Curse of the Fae King

by Delia E Castel

  “A-alright.” My pulse throbbed, urging me to discover the man beneath the scales. I had to see his face before I killed him.

  “Please…” he hissed.

  With as much care as I could muster with hands that trembled like leaves in the wind, I smoothed my fingers underneath the part where the collar of his leather doublet met his scales. My gentle, ripping movements elicited the most delicious moans, and by the time I’d created a seam from collar to hairline, I was wet, pounding, ready to shed my own garments and take my pleasure from his body.

  I pulled the covering of scales off his face, revealing viridian, green eyes so dark, they looked like the night’s sky before a thunderstorm. Lush, dense lashes, the same blue-black as his shoulder-length hair, ringed the eyes. My nostrils flared, and my jaw clenched. Those high cheekbones, straight nose, full lips… even the piercing stare… They belonged to a face I knew too well.

  “Gancanagh,” I snarled.

  His beautiful, gancanagh features hardened. “No. That creature is a shapeshifter who takes the form of a person’s heart’s desire.” He pointed at his square chin. “This is my face.”

  “Then you’re—”

  “I believe so.” His soft smile and the warmth in his green eyes told me that this was Drayce. “The day our eyes met in the wild hunt, I knew you would be mine.”

  “B-but you’re so beautiful.” My voice shook.

  His lips widened into a grin. “Now you know how I feel whenever I see you.”

  My throat dried, and my heart throbbed in time with the pulse between my legs. I had to see him, touch him, taste him… Just once before he died. I pressed a trail of kisses on his neck, marveling in the quickening of his breath. My fingers trailed across his collarbone, over the prominent muscle of his chest, and down his tight, rippling abdomen.

  Sweat broke out over his skin by the time I reached the waist of his leather breeches.

  “Take them off,” he hissed.

  My heart quickened, and the confidence that had filled me evaporated.

  Drayce cupped both my cheeks— this time with the soft, human hands of a Prince—and brought his lips down to mine for a dizzying kiss.

  Desire shot down my spine, and my hands scrambled back to his hips. His own hands slid down my back and unbuckled my sword belt. Drayce tossed the garment aside, and the iron sword thudded into a bush. I tried to turn my head to see where it went, but he held me in his gentle grip.

  With the lightest and nimblest of movements, he slid his fingers behind my cloak and untied the fastenings of my leather armor. I lost myself in his kisses. The dull warning that he’d taken away my weapons melted at the feel of those strong fingers massaging a trail down the bare skin of my back.

  I slid the leather breeches over his hips, and my hand brushed against his length. It was thicker than how it had felt under his armor, and the thought of that inside me made my insides lurch. “Drayce, I—“

  “We can take this as slowly as you like.” He drew my hands around his neck.

  I gave him a shaky nod, and he hooked his arms under my thighs and carried me back through the trees into the clearing. By now, the sun had dipped behind the forest, and the only illumination came from the flames in the middle of the camp. They danced in the autumn breeze, cracking and popping in unison with the cicada song.

  The fallen soldiers were mere shadows in the periphery of my vision, and I couldn’t tell if they were dead or just unmoving.

  Drayce undid my cloak and laid it on the floor. “Don’t worry about them.” Then he laid me on my back and straddled my thighs. With a flick of his wrist, shadows surrounded us. “The only thing that matters now is you and me.”

  His lips crashed onto mine, pulling me once again into his thrall. I clung to his broad, muscular shoulders, reveling in the sensation, our connection. My head spun in a whirlpool of pleasure, and I didn’t want it to stop. He was perfect. His lips, his tongue, his weight against my body, that hot, urgent pulsing length pressing into my thigh. Moments ago, I had feared it, but now, I needed it.

  Needed him.

  “I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I have wanted you.” His voice was a deep rumble that made me squeeze my thighs together.

  “Please.” It was more of a breathy gasp, and I wasn’t sure what I had been asking for.

