by Bec McMaster
I have no idea what he’s thinking.
Can he see it on my face? That I mean to betray him?
Surely not.
He wouldn’t be lazing back against the carriage seat across from me if he was.
I have to believe that, and yet, for some strange reason, that knot of tension is back within my chest. I toy with the sapphire rings on my fingers, forcing my shoulders to square.
“We’re nearly there,” he says, glancing through the windows.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Once.” His lashes shield his eyes for a second. “Though these lands did not belong to the fae then.” Something makes him hesitate. “This court was the summer residence of Igrainne, my king’s daughter.”
Igrainne.
The daughter Queen Mab begot on the dragon king she married—before she betrayed him. I cannot even remember a time when it wasn’t ruled by the Court of Blood. It makes me realize how truly ancient Keir is.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell him in a quiet voice.
“It is as nothing to what it was then,” he replies as if he sees something else. “These lands were wild and free. We called them the Lands of the Golden Lakes, for the summers here seemed endless. And the mountain halls were wide enough for even a dragon king’s wings.”
“Do you miss it?”
He looks at me quickly.
“Your people,” I point out.
“I miss… aspects of it.” Keir sighs under his breath. “I am much changed from what I was then. At first I thought this a welcome disguise, but sometimes I wonder if the body’s alchemy changes the very patterns of one’s mind. I am more fae now than I ever was dragon, in some ways.” His focus turns upon me. “And what of you?”
“Me?”
“You are half fae, half wraith. Which side of your nature calls more strongly to you?”
I look away. “I have never been fae. My father’s court would burn me alive if they suspected I yielded to my fairer nature.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
His voice is so soft it almost seems as though it’s gilded with sympathy. I close my eyes against it. “When I was born, my father took one look at me and sneered at my weakness. I was small and sickly and I gleamed like mother of pearl—”
“Mother of pearl?”
“Some twist of my bloodlines, no doubt.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s true.” Some wraithenkind glow in the night like fireflies, unless they tamp down their magic, but I’ve never seen another wraith with skin like mine. “My fae nature was more ascendant when I was a little girl, I’m told.”
“What happened?”
Restlessness itches within me. This is not something that is spoken of—I don’t think I’ve ever spoken of it, and it feels somewhat akin to revealing a weakness. “To remain weak meant to die. I quashed any and all of my mother’s magics. The first thing I ever learned to do was to hide the glimmer of my skin.” A shrug. “It’s second nature now. I don’t even have to think about it and sometimes I wonder if I could ever go back.”
We stare at each other.
There’s a sad little smile on his lips. “Yes. Something like that.” He glances out the window. “Here we are.”
Our carriage makes its way up the enormous driveway that parts the maze. And then it’s all happening. Keir’s footmen open the carriage door. A step is brought forth. Court of Blood servants turn to glance at our carriage, their eyes turning into saucers when they note the colors and sigil. The Court of Dreams is marked by a swooping dragon, which is probably Keir’s idea of a joke. One of them goes running—presumably to find Malechus and inform him of his newest arrival.
I hate this.
I’m made for the shadows, not the glittering lights that flicker over the Court of Blood entrance. My glamor is firmly locked in place—no one will catch a hint of the faint luminescence of my skin—and yet I feel utterly naked.
“Breathe,” Keir tells me, stepping down from the carriage and offering me his hand.
I’m scanning the entrance, tracking the guards, noting their weapons, potential escape routes, everything…, and his words jolt me out of the abstraction.
I look down, and there’s a handsome prince offering me his bare hand. Our fingers meet, and despite my misgivings I can’t help sucking in a short, sharp breath at the sheer heat of his skin. His mere touch promises I will burn if I were to ever give in to the look in his eyes.
It’s a game.
Punishment for my betrayal.
He knows I desire him, and he’s going to torment me at every turn with that desire.
“Come, my lady Merisel,” Keir says, his eyes burning through me as he lifts my hand to his lips and brushes the chastest of kisses across the back of it. “Let us go and introduce the world to my bride.”
His words chase themselves through my head as we mount the stairs.
I’m not supposed to be his bride—well, I am, but that’s just the cover we intend to use. He’s supposed to be bound by his choice during the Summons, but he is to ask for two rooms and will spend his time hunting with the other lords and dancing with the ladies. The servants will gossip of course, of how there stands a door between our beds.
It’s supposed to encourage the ladies of the courts to compete for his fractured attentions.
Maybe he made a mistake, they will whisper.
Merisel of Greenslieves is some backwater lady who just happens to have a distant queen in her family lines. She’s not particularly pretty—not like the glamorous fae princesses bound to be in attendance—and her tongue is boring and her wits slow.
I will fade into the background, some mere plaything the Prince of Dreams is growing tired of and he will attract all the attention.
Precisely as planned.
We’re led toward the ballroom, with flustered servants appearing from nowhere. If we’ve timed it perfectly, all the gallant fae will be dancing in celebration of the Blood Moon. It’s the first night of the wedding celebrations, an omniscient start to a weeklong orgy of merriment.
Tonight, they’ll crown the Willow Queen—she who was once offered to the bonfires to ward off the curse of the blood moon.
