King of the Flame

by Elizabeth Frost

  That little bastard.

  She shook her head. “Not in the way you might think.”

  He arched a brow. “Tell me more.”

  “I don’t think I have to, so I’m not going to.”

  The faerie king crouched, power radiating from him with so much intensity it made her hangover headache split open all over again. “Why do you insist on fighting me?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She leaned back on her hands to get a little more comfortable. “It could be because you choked me the first time we met. Or maybe because you locked me in here for five days intending to kill me. Didn’t work, cause you underestimated me, but that doesn’t change the fact that you tried to do it. Or maybe it’s because I just don’t like faeries.”

  Every tidbit of information she threw at him only made his gaze cloud even further. “Many people have questions about what you are.”

  “People are curious about me?” she asked, quirking a brow of her own. “Or are you curious?”

  “Both.”

  “Ah, so what do you think I am then?” This ought to be good. Ten thousand dollars said he assumed she was some kind of faerie.

  “Banshee?” he asked.

  If he was a mind reader, he would have heard her crowing. Someone better be paying her ten thousand dollars because she hit the nail on the head with this one.

  Lilith licked her lips. “What makes you think I’m a faerie?”

  “You’re not mortal, and you’re significantly more powerful than I assumed you would be. However, you don’t like faeries. I can only assume you’re a changeling.” The faerie king watched her every movement, maybe assuming she’d react and give him a hint. “Are you not?”

  “Why do faeries always assume powerful creatures are their own kind? You lot are so narcissistic.”

  To his credit, at least the faerie king grimaced when she said it. “So you aren’t a faerie then?”

  “No. And I’ve already given you all the clues you need to know what I am.” She had, although it might be a little difficult for him to piece together.

  Faeries were always so self absorbed. And this one was the King of the entire Autumn Court, so she could only assume he hadn’t been to the mortal realm in centuries. Maybe even longer than that. A millennia? It wouldn’t surprise her.

  His thoughts played behind his eyes like she was watching a movie. Did he know how easily his emotions flickered over his expressions?

  His brow wrinkled when he dismissed a magical species. His eyes widened when he thought he had it, and then his mouth turned down when he inevitably realized he didn’t know what she was.

  Finally, the king tossed his hands in the air and admitted defeat. “Fine, then. Tell me.”

  “Are you sure? I think you were close with that last thought.” Lilith crossed her legs more comfortably on the pillow and surveyed her fingernails. They were getting long, but the dirt underneath them was atrocious.

  The faerie king snarled.

  “Fine then, if you’re so willing to give up.” With a flash of her own hunger coming to the forefront, Lilith let her fangs drop and allowed her desire for blood to fill her gaze. “What do you think I am now?”

  At least he didn’t run away screaming. So many people did that when they first saw a vampire. Even magical creatures.

  This faerie king instead seemed to grow even more excited. His cheekbones flushed and his hands curled into fists. But it was the sudden desire in his eyes that made her want to bite him.

  “You’re a vampire?” he said. His voice was reverent, if at all possible for a faerie to think well of her kind.

  His reaction was odd. She didn’t know how to respond to someone who liked vampires. Or at least, who looked like they liked her kind. “I am.”

  “I haven’t seen one of your kind in centuries. I thought the humans would have hunted you to extinction.”

  “That’s the funny thing about vampires. We need humans to procreate.”

  The desire in his eyes dimmed. “Procreate? I thought vampires were barren.”

  How little he knew of her kind. “We are barren in the sense you’re assuming. I can’t host a baby inside me, but I can absolutely make a child of my own.”

  Lilith would not explain that every new vampire was like a child. All their memories were gone for such a long time. They were little more than hunger and rage wrapped up in flesh and claws. She’d made a few children of her own in the past. They were never worth the trouble.

  Vampire children were selfish, cruel, and it took such a long time for them to grow out of the “eating everything in sight” phase. She had let her own offspring figure life out on their own. A few of them had died early thanks to the humans who had shoved a wooden stake through their hearts. After she felt the loss through their connection, Lilith had known to never make a child again.

  It was too hard to bear when one died.

  He stared at her as though the answers to his world were in her expressions. “What are you thinking about?”

  Had her pain been so obvious? The ache of loss would never leave her. Especially when he stared at her like that.

  Lilith shook her head. “Nothing of importance. I’m not staying here a moment longer, faerie. So tell me what you plan on doing with me and we’ll get on with it.”

  The faerie king arched one of his thick brows. “You want me to kill you now? When we were just getting to know each other?”

  She doubted he would kill her. He would have done it the moment he walked into the room, not sat and chatted with her like some kind of crazy person. No one had that kind of time these days.

  He was about to give her some kind of ultimatum or a deal. She’d take either at this point, considering there wasn’t anything else for her to do other than sit in this trophy room and starve. And for a vampire, that could take hundreds of years before her body finally went dormant until a drop of blood hit it.

  She’d rather avoid all that. Messy business.