  Drayce treated me to a sensation of pleasures I’d never imagined had existed until this moment, licking and squeezing and teasing every inch of my flesh until I melted and panted, quivering with need. By the time the pleasure ebbed, and I had regained a sense of awareness, he positioned himself between my spread thighs, muscles trembling with restraint.

  “Do you want this?” he murmured into my ear.

  “More than anything.” I pulled him down for another of those enchanting kisses.

  There was a brief, pleasurable stretch as we joined, then I threw my head back and opened my mouth in a silent scream. My nails dug into the sinewy muscles of his shoulders as the new sensations intensified, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head. Shadows surrounded us, blocking out the light of the fire, the sound of the forest, the memory of all those soldiers I had killed. I lost myself in his magic, his body, his connection, shuddering under his ministrations until my world shattered into a million pieces, wiping away the human girl that I had been and building me anew.

  When I returned to my senses, I lay in his arms, satisfied, whole, and complete.

  “I never knew it could be this good,” he murmured into my hair in a voice breathy with awe.

  My lips curved into a smile. “Me neither.”

  “I could slumber for a thousand years, happy to be mated to you at last.”

  Something in his words broke through my haze of bliss. Hadn’t one of the courts been sent to sleep? I shook off the thought. It didn’t matter. Drayce and I were mated, and if General Creach and the others still lived, I would finish them with my dagger. Nobody would betray their own mate.

  Drayce closed his eyes and dozed. I snorted a laugh. On wash day, the village women would joke about their men falling into a dead sleep after love-making or becoming pliant enough to agree to any demand. It was amusing to know that even demigods were not immune. I gazed into his serene face. Now was the time to get the truth.

  My fingers encircled one of his nipples. “What will we do in the morning?”

  His arm tightened around me. “We will continue with the plan.”

  “Do you have the Book of Brigid?” I asked.

  “Hmmm?”

  “We’ve found the Blood of Dana, and the Sword of Tethra. Are we going to look for the Book of Brigid next?”

  “We don’t need to seek it.” He nuzzled my hair.

  “Do you have the book?”

  “Yes.” He yawned.

  My throat flexed. That was the truth.

  He had told General Creach that he’d found it in the cottage Father and I shared. What else would he reveal?

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Your table.”

  I nodded. One question remained at the forefront of my mind. It wrenched my heart to ask, but Father’s and my survival depended on getting a truthful answer, no matter how ugly. No matter how much it would hurt.

  My jaw clenched. After everything, was he still a deceiver? I closed my eyes, breathing hard, and building my resolve. The answer to the next question would seal his fate. “Are you still planning on offering me to the queen as her vessel?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Drayce?” I trailed my fingertips over the light dusting of stubble on his jaw.

  “What?”

  “Are you going to sacrifice me to Queen Melusina?” I closed my eyes and braced myself for his answer.

  “Yes.” He snored.

  A cold shock numbed my system, and my eyes snapped open. I had been a fool.

  Again.

  I slid out of his embrace and walked back to where he had left my leather armor. The jagged edges of the stones and twigs diggin
g into the soles of my feet paled compared to the dread weighing my steps and the thorns of betrayal piercing my heart.

  Tears blurred my vision, and I let them roll down my cheeks and onto my bare breasts. It was time to rescue Father and leave the island. At some point close to the Caledonia coast, I would drop the Sword of Tethra into the Sea of Atlas, where no one would ever find it.

  Without the Sword of Tethra, the Blood of Dana, and the Book of Brigid, Queen Melusina wouldn’t be able to release the Fomorians. Without Father, she wouldn’t produce daughters capable of piercing the mist. In time, the lack of Fomorian magic in the living world would cause her death.

  Drayce’s skin lay on the forest floor. It was a combination of leather armor and scales, but a one-piece garment, much like that of the Keeper of All Things. The Keeper’s desiccated brides had set the skin alight, and the fire had spread to the old man’s body.

  Sending Drayce this silent thanks for the idea, I dragged the skin back to the clearing, stopping before the fire to take one last glimpse at his beautiful, naked form.

