A King So Cold

by Ella Fields

  Dace cut in, voice low and growing deeper. “You saved him the night of your ceremony. Stepping in before Phane buried his sword in his back.”

  Landen shot Dace an irked look. “Save is a strong word for an…” He stopped there, lips bunching up to his straight nose, and swung his eyes to me. “But yes.” His tone was more resigned than pleased. “You had no reason to do that, to stop him, yet you still did.”

  Stunned, I felt my eyes bounce back and forth between the two males. Of course, it was them who’d helped Zad rescue me. “Oh,” was all I managed to say.

  Landen angled his head, unblinking and unnerving. “You look like her.”

  “You have his hair, though, and his personality.” Dace scrunched his shoulders, mock shivering. “Not your fault, we know, but it’s still rather… unfortunate.”

  “You’re fucking the queen?”

  My gaze snapped to the hallway.

  “You have no right to know or question any business of mine,” Zad hollered back. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “So sorry to interrupt,” she spewed, sarcasm dripping. “It’s only been sixteen years. You couldn’t keep your vows for sixteen fucking years? We’re practically immortal, you fucking asshole.”

  “I waited a long time before I bedded someone else even though I didn’t have to,” he snapped. “Because you were dead.”

  I looked at Dace, sighing. “You’d be wise to watch your tone.”

  “Oh?” His teeth and eyes flashed, and he bent forward, that sweet scent hitting my nostrils. “And why is that, queen?”

  “Because,” I said, leaning closer, my fingers brushing his. He flinched, and a low laugh left me before I sobered. “I’m not exactly like him.” Landen cursed. “But catch me on the right day, and I can assure you, I’m far fucking worse.”

  Instead of being horrified, something that looked a lot like intrigue widened the faerie’s eyes. His teeth took his lip, deep blue eyes dropping to mine. “Are we to fight, queen?”

  Something crashed in the study. “You lying whore of a male!”

  “Me? You never told me you were a changer.”

  “I didn’t know until I reached breaking point, you ignorant ass.”

  I sat back. “I’m in no mood, faerie.”

  They both laughed and then settled onto stools as we waited for Zad and Nova to finish tearing themselves, and the study, apart.

  After a time, their voices lowered, and we had to strain to hear what was being said.

  Well, I had to, but I stopped bothering. Instead, I began to wonder if I should just leave.

  What seemed like some cruel joke had now planted roots, and it was growing into something very real, tall, and impossibly imposing.

  Queen or not, I wasn’t sure I could scale it, but the thought of leaving like some wounded animal…

  A door banged open. “She did, I swear to you.” All three of us lifted our heads as Nova sped down the hall, a finger pointed at me. “Your precious queen is even worse than the whispers say.”

  Slowly, Zad followed, his hair a tousled mess, and his eyes aglow with anger. Yet weariness etched his frame, his face, his tone—as though the unexpected gift of his wife returning from the dead had aged him a thousand years.

  Understandable, but seeing so still gnawed at me.

  He wouldn’t look at me, no matter how much I willed him to.

  The Fae males stood when Nova hissed, “Zad? Are you even listening? She tortured me and made me drink my own urine. She’s a fucking lunatic.”

  I wondered how much more I might have done had I known it was Zad she’d touched.

  The thought triggered a hundred other questions, the most prominent involving Raiden, who had no idea he’d been about to commit himself to a female who was already married.

  But finally, Zad gave me his attention. And the look he threw me, cold and unfamiliar, even though he already knew I’d tortured her, shattered something loose inside my chest.

  Something that was too recently healed to identify.

  Dace and Landen both glared at me, their eyes hot and accusing, but I didn’t remove mine from Zad. I stared back, keeping my expression blank, as he came to terms with what I’d done—and who I’d done it to.

  I wasn’t sorry—no matter how much anyone might want me to be—and he knew that.

  After a long moment, he blinked, his jaw tight as he tore his eyes away. “Enough.”

  He left the room, and after a panicked glance at me, Nova wisely did the same.

