THIRTEEN
S ound and sight returned slowly, but I remained unbalanced where I’d arrived upon the unfamiliar stone floor.
I braced my trembling hands against it and looked up through the tangled mess of my hair when a man spoke.
“Well…” He leaned forward in his chair and rubbed a hand over his thickly bristled jaw. “I’ll be fucking damned.”
Not a man, I realized as I moved back onto my ass and breathed in his scent. A spiced and smoky musk.
Another faerie.
Dizziness dissipated, and I assessed what appeared to be a bedchamber. The marble fireplace was empty, the portrait above ruined by slashes. I frowned at the carvings in the headboard of a bed large enough for a family of four. Silk sheets rippled, aglow from sconces hung above tall nightstands.
Looking back at the stone beneath me, I breathed, “What happened? I must have…” I swallowed. “Did I vanish?”
There was no such thing as a half faerie with magical abilities. After years of researching, I knew it was true.
I was dreaming, surely.
The male just made a strange noise, a grumble of sorts, and kicked at something.
The featherbone.
It clacked against the floor in front of him. She never told me what it does , my father had said what felt like eons ago.
Well, apparently, it took people places. Places they shouldn’t be. Despair howled through my mind. For I knew. I knew exactly where I was before I said, “Tell me who you are.”
“Vane,” he grunted. He needn’t have said anything more.
King Vane. The Unseelie king.
My eyes closed. I was so perilously doomed.
They opened at the sound of a rustling swish and widened as the king rose from the large armchair. A book might have been set down on the round table beside it. I wasn’t sure because I couldn’t remove my eyes from his settling wings.
Black feathers lined the sharply curved apexes, morphing into a steel gray beyond broad shoulders. So broad, I glanced at his body and questioned how any wings could transport a creature of his size. Muscle twitched in arms the size of small tree trunks as he clapped his hands together and walked toward me.
I made to stand until he said, “Do not run. I will only frighten you more by hunting you.”
Fear and anger got the better of me when I should have kept my mouth firmly shut. “You’re threatening me? I’m not even supposed to be—”
“Informing you,” he supplied.
His voice was thick and rough, like the mud puddings I’d made in the woods when I was young.
I stared at his bulky leather boots, similar to what I’d seen in our military, and pinched my wrist. Nothing happened, so I bit my tongue. Blood filled my mouth, the coppery tang too real for this to be a dream.
The room grew dark.
His intimidating form blocked the meager light as he crouched before me. I refrained from flinching away, even as my fingers itched to reach for the featherbone so that I might stab him with it and run.
His nostrils flared as he sniffed.
Blue eyes as bright as the midmorning sky searched my features with a nearly comical scrutiny. A small crease appeared between his furrowed brows, and a soft rumble climbed his throat as he exhaled.
Then he snatched my hand.
His grip was tight, his own hand so large that mine looked like an infant’s. He brought it to his face, and I thought maybe he intended to kiss it.
But he held it against his long nose and scented me. My palm was given the same treatment. His warm exhale tickled, and I blinked rapidly. He grumbled again, frowning at my hand, then at my face. “Merciful Mother.”
He dropped my hand. It fell to my lap as he grabbed a lock of my hair and leaned closer.
And I was no longer so shocked that I would further indulge whatever this strangeness might be.
I pulled away, scowling. “What are you doing? ”
Confusion lowered his harsh brows. “That is obvious.”
“If it was, I wouldn’t have asked.”
He stilled, jaw tensing. After glaring at me for a moment, his rugged features eased. “I’m trying to determine whether you are the one.”
“The one?” I asked.
“The one we need.”
“For what?”
“To break the curse,” he said far too simply. Then he straightened to his full and imposing height.
“Curse?” I stood, too, regretting it when I wobbled. Stars danced, blurring my vision.
He caught my forearm. “You are not used to vanishing.”
“Whatever that was…” I swallowed thickly. “It was not vanishing.”
This king was more than a head taller than me. I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes, which roamed over me. He blinked when I stepped free of his hold, his long lashes a shade darker than his deep red hair.
“You didn’t mean to use the featherbone,” he determined. “To come to my realm.”
I laughed, perplexed and astonished. “Why would I mean to do that?” I didn’t dare say where I’d disappeared from, nor who I was.
I feared he already knew.
He glanced at the featherbone. “Long ago, an elder prophesied that a curse would befall these lands.” He looked back at me. “Many years dawdled by, and although tensions grew between kingdoms, her ramblings were almost forgotten.”
So the featherbone had been spelled. Only, what that spell was, and why it had answered to me… I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“And then it happened,” I needlessly said.
The king nodded once, arms folding over his wide chest. The bulk of him creaked the stitching of his gray tunic. “You hail from a family of schemers.”
Thoughtless words flew from me. “Don’t even try to pretend you know me, King. I’m not sure what I’m doing here, but I can assure you…” I gestured to the arched windows on either side of the fireplace. “The one you need is still somewhere out there.”
“That featherbone and your scent say otherwise.” His plump lips rolled between his teeth, then he confirmed that he did, in fact, know me. “The heartless prince is all over you, Princess Mildred.”
Dread cinched my stomach.
I whirled in a circle, not wanting to give him my back but too desperate to care. I marched to the bone, picked it up, and squeezed it just as I had on Atakan’s balcony.
Nothing happened.
A low and vibrating chuckle prickled my skin and stiffened my spine. “It has served its purpose. Might as well throw it in the hearth.”
I turned back, wanting to unleash every inch of my panic and confusion upon him. Perhaps the featherbone was at least good for gouging out one of those pretty eyes.
Alas, he was not Atakan. This Vane was a monster in his own right, certainly, but he was also a king. A different beast.
A foe I’d yet to study enough to survive.
Irritated and unsure how in the darkness I would fix this, I shucked off my coat and tossed it to the floor.
The king looked at it, then at me when I began to pace the length of a deep brown rug at the foot of the bed. Denial and pleading were useless. As was defiance. “Did this elder happen to say how the wards might be broken?”
His answer came instantly. “She said to remember that a curse ends for the same reason it was made. A captured witch who aided in erecting the wards confirmed as much.”
I didn’t ask what had become of the witch. If the information this king needed had been provided, then they were dead. “I’m going to need you to speak plainly. It’s been quite a night.”
He huffed. “Our enemy stole my father’s heart, so now we must steal our enemy’s.” There was a pause before he said, “Prince Atakan’s heart, to be precise.”
“I’m assuming you don’t mean that in the literal sense.” Now was not the time to inform such a monstrous creature that his enemy had no heart to steal.
King Vane knew. He’d even said it himself.
Which meant I was seriously doomed.
I needed a plan. I needed to escape this realm before he realized I wasn’t capable of doing anything. Yet again, I needed a strategy for survival.
Even if it meant playing another game.
Fear clipped the question Vane waited for. “And how might you accomplish that?”
The Unseelie king cocked his head. A slow smile rendered his features less severe and more alluring. “You must fall in love with me.”