It might sound like a sacrifice, but the first Willow Queen was a clever little thing. A lowborn nixie, she drank as much water as she could from the pond and filled her veins with it before offering herself as sacrifice. She went to the bonfires and broke the curse, but she did not die. The fires couldn’t touch her.
When they dragged her from the ashes, the Blood Court’s curse was broken, and the king of the court was so enamored with her that he took her as his second wife.
Her family was blessed with skin that would ward off even the sharpest knife, and her weight in rubies.
I don’t know what happened to the first wife. Her name was lost to memory, and the very fact they honor the Willow Queen each and every blood moon tells you something about the first queen’s ending.
The doors before us open, and a self-important kelpie in a pomaded wig draws a deep breath and bellows, “His Royal Highness, Prince Keir of the Court of Dreams, and his betrothed, Lady Merisel of Greenslieves.”
Heads turn.
Gasps echo through the chambers.
The entire dance comes to a stop, as even the members of the string quartet in the corner tilts their heads to look at us, with one last discordant shriek from the cello.
I have never wanted to fade into the shadows so much in my life.
“Come, my love,” Keir says, taking my hand and drawing me forward into the light, as if he can sense my horror.
They’re all looking at me.
Hundreds of whispering fae. I think I’m going to vomit.
Focus on the job. I swallow it all down, and even though I’m no longer feeling sick, I know my skin has paled.
“Prince Keir,” a brunette breathes, her eyes wide with joy as she welcomes him. “An honor.”
“Your Highness.”
Another woman swims out of nowhere, dropping into a deep curtsy. “We never dreamed we would have such an illustrious guest.”
On and on and on it goes as the females of the court swarm toward us.
But it’s the impossibly handsome fae prince on the throne who draws my attention. Malechus is the Crown Prince of the Court of Blood, the last in a long line of vicious, dangerous males. His father, King Aswan, may rule the court, but it’s said he keeps Malechus here at Castle Blackrock in virtual exile, far away from the throne and any ambitions his son might foster.
A crushed velvet doublet the color of a black-red rose spans his broad chest, with black edging clinging to his shoulders. Rings glitter on his fingers, winking in the light, and I catch a glimpse of midnight leather shifting over his thighs as he finally sights us through the crush.
Instantly, he stills, like a panther sighting its enemy.
His brown hair hangs in a wavy curtain to his shoulders, and eyes the color of a crystalline lake lock on me, even as he plucks a golden goblet from his attendant’s tray and nurses it negligently. He slowly lifts the wine to his sulky mouth, but he barely sips it. Instead, he watches us over the rim, his blackened claws scraping on the gold.
Or no, not us.
Me.
That look shivers all the way through me. It’s intimate, as if he’s picturing stripping the gown from my body or drawing me into the embrace of a knife.
“You’ve met before?” Keir murmurs in my ear, clasping his hand over mine as he leads me toward the dais.
“No.” Though there’s something about the way the prince looks at me that makes me question the truth of that myself. “Maybe he’s met my sister. Soraya resembles me in some ways. Her hair and eyes are black, but otherwise we could be twins.” My voice roughens. “A little bit of glamor and she fooled even you, after all.”
“Mmm.” Keir strokes my knuckles. “Then I don’t like the way he’s looking at you.”
Me either, but— “If you kill the prince, then we won’t get what we both want.” Though the Prince of Blood is going straight to the top of my suspect list for those involved in Soraya’s disappearance.
“Prince Keir.” Malechus strides down from the dais, a dangerous smile on his mouth as he clasps hands with the prince and draws him into a swift embrace. “If I’d known you thought to attend, I would have sent an invitation.”
“If I’d known you would invite me, I would have made my intentions clear.” Keir’s smile is a knife.
The two of them part.
And though Keir has an inch on him, Malechus feels in no way less dangerous.
“Please allow me to present my lovely bride-to-be, the lady Merisel,” Keir purrs, a hand coming to rest in the small of my back as he gestures me forward. “She wishes to lure me back into the world.”
“Ah yes.” Malechus reaches for my hand and brings it to his lips, his eyes settling once more on me. “I’ve heard many things about the lovely lady. Twenty potential brides accepted your Summons, and yet it was this one pretty little dove that caught your eye.”
“A dove?” Keir laughs under his breath. “I consider my love a peregrine instead.”
“And she’s captured fair prey,” Malechus says, breathing the words over my bare knuckles. He straightens abruptly. “You are very brave, my lady, to have survived such a dangerous ordeal, for others were not so lucky. You may recall my dear cousin, Narcissa?”
The last I saw of Narcissa, she was entombed in a wall and only her hands—forever clutching for help—remained free of the marble.
“A terrible tragedy, Your Highness.” I never liked her, but nobody deserves to die that way. “And it was not bravery that saw me win the day, but luck.”
Malechus glances at Keir beneath his lashes. “Tell me… did you bring me her killer’s head?”
Keir stares him down. “No. I burned Calliope’s body and gave the ashes to the forest.”
“A pity.” Malechus’s lips thinned. “I should have liked to have set it on my castle walls.”
There’s a hard truth in Keir’s eyes. “I should have liked to have had a chance to… discuss many things with her before I was forced to kill her.”
