But was he hiding something?
His gaze flicked back to hers. Perhaps he sensed the thoughts going through her head, because his eyes widened in shock a split second before he lunged.
The Mountain King grasped her hands and drew them close to his chest. She gasped, tugged close enough to count the tiny dots of yellow in his eyes. “You could be useful here,” he said.
Did he know where her thoughts were heading and knew he had to distract her? Morgan tilted her head to the side and smiled sweetly. “By killing you?”
“No,” he said, chuckling with a warm laugh that sent electricity zinging straight between her legs. “You’re here until the portals open. You can stay bored out of your mind, or one of my faeries can take you somewhere you can help.”
“How do you know I can help?”
“You know green magic, don’t you?” The spark in his eyes grew brighter. “You can put that magic to good use here, witch. All you have to do is say yes.”
She didn’t want to take more of his magic into her. And she wouldn’t sacrifice more of herself for these people.
“I guess,” she found herself saying. “If I can help, I will.”
10
Morgan trailed along behind the stone faerie who had collected her from her guest quarters. It had been two days since the banquet and she’d been bored out of her mind.
The Mountain King was right. She needed something to do.
Otherwise, she could only sit in that damned green nest, staring up at the sky. And when her mind was given freedom to wander, all she could think about was him. His broad shoulders. The way his eyes twinkled when he smiled.
The planes of his chest were ridiculous, smooth, and so golden brown she thought they might taste like chocolate. And she loved chocolate.
When was the last time she had lusted over a man like this? She stepped up and over a fallen log. She didn’t think she’d ever given a man so much thought or space in her mind.
The king had gotten underneath her icy shell, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“Follow!” the rock creature shouted as it rolled away.
The thing had shouted the same order a hundred times since collecting her. She wanted to reply she was not round like a ball and rolling through the forest wasn’t possible for a human.
She also knew the faerie wouldn’t have any sympathy for her. Its eyes were being mashed against the ground every time it moved. The poor thing didn’t know where she was.
“Wait for me!” she shouted back. “I’m not as fast.”
“Then walk faster, human!”
They made their way through the trees to another clearing. This one was similar to the valley where the king made his home, but a giant wall of mountains bracketed the back side. Their sheer cliffs seemed impossible to climb.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“The place of doors,” the faerie replied. It rolled to a stop in the basin.
She stopped next to it and looked around. This place was barren. Even the grass had died off, almost as though the king’s magic didn’t stretch this far.
“Why did he want you to bring me here?”
Just as she asked, four portals opened in front of the mountains. Their glimmering green lights were impossible to miss. So beautiful and so promising of her escape.
Morgan held her breath as faeries stepped through with plants in their hands. All the vegetation was dying or nearly dead. The faeries cradled the greenery in their arms like babies.
She should have been looking at the plants. They were the ones who needed her, and she always enjoyed saving a plant when she could. However, her freedom was within reach.
The stone faerie at her feet snorted. “Don’t get any ideas, witch. Those are one way portals. If you tried to leave, it would bounce you back twenty feet.”
Well, that answered one question. But not the other immediate concern. “The king said no portals could open other than on the solstices?”
The stone faerie’s hesitation answered her question. Morgan ground her teeth. The king had twisted his words, just enough to keep her here.
But she wasn’t about to open a portal until she knew the complete truth. The last thing Morgan wanted was to be severed in half by magic. She’d seen portals do worse.
The stone faerie rocked back and forth, as if it were gearing up to race away from her side. “The king said you could help the honored ones we bring through the portals. That’s your job.”
Honored ones? The faeries called plants that?
She watched the stone faerie roll away toward the others who were helping to place the plants in pots. Their drooping leaves and stems were heart breaking. Though the faeries were trying their best, they didn’t know how to repot plants the right way.
One faerie with twig arms had thrust a fern up to its neck in dirt and was shoveling loam up and over it. She could hear the poor fern sobbing from here.
Sighing, Morgan rolled up her dirty white sleeves. She’d been in the same clothes for four days now. Might as well get even more dirty.
“Stand aside,” she advised. The faeries stumbled back from the pots being carried through the far left portal. “I’ll take it from here,” she added.
Perhaps they understood her love for plants, or perhaps they didn’t want to do the treatments themselves. The faeries rushed away. Each ended up in front of another portal, taking what the next faeries brought through.
So this was what the king meant when he said the faeries brought prizes back with them. They went to the human realm regularly and seemed to bring home trophies along with the plants.
A faerie made of stones stacked atop each other wore a pair of leggings wrapped around its head. A flower faerie with waterlily petals for hair carried a pair of women’s heels along with the drooping ivy in her arms.
Every faerie seemed to come home with something new. Once they deposited their plant with her, they wandered off to huddle in groups. They stared at the items of clothing as though they held the mystery of humanity within them.
Morgan didn’t know how to take their actions. Items of clothing were so far from a mystery to her or her own people. It was strange to see anyone ogling over a pair of red heels.
