by Ella Fields
He blinked slowly. “I won’t harm her.”
“Your armies will join us, will they not? It will end in another massacre if my mother does something foolish from a place of grief.”
“No,” he said, and relief flooded me. “It’s just you and me making the journey, taking the risk, a risk I am willing to take a thousand times over because I fucking want you.”
A throbbing started inside my chest. He wanted, and to him, it was that simple, that important. I had to wonder if he truly had never wanted something in this way before. If maybe his willingness to take such a risk was a result of never knowing true consequence. If maybe, he knew nothing of complications beyond the physical—beyond what he could only see.
And I didn’t know how to make him understand when I wasn’t sure that was possible, when he’d stated himself that he was a male without empathy, and when it would mean acknowledging things better left alone.
So I nodded, falling into him when his hands left mine and drifted to my face, lips brushing my forehead. “She cannot die, savage. You hear me?”
“I do. We will marry and return home.”
Home. Again, that word, used for two entirely yet not so different places. She would be safe, but the king, this king of mine that I didn’t want but now could not bear the idea of seeing harmed… “What if she tries something?” I said, peeling away and rubbing my chest. “What if she tries something, and…” and I couldn’t voice the dark thoughts. “Why don’t we just wait?”
He cocked his head. “Wait?”
I nodded fast. “We could wait. Wait until we can reach a better agreement. Perhaps more solid ground on which we can wed.”
“No, thank you.” Dade captured a curl that had strayed from my braid and looped it around his finger. “We will go anyway.”
I laughed, my eyes watering. “Lovely manners. Why don’t we marry here?”
“Your mother would not agree,” he said, eyes upon my golden hair. “And for her to believe I care about you, it must be this way. She must see that despite any ideas she might have, I will do this regardless.”
He was quite possibly one of the most powerful creatures on this continent, if not the most, but outnumbered, that would not matter.
The king sounded amused. “Swan, are you concerned for my safety?”
Dropping my hand from my burning chest, I grinned, shaking my head as I walked to the door of my rooms. “Good night, Dade.”
“Daden.”
I whirled, blinking back at him in confusion.
“My real name, though I would prefer it never used, is Daden.” When I continued to stare, he smirked. “We leave at sundown.”
Daden.
He’d gifted me with a secret—a name I’d never heard though I didn’t doubt was real. Flutters had swarmed and warmed my chest ever since hearing those quietly uttered words, the vulnerability that lurked even quieter beneath them.
A vulnerability he’d hidden so well that I wouldn’t be surprised if no one else knew it existed beneath that veneer of calm deadliness. And tomorrow…
I paced my rooms, uncertainty flowing through me and creating dark thoughts.
What if he was hurt or worse, he was killed? What if others were hurt and or killed?
She wouldn’t harm me, my heart, not without good reason, but to see the blood king fall was reason enough. Except she did not know. My mother had no idea what he now meant to me.
I had no idea what he now meant to me.
When dinner arrived, I collected my plate and kicked the door closed. Pausing beside the bed, I eyed the table on the other side where I’d fed my beast.
Mine. Whether I was okay with it or not, that was what he was.
A king. A savage. A murderer.
Mine.
When I’d first met him, it had felt as though a string had looped around my waist, tempting with daringly gentle tugs to be closer, nearer.
Over the span of weeks, that string had grown into rope, and now, I was in chains—bruised and sore for fighting a brutal pull that would never fucking cease.
I didn’t bother knocking and opened the door that connected our rooms via his large dressing chamber. I knew he was there. I hadn’t heard him leave, and I cared nothing for his privacy when I’d already seen every powerful inch of him.
Dade opened the door at the other end, hair deliciously mussed and his head tilted, releasing soft light into the dark chamber. Curious ghostly blue eyes drank me in and paused on the fish pie in my hands. His nose wrinkled at the scent, then he stepped back.
Two sconces on either side of that monstrous bed were lit, and I kept my eyes averted from the perfectly pressed linen I’d once tangled so thoroughly. “Not fond of fish?”
Dade gestured to the square table beyond the far side of his bed that sat flush between two large windows. Two chairs perched neatly beneath, his dinner untouched atop. “No, but I’ll endure the stench if it means you’ll dine with me.” He untucked a chair, and I nodded my thanks, the nightgown I’d changed into sliding over the gray velvet padded seat.
“You’ve already bathed,” he said, seating himself on the other side and pouring a glass of wine. “Vanilla.” He handed me the glass.
There was only one, and my heart warmed as I took it, my fingers brushing his. “We can share, and yes. I was…” I blew out a slight breath, admitting as I removed the lid from my dish and set it aside, steam wafting into the air. “Nervous, I suppose.”
Dade, quiet for a moment, sliced into a steak as big as my head, blood oozing out and slowly pooling over the white plate around the steamed vegetables. “Are you not excited to see your mother?”
“Yes and no.”
He nodded, understanding my fears, for I knew he harbored similar worries, his teeth plucking the large hunk of meat from his fork.
I cleared my throat and cut into my pie. “What do you know of yours?”
“My mother?” he asked, brows furrowed and food still in his mouth.
