Ezekiel Geimhreadh
His eyes briefly flicked to Cedric, giving him a quick scan up and down before flicking back to find my forced smirk had fallen to mirror his stony expression.
Only his lacked the ice lacing mine.
The white clouds escaping his lips with his every breath grew thicker as the temperature dropped. While that was the only indication that he felt my magic cooling every molecule of water in the air surrounding us, one he couldn't control and suppress, the human's companion that he seemed to be getting on well with lacked the clothes to do the same. His shouts at the sudden drop had my eyes darting his way.
"For faeries fuck!" Came his barked curse as his bare feet curled against the ground beginning to spider with frost. His arms rose to wrap around his torso in an attempt to preserve warmth that the tattered remains of the clothes hanging off his frame did nothing to hold onto. The sudden cold had the color bleaching from his scarred flesh to concentrate at the tip of his nose and ears which began to pink. It wouldn't be long before they darkened to a red. Then purple. Then blue. He didn't want them turning black.
The chatter of his teeth had only begun to sound when he snapped his jaw shut to silence it. Unlike the tremble he was unable to stop from entering his fingers.
A warm wind briefly brushed through the strands of my hair before the magic embedded in the walls of Rowan's cell activated to end his attempt at countering my magic with his. Pulling my eyes back from the man ill-equipped for what he had coming his way, his current state probably playing a factor, I returned them to him, spotting his frustration before he could wipe his face clear of it.
"You killed my men," I said, getting straight into the conflict Cedric had raised.
"You're men attacked first," he countered.
"You weren't the target." My eyes narrowed, my head tilting to regard him closer. "But then again, you already knew that."
He had been following Elspeth's orders to keep knowledge of the human hidden. The question was, would he continue to?
It was due to Aster's firm belief that he was nothing like the woman who birthed him that he was here instead of at home playing a farce along with the rest of his family while knowing that death awaited him at the end of it. She believed he was better. She saw potential in him and mattered enough to me that it meant something.
Plus, at the end of the day, the Autumn Court would need a leader with the blood of an autumn royal. With everything Aster had witnessed behind closed doors, she was strong in her conviction that Rowan was the right King for the Court, even if he wasn't ready yet.
I trusted her. That was why he was here.
But if he was a threat to me or anyone I cared for, I would rather set off in search of his kin that had the smarts to go into hiding when Elspeth had first begun to systematically kill off those that posed even the thought of a threat to her crown. She only allowed her own son to live because she was so convinced she could continue her rule through him.
If that was true, it would meet its end before it had a chance to begin.
Rowan didn't deny it. He couldn't. Instead, he shifted his focus in a direction I didn't expect.
"What did you do to her?" He demanded through his teeth, his hard stare unwavering.
My brow twitched in surprise. "The human?" I questioned.
His eyes narrowed in response, causing another thought to strike. What if... what if he didn't kill my soldiers to protect Elspeth? What if he killed them to... to protect her?
