ELEVEN
T he prince didn’t return for a week. Our wedding date came and went.
Bernie’s concern was evident in her most recent letter.
Perhaps I should’ve been concerned, too. Yet for the first time in years, I wasn’t.
Of course, I wasn’t comfortable. I doubted I would ever feel wholly comfortable in this castle of trees and tyrants. But I was enjoying it—certainly the quiet that came with the absence of the king and prince.
The lack of fear.
The trepidation caused by my betrothed had settled into a low simmer. So much so that I almost missed the heat of it boiling. Almost missed him.
The company, at least, however perilous or ghastly.
Pholly wasn’t interested in making a friend. Maybe I would have been offended, if I weren’t looking for more of an ally and hadn’t noticed that she had no interest in being social with anyone. Not even Ruelle, who sullenly stalked the halls for any word of Atakan’s return.
Phineus had joined the prince, Pholly had said when I’d asked over breakfast some mornings ago. She’d seemed annoyed that I’d interrupted her drawing, so I’d let her be after she’d curtly informed me that they were out hunting.
We both knew what they were hunting. Pholly likely knew far more than me, but I understood enough.
Over the days that passed in a blur of dwindling snow and wet wind, I’d taken to leaving the castle between gaps in the weather to wander the gardens. Each time, I walked closer to the woods, drawn to the darkness between the trees. Patrolling guards kept me from venturing any farther.
Hidden villages winked within heavy woodland across the mountains on either side of the castle.
Smoke rose near one in the east. Too much to be considered chimney or factory made. After lunch, I went to the balcony of the prince’s rooms to find it had spread like a fast-moving fog.
Fire.
The halls were absent of souls. Only murmurs traveled from the staff quarters beneath the ground floor. No guards were stationed in the rear courtyard, where overgrown vegetation crawled across mossy pavers in dying and muddied chunks.
I lifted my skirts and held them as I met the grass.
Wildflowers intent on defying the harsh climate shivered in the breeze. In the distance, water could be heard falling into the river wending between the mountains. Birds soared overhead, arcing down the sharp-sloping hills beyond the bowl of gardens.
Hedges and quaking tulips were all that remained, new life unable to bloom until the remnants of winter relented. Ethermore wouldn’t warm as the other kingdoms did. Regardless, a glimmer of excitement unfurled at the thought of witnessing the unveiling of spring.
A shrieked-growl drew my eyes to the woods.
Guards no longer patrolled the tree line. I discovered why when I gazed up, shielding my eyes against the glare of the cloud-covered sun. The fire had spread uphill. That, or there were now more blazes burning near—or even within—the mountain village.
But it was the creature moving through the sky that succeeded in chilling my blood.
My breathing quickened as I hurried closer to the trees.
A felynx.
The monstrous mixture of feline and canine flew toward the smoke, the shadow upon the felynx’s back barely visible between its wings.
I’d never seen one outside of books and paintings. Bernie claimed she had when she was young and passing through towns bordering The Bonelands. I wondered how many of them roamed the continent, unable to fly beyond the wards entrapping their kin.
Wards made to keep them in, not out.
What Atakan had said about leftovers returned. I’d surmised there’d be plenty, as had my father in all his dealings, but I’d never expected to see them. To have them venture so boldly close to Cloud Castle in their desperation.
If they refused to accept their fate, the Unseelie were to be captured, imprisoned, and interrogated. Yet the patrols had been called hunts for good reason.
I’d assumed they’d hide in order to survive.
Many probably did, I thought as I continued toward the tree line. Many more probably weren’t like them— like me —and were not content to play games in order to remain breathing.
Disdain clawed sharply at my chest when another felynx soared over the treetops. I didn’t know whether it was for myself or the Unseelie faeries intent on causing destruction even after they’d been defeated.
I had no idea what I was even doing. It wasn’t as if I could get too close. It would take hours to reach those fires on foot. I should have been inside, taking advantage of the quieter castle by bathing as long as I wished and lounging around.
But now confronted by this different form of danger, the luxury of safety no longer seemed so appealing.
I’d heard of skirmishes, but not once in my two weeks at Cloud Castle had I heard rumors of this type of violence—battles with armies and beasts and fire. Perhaps the castle staff hadn’t known.
They surely would now.
Branches snapped under my flat boots, the leather too fine and thin for such terrain. I didn’t care. I tugged my gown higher and followed the sound of another ferocious roar. A wolf shifter, perhaps.
Rushing steps crashed through the brush uphill, and I paused mere feet within the tree line.
“It’s southbound.” The male warrior’s shout carried through the trees, as if delivered by the mild breeze. Heavier smoke now traveled upon it.
More hurried steps echoed. Armor glinted distantly.