  Lilith licked her lips. “Look, I just think it’s a waste of time for both of us if you’re going to sit here staring at me. What’s your deal?”

  “Deal?”

  “You’re a faerie. You can’t resist a deal any more than I can resist blood laid out like a banquet in front of me. So. Out with it.” She resumed looking at her nails again.

  Hopefully, he would think she didn’t care what his deal was. She wanted him to think her unafraid and unbothered by his presence. All she could do was pray he didn’t see through her visage and to the fear shaking her very core.

  Lilith hadn’t prayed in a very long time, but she was now. God stopped listening to vampires back in the Dark Ages. But maybe, just maybe, he’d listen to her this time.

  The king heaved a sigh. “What’s your name?”

  At this point, what did she have to lose? He already had her by the balls. “Lilith.”

  “What a lovely name.”

  “Tit for tat, faerie. What’s yours?”

  The faerie king grinned and replied, “I don’t think I’ll tell you just yet. Faerie names are powerful things, and you look like a woman who knows how to use them.”

  Damn. He saw right through that plan.

  Lilith rolled her eyes. “Fine. What’s the deal?”

  “Become a servant of the Autumn Court or burn at our next dinner for entertainment.”

  Lilith laughed at his words until she realized he was serious. Burn at the dinner for entertainment? He knew she was a vampire. He also knew her skin around fire was like tinder to a torch. She’d go up in flames like a firework and no one could stop her from dying a horrible, drawn out death.

  Maybe that’s what he wanted. For her to pick torture over enslavement.

  But she could be a servant. Right?

  She let out a distressed sound even as her eyes widened. She couldn’t be this man’s servant. That would mean she had to stay here, in the Autumn Court, in this hellfire realm he’d created for himself. She would die either way.
r />   “I—I—” Lilith didn’t know what to say.

  The faerie king stood, that wicked grin on his face. “I’ll give you a little time to think about it. A few more days alone in here should give you enough space.”

  Before she could even attempt to dart out the door, he’d shut it behind him.

  9

  “So you see, there’s no way I can agree to this deal.” Lilith waved her hand in the air. “Becoming a servant is far too close to being a slave, and vampires are slaves to no one. We tried that in the fourteenth century and it didn’t work out. That’s how you get Vlad the Impaler and no one wants another Vlad.”

  She paced back and forth through the trophy room. There were exactly fifty-seven steps from the door to the opposite end where she’d placed the blade back on its pillow.

  The song of blood still made her shiver now and then, but she’d avoided drinking from it again. The taste of ash still made her tongue feel a little swollen, and she didn’t want to know what magic did that. She’d had enough blood for a while. The only reason she’d touch that knife again was if she was dying.

  “And that’s another argument in your favor,” she added. “If I don’t eat eventually, I’ll dry out into a husk and I’ll be stuck here anyway. I don’t think there will be many faeries daring enough to feed my dried up corpse. And he already has enough trophies in this room to prove a point. He likes to keep things.”

  She paused in front of a giant’s head. The creature’s jaw was lax because the faerie king had never thought to wire it closed. Soddy work.

  Heaving out a sigh, she flicked the giant’s chin and watched it wobble. “I’d be stuck in here like you, and then what would happen? Would he maybe revive me because he grew bored enough to talk to the vampire again? I think not. He’d forget about me and I’d be here for the rest of eternity. You see why I’m having a hard time deciding?”

  Not that he’d come back for said decisions.

  Lilith thought she’d been in here for another five days. Her stomach growled loud enough for that to be the truth, but she really had no idea. The sun didn’t rise or set through the windows. Because there were no windows. Nothing for her to even remotely feel like she was alive.

  This punishment was far more cruel than any she’d ever lived through before.

  She marched down the trophy room once again. “Hi, Harry,” she muttered as she walked by one of the ashen skulls.

  Most of them had names by now because who else was she going to talk to? The knife? That would not happen again. She already knew what that thing could do to her, and she refused to play its game.

  The heads on the walls were the next best thing. They didn’t talk back like the knife, but they each had their own personality.

  Edwardo at the end of the long room, the closest to the knife, caught her attention more than the others. This creature had once been an elf, a rare breed to begin with. Most elves had died out when the humans started taking over the realm. Elves thought the world was theirs. When they waged battle with the humans, they always lost.

  His face was effortlessly beautiful. A little too pretty, really. Not a single flaw marred his face, even in death.

  Lilith stopped and stared into his wide eyes. “What would you do? Not stay a slave, that’s for certain. You’d fight to get your way and when you didn’t, you’d at least die trying. Huh?”

  She imagined he’d have something to say about the entire situation.

  “Elves don’t die in a cage, they die fighting,” she replied to herself in a deep voice.

  “And the elves died. Almost all of you, although I have a nasty suspicion there’s a hundred of you locked up in some cave somewhere waiting for the right moment.”

  She deepened her voice again. “Trickery is the best way to defeat your enemy.”

  Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

  Lilith tapped a finger to her chin, spun around in the other direction, and marched back to the door. Trickery was something she could do.