She turned her attention back to the fern. “Come on then darling, let’s get you settled.”
With a gentle tug, she pulled it out of the loose earth the faerie had shoved it into. She reorganized the loam and put only the roots into the soil.
Now was the hard part. She needed to use magic, or no amount of water and kindness would save the fern. It could barely stand up on its own.
But magic meant she would need to use some of the Mountain King’s, and she didn’t want to touch the green magic again. It only linked her closer to him. Closer to everything she didn’t want to get attached to.
Magic like that was addictive. She could still feel it in her own well, even though she had scrubbed every inch of her mind for days now.
The fern let out a soft whimper that only Morgan could hear. But the pitiful sound was enough to force her to decide.
“Oh, all right,” she muttered.
Tugging on the magic deep in the earth was so easy. It shouldn’t have been like reaching out for an old friend and asking to borrow a cup of sugar. And yet, it was.
The Mountain King’s magic poured through her until her fingers glowed. She reached out and touched a single fingertip to the fern. In an instant, it straightened.
She could hear its sigh. But more than that, she could hear its voice. Like she had the Monstera.
“Thank you,” it whispered. The fern’s voice was like the tinkling of bells, or ice dripping as the winter melted away. “That’s so much better.”
“You’re very welcome,” Morgan replied. What else could she say? She hadn’t thought she’d be gardening today, but here she was. Elbow deep in earth and talking to plants.
It felt like home.
She turned to see how many more she had
to repot, only to realize there were hundreds of plants behind her. With the Mountain King’s magic coursing through her veins, she didn’t see them as leaves or stems.
She saw the dead and dying greenery as a war zone. Creatures pulled out of a nightmare and brought to her medical haven. She could save every one, but it would cost her so much. So many sacrifices to be made when she had so little to give.
This was why she hid away in the forest. Morgan couldn’t survive seeing the destruction of the world.
She knelt in the dirt with her hands on her knees. Where was she supposed to even start?
A six inch tall faerie waddled toward her with something in its hands. The creature was made of mud and wore a lily pad as a hat. Its eyes were massive though, and bright blue like the crystal clear pond it had come from. “Witch?”
She hated that they called her that. “What is it?”
The mud monster held out a tiny piece of wire. “Explain?” Its voice was far deeper than she would have thought, and raspy.
Morgan took the twisted wire and rotated it in her hands. The brass piece was a cheap bobby pin with a fake pearl glued onto the end. Pretty, but no one would notice it was missing.
She held it up to her head and mimed putting it in her hair. “It holds back hair.”
The faerie blinked its large, watery eyes. “Why?”
This one seemed a little more simple than the rest of the faeries she’d met here. Perhaps it was young. Or perhaps creatures in the water didn’t talk as much.
Morgan held it out for the mud monster to take. “Our hair gets in our faces sometimes. So we put it back with these.”
“Ah.” The faerie turned it over in its hands. Its eyes widened when it realized there was a pearl at the other end.
Clearly, her impression of faeries was correct. This one was so enamored with the shiny thing at the end of the bobby pin that it had forgotten Morgan was right in front of it.
She moved to get up and leave the faerie to its shiny object, when it made a frustrated noise.
She paused and glanced back down at the creature. “Yes?”
The mud creature held the bobby pin back out to her with one hand and pointed to her hair with the other. “For you.”
Two words this time, a mouthful for something so small. She was shocked the creature would give up something it loved. Faeries weren’t giving. She’d never seen one who would gift a treasure, especially one it had just found.
Her heart squeezed in her chest, twisting with an emotion she hated to even name.
Morgan stooped and took the bobby pin. Instead of putting it in her own hair, however, she stuck the bobby pin through the mud right next to the faerie’s lily pad. The pearl gleamed in the sunlight.
“There,” she said with a soft smile. “Now you look beautiful.”
The little creature started giggling. Mud wobbled in every direction as it laughed, then reached up and touched a three fingered hand to the bobby pin. “Oh thank you!”
As it ran away, Morgan crossed her arms over her chest and grinned. Three whole words.
Like a blast of warm air, she felt the king approaching. His magic trailed up her body and tangled around her arms. Like he was the tether to this realm and holding her tight to the land.
She knew where he was long before he stepped closer. Morgan could sense him through the magic pulsing in her chest. The magic made his presence even more powerful.
And even more tempting.
“I see you found your way,” he said, coming to a stop behind her.
She stayed facing away, staring at the wall of a mountain instead of the king. “How did you know I was here?”
He shifted, his feet sliding through the sparse grass like the sound of wind in leaves. “I could feel you.”
The deep rumble of his voice echoed through her body and mind.
He didn’t speak like normal men did. He was not limited by time and space as humans were. It wasn’t just his voice she heard, but his power she felt deep in her core.
The bubbling waters of her magic shifted, rolling and reaching for him as though it were alive. She wanted to sink into the waves of his energy and feel them crash over her head.
