by Melissa Marr
“Please?”
After a moment, Irial kissed her fiercely, and when he paused in his kiss, he said, “Destroy me, Thelma.”
The Dark King himself had offered her control of their lovemaking. It was a powerful feeling, and she wasn’t going to waste a moment. With his direction, she lowered herself so that he was inside her. There was a brief spear of pain, which she’d expected, but more worrying was Irial. He was so impossibly motionless that she looked at him in fear that she’d done something wrong.
His hands tightened on her hips, and his dark feathered wings were fully visible. The look on his face was that of a man in rapture, and a thrill of power filled Tam. She’d done that. She’d made the most powerful creature she’d ever seen look completely besotted.
He’d once gazed at the ring she’d given him that way. He’d gazed at her that way a few times before they’d met—and since. It was somehow better now, though.
“You are a revelation, Thelma.” He reached up and tugged her down to kiss him, shifted them where they were connected in decidedly good ways.
Then he kissed her as tenderly as any man has ever kissed his beloved, and they made love without speaking.
He kissed her and touched her with soft caresses.
Unlike her expectations, he moved so slowly that Tam wasn’t sure she could breathe. She’d feared she’d hate the act, thought it left a woman powerless, but it wasn’t like that. Not with him.
He held her gaze, and she saw his shadowed dark wings curl around them both.
She stared down at him.
Irial looked just as shaken as she felt, and afterwards, he pulled her into his arms and whispered, “I will do whatever I can to protect you.”
“I know.”
“I am the one who might wither and die without you, Thelma. You have left me craving you.”
Before she could say a word, Irial had rolled her under him, and proceeded to spend the next several days teaching her all she wanted to know about lovemaking.
Niall
There were tasks aplenty to keep Niall’s mind full, but he kept thinking about the woman he’d seen in Irial’s house. She didn’t seem unwilling, but few mortals did when Irial was in sight. He might not be a gancanagh—or have Niall there to leave them addicted—but Irial was still the embodiment of temptation. Few people, fey or mortal, had refused his attentions.
Still, it was peculiar for the Dark King to linger with a mortal. Once, when Niall was young, that was not true, but in the centuries since then, Irial had focused any linger attentions on faeries. Why this one? Why now?
Jenny had spoken of a mortal, and the more Niall heard from faeries in the city, the more he was confused. Who was she? The Dark King wasn’t known for consorting with mortals. He’d stopped that when Niall left the Dark Court.
Keenan pursued mortals. In fact, that was why he was headed to New Orleans, why Beira would be here. Irial usually mocked Keenan for it—if he was even in the same city. The Dark Court didn’t linger where Summer was as often as it once had. Once they’d met and reveled. The last king had been a friend to Irial; it was how Niall met the Summer King. He’d been with Irial.
The memories of that time were harder to shove away when Niall had recently seen Irial, especially when the Dark King made a point to bring up the past.
Angrily, Niall paced the house he’d found for the Summer Court. Outside was a small garden space. A courtyard with a flowing fountain. Flowers in desperate need of attention. And in that garden were the Summer Girls—former mortals who had been bound to the King of Summer. They tended the plants as if they were no different from the bees and butterflies that were gathering in the courtyard. And Niall watched them, a substitute gardener who would appease them until their king arrived.
He was just about to ask one of the guards to find music for them when he felt a wave of frozen air. Too strong to be anything but danger, too fierce to be only Rika.
“Stay out here,” he ordered. He fled the garden, rushing into the house in hopes of intercepting the threat. Beira, the Winter Queen, was near. She could kill every faery in the garden with a gesture, and that remained a fear that Niall could not ever escape.
“Welcome to our home,” he said, sounding both diplomatic and calm as he faced the Winter Girl.
“Niall.” The look in Rika’s eyes was apology enough, but like the rest of them, she was trapped. The girls outside were safer because they’d sided with Beira, refusing the test to see if they were the missing queen. Rika, burdened with ice in her veins, was not so lucky. She—like Niall and Tavish, the advisors to the court—would feel Beira’s rage.
