by Ella Fields
“You cannot be serious.”
“What I am, Audra,” he rasped, heat roughening the low words, “is starved.” Then he kissed me, hungry, deep plunges of his lips on mine, pulling and tugging and melding.
I gripped his shirt, and then I bit him so hard I tasted copper.
He groaned, pressing me up against the wall. One hand framed my face and the other curled my thigh around his waist. Lifting me, he rolled his hips where I needed him, and I moaned, felt his teeth roam my neck, and tilted my head.
Searing heat ignited, my head spun, and though he’d said he had no need to feed in this way in Beldine, I still allowed it. I still wanted it.
I wanted the fire that crackled within my veins and the cooling rapture that pulsed and spread, rushing after it with waves of pleasure. But he didn’t drink as he’d done before. No, he merely opened the skin and kissed and licked at the blood that escaped. Against him, I writhed, needing the friction of his tented pants, that bulging member inside them rubbing over me.
A wicked laugh washed over my skin, his tongue lapping at the puncture marks. “You might not forgive me, but you need me as much as I need you, and that will never fucking change.”
Then I was cold, and he was leaving, adjusting himself in his pants as he strode down the hall.
I was going to scream, frustration coursing through me and throwing venomous words over my tongue. I trapped them, knowing he wanted that and was without shame in this new game he’d decided to play.
“I suppose I’ll finish in my rooms,” I said instead, smiling when he froze, and then ducking inside to do just that.
For three nights in a row, the same story played out with different endings and plot twists.
Kash refused to talk, as I’d predicted, and so instead, a mortal who’d been hidden away in the king’s harem was brought to the throne room.
I could only guess his insistence on having every meal there had something to do with reminding Zad, his other guests, and himself of what he was and what he could do.
The woman was strung from the ceiling by her feet, the king whispering gentle murmurings into her ear that I couldn’t hear as he rubbed her arms.
I wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here, but she had to be over thirty summers by the looks of her. She screamed when the king stepped away. “No, please. I love you. I’ll be better. I’ll be the best. Please, please...”
I tilted my head as Ryle took his seat next to me, unfazed. “Kash,” he called. “A gift for you.”
I knew, everyone did, including the dark-eyed male seated away from Zad, that his refusal to play, to talk of his relationship with my mother, would not go without punishment.
For I wouldn’t have let it either.
I sliced open some type of roasted bird, dipped it in a yellowed sauce, and sniffed it to detect for anything odd. Satisfied, I ate as the king continued only after he’d successfully garnered everyone’s attention.
“Seeing as you’re so fond of mortal women, I thought you might like one of mine.”
Kash’s jaw gritted, bitten words delivered through his teeth. “You are too kind, my king, but I fear I must decline.”
Ryle dropped his cutlery with an echoing clang. “You decline?”
Kash nodded.
Pushing back his chair, Ryle stood, leering down the table at him. “You loved her, yes? Your half-blood queen.”
Kash said nothing, but his eyes flared a little when the king moved behind me and gathered my loose hair to one side. “She bears a heavy resemblance to her mother, I’ve heard.”
Again, Kash merely nodded.
We both knew where this was going, so I took another mouthful, outwardly unaffected as the king’s mouth lowered to my shoulder while inside, every part of me grew molten with the urge to stab him in the eye with my fork.
“Hands off, Ryle,” Zad barked.
“Come and stop me.”
Zad rose, the air searing cold with power, but there was a scuffle, and I looked over as Kash shoved him back into his seat. Zad sat, eyes wild and tendrils of his hair escaping its tie.
The woman whimpered, and Ryle released me with a sharp intake of breath. “You marked her.”
My eyes darted to Zad. Now, his outburst, the savage way he’d almost had me the other night in the hall made sense. Though he slept his days away outside my rooms, he hadn’t tried since.
The gleam in his eyes and slight raise of his brow when I glared at him spoke of such unapologetic arrogance, I thought I might leap onto the table and lunge at him.
Anger shaking my hands, I set my cutlery down.
“She is mine,” Zad said in such an offhanded way that I gnashed my teeth at him. His lips curved, and he looked at his approaching brother. “She is linked to me. My mate.”
“Precisely,” Ryle said, boots clicking over tile. “Precisely why I find it interesting, though not at all surprising, you’d try to deter me even more.” His grin was shining knives. “Feeling a little... threatened, brother?”
Zad blinked, then laughed dryly, rubbing his hand over his bristle-heavy chin. “You do not want me to answer that.”
After staring at him with such malice, such unchecked hatred, Ryle clamped his lips together. “Very well.”
A dagger landed between Kash’s fingers, embedding itself to the hilt in the table as though it were cleaving through warm butter.
“Kashen, if you won’t speak of your half-human lover, then you must make good use of mine.” Ryle drifted back to his seat. “For unlike my brother, I don’t mind sharing my toys. Fuck her, force your cock inside her mouth, eat her fragrant juices, I care not.” Seating himself on the arm of his chair, his velvet pants brushing my elbow, he stated, “So long as she’s dead by the end.”
The woman’s desperate, pointless cries grew and fell onto unaffected ears.