Before I could decide whether to cease exploring, another roar sent birds flapping from treetops into the skies.
Body heat met my back.
A hand clapped over my mouth, and a familiar scent liquefied my limbs. “Just where do you think you’re going?”
I whirled, my heart pounding so fast that I shoved the prince. “You scared me.”
My meager strength didn’t move him an inch.
His brow rose. Blood crusted it and browned thick strands of his near-white hair. “Me?” He gestured past me to the woods. “I am nothing but a thorn compared to where you were headed.”
Though the warning intrigued, I said, “I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“Liar,” Atakan crooned.
The sound of his voice, the sight of his lean and seemingly unharmed physique, and the emerald sparks in those mischievous bronze eyes…
There was no calling the warmth that spiraled through me anything but pure relief.
Eyeing the blood splatter on his burgundy tunic and the drops on his leather-lined pants, I smiled. “Are you injured again?”
He wasn’t. But the barb did as intended.
His slight sneer brought forth a feeling of comfort that shouldn’t be, cold tendrils that ridded my body of that misguided warmth.
“You’re out of luck today, dread, but if you tell me what you’re doing out here, maybe I’ll let you touch me anyway.” He closed the space between us, his dimple catching my gaze. “Playing pretend might be fun.”
“If you need to pretend to hide the fact that you want me to touch you, then be my guest.” I shrugged. “Regardless, I’m not interested.”
“That’s why you waited all night for me in my bed.” His grin was as beastly as the creatures growling in the distance. “Naked.” Then he looked over my shoulder to the woods. “You’re interested in the bloodshed.”
The reminder of that night almost made me bristle. “I’m merely curious about what’s happening,” I admitted. “And why it’s happening so close to the castle.”
Another roar fractured the silence trailing my words.
Atakan glanced at the skies. Then my hand was snatched, and I was dragged back across the grounds.
Before we reached the castle, he stopped at a small garden shed astride the courtyard’s pebbled path. He opened the wooden door and tugged me inside, then released me into the dark.
He closed the door. Alarm prodded when he slid a rake through the rusted handle to keep anyone from entering.
Light filtered in through slits between the rotting slats, illuminating Atakan’s rigid shoulders and the tic in his jaw when he finally turned to me.
I retreated a step and collided with a pile of sacks. Old grain, I realized, pressing my hand to the hessian and squeezing to better keep my heart from racing.
I didn’t want him to hear it. I didn’t want him to mistake my nervousness and excitement for fear. I didn’t even know how to differentiate between the three to decide how I felt.
And I had no time.
In two strides, he stood before me. Over me. His hand swept into my hair to the back of my head. The strands tangled in his fingers were given a harsh tug, effectively tilting my head until my eyes met his, just as he desired.
He searched them, my face, then my chest.
The latter heaved with my shortened breaths, though I tried to control them.
He made that impossible when he kicked my feet apart and pressed so close, his groin encountered my stomach. “I’m going to ask you one more time,” he whispered. “What were you doing in the woods?”
“I was hardly in the woods.”
He simply waited, those cruel features void of expression.
I sighed. “I’ve already told you.”
He hummed. His other hand settled at the curve of my hip, then squeezed it. Heat flooded my body. A devastating grin sent it straight to my core when he asked, “Do you like that?”
I needn’t have answered, let alone lied. If he hadn’t already, then any second now, he’d be able to scent the truth. Still, I smirked. “Like what?”
His gaze narrowed, and his smile drooped. “I see.”
That gaze stayed on mine as he ever so slowly inched my skirts up my legs, allowing time to answer his question and to tell him to stop. To prove him wrong.
I couldn’t when I didn’t want to.
Cold air coated my skin. I barely felt it—felt nothing but the whoosh of my heart and the graze of his fingers and knuckles as he gathered my skirts to my waist. Keeping his eyes on mine, he released my hair to lift me onto the sacks. He tucked the cotton layers behind me, beneath me, and I bit my lip when his fingers slid underneath my ass.
He was so close, I could snatch his head and kiss his luscious mouth.
But he laid a hand on my thigh and waited. When I merely glared, impatient, he moved it higher. His eyes flared. “You’re not wearing undergarments.”
“The few I brought with me are being washed,” I lied.
He saw through it, yet I doubted he cared. His thumb brushed my mound, and I shivered. “The woods.” His voice thickened, throat dipping as he said, “Tell me.”
I heard the unspoken command within— play with me.
And I wanted to. By the darkest skies, for once, I wanted to so badly I might have questioned why, had I the chance. “I saw fire,” I said truthfully. “And I’ve been bored, so I’ve taken to roaming the grounds in your absence.”
He rewarded me by parting me with a lone finger.
I gasped, gripping his arm.
