by Lexi C. Foss
After her easy capitulation earlier, I assumed she’d say something like that. Because Aflora put everyone else’s safety above her own. This collar could very well suck the life right out of her, for all we knew, and yet she would willingly let me put it on her if it meant she’d suffer instead of those around her.
I admired the hell out of her for that.
Because I would do the same thing in her situation.
It was the responsibility of a royal to put others first. Which, consequently, was exactly why I loathed Emelyn Jyn. She only thought of herself, not others. When I told my father that, he merely shrugged and said it was my future duty to keep the woman in line. So, yet another task to fall on my shoulders in my future role.
Pushing the annoyance away, I focused on Aflora’s thick black hair falling in waves down her back as she led me to her room without another comment. She really was beautiful, in an otherworldly way, with her creamy skin, soft curves, and heart-shaped ass.
Any other lifetime, and I’d bend her over her bed, plunge deep inside her, and make her moan my name for hours.
But this life denied me the ability to follow through on that lust-crazed fantasy.
I caught her hand as she entered her room and led her to mine instead, desiring the familiarity of my personal space for the conversation we needed to have.
She didn’t fight my nonverbal request, just allowed me to take her into my quarters and shut the door. Stopping a few feet inside my room, she turned and watched me warily.
“I have no idea what this is going to do when I put it on you,” I admitted in the stillness between us.
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
“Actually, I see there being two approaches here.” Hence the reason I wanted her in my room for this discussion. I was breaking about a dozen rules, but the idea came to me while on my journey home.
Collaring her felt wrong. Like a steep path I didn’t want to risk going down because I probably wouldn’t enjoy whatever I found waiting for me at the bottom.
However, I’d give her the choice of where we went from here.
“My concern with this upgraded collar is that it’s going to handicap you completely, leaving you unable to defend yourself.” Something I suspected she was going to need now that she’d proven herself capable of producing WarFire. That was an advanced, difficult skill to master. And she’d displayed it beautifully in the worst possible way.
Aflora stepped backward to my four-poster bed and sat down without an invitation. Not that she really needed one. “If you don’t put it on me, I could lose control and hurt more people.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But how are you going to learn control if you are shackled so completely?” I pushed off the door to join her on the bed and handed her the upgraded device. She flinched as it shocked her skin, much the same as it’d done mine when Chern had given it to me. “You can feel it, right? How it’s sucking the power right out of your fingertips?”
Her throat worked again, her tongue slipping out to dampen her full lips. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
“I know.” I reached out to tuck a lock of her dark hair behind her ear, then ran my fingers over her current collar. “But sometimes the safe way isn’t the right way.”
Bright blue eyes met my own. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that in order to survive, you need to learn control, and none of us can teach you that while you’re handicapped.” I allowed my hand to drop to cover the device in her palm. A zing of discomfort immediately drove up my arm. Placing it around my neck would suffocate me entirely.
I suspected it would utterly destroy Aflora, likely belittling her to a near-human state.
“How about we hide the collar for now and save it as a backup plan. Then, in the interim, you can work with me and Zeph on how to master your new gifts. It won’t be easy, and we certainly won’t perfect this overnight, but with a little trust and guidance, I think we can make this work.”
“That’s an option?”
“It can be one, yes.” It was a huge risk on my part, especially as it went against the Council’s decision. But my father had trusted me with this assignment, claiming it as one of my trials, which allowed me to do this my way. And that collar just felt wrong on so many levels.
“Your Council didn’t approve this option,” she said after a beat, her intelligent gaze reading my face a little too well. “Why would you risk this for me?”
“I’m the future king, and sometimes kings make unpopular decisions.” That was a lesson my father taught me at a young age. “This would be included in that category.”
I released my hold on the item in her hand, kicked off my shoes, and twisted around on the bed to face her. It placed my back near my mountain of pillows and the headboard. I relaxed against the silky haven, pulling up one knee to wrap an arm around it while my opposite leg dangled off the edge of the mattress.
Much more comfortable.
“Have you never had to make an unpopular decision for your people?” I wondered out loud, studying her and catching the grimace my question evoked. I knew her answer before she admitted it.
“Yes.” She mimicked my pose, only she didn’t have a headboard to relax against, just air or the dark wood post. She chose neither and set the collar aside, her fingers wiggling as if to regain feeling. I understood because I’d felt the same twinge of loss in my hand from touching that power-sucking choker. “When Chancellor Elana attacked last spring, I absorbed a lot of her dark energy into myself to protect my people.”
Well, that was an interesting detail.
“How did you do that?”
She nibbled her lip, then cocked a shoulder upward. “Honestly, I don’t know. It was a natural impulse to take the brunt of her assault and dismantle it.”
I considered her for a long moment. “Describe to me what you mean by dismantle.” Zeph had told me what she said about the cerulean flames earlier, as well as her comments about picking apart spells and putting them back together. Her comment about Elana suggested something else at play here. Something that had nothing to do with Shade biting her.
