by Lola Gabriel
“I wasn’t going to be so crass,” he said, “but yes. So what if it is that part? It’s a stupid issue to have, and—”
“And you bring it up once a month like clockwork,” Wilder interjected. “And every month, we tell you that you’re going to have to leave your sex life outside the palace walls. There’s a reason for that clause, and you know it. It complicates the business relationship if you go around being you and sexing everything in a skirt.”
I don’t want everything in a skirt! Lennox wanted to yell. I only want Gia! But he steeled himself from blurting that thought out.
“It’s a dated concept,” he insisted. “No piece of paper should dictate who we can date!”
“And yet you’re the only one who has a problem with it,” Keppler said. “Why is that? Is there something you want to tell us, Lennox? Have you been seeing someone employed here?”
“No!” he cried, his voice laced with too much indignation for his liking. “Of course not!”
“Lennox,” Wilder said, “you know you’ll be thrown off the throne—”
“I know what will happen!” Lennox snapped hotly, interrupting his brother. Wilder was smirking like he knew why he was so adamant about changing the bylaws, and Lennox wondered if pressing the issue might give it away to the rest of his brothers.
He couldn’t just go and change the bylaws, even if he wanted to do it. Vextor had told him that he needed a majority vote, and by the looks of smugness in his brothers’ expressions, it was safe to say he was outnumbered.
Lennox glanced around the room. What had happened to them? He could still remember a time when he and his brothers had been close, had been not only friends, but best friends. Now they were enemies, hell-bent on making life miserable for each other.
Keppler, always rational, took a deep breath. “Should we take a vote?” he asked. Lennox appreciated the support, even if it came from Keppler being reasonable rather than him being on his side, but he knew it was a lost cause.
Lennox got to his feet and stormed out of the dining room.
“I guess not!” Wilder laughed, his guffaws following Lennox out the south exit.
If they won’t help me reverse this bylaw, he thought with grim determination, I’ll just have to find someone who can.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
What Lennox saw in Mira’s black eyes as she stared at him was not just shock; it was nearly panic. She looked over her shoulders, as if she expected someone to be behind her.
“Is that any way to talk to your ruler?” he asked sarcastically. “Can I come in?”
Mira stepped back reluctantly, and he pushed his way into her spacious condo while she stood nervously near the door. “I—I just wasn’t expecting you,” she offered as an explanation.
Lennox had never seen Mira like this. Why did she look so scared?
“You know, you could have warned me,” he said, flopping onto her suede white loveseat.
Mira’s brow furrowed like the question confused her, but Lennox got the distinct impression she knew exactly what he meant. “About what?”
“Never mind,” he sighed. “I need you to do something for me.” This time, Mira frowned with annoyance at him.
“Like what?” she asked. “I already granted you a wish, Lennox. You know I was pushing my luck doing even that.”
“Yeah, well, you could have prepared me for the animus and red tape involved with being ruler,” he grumbled.
“My way is not to question your wish,” she replied sweetly, nonchalantly shrugging her shoulders. “You ask and I grant.”
“Well, I need you to undo a bylaw at the palace.”
Mira’s face went perfectly still, almost as if she had suddenly turned to stone. Her eyes, unblinking, remained fixated on him, and Lennox almost felt like she had left the apartment, leaving behind an empty shell of herself.
“Mira?” he called out to her.
Lennox didn’t see her lips move, but he still heard her answer, “I’m here.”
“Well? Can you do that?”
Her entire body shuddered slightly, and now Lennox saw her eyes blink and her chest move with the air she breathed. A slow, almost cruel smile formed on Mira’s mouth.
“Of course I can,” she answered. “But I won’t.”
It was Lennox’s turn to frown at her. “Why not?” he demanded. “It’s a small thing.”
“I already granted you a wish,” she said smugly. Her tone reminded Lennox of his brothers when they had been congregated around the kitchen table, cackling at him like witches in a coven.
“I know you did,” he retorted hotly. “And now I’m asking you to grant me another one.”
“No can do,” Mira replied with a shake of her head, a taunting note in her voice. “You get one wish and one wish only. That was our deal.” Lennox pressed his lips into a thin line of annoyance, and he narrowed his eyes at the pixie.
“Did you know the problems I was going to have when you granted me my desire?”
Mira was subtle about it, but Lennox still caught a glimpse of the way her shoulders tensed. “Like I told you, Your Highness, it is not up to me to question what you want.”
“That wasn’t what I asked,” Lennox said. “I asked if you knew what was going to happen when you granted my wish.”
She seemed to choke back a smile as she darted her eyes away from his angry glower. “Maybe. Maybe not,” she sang.
Lennox lunged out of his chair, his face transforming into a wide face of leathery dark blue skin. Fear overtook Mira’s expression as he advanced toward her, his massive tongue lolling out, puffs of smoke emanating from his circular nostrils.
“Why did you grant me that wish without forewarning me?” Her ebony eyes grew large and scared.
“You can’t blame me, Lennox!” she yelled, backing up toward the wall. “I gave you exactly what you asked for: absolute power both here and in Sunside! But with great power comes great responsibility.”