  Rising, I decided I’d had enough myself.

  “Where are you going?” Dace asked.

  I stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “I don’t know.”

  They said nothing as I walked upstairs and headed to the roof.

  It was nightfall when all talk had ceased inside and a disheveled Zad climbed through the opening to join me.

  “You won’t touch me now?” I asked, when he sat upon the other end of the bench.

  He didn’t answer, just glared up at the moon as though it were responsible for fucking everything up.

  A sickening feeling flooded my stomach, but I remained quiet, as patient as I could bear, while I waited for him to speak.

  Though when he did, it was with words I’d rather not have heard him say. “You’ll be escorted home at first light.”

  He was up and climbing down through the ceiling before I could even think to protest.

  Rage, hotter than I’d felt since I’d discovered Raiden’s transgressions, threatened to incinerate me. The tips of my fingers tingled. I clenched my hands in my lap, and the swaying plants in the numerous gardens around me slowly stilled.

  I waited until it grew completely silent inside, assuming everyone was asleep, and then I scaled the vines over the side of the house, jumping to the grass below with a thud. My teeth clacked as a sharp pang shot up my legs. Shaking it off, I glanced around at the moon-glazed landscape, then continued. Horses huffed and whinnied as I entered the stables.

  “Hey,” a lone guard said, but I locked his next breath in his throat until I had my horse, suffocating him just enough to knock him out.

  I did the same at the gates when two sentries appeared, but I should’ve known as I raced uphill and reached the trees that someone would find me.

  Kash.

  Spurring Wen into a gallop, we jumped fallen logs and weaved between tree trunks as thick as castle turrets. Hours passed, and still, the Fae male followed, never reaching me, but rather, keeping a short distance behind.

  I knew better than to think he was worried for my well-being. No, he was stalking me for his own personal needs, whatever those would be. Revenge, perhaps. Though if he wanted me dead, he’d have surely attempted so by now.

  The sun was crawling into the sky when I finally slowed at the lake skirting the exit of the woods. There would be little water until we neared the villages outside the city, and the last thing I felt was afraid.

  Even though I should have been.

  After hours of silence, he finally spoke. “You know what we are, yet you haven’t done anything.”

  I hadn’t heard him climb off his horse or even approach, but I stopped myself from letting any surprise show.

  Taking my time to answer, I wrung out the hem of my skirts, which had fallen into the water when I’d led Wen to it. “Do you want me to?” I pressed, my emotions brimming just high enough to make me lose all sense of caution. “Do you want me to give you more of a reason to seek that bittersweet retribution?” Letting my dress fall back around my ankles, I pushed the hair that’d escaped my braid away from my face.

  With a jaw harder than steel, he glanced away. “There is much you do not know, winter queen.”

  Kash’s comment festered for stretched minutes, and when I snuck glances at him, his smirk told me he knew it. Seating himself upon a large, smooth rock, he plucked at some reeds.

  I watched, mouth hanging open, as the looped stems shimmered, then grew wings and took flight.


  His stare was goading, but as he watched the flying insect disappear, it turned contemplative.

  I’d heard the magic of the Fae was like nothing we’d encountered before, but seeing it, even in such a seemingly small demonstration, raised the hair on my arms.

  I lowered to the grass, staring at the gurgling stream of water. “My mother is gone, yet you remain here,” I stated the obvious.

  “We cannot go back, even if we wanted to.” I flung my eyes his way and found him staring at his long fingers clasped between bent knees. “Beldine is an impenetrable, forbidden land.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why?”

  A dry bark of laughter exited his flat lips, all the while his expression turned to stone. “Oh, how little you know, indeed.”

  I was beginning to tire of his presence, of this journey, and every damn thing.

  I moved to get up, but Kash said, “You’re a race of half Fae who’ve been led to believe they’re descendants of two goddesses. Goddesses who never even existed.”

  My brows jumped, and I would’ve laughed if not for the serious edge to his tone and those hard dark eyes. “Excuse me?”

