don't call me by titles. Not 'prince', not 'King', not 'Captain'. Not even 'sir'. I will never be such a thing to you. We're soulmates. Soulmates," he repeated in a whisper, shuddering. "I don't want such titles to be part of our relationship."

"You call me 'princess'," I pointed out. I wasn't sure it was the right thing to do, but it felt weird to let that point stand without challenge. "As an endearment, not a title," he said, pressing his face closer to my neck.

They sang to me.

After all my running, I still carried the traces of where I'd been, even if only I could see them. It was like an anchor; a way to measure how far I'd come.

Vaduin had those traces, too. So did Cass. The whole world did, a trillion trillion memories of breaks and mends, and an infinity more, glittering and gleaming in anticipation. It was change, all of it, whether good or bad. A breaker could tear open every wound, but she could also cut gems and break spears. I didn't have to be a force of destruction, caught up in the pain of the past. I could learn how to change things for the better. I'd make mistakes. Of course I would. But when I did, I knew a healer and an amalgam mage. Maybe they could help me put the world back together, and I could try again.

A hand wrapped around my bare ankle. Power blazed through me like I'd grabbed a high-voltage wire, making every muscle in my body seize. I would have screamed from the agony of Cass' full power raging through me if I could have moved under my own control. He used me without mercy, driving his power through the paths of mine, healing the girl under my hands as if they were his, straightening bones and pulling wounds closed.

He'd healed Kyra through me, and not in the way where he was passing his power through my body the way battle-trained healers could use leather-covered staves to extend their reach. He'd puppetted my body. Used my hands and the paths of my magic. Was that something healers were even supposed to be able to do?

And for fae… well, when you can sense the balance of debts the same way as seeing color or feeling gravity, bargaining is a much more comfortable way to interact than any sort of subjective or implied tit-for-tat.

I grew up being told that my whole purpose in life was to wait to find my One True Love, only to find out there's no such thing, except now maybe there could be."

Stag Court. All I knew about Stag Court was colored by the Annihilation War eighty years past, during which the monstrous King – then crown prince – of Stag Court had razed the once-great city Phazikai to the ground, killing everyone in it and claiming hundreds of miles of territory for his Court. They were the most despised enemy of Raven Court, and one they dared not provoke. Better to let sleeping monsters lie.

It was defended by the King's nephew, Varistan Yllaxira. His fucking charisma held that city together. People fought for him like hellcats."

"That night, the Stag Army committed everything," he said dully. "They rained fire from the sky. Threw their army at the walls. It was… a bloodbath." Vaduin took a careful breath. "The walls of the city stood. Burned and gutted, it stood, and never fell. They found Varistan burned and half-crushed by a trebuchet stone, but like his city, he didn't die. I…"

There were worse things than mourning in solitude.

"You had to know I'd ask, sooner or later, and you initiated this exchange, hissy-kissy." Vaduin resettled my arms across his chest with a disgruntled sound. "Pulling out the greatsword, are we?" he asked. The words were a little shaky, but he took my offering of a way out of the grief, stepping into playfulness with me. "Ooh, is that one a winner?" I asked, keeping my tone light. "Yes," he said softly. He exhaled through his nose, almost a sigh. "I appreciate that you don't… weep over me. Surviving has been difficult enough without an invitation to break."

"My heart can break for what you've suffered without making that your problem."

When there's no treatment, labels are mostly useful for the people who choose to wear them. I didn't think there'd be any use for him.

The fae portrayed wore a cold expression, as if he despised the world and everyone in it, the sort of supercilious look the most world-weary of the wealthy wear. Dark, jaw-length hair framed his icily pale face in silky waves, held back by a silver coronet, and silver jewelry dripped from the cuffs on his ears. Deep violet-blue eyes, one of the more beautiful of the unusual faery eye colors, looked out from the portrait without any warmth in their depths.

"The crown prince," he said softly. "We had the same mother. She was a striking woman, and I look a great deal like her."

He was… vainglorious. Cruel, even, in the way he discarded people. He was always looking for the next escape. Daring deeds, wild parties, duels, orgies, drugs; even things like silver rain and bloodsports." Vaduin sighed through his nose and steered me away from the portrait of the prince. "I'm not sorry he's gone. The world needs fewer people like that."

"Though I think I won't say as much to the High Court, I hold little love for those memories. I truly am hopeful no one looks past the wings to recall a time when I walked these halls."

Instinct had me reaching out to take his hand. My fingers brushed his, but Vaduin closed his hand into a fist, stepping away. Stung, I walked over towards one of the paintings, and almost tripped when the last few feet of Vaduin's tail wrapped around my ankle. I shot him a glare. Vaduin blinked back. He looked as surprised as I felt. He yanked his tail, but only succeeded in knocking me off-balance, making me hop towards him on one foot. The coil around my ankle held with the same immovability as a shackle. "Seriously?" I asked. His skin colored, a blush creeping up his neck. "Ah—" "You haven't done that for a while," Cass observed, sounding amused. "It's been quite a few decades since you tail-anchored on me when you were stressed. I suppose I ought to be grateful I've been replaced."

Vaduin exhaled sharply. His tail snapped behind him. "If you're disinclined towards possibly having your heart stopped, I'm far more willing to sit there and stab myself over and over with a fucking silver knife than I am towards helplessly standing by while you give Danica the sorts of memories that will haunt her for centuries." He hissed through his teeth, his eyes blazing with anger. "Fuck you for even suggesting it. She's your student, not your sword."

"I'm sorry, Danica. Any debt you owed me for the pain I suffered in teaching you and the silence I kept for you is far overwritten by the harm I caused you. I'm your teacher, and I dealt you a terrible wound when I should have protected you."

Vaduin clenched his teeth, looking away. "I can't say I expected to find my best friend kneeling in supplication at my soulmate's feet. And you said I could stand to be more jealous of you." My eyebrows and Cass' crawled up in synchrony. "'Best friend'?" I asked incredulously, at the same time Cass said, "I'm a friend?"

"You always let me go. I always get to choose to come back."

"You rescued me. Nobody ever rescues me."

verisimilitude."

The deer is trapped, and the wolf waits in the woods, I translated automatically, watching Vaduin with a feeling like my heart cracking in half. But the brave knight came, and took the deer in his arms. The deer can be you, if you want. The wolf—who is he to fear? Against him, there will be us two…

I fell asleep while listening to this sweet song. I want to sing it for you, sweet one, until the end of my life—

Ellys picked battlefields long before he ever chose you."

"I feel like a ghost," he said in a low voice, sounding defeated. "A thing made of battlefield ash and remembered screams. I don't know how to be anything else anymore."