by H. E. Edgmon
I know that look on his face. I recognize the way his throat bobs. When his horns darken and twist, the tips of his ears twitching, I yank the blanket higher up my torso.
Not because he needs to stop looking at me, but because I need him to stop looking at me.
Has it always been this warm in the bed? Have I always been able to feel the heat coming off his body and pushing up against mine? Were we always this close?
I am not—repeat, NOT—going to have sex with Emyr Leonidas Mirac North. EVER.
Well, maybe.
He drags his gaze back to my face, seeming to shake himself out of it. “Um. Is that really your type?”
Why does his voice sound all raspy now? No. I am not doing this!
“I don’t have a type.” I shrug. “Do you?”
“Do you want me to answer that honestly?” he asks, and I don’t.
I don’t want to ask, because I’ve spent a lot of time telling myself I definitely don’t care, but the timing’s never been more perfect than it is right now. And I figure, I’m already making some pretty questionable choices. What’s one more?
“So...was Jin right about you? You a little gay?”
Emyr frowns, rubbing a hand over his mouth. “Honestly, I’d never really thought about it until I realized you were a guy.”
“You’ve only ever been with girls before?”
“Ah...” Emyr shrugs.
The moment stretches on a bit before I ask. “I mean, you’ve been with other people, right?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“You cannot be serious. You’re telling me you walk around looking like—” I bite the inside of my cheek and start over. “You’re telling me you’re a prince and you’re a virgin?”
Emyr seems utterly unbothered. “Is that really so surprising?”
“Uh, yeah. How’ve you not had your bones jumped?” I am going to yeet myself out of the airplane on the way back to New York, but still. I have to know.
“It isn’t like people haven’t tried.” His tongue flicks out to taste his lips. “But I was never interested.”
“Never? Not even a little?”
Another infuriating shrug. “You talk like wanting to sleep with everyone I meet is normal.”
“Well, not everyone,” I mumble. “Maybe like a quarter of people.”
“That is...absurd.”
“Whatever, I’m horny, leave me alone.” I look away, study the arch of the ceiling.
Emyr is quiet for a moment, before he asks, “So, have you? Been with other people?”
Oh, here we go.
“Couple people. Guys I met after I came out, friends of friends of Briar’s.”
“Hmm.” Emyr props his chin up on his fist, considering me. “Did you love either of them?”
I don’t mean to laugh, but I can’t seem to help it. “No. God, no. I just, uh... I don’t know. They were there. And I knew them well enough to know I could probably trust them, but not so well that I’d be heartbroken if we never talked again ’cause shit got awkward.”
“They were there,” he repeats, and I flush.
“Don’t slut shame me.”
“I’m not. Or I don’t mean to be.” Emyr sighs softly, arches his back a little, hips rolling against the bed underneath him. “I want to ask you something, but I don’t want you to get offended.”
Oh, here we really go.
“Starting any question off like that is a red flag, but sure. Let’s hear it.”
Emyr’s front teeth scrape against his lower lip. “What exactly did you do with them? I mean... Did they—Did you—”
“Please stop before you hurt yourself.” I sigh, reaching up to rub a hand over my chest, pressing my thumb against the dip of my sternum. “I did...just about everything...to them.” It feels weird, wrong, to be talking about this at all, but especially with Emyr. It makes my mouth wet and my stomach flip and I can’t meet his eye. “I don’t like taking my clothes off. But it’s less of a dysphoria thing and more of a not wanting to explain the scars thing.”
I glance down at my arms. Clarke’s glamour is damn long-lasting, still in place now, making them appear smooth. I’m not sure how long it’ll keep.
“Hmm. So, they didn’t do anything to you.”
“I mean, not much. They did enough.”
“Hmm.”
I groan, rubbing my palm against my shaved head. “Stop that. What does hmm mean? Are you pissed that I went and fooled around with other guys while we were engaged?”
“No.” And when Emyr says it, it doesn’t sound like a lie. Which would be something to think about if every brain cell in my head didn’t fly out the window when he followed it up with, “I was just thinking, I’ve already seen your scars. I know exactly where they come from. You wouldn’t have to explain anything to me.”
I am going to straight up mcfucking lose it.
“You—I thought you didn’t experience sexual attraction, or whatever.”
“That isn’t what I said. I said I never wanted to sleep with anyone else.”
“I—” I roll onto my side so that my back is turned to him, because I can feel my face heating, and we are so not doing this. “Is that a mated fae thing?”
“Not at all. Plenty of mated fae have other partners who they aren’t bound to. Not every bond is even sexual in nature at all, beyond the need to reproduce. This... It’s a me and you thing.”
“Well, that sucks for you. What a shitty deal you got.” I motion to myself with a flick of my wrist.
Emyr says, point-blank, “I don’t think so.”
Oh, for crying out loud.
I roll back over, if only to make a face at him. “I really don’t get it. You said yourself the bond wasn’t like falling in love. And if the bond doesn’t make you like me, or love me, or want me, then why would you?”
“Are you fishing for compliments, firestarter?” Emyr smirks.