“It’s like a web.” She twisted her lips to the side, her gaze turning inward as if she were searching for the design inside her mind. “I can see all the strands and pick them apart to morph into whatever I need them to be. Or, like today, I memorize how it was created and replicate it.”
Well, shit. “Have you always been able to do this?”
“Yes. No. Well, sort of.” She blinked, coming back to me. “I rarely had a need for it before, but I’ve always been able to think that way about power. It’s natural, which is why I reacted to Elana the way I did. And also today. I understood the magic in a weird way, crafting it to suit me, but I had no idea it would produce WarFire. I just released some of the flames burning under my skin.”
Her shoulders fell on a sigh, and I fought the urge to reach across the bed and pull her into a hug. I could see how troubled she was by everything that happened today. It marked her as an abomination, a threat to fae kind. Yet she clearly wanted to do the right thing. Unlike some fae in her position who would go after the power to use it to their advantage, to protect themselves at the cost of others.
Aflora wasn’t like that at all.
If I told her to wear that choker, she would, even if it killed her in the process.
And it had nothing to do with her need to survive and everything to do with her desire to lead properly.
“I want to try something.” I pushed away from the headboard to sit cross-legged on the bed.
“Um, okay.” She copied my position again, facing me with our knees almost touching.
“I’m going to release a spell—nothing violent—and I want you to try to manipulate it without using your wand or your voice. Just like you did with Ella earlier. But don’t use any fire.”
She nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“Good.” I held my palms
up and indicated for her to do the same. “This is a simple spell for creating an object. You saw Stiggis do it earlier with Shade. Ready?”
“Yep.”
“Ajamee apple.” A bright red apple appeared in my hand. I brought it up and took a bite, waggling my brows.
She frowned. “I thought the spell for creating food was Tareero Tamida.”
“Ah, yeah, that’s one way to do it for food. Ajamee will create anything you want.” I set my apple on my nightstand and opened my palm again. “Ajamee dagger.” I visualized the knife I wanted, and it appeared a second later, glistening beneath the moonlight shining through my windows. “You have to envision what you want when you say it, and the object appears.”
“Zephyrus told me not to do this without a wand.”
“Well, I don’t want you to use a wand or your words at all. I want to see if you can make the magic work without uttering a sound, like you did today when dueling Ella.”
“But that was different because the magic was used on me. I can’t sense your spell at all like this.”
“Hmm. All right, we’ll go about this a different way, then. Lie down,” I said, a dangerous idea forming in my head.
I couldn’t touch her the way I wanted to, but I could use my gifts on her in an entirely different way. I had promised not to unleash a violent spell. I said nothing about erotic ones.
Aflora stretched out her long legs and laid her head on a pillow while I shifted to my knees to sit near her abdomen. “Okay, I want you to try to absorb what I’m doing, the way you did with Ella, and use it back on me.” This’ll be fun, I mused. “Ready?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I hovered my palm over her midsection, noting the way her shirt had ridden up to display a taunting sliver of her creamy skin. I focused my energy there, murmuring a spell meant to induce heat in a sensual manner.
Aflora’s fingers dug into the comforter on either side of her hips, a sweet little sound catching in her throat.
“Do you feel that?” I asked softly, compelling the sensation to spread across her stomach and higher to her breasts.
She shuddered, her eyes falling closed.
“Focus on the spell, Aflora,” I whispered, using my power to send a wave of it downward to the apex between her thighs. “Try to unweave it and send it back into me, sweetheart.”
Goose bumps pebbled down her arms as she squeezed her legs together in a manner I recognized all too well.
It took physical restraint not to bend over and place a kiss above the waistline of her pants. Mmm, then I’d tug down the fabric to explore her dampening arousal with my tongue. I bet she tasted sweet, just like how she smelled. Her alluring scent called to me, confirming her interest and telling me how ready she was to receive.
My spell wove deeper into her, seeking the places on her body that required a skilled touch and heating them even more.
“Kolstov,” she breathed, arching up off the bed.
“Kols,” I corrected, giving in to the desire to press my palm to her abdomen. I pushed her down into the bed and hovered above her. “Now manipulate the spell and re-create it, just like you did with the binding curse from earlier.”
“O-okay,” she managed to reply, her voice husky with need.
Oh, this was a hazardous game because now I wanted to hear her moan. To watch her fall apart. To slide my thickening cock into her and bring us both to a climax neither of us would soon forget.
I clenched my jaw to hold back a groan, my balls aching with the prospect laid out before me. It would be so easy to slip out of our clothes and lose ourselves in the sheets for hours. Days, even.
Fuck, I need to get laid.
Preferably by a writhing, dark-haired goddess with bright blue—
My eyes widened, the scene unraveling before me an impossible sight.
Holy shit, it’s cerulean.
I could see her magic unfolding as she mentally stroked my spell, learning and manipulating the ends and crafting it into a spell of her own.
“You’re—” A jolt of heat directly to my groin had me falling to the mattress beside her on a spasm so violent that my heart seriously stopped.
