A Strange Hymn by Laura Thalassa
Chapter 30
The casket children have Night Kingdom traits.
My skin prickles, even though it’s warm outside.
“Why did it take you so long to find me when I was Karnon’s prisoner?” I ask Des as he and I head back for our room. I don’t want to sound hurt or accusing, but a part of me feels both.
Des stops, turning to face me. He tilts his head. “Are you actually considering their words?”
I don’t know what to say, caught between my own uncertainty and Des’s secrets.
“I just need to know,” I say, my voice quiet.
Des’s mouth flattens into a grimace. He glances around us, looking at the fairies that stroll the gardens.
His meaning is clear: this is not a private place.
He nods to the huge cedar we’re rooming in, his wings unfolding behind him. “Follow me.”
Before I can ask him what he’s doing, he leaps into the air, his massive wings looking out of place in the bright light of day. Around us, people stop and watch.
Releasing a sigh, I take a running leap, letting my wings lift me into the air.
Des lands on one of the highest branches of the cedar. Clumsily, I join him, nearly overshooting the branch and falling off. He catches me around the waist, letting out a husky laugh that I feel to my core.
He can’t be bad, he can’t. We might both be fucked up, and sure, Des has killed a few people, but he can’t be evil—more like … Wicked Lite.
I situate myself on the branch so that my legs are hanging off, the backs of my ankles brushing my wings and my shoulder brushing Des’s. From this high up, fairies look like tiny bugs.
I breathe in the crisp forest air, the treetop swaying just slightly in the breeze.
“That morning, the morning you went missing,” Des begins, “you can’t even—” His voice breaks, and I swivel my head to stare at him. He’s a far cry from the cocksure fae king he was back in Mara’s breakfast nook. Now I can feel the heat and pain in his words.
“At first, I thought you walked out on me,” he says. “I thought you took off the way I had so many times back when you were in high school. In the days that followed, I wished you had.
“It was the full cup of coffee that changed everything. It was just sitting there on the patio table, still full. You of all people wouldn’t just leave a cup of coffee untouched.”
I smile a little because it’s true; I’d never let good coffee go to waste.
“That’s about the time I realized that you hadn’t left; you’d been taken.
“The anger I felt, the fear—” His voice cuts off and he shakes his head. “I scoured the earth for you, and then I scoured the Otherworld. Every minute that passed, the dread deepened. And it—” He runs a hand through his hair, letting out a choked laugh, “it was so much worse than those seven years of waiting. So vastly worse.
“I cashed in years of favors for breadcrumbs, and still it took me days to find myself in the Fauna Kingdom.”
My heart squeezes as I watch Des recall those days I was missing. I hadn’t known any of this.
“I should’ve been able to find you. I should’ve. The way my power works … the secrets I hear—the voices that tell me what I need to know—they were ominously quiet.”
Secrets? Voices?
He reaches for my hand, pressing the back of it to his mouth. I feel the slightest tremor in his touch, like the memory is still visceral to him.
“What about our bond?” I ask. “Couldn’t you have found me through it?”
I’d heard tales of soulmates tracking each other down, their bond like a compass directing them to the location of their mate.
Des tears his gaze from the horizon.
“There is something about our bond that I haven’t admitted to you …”
I don’t know how a single sentence can fill me with such foreboding, but this one does. My gut squeezes.
“What is it?” I can barely force the words out.
“Cherub, our bond … has issues.”