Muscle clenched beneath my hand. He peered at my flushing cheeks and my heaving chest. When his head rose, the tip of his nose skimmed mine, those long lashes bobbing. “There’s more.”
Not wanting him to stop, to cease touching me, I happily rambled on. “Guards normally patrol the tree line. I suppose they were called elsewhere. Perhaps to assist in the mountains. So I crept closer out of curiosity.”
A glide of his finger through me made my teeth join and my legs spread wider.
“How far would you have gone?” he asked.
I had the distinct feeling he was not merely referring to a walk in the woods but to the night I’d left my own ball to wait for him in his bed.
Exhilaration coursed through me when I clasped his cheek and he didn’t pull away. “I suppose we’ll never know.”
Then I kissed him.
His finger entered my body, and as I flinched and moaned, his tongue entered my mouth.
For moments that stole then returned my breath in a hitched flutter, he just held his finger still and as deep as it would go. His tongue stroked mine before retreating.
He sucked in a ragged inhale, his exhale heating my lips. “You’re so warm,” he groaned out. “So fucking soft.”
Even if I could have spoken, I had no response to that.
“I need to feel you with my cock.” When I said nothing and only blinked in a daze, he wriggled his finger. I whimpered, and he grinned. “Do you want it inside you?”
“I’m not playing this game again.”
“But you’re such a good little player,” he crooned, kissing the corner of my mouth. “Fine.” He withdrew his finger. His hooded eyes soaked in my slackening features as he slowly pushed it back into my body. “Give me those venomous lips.”
I did, and luxuriated in his throaty groan when my teeth took his plush lower lip. I sucked it, then nipped as I released it, only for him to take my own. He bit it so hard, pain clanged against the chorus of pleasure swimming through my bloodstream.
As copper dampened a sweet caress from his mouth, I found I didn’t hate it. I gripped his face, urging him to do it again. To do more.
To make me feel so much more.
He obliged and curled his finger inside me, stroking as his mouth battled mine. He did so again after withdrawing, stroking over and over until I was tugging at his hair and his mouth was at my throat. His teeth marked my collarbone, and his broad shoulder quaked beneath the clawed grip of my hand.
Pleasure dizzied.
My heart thundered in my ears alongside his hoarse curse when I began to shake—when I began to fracture. I braced for it. Breath halted, I braced for the same euphoria and pain I’d experienced last time.
But a low laugh cracked the haze. Cold washed in as his finger and mouth left me trembling.
I should have touched myself to carry me over the edge. Instead, I glared in disbelief. Though such wickedness shouldn’t have surprised me at all.
Atakan stepped back, his finger in his mouth. He sucked, eyes aglow in the dark of the garden shed. His mouth curved as he surveyed me, as he watched me shove down my skirts. “Something the matter, dread?”
I wanted to hurl obscenities at him. I wanted to leap at him and glue my mouth to his and push any part of him into my body to alleviate the ache he’d given me.
But only one answer would suffice.
So I smiled while smoothing my hair back from my face. “Nothing I cannot fix myself.”
His amusement died.
I sauntered past him to the door.
At the last moment, I thought better of it and pretended to trip and teeter. He cursed, stumbling back against a tower of pails. They hit the damp stone with a racket that would be heard by anyone nearby as I fell against him.
“Oh, my skies.” My hands grappled for purchase, one brushing his erection. My eyes bulged, a genuine reaction that ridded his anger and earned me a deep laugh far too lovely for a creature so hideous. I cleared my throat, my voice flatter than I’d intended. “I suppose my inferior half-human senses are to blame.”
His expression sobered as we stared at one another in the gloom.
It was strange to simply look without worry nor interruption. So strange that I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge just how enjoyable it was to study him this intently.
I stepped back to leave when a flash of light through the wood slats unveiled a bruise along his sharp jawline.
Without thinking, I touched it.
He let me.
“How bad was it?” I breathed, gently tracing the purple smudge.
His brows were furrowed when I glanced up at his eyes. Emerald had nearly swallowed the bronze whole. “None of your business.”
My lips twitched. “Of course.” I leaned in, my mouth skimming the bruise, and whispered, “But whether we like it or not, you are my business, and I asked you a question.”
His fingers stole my chin, his glower so severe, I half feared he’d shove me away and storm out into the gardens.
But it softened the longer he looked down at me, and disappeared entirely when he murmured, “Enough to make me miss the creature I loathe the most.”
Then his mouth captured and consumed mine.
He walked me backward to the sacks again, my hands lifting my skirts before his could leave my cheeks.
One tangled in my hair, his hold tight, and his rough words exhaled into my mouth like much-needed air. “I want you. I want you as much as I loathe you—so much, it feels like I can’t breathe.” His parted lips dragged across my cheek, his whisper scathing near my ear. “Give me back my fucking breath.”
