Page 32 of Serpent and Shadow

It had taken them too long to get here.

Valor La Fey stood just behind his commander, along with the rest of the Praecuri called out on this errand. He had requested to be among them. He’d practically demanded it. In the end, they’d allowed it, although he knew they did not like how it might look, his being there.

It took them four days to obtain permission.

Three days longer than it should have.

Valor had wanted to be able to tell his cousin they had made it the very next day. As it was, he confessed to some worry about her. Forsooth promised he would keep an eye on her after the events that nearly got her killed, but even Forsooth could not hide his concern over her reaction to events.

Caelum Bones.

Of all the people for his cousin to become involved with, she had to rut with and apparently marry into the vilest of the royal families in all of Magique.

Malefic Bones had a bad reputation even within that foul lineage, and his son, Caelum, seemed destined to follow upon his father’s dark footsteps, and not only because he was Malefic’s only child. Valor had crossed paths with both of the Bones males, of course, and to say he hadn’t been impressed would be putting it mildly.

Being a La Fey meant being in the same social circles as the other royal families. That meant weddings and cotillions, coming of age parties and funerals, birthdays and holiday parties. Valor had seen Caelum at a number of such occasions, and he’d more than once noted the arrogant prick’s absolute disdain for all manner of witches.

He wished now he’d made more of an effort with Leda.

She shouldn’t have been permitted to go to a place like Malcroix Bones totally blind.

If he’d been a better cousin, he would have made an effort to introduce Leda into that society properly. He could have shared their family’s oral history, described the histories of the different families, including their modern day reputations, and their relationships to the various branches of magic. He could have warned her about the Bones clan in particular, and assured her their vile reputation had been well-earned.

She might not have believed him, of course.

He may not know his cousin well, but she’d demonstrated a strong will on more than one occasion, and she might have charged forward with Bones anyway. But at least she would have been warned. She would have walked into Malcroix Bones armed with relevant knowledge against a liar and actual murderer like Caelum Bones.

Moreover, she might have met decent representatives among the older families, mages with honor, with reputations that didn’t cause people to speak in whispers whenever their names arose. She might have avoided Alaric Greythorne in that way, as well, which likely would have solved the problem of Caelum before it started.

Valor had no doubt it had been Greythorne who introduced her to Bones in the first place, as the two of them were childhood friends.

Of course, he knew most in his family bloodline were having a different reaction to the pairing, including his own mother.

Even though Leda was half La Fey, most were horrified that a Bones would sully themselves with a half-human, much less the royal heir. Valor, maybe because he was a praecurus and had spent actual time among humans, didn’t care about that.

To him, her human blood was the least of it, although he admitted to some disappointment it hadn’t protected her from being pursued by that animal in the first place. Of all things that might have been considered a redeeming quality in the prick, why did he have to be less of a raging blood-bigot than his father?

While Valor would very much like to throttle Caelum Bones for whatever he’d done to seduce his young cousin, it was Malefic’s reaction that worried him significantly more.

Malefic would kill her.

He would kill her horribly, and possibly publicly.

The thought made his heart hurt, mostly because he knew it to be true.

Malefic would never permit this sham of a marriage to go forward, whatever his political ambitions. He would make a message out of the insult, and not only to his son.

He folded his arms, breathing a cloud of cold air from his lungs.

He knew he wasn’t the only one who worried about what Malefic would do next. The King, the Ethnarch, all of them had gone back and forth on how hard they wanted to go after Malefic in this. They’d argued over punishments, what they intended to demand, how much resistance they expected, and whether they could risk imprisoning him again, given what happened the last time.

Valor had watched a large part of those debates with disbelief.

Still, it hadn’t been difficult to read between the lines, nor to understand what drove all of their hesitation and indecision.

The King was leaning towards reconciliation.

He talked of retribution and duty, pounded his fist on his famous Moon Table, made grandiose speeches about the need for “alignment,” but King Roland II was leaning towards offering concessions to Malefic to bring everything back into normal order.