“I have brought the queen to speak with you,” Rika said, not sounding nearly as calm as he had, but she’d been human until recently. Her terror of the Winter Queen was still fresh.
Rika stepped to the side, and there behind her was the reason the curse existed.
Beira, the Winter Queen herself, strode into the house. Ice trailed behind her in a swath of crystals. She was clad in a modest burgundy dress, tasteful hat, and wore a single strand of pearls that looked as if they were carved from a glacier.
A not insignificant part of Niall wished her dead on the spot. She’d murdered Miach, the last Summer King, in a fit of rage. Miach, father to her son. Miach, who rescued Niall. Miach, who had somehow loved Beira.
“Niall! What a lovely surprise.” Her voice carried the howl of blizzards, and the sincerity of a predator eying a meal.
“You’re in the house I’ve rented, Beira, a house you entered seeking the Summer Court.” Niall kept his voice level, hiding the fear inside him.
The Winter Queen was as likely to kill him as kiss him. She pretended she was mercurial, but mostly she was a sadistic monster.
Beira pouted, rose-red lips pressed into a moue. “I had expected my son to greet me.”
“Keenan is not yet here.”
“But he thinks she is,” Beira said, exhaling frigid air into the room unnecessarily. “Another dream? A vision? One we will stop from coming to fruition.”
She glanced at Rika, who nodded. “I know what I’m to do. Bound by the terms of the curse.” Rika met Niall’s gaze. “I’ll stop him from convincing her to take the test, or she’ll be just like me.”
“But you’d be free,” Niall reminded her.
A knife made of ice lodged itself in Niall’s thigh. He hadn’t even seen it form, and it was already piercing his skin. Not the artery, but still deep and jagged. Blood flowed down his leg.
“I don’t believe it was your place to speak,” Beira said, flinging another knife at him.
He dodged the second projectile, but not the third one.
Vipers weren’t as vicious as the Summer King’s loving mother, and if not for the rules regarding the murder of regents—and his inability to do so—he might let the simmering pool of hate boil over. Unfortunately, striking her would result in his own death. Niall was powerless.
They all were unless Keenan found his queen. Sometimes, it was the hope, that dream of shedding Beira’s frigid blood that compelled him more than anything else.
“I will tell him you stopped in,” Niall said, voice no longer calm. “I’m sure he won’t be disappointed to miss your greeting.”
“I could kill you,” Beira gestured, creating a throne of carved ice in the room. She settled into the ostentatious thing, curls of ice that looked like screaming faces arched over her shoulders.
“You could.”
“But where’s the fun in that?” Beira asked.
And that, Niall suspected was the saving grace with Beira. Unlike some faeries, she wasn’t seeking death. She was content with demonstrations of her power—and the surety that she was safe. The oldest fey, Sorcha and Bananach, could strike any regent. They were in Faerie, though. Other regents could strike out at her, but that was only Irial, Keenan--or the missing currently-mortal, Summer Queen. It was a very short list, and Niall wasn’t on it.
So yet again, Beira watch
ed as he bled, and Niall was powerless. Unless Keenan found his queen, or Irial grew a conscience, Beira was untouchable. So, Niall was left facing her and hoping she didn’t accidentally kill him.
“Do you think she’s here?” Beira asked, sounding genuinely curious.
He shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“To my son? Yes.” The Winter Queen’s perfect red lips curved in what he’d once thought was a beautiful smile. Now, it filled him with dread.
“Then it matters to me,” Niall said, and in that moment, it was truer than he could express. It mattered because if Keenan was unbound, Niall would do his best to convince him to commit matricide.
“Don’t you grow weary of this curse? I am. I trail all over the word, pursuing him, toying with his mortal lovers. Perhaps, Niall, the solution is just that my son should die.”
“And what of the curse?”
“Perhaps balance would be restored, a new king would rise. Would you rule well if you took the throne?” The Winter Queen waved a hand, causing snow to fall from the ceiling of the house. “Answer me.”