Though this war between us was far from over, I smiled against his cheek.
“What would you do for it, monster?” I dared to ask, even as I unfastened the leather ties of his pants.
“Murder, maim, and…” He groaned when my hand wrapped around his cock.
Thick and long, the silken weight in my hand concerned. It also delighted. I had him, quite literally, in the palm of my halfling hand. “And?” I prompted with a gentle squeeze and a kiss to that sinister dimple.
“Bleed,” he confessed through gnashed teeth.
Victory sang through my veins. A song so sweet, I released him and pushed up onto the sacks of grain. I bunched my skirts and opened my legs. “Show me just how much you loathe me, my prince.”
He took himself in his hand, eyes fixed on my sex as he rubbed the head of his cock over it. “Say that again.”
“Say what?” I fluttered my lashes, feigning confusion.
Our eyes locked, and he smirked. It widened into a menacing grin as he stepped against the piled sacks—effectively pushing himself inside me.
My body bucked.
He gripped my thighs, forcing them to remain open as he filled me in one slow yet determined thrust. His nostrils flared when he seated himself, and his chest heaved as he exhaled a ragged, “ Fuck. ”
I concurred but for a different reason.
Pain scalded. It spread from my core to tighten each limb and steal the beat of my heart. My pulse screamed. My eyes burned. I closed them, swallowing thickly.
Atakan squeezed my thighs. “Look at me.”
I wouldn’t. Not until I was certain the tears had abated.
“Mildred.”
It might have been the first time he’d ever solely used my name. The guttural tone was so shocking, so deliciously telling, I obeyed.
My lashes lifted. The bronze in his eyes had been reduced to flecks swimming among an emerald sea. He frowned at the sheen coating my own.
A quiet snarl made me tense until he gently parted my lips with his.
I exhaled a sigh as my eyes closed again. He licked beneath my upper lip, then kissed my lower lip so softly, I shouldn’t have felt it everywhere.
As though he was deciding which part of my mouth he enjoyed most, he licked lazily at my teeth, tongue, and lips before snatching the latter in a prolonged and bruising kiss. Over and over, he repeated the same explorations until I eventually wrapped my legs around him and fought back.
Only then did he slowly begin to move.
And with each blistering thrust, the burn gradually extinguished.
I wished the same could have been said for the organ in my chest. My eyes opened. My stuttered exhale made my lips leave his. His gaze refused to relinquish mine, and my heart danced, drunk on feeling that riddled me with fear and confusion.
As if hearing the wild beat, Atakan increased the pace.
My stunted breaths became moans I failed to quiet, my teeth sinking into my lip.
He withdrew and glanced between us. “So gloriously wet.” He hissed as he eased back in. “One might think you loathe me as much as I loathe you.”
“I’ll wager I loathe you more,” I said, all breath.
“You’ll wager, huh?” His exhale of laughter dried when my thighs began to shake, and his harsh swallow deepened his voice. “Prove it,” he said. “Come on my cock before I fill your pretty cunt and leave you dripping on these sacks.”
Those hideous words sank into my skin, my very bones, awakening and emboldening.
I grabbed the chest of his tunic and brought his mouth to mine. “Make me.” My teeth nipped his upper lip.
His thrusts sharpened. “Fine,” he gritted, and his hand swept over my cheek into my hair.
A yank tilted my head back, his mouth ravaging mine far too briefly before roaming to my jaw and throat. All the while, his thrusts slowed and grew more precise as he listened to each moan and felt every contraction.
I grasped his neck. Stubble lining his typically clean-shaven face prickled my other hand as I clutched his cheek.
Sensation delivered a delirium that made it all too easy to forget who he was. Just how wretched he was.
It made his groaned approval believable. “Skies, you feel so fucking good, too good…” He growled when I unraveled, then continued to deliver me to heights I’d never thought to reach for.
Not with him.
It should have been impossible for a creature intent on giving me pain to gift me pleasure beyond words.
And as every part of me tensed and shook, bliss falling through me from my scalp to the tips of my curling toes, I wondered if maybe—just maybe—I could do more than survive this rotten prince.
As he stilled and jerked, I wondered if I could enjoy him, claim him, and perhaps even ruin him the same way he was ruining me.
His head dropped to my shoulder, breaths leaving him as fast as my own.
For minutes that felt both never-ending and far too fleeting, we didn’t move. Neither of us seemed able to.
So when he finally freed his cock from my body, his hooded eyes clasped to the mess he’d made between my thighs, I failed to believe his cruel words. “Well, that scratched an itch.” He tucked himself into his pants. On his way to the door, he tied them and threw me a smirk. “Now I can cease wondering.”