Strength Read online

  She smiled in spite of herself, pointing at the suns. “Please tell me you’ve had those the entire time.”

  He laughed, glancing over his shoulder at the children. “Just wait—they’ll get you, too. They’re impossible to resist.”

  They’re not the only ones...

  Cosette had abandoned her seat at the table and was dancing with the children in a circle around the fire. Long gone was the stoic warrior who tracked down ancient monsters and rescued her friends from the wizard’s cage. For once, the young princess looked exactly as Evie remembered. Breathless with laughter, dancing barefoot by the fire. Flowers in her hair, starlight in her eyes.

  Seth was spellbound. He distracted himself as best he could—pouring drinks for the others and making stabs at conversation, but not a full minute could pass without him glancing reflexively over his shoulder. He could have watched her for hours, long after the party was over and the rest of them had gone to bed. Evie followed his gaze, then leaned conspiratorially across the table.

  “How goes your crusade?”

  He jumped slightly, quickly turning back around. It might have caused more of a stir, but the party was loud and the friends had all been drinking. Heavily.

  “Things are progressing according to schedule,” he answered casually. “I’m in the invisible stage now—where I pine away in silence and she occasionally forgets I’m alive.”

  Despite her own flailing crusade, the princess couldn’t help but laugh. It was one of the things she loved most about shifters—they were adorably candid. This one more than most.

  Of course, not everyone agreed.

  “I suggest you keep it that way,” Ellanden said lightly, watching a pair of nymphs over the rim of his glass. “Invisible is a good look on you. No need for things to change.”

  A faint blush appeared on Seth’s cheekbones, while Evie tipped her drink into the fae’s plate.

  “Hey, you finally made it!” Freya rejoined them suddenly, landing with a grin in the chair on Ellanden’s other side. She downed what was left of his whiskey, slamming down the empty glass with a flourish. “What took you guys so long? I was about to go looking for you.”

  There was an imperceptible pause.

  “We got lost,” Asher lied easily, managing a little smile while the princess gulped whiskey behind him. “Those rope bridges all look the same.”

  Freya nodded distractedly, but Ellanden glanced between them with the hint of a frown. The princess deliberately ignored him. The same way she eased her arms casually beneath the table when his eyes flickered to her wrists.

  “Not much incentive for a vampire to go to a feast anyway, right?”

  The others glanced up in surprise and Seth froze in embarrassment.

  Despite the obvious effort he was making, the man had spent the majority of his life in a world where heroes were a thing of the past and vampires were a daily threat. It was still difficult to reconcile with the fact that one member of their group came equipped with a pair of fangs and the strength of the undead. When Asher had sat unthinkingly beside him, he’d tensed in his chair.

  The group stared in silence and he back-pedaled quickly.

  “I only meant—”

  “It’s fine,” Asher said dismissively. “I know what you meant.”

  Normally, the shifter would have changed the subject. Any sane person would have done the same. But there was nothing normal about their circumstances. They were sharing a quest, they were sharing a table, and he was more than a little drunk. In a burst of recklessness that would baffle him the following morning he leaned closer, examining the vampire for the first time.

  “I’m sorry they tried to drown you.”

  An interesting start...

  Asher glanced over in surprise, shaken from his own thoughts. He waited a moment for wisdom to prevail, for the barrier of distance to be restored. But when it became clear the shifter was set in his course, he turned in his chair with an amused smile.

  “Why, thank you.”

  Evie smiled in spite of herself, while Ellanden tipped the whiskey from his plate with a roll of his eyes. They’d seen people try to befriend their companion many times. Usually, such ventures ended in tears. That being said, the shifter was genuinely interested. And unnaturally determined.

  And he’d been drinking for the better part of an hour.

  “Is it ever strange for you?” he wondered out loud, splashing the whiskey back and forth in his glass. “Watching others partake, while you...”

  He trailed off, curious but unwilling to offend.

  Most people would have been offended anyway. Asher only smiled.

  “It used to be,” he admitted. “It isn’t anymore.”

  Evie stared at him in silence, the smile fading from her face. She remembered the night her Uncle Aidan had brought him to the palace. Just five years old, newly orphaned, spirited away from the remains of his annihilated clan. He’d known the rules, he hadn’t tried to break them, but those first few months had been hard. Hard for him and hard for the people around him. Now, the only time she even thought of him as a vampire was when she saw the fear of it in others people’s eyes.

  But that’s not true, is it? Not after tonight...

  “So you’ve never tried alcohol,” Seth continued in the same thoughtful narrative. “You’ve never been high, you’ve never been drunk.”

  Asher shrugged casually, gazing out towards the fire. “I was kept in a drugged enchantment by a wizard for the better part of ten years, but I’m not sure if that counts. At any rate, I wouldn’t rank it high on my list of things to repeat...”

  Ellanden poured himself another drink, suppressing an involuntary shudder, while Seth stared in open fascination. Time, proximity, and alcohol had finally convinced him the vampire meant him no harm. That left him free to satisfy all those burning questions. Another few drinks and he might ask to see the fangs...

  “But what if someone else has been drinking?” he pressed.

