by Ella Fields
“What’s wrong?”
Este didn’t startle. She’d likely sensed I was still there.
“They’ve poisoned him.”
Uncaring of who might hear, I hissed, “They what?”
“He wouldn’t do it,” she said, tears in her voice as she gently slapped at his cheeks. “He thought he could, but when they took him to ensure he kept his promise, he apparently destroyed the room they locked him in, snapped the arm of one of Ryle’s best warriors, and killed another before they could stop him.”
I swallowed, my chest heaving with a shuddered breath. He’d killed. Such was his desire to keep from hurting me, to keep from ruining us even more. He’d murdered.
I felt my lips tremble and sucked them between my teeth. “So they poisoned him,” I whispered, then frowned. He could not help the land if he was dying. “He will be okay?” I itched to rush over there, but I knew it would be a grave mistake. They’d see my legs, wonder who else was here with them, being that the queens were supposed to take turns.
“Yes, the effects should wear off soon, depending on when they last dosed him.”
Relief kicked me in the gut. “What do you do until then?”
She stopped trying to sober him, her lithe form slumping, her head falling to his shoulder.
Zad groaned, trying to push her off.
He was in there. He just couldn’t do anything. The horror of that... I couldn’t even think it, but the queen gave voice to it.
“I suppose I’m to use the part of him that hopefully hardens, and his magic will awaken him more with the pleasure as it feeds the land.”
“Over my decaying bones,” I snapped, making to leap forward.
But I couldn’t move.
The queen had stuck my feet to the ground, leaving my arms to pinwheel until I found purchase against the wall, more dirt embedding in my nails. The audacity. I threw all my might, all my anger toward her, only to find a wall of resistance.
I ducked just in time to avoid the ricochet of my own magic, narrowly avoiding a hit to the chest. “How—”
“I will unglue your feet if you leave,” she said with a calm-filled authority. “I cannot imagine why you’d wish to stay. Are you some kind of masochist?”
She had no idea. “Unglue my feet, queen,” I snarled, “and I’ll show you exactly what I am.”
A tinkling laugh left her, and she eyed me over her prim shoulder. “Cute.”
Then after a moment of hovering in reluctance, her hands were trailing down his shoulders and arms. Zad muttered something behind his gag, which I noticed was a glittering black metal.
The queen hushed him, continuing her ministrations.
It felt like something was crawling over my own skin when his eyes slowly opened, blinking at where I was stuck. They struggled, desperate to remain open, and he shifted beneath the silver queen.
“That’s it,” she crooned to him, her hands smoothing back his hair. He shook her off. “Go,” she said to me. “You are only making it more difficult for him.”
We both knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Staring down at my feet, I encased them in ice.
Ice that cracked.
The queen gasped as I launched forward and pulled her off the dais and into the shadows, but before she could react, I pressed my finger to her mouth. “I’ll do it.”
She squinted at me in the near dark, a low hum of incredulous laughter departing her rose petal pink lips. “You?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not even full fae, let alone a fae queen. It will not work.”
“This,” I said, gesturing to where Zad was trying to watch us, but his head kept lolling, “isn’t working either.” I softened my voice, lowering it. “Leave while there’s a slight chance your wolf might forgive you.”
Her eyes widened at that, her lips quaking. She glanced over at Zad. Looking back at me, she nodded. “Pray to every deity you royal half breeds worship that this works, or we’re all sea dragon bait.”
Then Este was gone. In her wake, the scent of roses and morning dew lingered.
Zad’s eyes were closed when I stripped out of my nightgown and undergarments, the dinner knife falling to shine in the dirt. They opened when the makeshift dais shifted and gave away my presence. Meeting his clouded gaze, I sank onto his lap, intent on ridding the queen’s touch from his chest.
My hands smoothed over it, over every inch of skin, and when they roamed up his chest to his neck, fingers tickling over his taut cheeks and jaw, the rough studs of hair erupting from his skin, I smiled. Almost entirely gold, a gold so deep it was closer to bronze, his eyes exploded.