  I couldn’t look at his face. It hurt too much to know that my heart’s desire was both the man who had awakened my ability to see faeries, changed my species, shattered my heart, and planned to sacrifice me to a monster.

  Perhaps he thought that I would forgive him after he’d sent me to the Otherworld as a wraith, just as I had forgiven him for bringing Father and me to Queen Melusina.

  “You want to know what’s pathetic?” I glared at his taut, tanned pectoral muscles. He was a living statue, carved in bronze. “After everything I’d seen of you wretched faeries, I still believed in you.”

  A sob caught in my throat. Tears of rage and regret obscured my vision. Drayce continued sleeping, oblivious to my pain.

  “I love you, too…” My voice shook. “But I’m no fool!”

  I dragged the skin to the fire and threw it in. Flames licked at the leather, charring its edges.

  It wasn’t burning.

  My nostrils flared, and I glanced around the clearing for ideas. My gaze skipped past the mortar and pestle, catching on the bottle of oil used to prepare the meat. I poured its contents on the skin, and the fire spread, engulfing it in flames.

  Drayce bolted upright, eyes wide. “What did you—”

  His scream was louder than the crowing of the night fowl, and more terrible than the dying cries of the Keeper of all Things. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and my insides twisted into a series of painful knots.

  What had I done?

  I turned to the side and emptied the contents of my stomach, the sounds of retching drowned out by his screams. Why had I been so vicious? I could have killed him with the iron, but I had chosen to hurt him… just like he had hurt me. Perhaps the banshee’s breath had hardened my heart and turned me into the kind of creature I despised.

  After shoving on my clothes, I ran from the clearing. My legs trembled so much, I tripped over a soldier’s body and landed on my hands and knees. Moonlight reflected onto Yarrow’s pale face, frozen with fear.

  “No!” A deep moan rumbled in my belly. These people had shown no remorse when they discussed my fate. I’d given them painless deaths compared to what faeries did to humans.

  Drayce’s screamed rose in pitch, and the flames in the campfire expanded into an inferno that spread across the clearing. I picked up the Sword of Tethra from where I had left it and slashed the pad of my thumb. The Blood of Dana could open gateways. My blood was how I had escaped the faeries that Samhain night.

  I had run through the forest, a broken, bleeding mess of cut knees and scraped hands. The queen and her wild hunt chased me on winged horses, baying at me to surrender. Each time I crossed a ring of mushrooms, my blood must have transported me to a different part of the forest. At the time, I thought the mushrooms had contained the magic, but it had been my blood. And that same lifeblood had also killed the Queen of the Banshees.

  I stared into the red liquid beading on my thumb and said, “Take me to Father.”

  Chapter 20

  The drop of blood fell onto the forest floor, and a hole opened in the ground. I peered inside, expecting to see Queen Melusina’s boudoir, but instead, water bubbled through the opening and spread to my boots. I stepped back. Obviously, there was more to my blood than just spilling it and announcing my destination.

  Drayce’s screams continued, deepening the ache in my heart. I had to put him out of his misery. No one, except for perhaps the Keeper and Queen Melusina, deserved such a nasty, prolonged death. I knelt on the ground, scrambling around in the semi-darkness, pushing apart the branches of the wild rose shrub to find where Drayce had thrown my sword belt.

  My fingers brushed against something that was both ice and molten fire. With a yelp, I snatched my hand away. Since mating with Drayce, I’d become even more susceptible to iron.

  By the time I’d picked up the leather part of the belt and buckled it around my waist, Drayce had stopped screaming, and the campfire had returned to its previous size.

  A deep ache spread from my heart to the back of my throat, thickening it with guilt for the vicious murder and grief for the loss of my mate. I blinked away the last of my tears and swallowed hard. Would he still be the King of the Otherworld when he died?

  I bowed my head and caught sight of something white under the bush. It was the Dullahan’s bone whip. Now that my skin couldn’t abide iron, I’d need another weapon. I picked up the whip and placed it on my sword belt.

  A capall nickered, and I flinched, heart jumping in anticipation of Enbarr’s retribution. Instead, the warm, white snout of one of the soldiers’ steeds nuzzled the side of my neck, and my stomach muscles relaxed.