“Yeah. Indulge me.”
“You don’t let me get away with anything,” Emyr starts, reaching up to run his fingers through his curls, “which is completely infuriating. But no one calls me out like you do. Everyone else has a game to play, some agenda they’re hoping to twist me toward. You wear everything on your sleeve.”
He doesn’t have any idea how wrong he is about that.
“You have a sharp tongue that keeps me on my toes. You aren’t afraid of offending people or challenging the status quo. You do what you believe is right, no matter the consequences. You’re good, but you aren’t afraid to get your hands dirty, either.”
I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think I’m good at all. And it makes me very, very uncomfortable to hear Emyr say he thinks otherwise.
“It helps that you’re nice to look at,” he adds, taking me off guard.
I scoff, fumbling over my own tongue as I struggle for a retort. “That hardly seems like enough foundation for a marriage. And what about this whole babies thing? You were looking for someone who was gonna lie back and be your little incubator, and, my dude, I am so not it.”
Emyr watches the ceiling. “I’ve always imagined biological children. I... I thought it would help.”
“Help?” I prop my head up on my fist. “Help what?”
“I love my parents. And I’m very close with my mother. But...” Emyr swallows. “There’s always been a distance between my father and me. I feel like there’s something between us, like he doesn’t trust me the way he should.”
It’s a quiet, vulnerable admission that makes a little wrinkle settle between Emyr’s eyes. I have the absolutely out-of-my-mind thought that I want to reach over and press my thumb there, and smooth that worry away.
I don’t, of course.
At least we’re no longer being horny.
“Is this about you wanting to go back to Fa
ery?” I ask, thinking about the awkwardness of dinner with the king and queen, the king’s sharp retorts to Emyr’s ideas.
Emyr shrugs. “That’s part of it.”
“Why would you want to do that? It seems dangerous to even try.”
He opens and closes his mouth, then exhales. “I don’t know if you would understand.”
I roll my eyes. “Try me.”
“This world is all I’ve ever known. But it’s...it’s not a world that was meant for us. It’s not where we belong.” He reaches up to rub a hand against his mouth. “I don’t know how I can miss a place I’ve never been, but it’s as if my bones know they don’t come from here. They belong in Faery. They want to go home.”
After a quiet moment, Emyr shakes his head. “It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
I stare at him for a long moment before swallowing. “No. It doesn’t.”
Because that feeling he’s describing is exactly the way I feel now that I’ve been away from the human world for a while. And though I’m hard-pressed to admit it, it’s also the way I felt for years, being away from Asalin.
Quietly, I ask a question that’s bothered me for years. “When you look through the door to Faery, what do you see?”
Emyr frowns. “Nothing much. It’s a wasteland, just like my dad says. But...there was one time...once, back when we were kids, I thought I saw something else.”
“What?”
“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He laughs softly, shaking his head. “No one would.”
“Try me.”
Heaving a deep breath, Emyr rubs a hand against his bare chest and finally says, “I thought I saw a person. And they were terrifying.”
I blink at him. He’s right, I don’t believe him. “How would that be possible?”
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot. Maybe my dad is still sending people over in secret for short missions. Maybe they’re collecting intel, and he won’t tell me because he thinks it’s too dangerous. Maybe that’s what his secret is. Maybe it was something else, someone from Asalin who managed to get through. Or...maybe it was the overactive imagination of a child. After all, I haven’t seen anything like it since.”
I watch his face. His expression is screwed up in concentration, like even now his mind is trying to sort through what he knows. The furrowed line between his eyebrows appears again.
“It doesn’t matter, though,” Emyr continues. “The issue of biological children, that is. I’ve thought about what you said, and you’re right. We’re young. We don’t need to rush into figuring out our heirs. We can decide the details later. Whenever you’re comfortable.”
I swallow and flop onto my back to blink up at the ceiling. This is so frustrating. Emyr is changing. He sees me, and he’s adjusting.
But I’ve already made my deal with the devil. Could Emyr ever forgive me if he knew?
And even if he could...could I really ever be happy as a king of the fae?
Briar, Jin, Emyr. All of them look at me and see what they want to see, instead of who I actually am. They don’t know that I am the monster. I don’t know how they could’ve missed it, though.
Emyr looks straight at me. “Look, I want to be with you. Maybe it’s ridiculous to you, but I know this is the way things are meant to be me. You and I are supposed to make each other happy. And that means, for me, you’re it. Whoever or whatever you are. However my life may change because of it. You’re it.”
I have no idea what to say to that. I stare at him for a long moment before dragging the blanket over my head and closing my eyes.
It comes to me after Emyr falls asleep, when the soft sound of his snoring fills the bedroom. This twisted, warped revenant crawls out of the deepest, most buried part of me and latches itself into my mind. I’ve been trying so hard not to think about it. But it’s too late.
* * *
The sun is beginning to set over the mountains that surround Asalin. I know I should go home soon, but I don’t want to. There’s nowhere I would rather be than right where I am.