I smiled at my plate, shoveling the fluffy pie into my own mouth and nodding.
He swallowed and sliced into more of his meal. “Not much besides the basics. She was fond of politics, swimming, and cooking.”
“A queen well-suited to the throne of Vordane.”
He ignored the slight mocking in my tone. “She also loved the piano, though rumor has it that she wasn’t very good. My father had hoped for a demure wife, I’d heard, and instead, he wound up mated to a female who challenged him at every turn.” His nonchalant tone did not stop those words from making me meet his smiling eyes. “He liked chess, battle, of course, and sailing.”
“Sailing?”
He chewed and swallowed more meat before answering. “He owned a fleet of ships, and he and my uncle would often set sail twice a year under the guise of trade.” I ate some more as he went on, my chest growing tight for all he hadn’t gotten the chance to know for himself. “A male of few words, supposedly, but a keen observer. Prone to terrible tempers every other full moon should someone test him, but otherwise content.” He sipped some wine, his eyes downcast. “Many say he was unnervingly quiet but friendly.”
My appetite waned; the delicious, buttery crust that dissolved over my tongue struggled to slide down my clogged throat. Neither of us looking, we both reached for the wine at the same time, the king removing his hand when I pulled back. My cheeks warmed, but I took it and greedily drank a few mouthfuls.
“How did your parents meet?” I shouldn’t have asked. I was a glutton for punishment, but it mattered. Even if he hadn’t known them himself, they were a part of him, and they mattered.
“My uncle, actually,” Dade said without inflection. “He’d dragged my father to the great lake beyond the city when he’d heard of a group of females competing in a swim competition.” A roguish smile brightened his features. “My father apparently protested as he’d had plans with two females later that evening and didn’t want to run late.”
I nearly dropped the wine as I
set it down. “Two?”
Dade nodded, his knife sliding with ease through the bloodied meat, then gathered some vegetables to scoop over the top. “Supposedly, he was a little too friendly with females, though not in an overt way, but privately.” I waited as he ate, his full lips darker, wet from his food, when he continued, “Serrin promised they wouldn’t be late, but in the end, he did not return home until three days later.”
I laughed at that. “Your mother gave him a hard time.”
“No, she knew what she wanted when she’d climbed from the lake and saw him standing there.” He sat back, fingers dancing around the wineglass, his eyes dancing on me. “They hired a room in the city until they were satisfied their bond was uh… welcomed.”
My skin grew tight, too hot in an instant. I looked away, returning to my food. Yet I couldn’t keep from wondering if that was what I’d done—if that was what we’d done a few nights ago—welcomed the bond.
His sweltering stare, the burning air between us, was answer enough.
We ate in tense silence, Dade’s attention a furnace I couldn’t force myself away from, yet I didn’t look at him.
A grating and toe-curling chuckle erupted, but he rose from the table before I could glare at him. He retrieved a book from the bottom of the small pile upon his nightstand and stared down at the age-worn brown cover.
“I didn’t take you for a reader.”
“It is hard to find the time with so much murderous intent, I will admit.” I balked, the wine souring in my stomach, then his head lifted, and he laughed again—loud and utterly genuine. “Your expression just now.”
The sound—stars, the deep, melodically guttural timbre that vacated him threatened to decimate me where I sat. “You’re not funny,” I said, though my tone betrayed me, and I pinched my lips to keep my smile leashed.
He huffed, stalking with that lazy yet lethal grace back to the table, and retook his seat. “Here.” Sliding the book over the wood, he instructed before returning to his meal, “Open to the first page.”
Carefully, I plucked up the book, watching him eat for a moment. He seemed to be waiting while appearing as though he cared nothing of it as I set the book in my lap and appeased my curiosity.
A female, brunette and smiling in a way that would undoubtedly make nearly anyone want to please her, gazed back at me with deep blue eyes. Below a high, marbleized cheek, a lone dimple popped, brown curls falling around a heart-shaped face as though created to help soften the eye-drawing yet cruel sensuality.
Next to the beautiful female’s image was another. This one of a male of similar brutal beauty. His bone structure was not softened by anything, least of all the eyes that smiled yet remained a deep, dark blue. His near-white hair fell to his shoulders in thick, messy waves, his lips not as full as those gracing the male seated across from me.
I looked back at the female, noting Dade drew that feature, as well as the intimidating structured edges of others, from her face.
From his mother.
Beneath the two singular, painted portraits that were finger smudged by littler hands over many years and glued to the first page of a book of outdated nursery riddles were their names.
Vern and Maya Volkahn.
Swallowing, I closed the cover over the souls that haunted the male sitting across from me and gently placed the book upon the table. “You have her cheekbones and forehead.” I gestured to my own, then my cheeks. “A slight set of dimples, her lashes, and her lips.”
Dade paused, slowly straightening and lowering his cutlery.
I continued. “Your father gave you his hair but a shade darker, and that deep, ocean blue that sometimes takes hold of your eyes.” Pressing my hands over the skirt of my nightgown to keep the tremble that arrived hidden, I managed a small laugh. “Oh, and his strong nose.”
“Strong nose?” he asked, his head tilting.