A shiver runs through me.
Calliope claimed she was born from the bloodlines of Queen Mab—the fae queen who married the most powerful of the dragon kings. Mab birthed a daughter, Igrainne, who bore half of her mother’s magic and her father’s power, and all of the hunger for more.
Calliope was a direct descendant of Igrainne.
She tried to kill me.
She very nearly pushed me into a wall, leaving me to suffer the same fate as Narcissa. If I’m a little swift to snatch a glass of elderberry wine from a passing servant, it’s only because drowning isn’t the only death that makes my heart race.
But it’s the first time Keir has mentioned Calliope’s name.
She was part dragon herself, determined to eat his heart in order to fully transmute herself into “what she was meant to become.”
As I sip the wine, I can’t help stealing a glance at him. Does he wonder if he could have reached her and swayed her from her mad plan? Or does he wish he had time to personally question her, in a chains-and-rack kind of way?
“Come,” Malechus says, gesturing us into the hallway. “I shall have servants sent to make chambers for you. In the meantime, you must greet our guests.”
A gasp comes from behind.
Glass shatters.
I have the hilt of a thin dirk in my hand as I turn, but the danger doesn’t come in the form of a weapon.
No. It comes in the form of a voluptuous redhead wearing a gown of seafoam draped with gold netting, her jaw gaping open as she stands in the wreckage of what was once an elegant wineglass.
Princess Ismena.
The sister of the King of Storms, and the woman I saved from Calliope’s murderous wrath the night she was killed.
“Merisel,” she says in faint horror, and relief floods through me as I realize she still believes me to be Merisel of Greenslieves.
If her brother has my face plastered on reward posters, then I need to ensure my glamor doesn’t slip, even once.
Is that why she’s looking at me as if I was the one who tried to kill her?
What does she know?
Keir pushes past me, using his body to force my hand down. I shoot him a glare and vanish the knife.
“Your Highness,” I greet.
Ismena recovers well, pasting a smile on her lips as she glances toward Keir at my side. “Such an honor, my prince. I did not expect to see you here—either of you.”
And then she makes a swift apology and virtually flees.
I exchange a look with Keir.
This might be a problem.
“I forgot how much I hate these shoes,” I groan as I climb the stairs toward our rooms. They’re endless monstrosities of polished alabaster and my heels are a good four inches high. I’m fairly certain my calves are about to commit mutiny, and my toes want to scream. “Do you think anyone would notice if I Sift to the top?”
“I forgot how much I hate balls,” Keir mutters as he eyes me. “Here.”
He sweeps me into his arms before I can react and resumes our quest.
“What are you doing?” I blurt.
“Carrying my beloved,” he mocks. “As any heroic prince would do.”
My tongue stills. No one has ever carried me and it’s a strange thing to be in his arms like this. It takes me back to the Court of Dreams. To the first time he kissed me. I found his strength and presence overwhelming then, and if anything time has only worsened that impression.
But I also forgot how warm he is.
A shiver runs through me. I can’t stop myself from thinking about what it would be like to have all this weight pressing me into a mattress. I’m trying not to touch him, but up close and personal, all this muscle is distracting.
He sets me down outside the door to our rooms, my skirts slithering down aroun
d my calves.
“There,” he whispers. “Better?”
I’m not entirely certain the answer to that is yes. “Thank you, but if anyone was to see us, they’re going to think you’ve fallen for me.”
Keir’s smile remains dangerous as he reaches past me to unlock the door to our rooms. “Anyone who saw us this summer would know I had already been a fool for you.” His smile fades. “If we’re going to continue the lie, then we have to sell it. Anyone who knew me would know that my feelings for you would not fade so swiftly.”
I examine the stern lines of his jaw as he opens the door. If a sculptor was ever to create that face out of stone, they’d be lauded through the ages.
“You’re a prince,” I point out as we sweep into the antechamber that lingers between our bedchambers. Despite my distraction, my breath catches when I see them.
Malechus has certainly spared no expense in outfitting his court—or perhaps he set his servants to scrambling the second he realized Keir was here. Or did he simply cast another couple out of these rooms?
They’re gorgeous.
Sumptuous red silk cushions. Low divans and rugs. The room itself is carved out of the mountain, and enormous columns of polished quartz circle the room.
“What does that matter?” he asks, kicking the door shut behind us.
“You have princesses throwing themselves at your feet at every turn, as evidenced by what happened below. I think it highly likely your feelings for me would have waned in such a short amount of time.”
“Oh, that you think me so inconstant.” He tugs his coat off revealing the fresh lawn of his shirt.
“I don’t think you inconstant,” I snap, “but you know the truth now. You have no reason not to let your eye linger on others.” Tugging at the bracelets around my wrist, I toss them on a low table. “You’re my decoy. I want Malechus—and the rest of the court—focused on you.”
“Fine. How far do I take it?”
“How far… what?”
“These flirtations?” Keir tosses the coat aside as if it’s a challenge, and his shirt clings to his chest with static. “How far do I go, Zemira? Do I focus on one princess? Or maybe I dangle two of them on my knee…. Or would three suit?”