  Asher shook his head, not following.

  “What if you, I mean...what if the person that you...” A flicker of the fear returned as he found himself incapable of saying the rest. “...what if they’d had some?”

  There was a beat of silence, then the entire table started to laugh.

  “I’m not really sure.” Asher tilted his head with a friendly smile. “Shall we find out?”

  Seth leaned back with a shiver, deciding he didn’t want to see those fangs after all. Cosette left the adoring children behind and returned to the table—flushed from the warmth of the fire. Her braids had loosened into gentle waves and a white flower was painted on her cheek.

  “What are we finding out?” she asked breathlessly, a smile still lingering on her face.

  “Actually, it’s rather quaint,” Ellanden answered with a wicked grin. “Our fearless shifter was just wondering—”

  “—if you’d like another drink,” Seth inserted quickly, pushing his own towards her. He lifted a finger to her cheek before lowering it with a shy smile. “They got you, too, huh?”

  “What?” She blanked, then remembered the paint. “Oh—yes.” She touched the paint as well, inadvertently echoing his exact words. “They’re impossible to resist.”

  His handsome face stilled for a moment, struck by the coincidence. Ellanden sank irritably in his chair, muttering in his native tongue, “Dia ca mahret—”

  Asher understood enough of the language to kick him under the table. But for once, the fae wasn’t having it. Instead, he lifted his head with a rather fierce expression.

  “You look well.”

  The accusation scorched the air between them, leaving half the table baffled and speechless while the other half deliberately avoided everyone else’s eyes. The charged silence stretched on for several moments before Freya cleared her throat loudly and lifted the flagon once more.

  “I think that calls for another round...”

  THE WHISKEY DID THE trick, cooling tempers and smoothin
g over arguments that would be better left until tomorrow. Under its coaxing hand, the friends forgot about the troubles plaguing them and allowed themselves to do something they hadn’t done in an awfully long time.

  Act their age.

  “There were seventeen.”

  “There were five.”

  “There were seventeen.”

  “There were five.”

  “Asher, you’re forgetting—”

  “Ellanden, there were five men stationed outside the throne room. Any numbers added onto that are just an egotistical inflation of your own imagination.”

  “Yes, but you’re forgetting the twelve soldiers who were sleeping in the antechamber,” the prince insisted. “I pity your abysmal storytelling, so we’ll chalk it up to a temporary lapse in pride.”

  The vampire chuckled, fluttering his fingers in the flame of a candle.

  “So as I was saying,” the fae cleared his throat, “there were seventeen—”

  “You’re all mad,” Seth murmured. It was the first time he’d spoken in several minutes and the rest of the friends turned to him in surprise. He lifted his eyes over the sea of empty goblets to the intoxicated prince and the vampire sitting by his side. “I saw you massacre half a beach of Carpathian soldiers. And you—you sank a pair of warships with a flaming arrow. How is it possible that either of you cares how many guards you bested in some stupid castle. Why does it matter?”

  The rest of them flushed, but the prince regarded him coldly.

  “It matters because I was six. And it wasn’t a castle,” he added under his breath, “it was a palace—there’s a difference. You’d know that if you hadn’t been raised in a barn.”

  Evie kicked him sharply beneath the table. “What did we say about saying things like that?”

  “Say them quieter—”

  “Keep them to yourself.”

  The others continued talking, oblivious to the exchange.

  In the clearing around them, the party raged on. Most of the children had been put to bed, and people who remained were under the heavy influence of a feast’s worth of alcohol. The empty bottles were kicked discreetly under the table. More bottles were being opened and poured.

  “—not like you would have gotten into trouble anyway,” Cosette was saying, resting her chin on the table while absentmindedly playing with a knife. “What was your father going to do, banish you for stealing his crown? It’s not like any of those guards was actually going to hurt you—”

  “Wait,” Seth interrupted, fighting back a smile, “you stole from your own father? That’s the big accomplishment? Stealing your dad’s crown?”

  “To start,” Ellanden answered sharply, “it wasn’t my father’s and it wasn’t a crown. It was the royal scepter of Belaria. And I was planning on returning it right after I’d decapitated the agreed upon statue. I just happened to drop it accidentally in the courtyard pond.”

  The others stared in silence and he lifted his glass with a shrug.

  “It was a dare.”

  Seth shook his head incredulously. “Who in their right mind would dare you to such a thing?”

  Evie raised her hand in silence.

  “You’re all mad,” the shifter said again, this time with the hint of a smile. His eyes lifted to Cosette, twinkling in the light of the fire. “These are the games you played growing up?”

  She shook her head practically, dissecting a slice of mango with her knife. “I was just a child. Most of the games I played involved me imagining I was a pony.”

  There was a pause.

  “Imagining you had a pony.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The shifter laughed as a sudden cheer rose up from the other side of the bonfire. A group of teenage witches was taking turns attempting to harness the flames. The one who finally managed it got cocky, raising her arms in triumph...and subsequently lighting her skirt on fire.