“I am the servant to the Summer King, and I believe that the mortal he seeks will be found.” Niall swallowed hard, but said nothing as she stood and walked toward him. He’d faced the worst of the Dark Court. He didn’t back down. Not then. Not now.
But then the Winter Queen parted her lips and exhaled so frost and ice formed on his skin, clattering when frozen shards of his clothing ripped and fell to the ground from the weight of the icicles on him.
“I wanted to tell my son in person that I am here. Perhaps this will suffice as a message.” She breathed the words against his cheek. Then she glanced behind her. “Come, Rika.”
And that was the last he knew as he fell to the floor trembling from the winter storm Beira had aimed at him.
Irial
Irial was resting, drowsing yet another night away with a beautiful woman naked in his arms. They’d had several days of love-making, interspliced with periods of jewelry making for Thelma as he tended business. His fey had retrieved her jewelry making supplies, as well as a plethora of stones and metals. Her joy over it had resulted in another wondrous night of nakedness.
The woman might be ignoring his offer of a jewelry store, but she accepted the unmade stones. By the time she realized that the store and several others were legally hers, Irial hoped she’d be besotted enough to forgive him for buying her what she declared “unnecessarily lavish gifts.” He was well and truly in love, so what limits were there to be on what he could offer?
Tonight, however, he was resting as she slept beside him. It wasn’t the sort of wickedness that was typically associated with the embodiment of nightmares, but today it was exactly the way he wanted his life to be.
“Iri!”
The thundering at the door felt like an assault on his mood, and though he was not an unfair king, he was reconsidering his tolerance in that moment. Kings ought to be entitled to peace, and a few hours of naked joy surely fit in that category. Admittedly, his court was used to summoning him while he was mid-act, and Irial had always prided himself on being able to multitask now and again.
Somehow, he was certain fair Thelma would not approve of his handling business while she was astride him.
He walked to the bedroom door, naked and surly. “What crisis cannot wait?”
The Hound, one of Gabriel’s Hunt, stood there as if expecting a blow. He was wide-stanced in the hallway, braced for a fist to his massive jaw. He must be new, and undoubtedly Gabe had filled him with stories of the dreaded Dark King.
Irial rolled his eyes. He was more inclined to fuck than fight most of the time. “What is the urgency?”
“Summer King. Here.”
That, of course, was a matter that merited interruption. There was no official reason for Keenan to be at Irial’s door.
“Says it’s urgent,” the Hound added.
Irial scoffed and started to turn away. He’d see the whelp, but he’d take his time. He was, after all, naked and smelling of sex.
“Said to tell you it’s about Niall.”
At that, Irial paused. He’d grab trousers, but that was enough.
For Keenan to darken his door with Niall’s well-being as reason was enough to make Irial worry. He sent tendrils of inquiry to all of his court. “Niall?”
He waited for replies as he dressed. Nothing of significance came. Jenny had seen Niall, but Irial knew that. She’d given him Irial’s address.
A few others had seen him at the clubs. One of the young Hounds had seen him in a fight at the dock. It was standard. Niall coping with his massive stores of guilt and finding excuses to exorcise his darker impulses under the guise of “good” reasons—and adding guilt for enjoying it.
“Irial?” Thelma asked from the bed. “Are you leaving?”
“Duty calls, love.” He paused and kissed her softly. “I’ll be back before you wake, I hope. The others will look after you. Stay in the house while I tend to business?”
“I . . . feel like I ought to argue.”
He smiled. “But today, can we avoid that? At the least will you stay in my bed until dawn?”
She smiled back. “I’ll be here.”
“Hopefully still in my bed.” He was teasing, but he was also trying to elicit a promise that would keep her safe from the threat that had come into his house.
Keenan was here. He didn’t want to alarm her, but Thelma’s humanity, her choice of a future, would vanish if Keenan’s gaze fell on her. That was it. The end of all options.
Irial brushed her hair away from her face. “If you need anything, there will be a servant outside the door.”