Kash lifted his gaze from the blade to the king. “You cannot wish for me to kill one of your lovers.”
“I’ve many more,” Ryle said with ease. “She’s been with me since she was eighteen summers, before we were trapped, and her breasts are already sagging.” He wrinkled his nose. “It was fascinating at first, but now, I find I prefer her the way she was. Young.”
The woman screamed his name, the rest of her pleas garbled as she cried, her face mottled as blood continued to rush to her head.
Kash stood.
Goblets of wine were drunk from as we watched him circle the tables to where the woman hung before the dais.
Zad wasn’t looking, but then his shoulders stiffened. As though he knew he owed that much to the mortal, he shifted. As if he owed them anything at all.
Kash bent low, swiping tears from her bright green eyes, and the bitter scent of something infiltrated.
Magic, I surmised. For he had it as much as Zad, as much as most in this room, and he was using it to glamour her.
The woman smiled, sucking back tears. As though she were in a different place, away from this nightmare. She stayed that way, even as the dagger plunged inside her chest, ending her life in one quick thrust.
It clanged to the floor with ringing finality. Zad watched Kash as he glared at the king, blood pooling on the floor beneath the corpse behind him. Then Kash was dust, sweeping out of the throne room.
Unmoving, his head upon a fist, the king stared at his dead human lover for the remainder of our meal.
Audra
Zadicus was there, as always, this time sharpening a small blade.
He stood when he heard me enter the hall, tucking the blade inside a hidden sheath in his pants, the stone he’d used to sharpen it upon the floor. “Are you okay?”
In a nightgown made from gossamer and embroidered dried flowers, I walked to the railing and stared down into the dark abyss. The throne room was down there, veiled from prying eyes or those who wished to do something daring. “It was exactly what I would have done,” I said. “So no, I am not disturbed. I am disturbed by the fact you will not end this charade already.”
<
br /> Zad reached for my hand, but I pulled it back and marched away.
“Where are you going?”
“To find the king and tell him you’re done with dallying.”
At the sound of raised yet hushed voices, I stopped at the end of the hall.
The female’s was hushed, the male’s rough and uncaring of who heard. A flash of white, the swaying of a thin gown, and that regal, soft voice. The queen of the Silver Court.
Zad tugged me back around the corner, pressing a finger to his lips as their conversation carried.
“...cannot expect me to,” the male said, his voice rich and deep but caustic with emotion. “You allowed it once, but I refuse to allow it again.”
“It is not up to me, and if it were, you know I would never so much as consider it.”
“But you did it,” he said, growling now. Zad’s brows hovered over his eyes as he stood breathlessly still beside me. “You let him have you in front of thousands while I was made to stand by and endure it like it was some fucked-up honor.”
“Because it is an honor to serve our king and to serve our people, to help our land.” Though her words were strong, they lacked feeling and conviction.
“Do you hear yourself?” he barked, a wicked laugh following. “We barely survived that, and now you’ve dragged me here to do it all over again.”
“I’d hoped it wouldn’t—”
“That it wouldn’t come to this, yes,” he spat, exasperated. “But it has, and you knew it would. You knew it would, and you fed me your hope and your drugging kisses as though you could fool me into believing it would all be okay.”
“Kole,” she said, hushing him.
“No.” The word was almost a wheeze. “No, I will not stand by while he makes a mockery of our bond and of this land you so wish to protect by whoring yourself out.” Zad cursed under his breath. “Never again.”
Footsteps echoed, a large shadow looming on the wall as the male came closer. “Do not walk away from me. You cannot mean to have me make an impossible choice. That is not love.”
The shadow stilled, bobbing a little. “This,” he hissed. “The fact you cannot refuse him and put me first, Este...” His voice grew choked. “That is not love.”
Those words rocked me, and I wondered, from the other side of that very same anguish, if I’d react just as badly should Zad have decided not to refuse the king.
“Stop,” she called. “That is an order.”
He didn’t. The walls quaked, and I melted back into the one beside me as the shadow changed from a long-haired male into a ginormous white wolf. Claws scraped against the tile, embedding as the beast skidded around a corner we could not see. Then a thundering crack, as though he’d found an exit and burst through it, and all was silent.
Este lingered. The residue in the air, their grief, and the magic the wolf had left in his wake suffocating. It dissipated with her hope for his return, a door down the end of the hall they’d been standing in closing.
“She is his queen,” I whispered, shocked that her warrior, of whom she obviously loved, had seemingly abandoned her.
“They cannot control it when their emotions become too volatile. Especially the younger ones.”
“He’s young?”
Zad nodded, steering me with a gentle hand upon my back away from the now empty hall. “Not much older than you, I believe. I know his father, their alpha. Kash informed me that Kole is his youngest son.”
“They’ve linked. Though she is far older than he.”
“Yes, though age is never much of a concern to our kind. If they bleed or have matured into full male, then they are old enough to take a lover, or to be taken as one.”
“To do so before then?” I asked.
“That is up to the youngling’s parents to decide, but most decide to make an example of them.”
Something I was familiar with. He squeezed my hip as if guessing my thoughts. “You’ve known, deep down at the very least, that I have been here a long time.”