Emyr’s fingers rest in mine, the pad of his thumb stroking my own. We’re lying on the balcony of his bedroom in a tangle of blankets, our makeshift fort, watching the sky erupt into pinks and oranges.
The rest of the world can be bad sometimes, but I always feel safe with Emyr. When the fae whisper awful things about me behind my back, when my parents yell at me for not wanting to act the way they tell me to, when my sister is cruel...there’s always Emyr.
I know I should go home soon, but home, for me, is wherever he is.
“My parents found the deck of tarot cards you gave me,” I say quietly. “They got so mad. They burned them all right in front of me.”
Witch magic is forbidden in my house. They don’t want me practicing it. Don’t want me rubbing my abnormality in their faces.
Emyr brushes his nose against mine. “I don’t understand why they’re so mean all the time.”
“They want me to be more like Tessa, I guess.” I sniffle and reach up to rub my eyes. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back to my family’s house. I want to stay here.
Emyr takes my hand, pulling it away from my face and squeezing my fingers. “I like you just the way you are.”
“You wouldn’t change anything about me?”
“Of course not.” He frowns. “Then you wouldn’t be you. Besides, when we’re married you can have as many spellbooks as you want. They won’t be able to do anything about it.”
Tears blur my vision as I stare into his face. Hesitantly, unsure of myself, I lean forward and brush my lips against his. It’s only a whisper of a kiss, and my tears are still warm between us.
Still, when I pull away, Emyr smiles, dimples breaking out on either side of his mouth.
I sigh and lean into his side, and the two of us snuggle up in that blanket fort until servants come to send me home.
* * *
Pain rips through my gut so ferociously it threatens to tear me in half. This is not a new pain, but a familiar one. A gaping, raw loneliness I’ve felt every day since I ran from Asalin. I’ve gotten good at acting like it doesn’t exist, at ignoring it and shoving it down. But it’s never gone away. It’s always been there, just beneath the surface.
I missed him so much.
That is the ugly secret I’ve tried not to look at since the day I left for the human world. The secret I knew I would have to burn alive if I wanted to change my fate. It isn’t possible I could maybe, someday, in another universe, love Emyr. I already love him. I have always loved him. Maybe I’m not in love with him, maybe not in the way you love someone you marry, I don’t know. But definitely in the way you love someone who’s got his claws in part of your soul. Emyr’s had his claws in me since we were kids, and anything I did to hurt him would end up hurting me, too.
It was just so much easier to do that when I could pretend it wasn’t there at all.
I roll onto my stomach and press my face into the pillows. As quietly as I can, hoping I won’t wake him, I cry myself to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ME OR THE THRONE
Everything is warm.
Not hot, not like being on fire, but warm like sitting next to the fire. Like lying under the sun. My body feels loose, muscles relaxed, bones eased up like someone’s shot me up with morphine while I wasn’t looking.
I arch back, seeking more of that warmth behind me, and the warmth rolls forward to meet me. It slides against the backs of my thighs, crawls up my hip to curl around my waist and press into my belly, nuzzles against my throat. I reach down to tangle my fingers with the warmth’s, to drag its hand from my stomach to my chest to my face, to press my mouth into its palm.
It occurs to me, in some distant part of my brain, that the warmth is Emyr. But that part of me is so quiet. And the part of me
that craves touch is so, so much louder. So, I ignore it.
His fangs dance pinpricks against my neck, hints of sting at my pulse. His claws trail from my jaw to my collar to my ribs, a ghost of touch so as not to hurt.
I reach back and curl my fingers around one thigh, my own nails sinking in hard enough to pull a rumble from his chest, a rough growl pressed into my ear.
Fuck. I wanna do whatever I have to do to make him do that again.
I jostle my hips enough to roll over, opening my eyes to look up at the underside of his jaw. It’s dawn now, I think, the room lit in soft shades of orange and pink leaking through the window. When I press my mouth to his clavicle, his wings curl in tighter around us like a cocoon, and he swallows.
My hand presses to the elastic of his boxers, blunt nails crawling up the sharp planes of his stomach, up over his broad chest, finally resting at his throat. My thumb strokes up in a long sweep, cresting over his Adam’s apple and resting in the notch under his jaw where I can feel his heart beating.
I think I feel him trembling.
That’s around the same time I notice Clarke’s glamour has worn off, and the scars are back.
It shouldn’t be a big deal. I’m used to seeing them. Every morning in the shower, every night when I get into bed. It’s an errant thought, really.
Oh, the scars are back.
And it’s about the scars, but it isn’t about the scars.
I see the scars and I can feel fire and shadow mingling together in my blood to make poison. I feel the poison and remember who I’ve used it on. I remember my ghosts and remember the contract that promises my own death. I remember that oath and remember a fresh one, a bargain made with Derek Pierce for my freedom.
If Emyr had any idea who I really was, he wouldn’t want his hands on me.
He’s noticed my stillness and matched it with his own. His touch does not stray, body poised in the last position it held. I’m not even sure he breathes for a moment, waiting, waiting for me to reanimate.