  “I think you heard me just fine, half breed.”

  “I am no half breed, asshole.” Getting to my feet, I stomped to Wen and hauled myself up into the saddle. I’d heard enough nonsense for a lifetime, and I hadn’t the desire to hear anymore.

  “You are.” His tone might have been light—conversational, even—but the words were sharp. “You and all of your precious royals are half Fae who consider yourselves holier than thou. You’re not of pure blood, else your ears would be more pointed for a start. You’re a half breed. Half mortal, half Fae.”

  With only slight points, his own ears were just like any other royal.

  And then they weren’t.

  Glamour.

  Sweat coated my palms, my hold on Wen’s reins slipping, as Kash let it fall.

  With a gleam in his eye, he reclined back over the rock, his voice riddled with indifference. “A race who continues to sully themselves with humans, diluting your precious royal blood so that high royals can continue to hold their precious positions of power. Power you should not have. Power you abuse appallingly at that.”

  Still staring at the now unveiled, severe arch to his ears, I could hear myself swallow. “This cannot be true.” But he could not lie. “We have our own history, and it has nothing to do with yours.”

  A history I’d never been sure I believed.

  “It has everything to do with ours. We just wanted nothing to do with you,” he said so plainly. “Think about it, I dare you.”

  My eyes thinned, my heartbeat a storm brewing in my ears. With a shake of my head, I readjusted my hold on the reins.

  I froze when he kept talking, unable to help it. “No royal should possess the type of power you and Raiden do. That your lineage does. It was not a gift bestowed by some so-called goddess or two but an accident made by a long dead faerie queen who fell in love with a mortal.”

  “No…” But looking at his features, feeling his words resonate, I knew. I knew it was true. “You’re saying our history is a lie?”

  “What history?” he said, a little exasperated now. “You’ve been told minor fables about goddesses who do not exist. They never have. Rosinthe is but a sliver of land that used to belong to Faerie until there became too many of you, and the queen’s brother soon ended our shared existence.” He wore a grim tilt to his lips. “And also her existence. For when she intended to place her human plaything upon the throne beside her, our people fought back. A line was drawn, homes were lost to the ocean as Beldine cleaved a portion of the continent and forbade half breeds and humans from ever returning again.”

  “When?” I asked. Feeling my unease, Wen shuffled beneath me, huffing.

  Kash rolled his eyes. “Some millennia ago.” He came to his feet. “And without the pure source of magic given from the royal bloodline of Beldine, that they share with the land and the land with them, the many creatures, plants, and ancient trees of Rosinthe have perished. The ones that remain are all… replicas. Evolution, if you will.”

  I thought of the blithes, of the tisks, and of the furbanes. The fact that we were the half breeds, the mixed, was a startling point not lost on me.

  Nor was the way Zad had not been entered into the equation of too much power. “What of Zad?”

  With another smirk, he climbed his mount. “Death and life himself?” Noticing my frown, he continued. “Zadicus is many things, but he is not like us, and he is not like you and Raiden. And before you ask, of course, he is very much aware of all this.” I was trying to make sense of that when he gripped the reins, and said, “So, half breed, what are you to do with this knowledge?”

  “Nothing,” I said, already imagining the possible ramifications, the upheaval, the fear, and the unrest. My words were too thin, too low, a croaked rasp. “Nothing at all.”

  Sitting straight, Kash regarded me with too dark eyes. “Very well. I suppose it would not behoove you royals,” he said the word as though it shouldn’t exist, and perhaps he’d be right, “to make yourselves seem… less than, now would it?”

  I balked, uncaring as I blinked. “As opposed to?”

  Kash laughed, and the sound was shocking in its sharp, musical quality. “Oh, you have no idea.” He adjusted his tweed jacket and neck scarf, and clicked his tongue.

  So many questions raced through my mind, and I found it terrifying that I was able to match each one with the shocking explanations Kash had thrown at my feet.

  My lips parted, then closed a dozen times. I bit them shut. I was burning with intrigue—with the need to know more, to ask more—but I couldn’t. For now, I needed to leave this information where it belonged.