“Fix it!” Lennox hissed, his chest expanding to tear through his shirt, exposing his huge wings. The webbed spanning knocked down all the furniture in its path.
“I wouldn’t know how to start!” Mira squealed.
“Start by changing the morals clause!”
“I can’t!” she cried, despite her earlier statement that she could. “That’s something only the princes can override amongst themselves!”
Lennox stared at her with glittering, furious eyes. He supposed he could find another pixie to grant him another wish, but the pixie might not be as willing to help him as Mira had been. Him asking for another wish could lead to the pixie asking a lot of questions, and those questions could potentially get back to his brothers, who were already looking for ways to undermine him.
They were probably watching him like a hawk. Lennox couldn’t give them any reason to be suspicious of him.
“Please, Lennox, you’re freaking me out!” Mira screamed. Lennox had forgotten how close he was to her, and he backed away, his claws digging into the thick carpeting over the hardwood.
“There has to be something that can be done,” he mumbled to himself.
“Well,” Mira volunteered, the snarky bite back in her tone. “You can start by being careful what you wish for.”
“What the hell does that mean?” he snapped.
“It means you wanted what Wilder had,” she responded, “and now you have it. All of it. You thought your brother had it so much better than you, but did he really?”
A burst of flames shot from Lennox’s mouth to singe the wall behind Mira, his body enveloped in anger and frustration. Mira jumped, startled, and she immediately looked contrite, but she didn’t say another word. Lennox assumed she was done talking and taunting him.
She had granted him his wish on purpose, knowing it would backfire on him somehow. It was most likely retribution for the fact that Lennox had never called her again after their little affair, or something equally stupid.
Still, it se
emed too petty a reason to grant him such a powerful wish, and Lennox couldn’t help feeling like things were about to get worse.
He thought back to breakfast that morning, his brothers talking when they thought he couldn’t hear. There had been so much anger in their voices, so much venom in their words. Keppler had mentioned something about his antics, hadn’t he? What antics? What else would they have said if Lennox hadn’t walked into the room?
What had they said before he started eavesdropping on them?
The morals clause was starting to look like the least of Lennox’s worries. He had a grim feeling that his brothers were plotting something much worse than dethroning him.
13
Gia was second-guessing being in the palace. Well, not being in the palace per se, but slipping incognito into an unused suite in the east wing. Lennox’s instructions had been very specific, though.
“You can’t tell anyone you’re coming, and you can’t be seen. It’s extremely important, and timing is everything,” he had warned her.
The offense she had taken to sneaking around was mildly shadowed by concern. Then again, she was starting to see that, if she was going to be in a relationship with the ruler, she was never going to be anything but a clandestine girlfriend.
Maybe ‘girlfriend’ is pushing it, Gia thought.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so naïve as to listen to the voicemail he had left her. One minute, he was asking her to move into the palace with him, and the next one, he was telling her not to be seen. Gia was getting tired of these head games.
Part of her longed to tell Allegra what Lennox had asked of her. She probably would’ve done so, except the strange encounter with her and her pixie friend, Mira, had left Gia feeling wary about her friend. She felt as though Allegra were hiding something.
That’s ridiculous, Gia told herself. Allegra has been nothing but a true friend to you.
Still, she had promised Lennox she wouldn’t say a word to anyone.
As she paced around the front room of the bedroom suite, the marble fireplace crackling with a freshly lit conflagration, Gia considered walking away and never looking back. The way she felt about Lennox couldn’t be real. She didn’t know him well enough. In fact, she didn’t know him at all! But as hard as she might try, she couldn’t deny how overwhelmed she felt when she thought about him; the way her pulse raced and her cheeks flushed.
Gia groaned out loud and buried her face in her hands.
“It’s not that bad, is it?”
She jumped and spun, seeing Lennox leaning against the doorway to the bedroom, smiling at her softly. “How did you get in here? Through the window?”
Lennox laughed and shook his head, his green eyes boring into hers. When their gazes met, a now-familiar sensation of being lightheaded swept through Gia. Before she could realize it, Lennox’s arms were wrapped securely around her, and she leaned her head into the crook of his neck.
“I missed you,” she heard herself say, surprised at her own words. Perhaps Allegra had been right about her becoming bolder. Or maybe Lennox just had that effect on her.
“I missed you, too,” Lennox said gruffly. “I can’t stop thinking about you, no matter what I do. You’re constantly on my mind.”
Gia exhaled deeply. His words resonated inside her, but she didn’t know whether to believe him.
“I need to talk to you,” he continued gently, pulling back to stare down at her. “I learned something over the past days that I didn’t know when we first met.”
“Let me guess,” Gia sighed sourly, her eyes narrowing. “We can’t be together.” She thought back to what Allegra had told her, that she was just a one-night stand to Lennox. But if that were true, why was he here, talking to her?
“We will be,” Lennox said immediately. He kindly took her hands into his and led her toward the bedroom, where they sat down on the edge of the four-poster canopied bed. Black curtains protected the highly-decorated mattress littered with gold and ebony pillows, the tassels glistening off the candlelight.
“There is a clause that forbids me from becoming involved with an employee of the palace,” Lennox explained. “If anyone finds out that we have been together, I will lose my standing as ruler.”