  Holy crap—

  Evie half-pushed to her feet, watching as the witch’s friends doused her in water, laughing when she began cursing in some foreign tongue. Whatever limited inhibitions the village maintained had vanished amidst the haze of whiskey, and things were getting heated as the night wore on.

  Shifters were slinking into the shadows with witches. A pair of warlocks was glued at the mouth. At some unseen signal the fiddlers picked up the pace and a swarm of people flooded towards the grass by the fire, their bodies glistening with sweat as they danced in front of the flames.

  “This must be why they don’t really wear clothes,” Freya remarked casually, watching as two shifters tangled themselves together. “Saves them the trouble of having to take them off—”

  No sooner had she spoken than there was a tap on her shoulder. The friends looked up to see a teenage wolf standing in the darkness with a smile. He looked the witch up and down before cocking his head towards the fire. “Care for a dance?”

  ...or something like it.

  Freya froze in surprise, caught completely off guard. She hadn’t noticed him, but the man had apparently been watching her for quite some time. And he had a lot more than dancing on his mind. Her lips parted, but before she could answer Ellanden dismissed him with a wave of his glass.

  “She’s taken.”

  The others turned to him at the same time, fighting back smiles as he poured himself another drink. When he saw them watching, he lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug.

  “Best not to split up. We still don’t know what these people want.”

  Asher’s eyes twinkled with a secret smile. “I think they made it very clear what they want.”

  The fae purposely ignored him, while the others made an effort not to laugh. The only one who looked secretly pleased was Freya, though for once she was keeping her opinion to herself.

  It might have been the first proposition, but it was in no way the last.

  As the night wore on, the villagers—who at first had kept a careful distance—grew more and more bold, making their way in shifts towards the table in an attempt to engage the beautiful travelers dining in their midst. The two princesses were asked to dance enough times that the men eventually made it into a drinking game. Ellanden received just as many offers, all of which he politely declined, and Seth was invited to take a midnight walk with a witch who looked about ready to set him on fire if he refused. He refused anyway, watching nervously as she made her way back to the rest of her coven, a little trail of sparks dripping from her hands.

  “You should have gone,” Asher teased quietly. “She probably hexed your drink.”

  The vampire was the only one who hadn’t been propositioned over the course of the evening. There had been plenty of stares, plenty of whispered conversations, but no one could seem to get past the fangs. Instead of being offended he was greatly enjoying himself, offering a hilarious running commentary as his friends stammered and flailed with each drunken attempt.

  Seth stifled a shudder, glancing down at his glass. “Don’t say that...”

  The vampire leaned forward with mock concern, also examining the goblet. “Sprinkle in some grass...that’s how you can know for sure.”

  In a moment of pure intoxication, the shifter actually glanced beneath the table. Then he set the glass down slowly, regarding the vampire with a rueful smile.

  “It’s easy for you...no one dares to come close.”

  Asher’s smile faltered for a second, then he turned back to the fire. “That’s true.”

  No one else noticed. The rest of them were focused on the party and their drink. But the princess froze where she sat, feeling suddenly cold. Her eyes travelled across the table, but Asher wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t really looking at anything. But his eyes were fixed on the people dancing by the fire, like there was some kind of wall between them. One he could never breach.

  “—don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ellanden was saying, winking at a nymph who was staring at him across the grass. “They’re not all so bad.”

 
Evie shook herself back to the present, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. It was easier to do with whiskey. Though not everyone had such a luxury.

  The others were still talking, but much to Ellanden’s embarrassment the nymph had taken the wink as an invitation and was heading their way. He flushed ever so slightly at the presence of his friends, but straightened up with a charming smile. A smile that faded almost immediately...

  ...as the nymph melted into the shape of a man.

  “Eli?!”

  The princess couldn’t help but gasp aloud. The rest of them were staring in utter disbelief, but none so much as Ellanden who literally whitened with rage.

  “What the heck is wrong with you!”

  The shape-shifter merely laughed, pulling up a chair next to Evie. “Relax, I was just having a bit of fun.” He poured himself a glass of ale, though it was clear he’d had plenty, before stretching his legs with a self-satisfied smirk. “Besides, wasn’t it you who beckoned me?”

  The fae’s eyes narrowed in a vengeful glare, but now that the shock had worn off the rest of the friends found the prank downright hilarious. They pulled their chairs closer, gathering in delight.

  “You’re a shape-shifter?” Freya asked in astonishment, forgetting, for a drunken moment, the true identity of the people who sat beside her. “I’ve never met one before.”

  Asher silently confiscated her whiskey, while Cosette shook her head with a sigh.

  “At your service,” Eli answered with a grin, casting a sideways look at Evie. “And I’m not surprised you’ve never met one. My particular brand of magic is exceedingly rare.”

  The friends shared a secret grin, thinking the same thing.

  Ellanden’s ego cannot take this.

  Sure enough, Ellanden was staring deliberately at the table—taking measured breaths while carefully pouring himself a glass of ale. The shape-shifter was oblivious. As was the witch.

  “So can you turn into anyone?” Freya gushed. “Anyone at all?”

  Eli flashed her a quick smile before returning his eyes to the princess.

  “I can be anyone you want me to be...”