  In the dark.

  We rode in silence until the first village came into view, and the sun began to glow high in the sky.

  “You have her face.”

  “My mother?” I asked, already knowing that was who he meant.

  Instead of confirming, he brought his mare closer, riding almost neck and neck with Wen.

  I slowed Wen’s pace, and Kash pulled back, trotting beside me.

  Glancing over at him, I found his eyes forward, his dark hair swept back from the wind, exposing a profile that would make any female, human or otherwise, weak in the knees.

  The thought made me angry. “She was weak and stupid. You and I both know she should’ve left, but she never did.”

  “Because she didn’t think she could, and then along came you,” he said, bluntly. “She would never leave you.”

  I scoffed. “She couldn’t take me with her?”

  “You’d have been hunted.”

  I was painfully aware of that. “A shorter life spent with someone I loved might have been preferable.”

  “Your father would not have killed you.”

  To that, I snorted, uncaring how unladylike it was. “He’d have done far worse than kill me. But you’re right. I’d be kept alive.” I was his only heir. “Dead everywhere it counted, but alive.”

  Kash sat with that a minute, his eyes flicking to me a few times before he blew out a frustrated breath.

  “Exactly,” I said, quiet as I absorbed the sight of the castle looming far off in the distance.

  “You really tortured Nova?” His tone, the question, seemed impassive.

  I didn’t much care if he cared. “I did.” I sniffed, lifting my chin. “I’ve yet to figure out what her game is, but I can assure you, she is not what she seems.”

  Kash laughed, and I almost jerked at the dark, musical sound. “The same could be said of you.” He paused. “I’ve known her for most of her life. You could say she’s like a little sister to me.” Another pause as I felt his gaze upon my profile. “Are you not afraid of the repercussions for hurting someone we care about? For abusing the female Zad loves?”

  His use of present tense didn’t slip by me.

  If his aim was to upset me
, it was working. My voice was too gentle for such vicious words. All the better to let him know I refused to be toyed with. “Darling faerie,” I purred, smiling his way. “Haven’t you heard?” His brows scrunched. “Monsters fear nothing. You’d do well to remember that.” At my urging, Wen took off over the hills, and my hair came loose, flying behind me as his hooves sent dust-shrouded wind sailing back at Kash.

  He didn’t follow.

  Between one village and the next, I tugged on the reins, my breathing harsh and my heartbeat erratic, booming in my ears.

  I refused to cry.

  I would never reduce myself to such a state over a male.

  They were to be used. To be enjoyed. To be kept at a safe distance from the heart.

  How many times would I need to remind myself of that before I finally fucking learned?

  Sniffing, I closed my eyes, the iced breeze washing over my face as Wen trotted closer to home.

  When I reopened them, I discovered we weren’t alone, and I prepared to run.

  “Uh, uh, uh.” A gentleman with a wiry beard wearing camouflage green waggled his finger. “We have a message from your king.” I lifted my brows as his friends, a woman and a mixed male, stepped out from the gnarled cluster of brambles to join him.

  “Well,” I snapped, impatient and wary. “Tell me this message so I can be on my way.”

  The woman frowned, speaking low but still loud enough for me to hear. “What in the darkness is the queen doing out on her own?”

  “Good question,” the man with the beard said, stroking it as he eyed me. “We were to pass this message on to one of your village messengers.” His head tilted as he no doubt took in my flushed cheeks, crumpled dress, and tangled hair. “You’ve saved us the trouble… but why?”

  Of course, the messengers of the kingdoms loved their jobs; they not only did it for the coin it provided but for the gossip too.

  “None of your business.” I turned Wen to leave.

  Before I could skirt around them, the woman said, “The king said to tell you he has your witch.”

  A ting sounded as I plucked my dagger from its sheath on my thigh.

  The male and bearded man took a step back while the woman gulped, raising her hands. “Apparently, she’s fine, M-Majesty. Perfect health.”