He’d never looked more inhuman than at that moment, and though something nudged at me to run even though he was bound, that link of ours, my stupid heart, had my legs winding tight around him.
Muscles in his upper arms and shoulders bulged and pulled as metal clinked behind his back, and then his arms were around me, constricting and wonderful. His head lowered to my shoulder, my hands skimmed up the broad planes of his back. I felt him exhale as I rubbed my fingers over the scars, the scars I now knew were from his missing wings.
Gently lifting his head, I studied his overeager eyes, the drums outside the cave causing my blood to pound. His nostrils flared wide at my touch, and I dragged my lips over his cheek, nearing the mouthpiece that stunk of a magic I’d never dare try to best.
I did not have to.
Like the metal that’d bound his hands behind him, there was another click, and he reached between us, tearing it off.
It hit the dirt wall, and outside, the commotion climbed higher in answer.
With his hand behind my head, his chest a pounding storm beneath my palms, those eyes feverish upon my face, my breasts, and then my mouth, he grunted, “You shouldn’t be here.”
Slowly, I grinned. “But I am, so what happens now?”
His lips shifted with a hint of humor, and I pushed his hair back, inching forward until my chest touched his. “Now,” he said, gruff and low, fingers bunched in my hair, tilting my head back. His eyes left mine as he ducked, his breath heating my throat. “I devour you until you beg me to stop, but Audra,” he said, sounding breathless, rocking beneath me as if he could no longer wait but was forcing himself to with every breath he shakily drew. “Audra.” My name dragged from deep in his throat as though it were the cure and the curse.
“What?” I said, nothing but melting wool in his arms as he bent and sculpted me as he saw fit.
The threadbare cloth that’d covered his manhood slipped over my thigh, the rough feel of it evoking a moan. His tongue lapped at my skidding pulse, his free arm lifting me onto his hard length. I slid down with a silent cry, and he huffed with wicked intent against my flushed skin. “Even if you beg, I will not be able to.”
I needed him, needed this like nothing I’d ever needed before.
I gripped his hair in kind, and he smiled in response, but it was all predator—nothing sweet in sight. My mouth dropped to his, his cock twitching inside me. I rolled my hips, my lips rubbing his. “Then it’s a good thing I’ve never been one to beg.”
Something unfurled on the wall behind him, the entire mouth of the cave now shrouded in shadow.
Wings, I realized, my lips parting in awe, and then Zad’s teeth stole my bottom lip and tugged. “No one sees you but me.”
I stared at them in wonder, marveled at the way the shadow wings moved with him while not even attached to his body. Phantom and unexplainable, they’d appeared at his urging to wrap around us like a feathered breeze I could see but not feel—as though he’d hidden his true shadow from me, from all of us, all this time.
He’d glamoured his true self.
The realization, that heady intensity that’d melted every layer of ice inside me, sank deep, and I pushed strands of auburn hair back from his ears—hair that seemed to catch and absorb every ounce of light in the cave. I’d known for days what I’d find there, known what else he’d hidden from me, yet my heart still stuttered as I behe
ld the soft curves at the tips of his ears.
A low purr, his lashes bobbing, as my fingers traced the lobes. They were just like mine, the cartilage only changing the higher my fingers rose. They were not pointed but curved in a harsh bend by the side of his head.
Zad’s lashes rose as my fingers drifted down his neck, my hands splayed across the clenching muscles of his shoulders. My eyes were wet, not with hurt or fear but with wonder. Large hands clasped my face. We stared for unending moments, though it had to be costing him to remain still. Desire, this bone-deep lust, warred with love and longing.
And then they clashed.
It was harsh, and it wasn’t anything I’d grown used to. It was pure hunger unleashed. His hands bruised every place they touched, and my nails scratched, pleading with my urgent breaths for more. He moved me over him as though I were nothing but air, so thorough in his aim, and so hard, I could barely see straight, but I didn’t care.
I wanted it, all of it, anything that was him and nothing that wasn’t.