I nodded. “That perfect bridge with just the right amount of thickness and length.”
He stared for a moment, then his features creased as he sat back and released another glorious yet brief bout of laughter. My cheeks burned when he settled and stated with deliberate slowness, “Thickness and length.”
“King of jokes now, are we?” I coughed to smother my bubbling laugh. “Don’t be so lewd.”
“You said it, not me.” He grinned and smoothed some rogue strands of hair back from his forehead. “So you like my… nose.”
The way his eyes shone with remnants of mirth had my thighs clenching together. “I do,” I said, not willing to add what he already knew—that I liked many other things too—and so I quickly said, “They’re both incredibly beautiful. Stunning. Your parents.”
His smile drooped, and I felt my heart thrash at what he’d just done, with all he’d shared with me, and therefore I had to gently say, “I am honored to see them, that you would show them to me.” I had a feeling he never shared those portraits with anyone.
He watched me for a crushing half minute, then nodded once. “All pictures of them were removed as soon as I came of age enough to give orders to my uncle and not the other way around.”
“You did not wish to see them?”
“Not as reminders, as weapons, no.” His gaze fell to an empty space on the table. “But just as my parents. Eat,” he said, and stood abruptly to return the book to its home by the bed.
He took his time, placing it exactly as it had been with a careful type of reverence. A reverence I might have been envious of if not for the fact that he’d also gifted me with the same attention.
Longing fluttered into something else, something wilder and untamable, and when he waded back, I forced my attention to the food I’d been carelessly shoveling into my mouth.
Almost done with dinner, I sent my gaze over the room while I drank some more wine, admiring the wood of the strange bed and the ghastly skulls atop the fireplace mantel and drawers.
“Are those your parents?”
He knew what I was referring to and refilled the wineglass when I set it down. “They are my warrior kin, my friends, you could say. Bond, Reline, and Nerin. I matured with them, and they died in battle. The last two this past year, and Bond in the first year.” His mouth twisted, the decanter hitting the table with a thud. “He was never one for such things.”
“Yet he fought anyway.”
“Despite my best attempts to force him home”—he scooped some remaining vegetables onto his fork—“yes, so they serve as reminders.”
I waited as he ate, then asked, “Reminders of what you’ve lost?”
“Of what I stand to lose more of.” Such dark iced words.
I nodded, understanding even if I hated that I was able to. He would do whatever it took to ensure he never lost anything else again—even if that meant taking over the entire continent.
“Your uncle,” I said, curious. “He’s alive?”
“He is, though I cannot say for how much longer.”
I clasped my hands together in my lap to keep from reaching for the wine—for him. “You should free him.”
Dade’s eyes left his plate, ensnaring mine as he pushed it aside. “Free him?”
“He’s your uncle,” I said, trying to find the words even as the new growth of feathers at my back still itched in this form. “He was trying to protect you. To end this war of yours by making my mother submit.”
“He serves himself and himself only,” he said roughly, his jaw rotating and then clenching. “He always has. He hurt you, maimed you—”
“I am healed.”
“He betrayed me when he wounded you, and I care not for his reasons, only that he did.”
My mouth dried under the blanket of those cold, graveled words. I tried a different approach, knowing that sentencing his uncle to die was not what he wanted. Not really. He wanted to send a message to ensure no one else laid a hand on me, and he’d hurt himself in order to do so. “He raised you.”
Dade’s jaw shifted. He reached for the wine.
“He raised you,” I said again, softer now. “He took care of you, did he not?”
He drained the contents of the glass and placed it down hard enough to crack it. Uncaring, he rubbed his fingers over the bristles around his mouth, the movements fluid yet not of the form that sat across the table from me. “He did.”
“That’s it?” I said, aghast. “He is your blood, and I will not be offended if you choose to allow him another chance.”
“He placed a dagger in my hand on my fifth birthday and did not let me drop it until I’d killed one of three rabbits he’d released into my rooms.”
I froze. Dade reclined in the chair, the wood creaking as he laid his leg across his knee and gazed beyond me into the past. “I couldn’t catch one with the blasted blade, of course, and frustrated, I accidentally shifted and killed it that way.”
“You cannot control the shift until you enter maturity.”
“Right,” he clipped. “That didn’t matter, and it didn’t matter that I puked all over myself when I shifted back, in tears upon this very floor.” His eyes roamed to the end of the bed. “He made me do it twice a week until I eventually lobbed the heads off all three rabbits with a blade.”
My chest throbbed with the image of such a young male losing himself to bloodlust. “Shit…”
“And then it was badgers. A year later, the training yards, where he beat me until my bones groaned and I silently raged beneath every blow and the reminders he’d spew at me about my parents being dead.”
“He…” I blinked and released a choked breath. “He used their deaths as fuel.”
“Of course,” Dade said, as though it were normal, as though that were okay. “Understandably, as it worked, yet as the years bled by, his grief waned.”
“But your purpose never did.”
“He’d done too thorough a job. My generals, the older warriors, everyone spoke of my father as though he would return at any moment. The tales Merelda would tell me of her and my mother cooking together in the kitchens…”