I swallowed, unsure if I could ask the question, being that he’d known my grandfather who’d died nearly five-hundred years ago. “How long?”
He caught my gaze with his. “Over six hundred summers.”
My mind spun, and I blinked. “How much over?”
Those decadent lips shaped into a smirk that shone in his eyes. “Forty-three summers over.”
I hated it, that just by staring at him I still felt so lost and found within my own skin. From one moment to the next, I was plagued with conflicting thoughts, endless questions, fathomless want, and murderous intent.
Six hundred and forty-three summers old. The reality should’ve stunned me, and I waited for it to, but instead, I found myself oddly at ease with the information. For it was true that I had known he was older than me by far.
Curiosity sparked. “What was my grandfather like? Henderson?”
“Much like your father had been before the years and his actions got the better of his mind,” Zad said. “Arrogant and cunning, but also fair and a lover of family. So much so, he’d had himself killed on a hunting trip not long after the signs presented themselves.”
That pulled my feet to a stop, and I frowned at Zad’s back before he turned. “Signs? Before he lost parts of his mind?”
Zad dragged his teeth over his bottom lip. “Some say that caused the shift in your father to take hold earlier than most.”
What he didn’t say, the bright confirmation in his eyes, sank like stones inside me. “He killed his father?”
Zad, unable to say and locked into a promise he’d perhaps made long ago, just stared until I was certain that was what he’d meant. “Wow.” Shaking my head, I started walking again, and he joined me. “So Henderson asked his own son to end his life.”
“It appeared to be an unfortunate accident,” Zad said blandly. “Of course.”
All he’d said, and that he hadn’t needed to say, crawled through my mind. I hadn’t known my father well, hadn’t wanted to, and any new information about him only seemed to further color him gray when I needed him to remain firmly in the dark.
For only monsters could breed monsters.
“Perhaps he’ll return,” Zad murmured, looking back. “Kole.”
I knew better, and so did he. I also knew when he was trying to shake me from my thoughts, and my teeth gritted against the warm surge inside me.
Outside my rooms, I hesitated, my hand lingering over the hidden door.
“Zadicus.” I fixed my eyes on his neck, the tense set of his strong shoulders, and suppressed the image of those queens touching them—touching him. Thinking about it, torturing myself, wouldn’t get me home. I’d survived worse, I reminded myself. Yet I wasn’t so sure about that. “There is only one way out, and even if there were another, would you really leave your people to rot with their dying land?”
We both knew he wouldn’t, but he’d still try to find another way. He’d do everything he could to avoid a responsibility that ruined and renewed.
“I just need time.” He clearly believed that, or else he wouldn’t be able to say it. Shifting closer, he opened my hand and pressed the small blade he’d sharpened into my palm. He gently folded my fingers over it, his deep voice graveled. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I’ll keep trying.”
His expression was void as he stepped back, something of which I’d realized he’d had to train himself into doing, and therefore could not shake, not even with me, unless he reminded himself. But his eyes swam with a fear that had nothing to do with his brother.
And as I shut the door and readied myself to find some facet of sleep, I knew he was out there, at war with himself, especially after the conversation we’d heard.
He was not the only one being forced to make horrendous sacrifices.
I woke up in the air surrounded by a fluttering buzz, the wind on my face.
At first, I thought to close my eyes. For this was surely a dream I could escape by sinking into anoth
er.
Then I swung, falling into the side of a metal cage. The buzzing above me was drowned by cackles. Two faeries, cicada-shaped wings vibrating upon their backs, struggled to keep hold of the rope wound through the metal bars confining me.
I lurched, gripping the side of the flimsy cage as though it could keep me from tumbling into the crashing sea below. This was no dream.
I was being transported through the air.
With a jolt that clacked my teeth, the faeries dropped me upon a small flat expanse of crumbling rock, of which could soon become part of the Whispering Sea.
I wasn’t alone. Beside my cage were two others, and inside them were Nova and Eline.
Nova screamed, grabbing at the long stick jutting at her through the bars. The faeries with long paper-thin faces, insectile legs, and clawed hands on rubbery-looking arms revealed sharp gray teeth as they laughed, trying to provoke Nova into climbing out.
I needed no provoking. As soon as they opened the side of the cubed enclosure, I crawled out. The breeze was strong enough to be cold, calling to the simmering rage within my veins. A small blessing in a land intent on giving me none, I flexed that rage, the coiled serpent within me awakening, all too happy to slither to the surface.
I let it, welcomed it, knowing I was about to need it.
Eline was silent as the faeries lifted her cage, tilted it, and she tumbled out.
I wasn’t sure how the king had managed to capture them, but I had a feeling it was similar to how he’d lured me.
We’d been entangled in a spider’s web, and we’d realized far too late.
“Audra,” Eline said, the faeries fluttering away with our cages.
Waves roared below, surrounded and crashed past us as sea salt sprayed up into our faces. “Greetings, Little Lion. How does the king fare in my absence?”
She swung her head around, taking in the looming cliffs, the sea rushing between them and us, and swallowed. “This is real.”
“I’d wondered the same thing,” Nova said.
I sighed, gazing upon their finery and feeling that longing for home more fierce than ever.