Aflora’s beautiful gaze captured mine, her smile that of a seductress with her enchantment wrapped around my dick. Literally. She gave it a stroke, and I grabbed her hip in response, our bodies turning toward each other on the bed. “Fuck, Aflora.”
Definitely not a virgin or inexperienced.
Not with a grip like that.
“You said to use the spell against you,” she replied, her tone still husky but this time filled with feminine pleasure. “How am I doing?”
“Wonderfully,” I admitted on a hoarse exhale, jolting as she did it again. My grip tightened as I fought the instinct to push her to her back and truly take over. To kiss her deeply, rip off her clothes, and fuck her until my heart stopped again.
But that sliver of cerulean magic taunted my senses, grounding me in the reality of our situation. Not only had she just learned a spell through touch, but she’d also unwoven it and reapplied it in a way only a Quandary Blood could. And the color surrounding her magical essence proved it.
Aflora was absolutely an abomination.
A problem I would eventually need to slaughter.
If I were smart, I’d end her now and not wait for her to grow any stronger. There was a reason the Quandary line died out.
The Midnight Fae had slaughtered them all.
This female posed more risk to my ascension than anyone I’d ever met.
Yet my instinct had me pulling her closer, not pushing her away.
The urge to protect such a precious gift overwhelmed me, consumed my ability to think clearly. “Aflora,” I whispered, my lips suddenly dangerously close to hers. “You have no idea how unique you truly are.”
She released her mental grip on my cock, her energy vanishing as she captured my gaze. “I know more than you realize.”
“Can you tell me about your parents?”
“What about them?”
“Did they have any Dark Fae heritage?” I wondered out loud, trying to solve the mystery of her creation. Because these talents couldn’t have come from Shade. He was one hundred percent Death Blood. “You’re displaying Quandary Blood gifts, and I have no idea how that’s possible.”
“Quandary Blood?” she repeated, frowning.
“The sixth line,” I explained, ignoring my twinge of annoyance at her not thoroughly having researched our kind. Every fae kingdom treated politics differently. And she was right about her upbringing being vastly different from mine. I grew up with parents. She grew up fighting for her existence against some unknown plague that later turned out to be abomination related.
How ironic, given her situation.
“My parents were Earth Fae,” she said slowly. “Not Midnight Fae.”
“Either that’s not true”—which was my suspicion—“or Shade’s bite somehow infected you with the rarest gifts among our kind. Quandary Bloods haven’t existed in over a thousand years.”
“What happened to them?”
I wasn’t going to lie to her. “We killed them all.”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “What? Why?”
“Because Quandary Bloods, when they existed, could manipulate energy in a way no one else has ever been able to do, including turning off any link they desired and leaving the fae powerless. The web you mentioned is your connection to the spell. And—”
“I can undo it and piece it back together,” she finished for me, her body tensing beside mine. “That’s not normal.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Shade can’t do that?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” I replied. “It’s not a Death Blood function.” But I had to wonder if he somehow knew or sensed this gift inside Aflora. Maybe that was why he picked her as a mate—to wreak havoc on our kingdom.
“My family fell into power because of a Quandary Blood,” I continued, thinking about t
he history my father once told me. “There was an uprising that ended in the overthrowing of a Death Blood from rule—Shade’s ancestor, actually—and a Quandary Blood transferred the source connection from the fallen royal to my grandfather.” Which initiated a millennium of animosity between our families.
“And then you killed all the Quandary Bloods?”
I frowned, considering. “I didn’t, but the Midnight Fae did.”
“Why? If they helped, then why would you kill them all?”
“Because they were dangerous. As I said, they could dismantle a Midnight Fae’s power and render him no better than human.”
“Did they do that?” she asked.
“Yes. The Death Bloods used them to try to regain power about a thousand years ago. The Quandary Bloods were dismantled and exterminated in response, serving as a warning to keep the Death Bloods in line.”
“Sounds like a rather murderous approach,” she replied, her displeasure written into her features. “Maybe some of them were innocent.”
“Like you?” I suggested, arching a brow. “Are you innocent, Aflora?” I gave in to the impulse to press her back into the bed, my thigh sliding between hers as I moved over her, our lips still dangerously close. “Because I think you’re a lot more experienced than you let on.”
The double entendre was intentional. It applied to both her magical skills and sexual talents. Because the way she’d used that spell on me without even blushing told me a lot about her confidence in the bedroom. Which only made me want to explore her more.
“I don’t even know how to use this power,” she whispered, her big blue eyes guilelessly gazing up at me. I almost wanted to call it an act, but I sensed her sincerity in those words. “I have no idea where it came from or why.”
“Your parents, most likely,” I replied, resting my elbows against the pillows on either side of her head. “Now the question becomes, what should I do with you?”
Kill her was the obvious choice.
But if Shade somehow knew about her bloodline, that implied a much deeper motive at play than him just wanting to avoid his mating duties.
I could practically hear Zeph in my head telling me to use her as bait, to determine exactly how far Shade planned to go.