  After hooking the Sword of Tethra to my belt, I mounted the winged horse and shook the reins. “Take me to the Apex Palace.”

  The capall galloped forward through the forest, increasing in speed until the trees around me blurred. When we reached another clearing, he leaped, raising his front legs into the air, unfurled his wings, and ascended into the skies.

  My stomach lurched, and I leaned into the creature’s neck. Its smoky mane curled around my face, reminding me of the Banshee Queen’s last breath.

  I groaned. “I’m a monster… No better than her.”

  All throughout the night, we flew along the Autumn territory’s forest. The capall seemed to know his way back to the palace and kept close to the river, as though it was our guiding light. I kept my gaze on the skies, their bright stars reminding me of eyes I had once loved. Eyes that were now dead and burned.

  When the river split and the first signs of mist appeared above the trees, I knew we drew close to the Apex palace. The Fomorians were either tethered to that mountain, or they kept close to Queen Melusina because she was the only person in this realm who wanted to set them free.

  Tendrils of the mist swirled around my ankles. I couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion, but at times, it felt solid. If Father had pulled Queen Melusina out of the mist, then there also had to be something special about his blood. Was it because he was a druid? Drayce had mentioned their affinity with the goddess Dana. Thinking about it now, his description of her hair could have applied to both Father and me.

  The capall’s wingbeats were the only sound in the still, starless night, but echoes of Drayce’s screams lingered in my ears.

  Faint stirrings of mist thickened the air, and regret filled my chest with its heavy burden. What had I done? I didn’t dare whisper the words out loud in case I woke the Fomorians.

  We flew over meadows, forests, over vast lakes reflecting the cloudy, dawn sky until the sun rose above the mist, casting its orange rays over the gloom. A yawn ripped from my lips, and I blinked tears of exhaustion.

  Soon, the Apex Palace came into view, a dark structure of sharp, twisted towers atop the steep mountain. I leaned into the capall’s neck and whispered, “Can you take me to a servant’s entrance?”

  A snort of agreement was his re
ply.

  We headed for the middle of the mountain. Small caves pitted its surface, and I wondered if this was where the servants dwelled. The capall landed on a walkway that led to one of these entrances. It looked like a mine, but with filthy humans covered in rags, toiling over steaming vats.

  I dismounted and patted the capall’s shoulder. “Thank you for taking me back. Could you wait for me here, please?”

  He didn’t answer, and I didn’t push the issue. The capall had done plenty for me, considering I’d poisoned his masters. I left him on the walkway. He didn’t fly away, to my surprise, and I hoped he would stay to help Father and me escape.

  I stepped into the warm, humid cavern, a laundry room of sorts. A black cloak lay on a pile of clothing. It appeared to be made of wool and the perfect size for Father. None of the humans at the vats noticed me, so I hurried past and picked up the cloak.

  “Excuse me,” I asked a passing girl. Greasy, dark-blonde clumps of hair hung over her eyes. “How do I get into the palace?”

  She either ignored me, couldn’t hear, or was too far into a trance that she didn’t notice. Large holes gaped open in her boots, revealing gnarled, blackened feet that contrasted from her youthful face. I shuddered and turned away.

  I continued into the dark cavern, staying close to the flaming wall sconces and tried talking to another human and then another, but they all appeared to be mindless husks. Finally, I found a young woman holding a bundle of clean clothing. She was probably giving it back to a faerie who dwelled within the palace, so I followed her through a darkened hallway.

  It led to a stairwell of the same flint as the rest of the mountain. Saucer-sized holes provided enough illumination for a servant not to trip and dirty the clean laundry. We ascended a spiral of what felt like a thousand steps, and I wondered how an emaciated, bare-footed servant managed the climb.

  At the top of the stairs, we passed a hallway of floor-to-ceiling windows, offering a view of the mist hovering over forest-covered foothills. I squinted at the dawn light that filled the black stone hallway and continued through the lower corridors of the castle.