The three fae royals gaped at each other for several moments, all three of them crouched around the beautiful oracle who’d just laid claim to each one of their hearts.
“This can’t be true,” Blake snapped in disbelief, shaking his head so vigorously, Drake thought he might damage his neck.
“An oracle’s visions never lie,” Menion insisted with a shrug.
“You seem to know so much about all this oracle stuff,” Drake pointed out to the younger prince. “Have you ever heard of something like this happening?”
Menion sighed and looked down at the beautiful blonde-haired woman in his arms. He reached up and stroked a stray strand of hair that had managed to work its way out from under her hood away from her face.
“I know much about oracles, but little about fated mates,” the prince admitted. “I am at a loss, just as you are.”
Drake couldn’t say it was a loss. Although what had just occurred meant he would have to share her, he knew in that moment that he’d gained something more than he could have ever hoped for. He had found the very thing he’d come to Kira for, though he’d never expected it to be her, and he could never have thought that not only his brother, but this stranger from across the seas would be fated to be with her too.
“What does all of this mean?” Blake asked, echoing Drake’s own thoughts.
“It means we should rest, and first thing in the morning, we travel like there are hellhounds on our tails,” Drake explained, unable to take his eyes off Kira’s peaceful face. “The sooner we get back to court, the sooner we’ll be able to find answers.”
Chapter 7 - Kira
It had to be a dream. There was no way the warmth surrounding Kira could be real. Yet the scents of burning firewood and freshly cut flowers suggested it was indeed real. For just a moment she could imagine she was back in her cabin, enjoying one of the milder days the Winter Isle had to offer. Yet when she allowed her eyes to flutter open, she did not find the familiar bare wooden ceiling above her. Instead, it’d been replaced by a sheer piece of white fabric that looked like it would feel as soft as a cloud if she tried to reach up and touch it.
“She’s awake!” a strange feminine voice hissed from somewhere close by, “Quickly! Go and fetch the king and his brother.”
Hurried footsteps dashed across the stone, and Kira lifted her head just enough to see a young girl running through an ornately carved archway across the huge circular room. Kira sensed what kind of room it was almost immediately; the kind that could only be located in the tower of a king’s palace. For one dreadful moment, she imagined she was back in King Dunston’s court and her entire escape had been nothing more than a figment of her imagination.
Then she felt a gentle hand land on top of hers, and she looked around to find an elderly fae woman perched on the chair beside her bed. She was not elderly in the same sense that a human would be elderly. She was still beautiful, with only a few wrinkles beginning to show around her eyes, though her eyes themselves spoke of wisdom that only came with tender age, and her hair was just beginning to show the first wisps of silver that came with a fae’s later years.
“W…where am I? How…how did I get here?” Kira stammered, finding that her throat was red raw. Trying to talk caused her eyes to water, and she realized her head was pounding, just as it did after one of her visions. Realization suddenly hit her, and she remembered all that she’d seen just before she’d passed out in the cave. Images of her with her three fae mates flashed before her eyes. Her entire future had been cast out before her with one roll of the dice.
Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to force the images away. They caused a heap load of emotions to well up inside her, emotions she wasn’t yet ready to face. Most were good, and yet some were scary, leaving her feeling drained all over again. What she wouldn’t have given, in that moment, to just be a normal woman and experience everything firsthand rather than seeing it all before it happened.
“You’re safe,” came the reply from a much more familiar voice, “Just as I said you‘d be.”
Kira’s gaze whipped back to the bedroom doorway, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Menion standing there, smiling at her. He leaned against the archway with his arms crossed over his broad chest. His plain traveler’s garb had been replaced by silken clothes in the navy blue and yellow of his family colors. Kira couldn’t help but feel the colors didn’t suit him and his mossy green eyes, yet she couldn’t blame him for wanting to sport his family colors with pride in a foreign kingdom, especially in the court of an enemy king.
How can my fated mates be mortal enemies? she asked herself. How can I even have a fated mate in the first place? She’d never heard of a human being a fated mate to a fae before. Usually, that honor was reserved for the fae, and yet here she was with three of them. Maybe I was hallucinating? she wondered. Perhaps she’d eaten the wrong berries off one of the bushes on their journey down the side of the mountain and they’d made her imagine things that hadn’t really happened. That had to be it!
Yet, as Menion wandered over to the bed, she felt her heart opening up to him, and a smile spread across her own face.
“You shouldn’t be in here, young prince,” the elderly fae woman warned him. “Not before the king himself.”
“I have as much right to be here as he and his brother,” Menion grumbled at the woman, though he didn’t look away from Kira for even an instant. Before the woman could say anything else, he dropped down onto the bed beside Kira and took her hand in his. “How are you feeling?”
Kira breathed a sigh of relief, taking in the warm, musky scent of him even as he reached up and stroked a strand of hair from her face. This isn’t right! A small voice in the back of Kira’s mind was screaming, trying to remind her that Menion was the son of the man who’d kept her imprisoned for half her adult life, and yet her heart didn’t care. Just to be near him made her heart swell, and she found herself leaning into him, glad when he wrapped his arm protectively around her.
“Better, now that you’re here,” she admitted, breathing another sigh as she relaxed against his muscular chest. “What happened? How long have I been out?”
“Oh,” Menion sucked in a breath and seemed to debate the question for a few moments before answering, “Well, it took us three days to get down the mountain, and then we’ve been in the palace for another…two, so that makes five days.”
Kira sat bolt upright and turned to look at him, searching his mossy green gaze for any sign that he was joking. When she could find none, she began to shake her head. “That can’t be true.”
She didn’t get the chance to ask him whether he really had been joking, because the sound of hurried footsteps suddenly sounded across the room, and Blake and Drake barged right in, both glaring at Menion with obvious distrust.
“What are you doing in here?” Blake demanded, “I gave no permission for you to be allowed in here!”
“Unlike you, I’ve been waiting right outside the door for our lady to awaken,” Menion growled back at him, and for a moment the three glared at each other as though they had entirely forgotten Kira was in the room.
“Okay, enough with all this alpha male bullshit,” she snapped at them all, leaning back against the mountains of pillows once more. She didn’t think it would be a good idea to melt back into Menion’s arms again, not in front of the twins. How am I supposed to be with all three of them? she asked herself silently, knowing she couldn’t even begin to ask them what they thought of it. Each one would likely say something stupid about how they should duel each other for her hand or something of the like, and even if she had been passed out for five days, she definitely didn’t have the energy to argue with them all.