He said nothing, and I doubted he even could. He’d plunged so deep, a scream tore from me, and he held me back just far enough to squeeze and suck my breasts before hauling me against him. Hard and unrelenting, he used me until I blew into a thousand pieces over him.
As though we’d forged a bond all over again, we both shuddered so violently, the earth trembled around us. In awe, I watched dirt sprinkle from above, shaking and clawing for more as he laid me down and covered my entire body with his and his winged shadow so that only he could see it. He licked at my mouth, my neck, my heaving breasts, and grew hard inside me once more.
Pushing one of my legs up and over his shoulder, he groaned into my neck, licking the curve of my throat over and over as he slowly moved in and out of my body.
There was no pain, no quick mask of pleasure to relieve it, for it was nothing but a toe-curling pleasure to have his teeth pierce the flesh he’d so gently softened for himself to feed on.
My eyelids fluttered as my hand clenched tight in his hair, holding him to me. Above us, the soil came alive, the roots of the tree-laden castle shifting and slithering, dirt raining and glittering. As though he’d summoned them all, those bubbled bugs floated above the cocoon of concealment Zad’s shadow had provided, so that even in the dark, I could see him.
Zad’s magic had always been more. More than me, more than Raiden, more than any royal I’d ever encountered. I’d always thought it was the air of primal authority he’d carried with him that made it so, and although that was largely why I’d found myself so attracted to him, I’d never guessed how deep that energy of his, the feral way it sang to me like a wolf calling to the moon, had run.
His magic, this force of unimaginable power that dizzied and drew, it was more than even him. It was the air, the earth, the mists, our blood, the beating of our thundering hearts, and the changing skies.
It was Beldine.
The guards eventually arrived with Queen Hydrah, but we didn’t stop. I couldn’t ask him, and I didn’t want to, and I knew there was no way he would.
A wall, naked to the eye, stopped the guards from nearing us. They rushed outside, and Zad removed his teeth from my neck.
My lips sought his, licking the blood from them, smiling against them at his soft growl of approval.
“Leave them,” the king said.
“But he’s...”
“It’s working, so I care not. Out.”
I was too far gone, too much of nothing but everything Zad needed, to care.
He kissed me in time with the movement of his powerful body, muttering words to me I was too dazed to understand. Filthy approval, I guessed, for when I tightened around him, he hummed into my ear, picking up his pace.
Zad roared when I fell apart, joining me. The muscles in his neck corded as his head tipped back, his powerful arms holding him up while his hips made fine work of rendering me useless, and he finished emptying himself inside me.
Within seconds, his head lowered for his soft lips to drag over my chest to my chin. My mouth opened, welcoming his tongue even as my lungs struggled to keep up. A violent groan evoked a full-body shiver, and he pressed himself as deep as he could go before leaving my body.
But only for one panicked heartbeat.
I was picked up and placed onto all fours, my back arching when he entered me from behind.
The sun was leaking inside our own little world when I opened my eyes to find Zad’s body curled around mine. One arm was tucked beneath me, holding my head to his warm chest and his hand half covering my ass, the other upon the small of my back. His fingers were tracing the indent of my spine, our legs entwined.
“I love you,” he said, voice strained and roughened with sleep, his breath stirring the top of my hair. He kissed it, holding me tighter, however that was possible with all of me touching all of him. “My perfect storm, my entire fucking heart.”
Something leaked from my eye, my arm slithering from between us to wind around his toned waist. The scent of sex laid heavy on the floral, smoke-infused air. As it should, considering how much of it we’d had. The act, if that was what we’d done, was a muddled blur of ecstasy-ridden waves.
I said nothing back, not because I didn’t want to, but because he knew. He knew it as surely as he knew his own love for me, that I returned his feelings, no matter how furious I was with him. For that hurt, his betrayal and deception were still there. It had faded in the wake of the reminder of us. It’d been too intense for it not to, but it hadn’t been erased.