Thelma laughed. “A servant while I sleep? What life is this that you live?”
He was grateful she laughed, more so that she didn’t realize that the servant was also a guard. There was no need to tell her that the threat she most feared was downstairs in the same building. He’d protect her.
Irial opened the door, and he heard her breathing even out into sleep again. Once he was in the hall, he told the Hound, “She stays in this room until Keenan leaves. In the house until I return.”
The Hound nodded.
And Irial was descending the stairs to meet the Summer King, the cursed king who would steal Thelma if he found her, as one of the thistle-fey sent an answer back over their tendril connection: “Beira is here already. Arrived. Saw Niall.”
Niall was alive. Irial was sure of that much, but the combination of Beira’s presence and Keenan’s late-night visit told him that Niall was injured. He donned a glamour to hide the fact that he was topless, pulling his very present feathered wings around him like a cloak, and grabbed a hat from the stand in the foyer.
He slid open the pocket doors and found the Summer King standing in the dim room. Pulses of light from his body betrayed his worry.
“Let us go then, kingling.”
“You know?” Keenan’s usual temper was absent. They didn’t like one another, probably never would. They shared exactly one thing: affection for Niall.
“You’re not being a jackass, so I assume Niall is more than slightly injured.” Irial tossed the words over his shoulder as he headed to the door. “Take me to him.”
“Your vow you won’t tell him,” Keenan said, sounding imperious in a way that offset his relative weakness. He might not be as strong as other regents, but he was a king.
“Do I ever?” Irial sighed and jerked open the door.
Gabriel waited there, and the look in his eyes held all the censure and understanding that Irial would tolerate from no one else.
“Keep my guest safe.” Irial’s command spiraled into ink on the Hound’s forearms. “Do not leave the house or allow anyone in.”
Gabe nodded, eyes darkened with the hope of a fight. They weren’t expecting guests, but Beira had already arrived and apparently attacked Niall. No one could predict her violence, like Winter itself, she was often deadly and violent.
And the
n Irial walked into the darkened city streets with the regent who held Niall’s loyalty.
Finding Niall unconscious was not an experience that did much for Irial’s mood. He disliked Beira for a great number of things, but his loyalty to his court often outweighed personal feelings. It had to. His life’s purpose was to guide and protect the Dark Court, and his very emotions nourished them. Hating Beira was useful to his court. Feeling rage, envy, guilt—all feelings that swirled like a decadent dessert—would nourish his fey. Siphoning those same feelings from Keenan was the equivalent of a multi-course meal.
Loving anyone was not of use to the darkness.
But love he did. He’d lost Niall’s affection centuries ago, and he swore to himself that he would not sacrifice Thelma as he’d done with Niall. Although Niall had joined the Summer Court when Keenan’s father was still alive, the rage that defection brought was why Irial cursed the young Summer King over eight centuries ago. If they’d not taken Niall in, would he have come home?
Irial wouldn’t let them have Thelma, too.
“I removed the ice.” Keenan gestured to Niall.
The faery’s body was motionless. Not dead. Thankfully not that. He looked as though he was carved of wax, or some exotic stone. Too beautiful to be real, and as still as a statue.
Irial traced a finger over the scar that improved upon Niall’s already near-perfect face. “You’ll leave me alone with him.”
“He hates you,” Keenan objected.
“And yet, I love him.” Irial glanced at the Summer King. “You may not understand me, kingling, but that detail is and always will be unchanged.”
“He’ll never forgive you,” Keenan swore.
Irial consider punching the young king, but that wasn’t going to help this moment. “You sought me out. Let me heal him.”
This secret, this habit of theirs, created odd guilt-inducing fear that rolled off Keenan in waves. Niall had been struck time and again over the centuries after he’d left Irial. He was Beira’s perfect victim: worrying both Keenan and Irial. And so, Keenan had periodically been forced to bow his head at Irial’s door. The first time, he was terrified, afraid that Irial would refuse. Now, he was a delicious twist of rage and guilt.