Gia blinked. “What?”
He nodded and shrugged, almost sheepishly. “I had no idea it existed, but if anyone gets wind of this, I will be overthrown.”
“I—I don’t understand. In all your years as ruler, you never knew about this?” Gia demanded skeptically. He had surely been with employees before, right?
“I… I can’t explain it to you,” Lennox said, lowering his head in embarrassment. “But no, I didn’t know about it. I’ve tried to have the clause overwritten, but I need my brothers to approve it, and they won’t.”
Gia tilted her head to the side, reading the expression of pain on his face. He wasn’t lying to her. “So, what does that mean for us?”
Lennox cupped her cheek in his hand. “It means I will find another way,” he promised. “But I need you to be patient. And discrete.”
His last words sent a pang of disappointment through Gia. That was what Lennox had been trying to tell her the last time they had seen each other. That was why he had told her to quit her job and move in with him, as if that were the perfect solution to everything. Was it?
“If I quit my job,” she whispered, “we can be together freely?” Lennox didn’t respond right away, and Gia knew there was more that he wasn’t telling her. “Lennox, you can’t keep me in the dark!” she cried.
“I can’t ask you to quit your job in the palace when I know you’re moving up in the realm,” he said, his voice quiet. “And there is no guarantee that it will rectify the situation because—” He stopped dead in his tracks, like he had said something he hadn’t meant to.
“Because what?” Gia demanded.
“Because I think that my brothers are plotting to overthrow me anyway.”
Her face twisted in shock. “They can’t!” she gasped. “You’re the ruler! They’re your brothers!”
“They loathe me,” Lennox mumbled, sadness laced through his voice. Then he spoke in an even quieter tone, almost to himself. “I thought it would be different if I was in charge… that I would do better than…” He heaved a deep sigh.
“No,” Gia said, determination coursing through her. “If you’re serious about us being together in the open, I will quit my job today. It’s ridiculous to put you at risk for such a silly, trivial thing like the place where I work!”
Lennox shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking me to,” Gia corrected him. “I’m offering, but only if you’re sure you really want to be with me.”
Allegra’s words echoed in her mind: And I know he is charismatic and convincing, but he is the ruler of the Hollows. In eons, he has never settled down, not once.
Gia wanted to make sure that, if she was going to take a leap of faith, she wouldn’t just be throwing herself off into the abyss.
Lennox’s expression, full of love and admiration and amazement, dispelled all of Gia’s doubts. He leaned into her and crushed his lips to hers, the urgency sending jolts of electricity through her body.
“I’ve never wanted anything more in my life,” he whispered, his mouth falling to the curve of her throat. “Never doubt that, Gia. I won’t give you up. There is nothing that can keep us apart.”
Gia had known that since she had fallen into Lennox’s embrace at the gala. She had gone astray and tried to ignore it, tried to push it away until she had convinced herself it was the right choice. But their connection was made of something stronger than rules and clauses. Lennox was right. Nothing could keep them apart.
Gia closed her eyes as Lennox lay her back against the soft mattress beneath them, her fingers entwined through his thick hair.
“I don’t know how this is happening,” Lennox murmured, his face buried in the buttons of her dress as he undid them. “But I
will never let it go. I swear it, Gia. You and I belong together.”
“I know,” she sighed, wrapping her legs around his waist as his lips met the taut skin of her breasts, his tongue teasing along the ridges of her swollen flesh. A thousand sensations flooded her, each one plucking at her heightened emotions and causing surges of warmth through her from head to toe. She was floating above herself, lost in Lennox’s mouth, in his fingertips, in the lines of his sculpted body.
Once more, they joined together, his thickness filling her as she had never known, and she locked her ankles around him, drawing him near. In those moments, they were one being again, an unlikely mix of fairy and dragon, pushed to the heights of passion and ecstasy.
“I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to find you,” Lennox murmured, his breaths escaping in short, hot rasps. Gia’s nails dug into his skin, her body responding to the pulsating motions of his thrusts.
Despite the impossibility of it, Gia realized that Lennox loved her.
Perhaps it was the way they lost themselves in each other’s eyes or the timing of their release, again falling into one another in perfect synch. Whatever it was, as they lay in a heaping pile of sweating legs and arms, Gia knew what she had to do.
They were quiet for a long time, sinking into the endless pillows, which were now strewn about the bed in a haphazard pile.
“I’ll quit my job at the real estate office,” Gia said, her fingers still twirling through Lennox’s hair. “But I won’t let you take care of me, Lennox.” She felt him tense slightly.
“Gia,” he said, sitting up. “You can’t live in the Trenches. At least move into a condo I have in Sunside until you find somewhere more suitable.”
“I’m not moving to Sunside, either,” she replied. “Everyone is going to have enough to say about us being together.”
“Screw what they have to say!” Lennox growled. “The Trenches are dangerous, and you know it.”
“The Trenches are what I can afford right now,” Gia insisted, biting back the urge to tell him that the real estate agency was supposed to be her ticket out of the slums. You can’t have everything, Gia. If you want to be with him and be independent, you can’t blame him for your decisions.