Morgan tried to breathe normally, in through her nose and out through her mouth. But her lungs insisted she needed to sip the air and taste him on her tongue.
“How?” she whispered, but she already knew the answer.
“You took my magic inside you.” He stepped even closer, pausing when his chest heated her back.
Though he didn’t touch her in any other way, Morgan felt as though he stroked every part of her body. She wanted to leave the clearing and see what other parts of him she could take inside her.
Because she could still feel him. His magic pulsed and her body reacted without him even having to touch her. He laid not a single hand upon her body and yet...
And yet.
Breathless, she pressed back into him. “Why can I feel your magic so differently than anything else?”
“You’ve taken magic from a person, haven’t you?” He leaned in, and his beard scraped against the soft skin of her neck. “When you share magic with a faerie, there is no deeper connection. You and I are one until you use up all the magic you stole from me.”
Dazed, her voice wavered, as it always did when his magic overwhelmed her. “I didn’t steal it. You offered me your magic, and I took what was freely given.”
Did his lips just touch her neck? She felt as though they did. Something soft and plush had glided over her pulse.
“Freely given?” he murmured. “I don’t know if you know the meaning of freedom, witch.”
Before she could ask him to clarify, she felt him stiffen and step away. She felt his inhalation like a gust of wind, shoving her toward the stacks of plants and work that needed to be done.
A blast of power shook the ground at her feet. Morgan held her arms out for balance and turned toward the king. “What are you doing?” she snapped before she saw his expression.
His eyes glowed. Not just with heat, but rage. So much rage those eyes looked like chips of emerald, hard and sharp enough to cut through flesh.
The king wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the plants draped on the ground.
Another burst of power shuddered through the ground. A fissure split between her legs and headed toward the portals. Morgan quickly hopped onto one side to avoid being swallowed up by the ground.
A few faeries weren’t so lucky. In particular, the mud monster fell into the chasm. It let out a startled shriek and grabbed the edge of the land just in time.
Morgan looked between the faerie and the king, who didn’t appear to see what was happening at all. He’d furrowed his brow in anger, his teeth bared, and his eyes glowed with a thousand years of anger behind them.
He had no idea what he was doing, she realized. Not a single bit of control was in that magic.
She dove for the faerie. The mud slipped just before she reached him, but Morgan threw herself over the edge and caught its arm. Hanging by her hips, she blew at the hair in front of her vision and grinned down at the creature. “Got you.”
“Witch!” it squeaked.
“Can’t let you fall with that pretty bobby pin, can I?” Morgan clawed at the ground and pulled herself up over the edge.
The mud monster was easy to lift. She’d thought it would weigh quite a bit, considering all the mud making it up. It was light, though. Light enough that she could hold it against her shoulder like a baby and carry it far away from the crevice in the ground.
Morgan placed it next to another huddle of faeries and ignored the mud splattered across her top. “There you go,” she said. With a quick pat to the top of its head, she turned to the Mountain King.
The man didn’t control his magic. She’d seen this happen to a witch before, although it was so long ago she didn’t remember how the coven had stopped him. Magic had a way of controlling the user when it wanted.
It wa
s alive inside them. Any magic had a bit of the original bearer’s flavor. If that was green magic, it wanted to go back to the earth. If it was black magic, it wanted to be free in the land of the dead.
With the Mountain King, she felt this green magic was older than the rest. It wasn’t what she’d dealt with before. This magic didn’t come from the earth, nor did it want to go back to the earth.
It wanted something else. Anger had made the ground split open and swallow the back portion of the plants. Rage had popped up the moment he’d caught sight of all the plants laid out.
Morgan approached the king with careful steps. She made certain he could easily hear each movement, and that she remained in front of him at all times. She lifted her hands up to be no threat.
“Mountain King?” she asked. “What are you doing?”
“They destroyed them.” The voice wasn’t the same as the tempting one she knew. This voice rumbled with the power of an avalanche and the thunder of a landslide. “They know not what they do, and yet they destroy so much.”
“Who are they?”
“Your kind, human. All you know how to do is destroy, maim, and kill.”
She held her hands up higher, stepping closer. “I’m not human, remember? I’m a witch.”
“Even worse. Your kind sacrifices all the things I made. For what? Petty charms and foolish tricks?” His eyes glowed brighter, beacons of verdant green.
Morgan had the distinct impression she wasn’t talking to the faerie king at all. This was something much older than the being she knew. Something ancient looking out through his eyes.
“I don’t sacrifice green things,” she replied. “Don’t you remember? You sent me here to fix them. And I did.”
“Fixed them?” the creature inside the king snarled. “All I see is dead plants everywhere the eye can fall. How did you fix them?”
Morgan pointed behind her toward the fern still blissfully chirping in its pot, unaware of the surrounding chaos. “I only had time to fix one with your irreverent power. I can fix many more if you let me borrow more of your magic.”
King of the Mountains Page 8