  If she agreed to be his servant, then that opened a lot more doors than staying in here. She might be able to sneak off in the middle of the night. And if they gave her some kind of magical guard, then at least she could get a feel for whatever castle this faerie king lived in.

  It wasn’t a bad plan. She reached the door and turned around once again. Marching back toward the elf, she considered the possibilities.

  Worst-case scenario, it took her a while to figure this place out and finally find somewhere she could redraw the runes. Even then, it was unlikely she could remember them at this point.

  It was a fire faerie who had gotten her here in the first place. She could probably find another one who didn’t like their king. Every monarchy had its rebels.

  She stopped in front of the elf and lowered her voice. “All you have to do is make a few friends.”

  Lilith finger gunned him with a wry grin. “Ah, but don’t you remember that’s not my strong suit? People don’t like me.”

  If the elf was alive, he’d tell her to suck it up and figure it out. And she should. Absolutely.

  Making friends was the least of her worries right now. The king could still decide it wasn’t worth it for her to be a servant, and then the pyre went up for his dinner entertainment once again.

  “It’s decided then,” she grumbled. Pointing at the elf severely, she added, “If this goes wrong, it’s your fault. Just know I will come back here and haunt your ass.”

  Servant it was, even though it grated on every nerve to even consider herself subservient to anyone. All she had to do was wait for the king to come back and talk to her.

  Lilith had half a mind to grab the cushion from the knife once again. The floor was hard and even though she couldn’t get hurt, it still made her back ache when she woke up from napping.

  Eyeing the knife, she decided not to tempt fate again. If she didn’t touch it, then she couldn’t fall under the nasty thing’s spell again.

  Grumbling and frustrated, she sat down in front of the door and stared at it. Willing the wood to slide open again so she could get this over with.

  Lilith had no idea how long she stared at the door. Eventually it opened again and the faerie king almost stepped on her as he entered the room.

  She didn’t move. He could step on her if he wanted, but that was walking into a trap. She didn’t need him to own up to either end of the deal if he was dead. Like a venus fly trap, she would tear him limb from limb and then use his blood to open whatever portal she wanted.

  Maybe she’d go back to her roots. Back to Sweden, where the air still smelled clean and fresh.

  Sadly, he didn’t step on her. Instead, he side-stepped fast enough to prevent her from touching him, but still blocking her from the door before she could sneak out.

  He was quick, she’d give him that. And he knew how to prevent an opponent from doing whatever she wanted.

  Lilith looked up at him and tried to smile. “Your Majesty.”

  He frowned. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a cat who got the cream in the kitchen. What are you up to?” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared.

  She hadn’t thought he’d read her so easily, but there it was. He already knew she was up to something and Lilith wouldn’t dance around the topic. If he wanted a new servant, then she’d give him one. A shitty one, albeit, but a warm body was a warm body.

  “I’ll take your deal. Servant it is.” She rolled to her feet and dusted her hands off on her leather leggings. “When do I start?”

  The faerie king blinked at her. “I don’t think I heard you right. Say it again?”

  “I’ll take the job offering.”

  “It’s not a job. A servant isn’t paid in the fortress.”

  Shocking. As if she’d been expecting a salaried position given the circumstances. She shrugged. “Okay, that’s also fine. I wasn’t expecting the red carpet treatment considering how I’m curre
ntly being imprisoned. Whatever you have to throw at me, I’m sure I can handle it.”

  His eyes did that thing again. Heating to a point where they glowed. His cheekbones flushed. He looked her up and down then said, “Oh, I’m sure you can handle anything just fine.”

  Was he... was he hitting on her?

  Why did that make every bone in her body turn liquidy? She should have laughed at such a ridiculous line and told him to go fuck himself. She wasn’t here for that and yet... Well. And yet.

  Lilith cleared her throat. “I’ve never had any complaints before, but I need to get to work if that’s what you want from me. Eventually, I’ll work off my debt. Correct?”

  “There’s no debt to work off.”

  “Then eventually you’ll let me go.” Like her rule, if she was going to lie, there had to be some truth to it. This was her way of ensuring he knew she thought she could leave. That way, if any servants reported back she was asking about portal building, she could always lean on this moment.

  The faerie king stepped very close. “You aren’t going anywhere if you agree to be my servant, Lilith the vampiress.”

  Oh, her name on his tongue sure was lovely. Even if he insisted on giving her a designation when vampires didn’t give a shit about that stuff. If she wasn’t the Primus, then there were no accolades worth mentioning.

  She plastered a fake smile on her face and bared her teeth. “That wasn’t part of the deal. It was death or servitude, you never mentioned being trapped here.”

  He took another hefty step closer. His breath fogged over her lips and damned if she didn’t inhale the scent of candy on his breath. “You came here to my realm uninvited. What makes you think I would ever allow you to leave?”

  “Uninvited,” she repeated. “The word suggests you don’t want me here. And I don’t want to be here, so why would you force me to stay?”

  “Maybe I find you interesting.”