And I wouldn’t have done what I did, risked both of our lives, if I didn’t still love him. It was madness, sheer insanity, to risk myself and him in that way, but love, I’d come to learn, did not care for rules or risk. Love was untamable, a force of magic no one could escape should it befall them.
I was trapped, and as much as it terrified me to know that, it terrified me far more to be without him.
“Did it work?” I finally asked, the king’s voice, how he’d known I was here, muddled inside my memories.
Zad kissed my head again, then groaned as he untangled himself from me. “Come and see for yourself.”
The gleam in his eyes told me all I needed to know. It had. We’d done it. Him and me, no other pureblood, royal females necessary. Still, I humored him and gingerly shifted to dress in the clothing lying crumpled upon the dirt floor.
Zad caught me before I could step down and, instead, picked me up.
“I can walk,” I needlessly said.
“Then perhaps I need to carry you back to those furs and wrap your legs around my neck once more.” He set me down, and I scowled at him, eliciting a husky chuckle as he fetched my clothes.
Painfully aware of the mess between my legs, I tried to kill the unfurling shiver and failed, unsure how I could possibly want more.
With a gentleness so like him, he pulled the frothy nightgown over me, forgoing the undergarments. I pushed my arms through the straps, then dragged my fingers through my knotted, tangled hair.
Abdominal muscles gathered and released as he bent to retrieve the beige cloth he’d worn the previous night and hastily looped it around his waist. He was staring at me, face unreadable but for that smile in his eyes, and I couldn’t help it. I smiled back.
My animalistic lover, my gentle prince, and my territorial lord.
Indeed, it probably would’ve been nice to have been carried. With just a few steps toward the sheer gauzy curtain strung over the cave entrance, I was doing my best to keep from wincing.
Zad huffed, the glint in his eyes as he clasped my hand within his full of that maddening arrogance.
“Don’t be too pleased with yourself.”
“Oh, but I am.” He pushed the curtain aside, bending and tugging me through. “Thoroughly,” he said to my ear, then nipped at my lobe.
I made to shove him away but laughed as he pulled me into his side, his large hand upon my hip as we took in the destruction of the night.
But th
ere was none to be found.
New flowers were unfurling, the spray of the river through the trees leaving droplets that glittered over each gold and green leaf. I’d already discovered the treacherous beauty of this land, but I was beginning to think I’d only glimpsed it.
Through the trees, we walked in silence, both of us seeming to draw new breath as we absorbed new life. Tittering laughter came from a creature swinging high above in the canopy of giant trees. In the bright light of day, the bark was no longer a mottled brown but gray with black stripes and patches running through the trunks.
Slowing, Zad waited as I dragged my fingers down it. It shivered, and I snatched my hand back, blinking.
He chuckled, pulling me along. “They like to be touched.”
I said nothing, still feeling the coarse velvet of its bark upon the tingling pads of my fingers.
We veered left, skirting the edge of the waterfall, its salty mist rising to dampen the dried sweat upon our skin. Alongside it, the castle at our backs, was a path lined with what I’d once thought were white pebbles.
They were beetles.
I stopped, as did Zad, and stared down at them. Tiny black legs poked out from ivory shells, differing in size, but none bigger than my hand.
“Sugargems,” Zad said. “You cannot harm them. Their shells are harder than steel.”
We walked on, and I wondered if I was missing countless hidden secrets. I had to be, but I didn’t ask him to stop. Though he seemed content to amble, taking in this place he’d once called home.
“It’s alive,” I murmured. “All of it.”
Zad’s jaw flexed, his chest lowering with a loaded exhale. “I hadn’t known he’d lack the power to keep it so.” Ruefully, he smiled. “He is my father’s every dark mood. So much like him that I never once thought to ask or to check.”
We skirted a marching group of large insects, their long legs jostling their thin, golden bodies from side to side. “Kash, all of them, they didn’t know?”
Zad shook his head, making to shift a large fern from the path for me to pass, but stopped to rub his fingers over it. The green, so light it was almost yellow, darkened to a deep emerald. My hand tightened around his as the color spread through the fern and down into the soil.