TWENTY-NINE
M oonlight glinted on the armor covering the Seelie king’s chest, and illuminated a long streak of dried blood on his tunic sleeve.
What Pholly said earlier screamed through my mind like a howling wind. Atakan had kept me in the dungeon because of his father.
And I was now alone with him.
I hadn’t needed to question why Atakan wished to keep me from him, and my assumptions were confirmed as that warm smile waned.
“I find it interesting…” Garran gazed down at the silk in his hands. “That no one thought to inform me of your return. I learned of it from a beast we captured at a gap in the wards.”
I swallowed, hoping he didn’t hear it or the uneven rhythm of my heartbeat.
He looked up. “You’ve done something rather unfortunate, Mildred, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
I remained quiet, though that part of me inwardly roared—the part that insisted on survival over all else. Flicking my eyes to the rumpled bedding, I purposely thought of Atakan.
King Garran released a weary exhale, then finally seemed to notice the egg I still clutched. His head cocked, arms falling to his sides. “Why are you holding a monstrous egg?”
I found my voice then. “It’s a pytherion egg.”
What’s happening? Atakan’s voice startled, although summoned intentionally.
But every inch of me was now absorbed in Garran’s slow steps toward me.
Your father , was all I could manage.
The wood floor creaked as Garran stopped and rubbed at his beard. His hazel eyes remained trained on the egg. “Dare I ask what you’re doing with it?” His gaze rose, aglow with accusation. “Do you intend to lure the fire-breathing beasts to this castle?”
Drivel on about the fucking eggs. Tell him how and why and who. Atakan’s voice was sharp, like claws scraping over my mind . Just don’t stop talking. I’m coming.
“No,” I said to the king and lifted my chin. “Quite the opposite. We found it in the city this evening, and we’ll be taking it elsewhere as soon as possible.”
His heavy brows jumped. “We?”
I wouldn’t name who’d accompanied me. I simply said, “While I was in The Bonelands, I heard their plans to bring an army of pytherions to this castle and the royal city.”
“You just heard it, did you?” Another smile curled his lips, and they twitched before he sighed. “Did you also hear that the wards entrapping them have ruptured?”
I nodded.
He nodded, too. “You ruined them, Mildred. You broke a curse that cannot be broken, yet somehow…” He threw his hands out, the silk falling from his fingers to land in a gentle heap. “Here we are.”
“It isn’t my fault you believed your son to be heartless.” I refused to step back, to cower, as Garran reached behind him, and I heard the whispering ring of an unsheathing blade. “And it isn’t my fault he brought me back here.”
At that, he tensed. As if I’d confirmed his suspicions, his features scrunched.
He inhaled deeply. “But it is your fault.” Exhaling a quiet and rasped laugh, he shook his head. “Any hot-blooded male can recognize that scent.” His chin rose, eyes sparking as he stared me down. “The scent of a freshly forged mating bond.”
I gave that no response.
He belted out another laugh, gesturing to the soiled bed. “Not to mention the fucking reek of it all over this chamber.”
Heat crept up my neck. For once, I didn’t care. I let it—let it infuse my cheeks. Intentionally, I stared at his boots and stumbled on my words, “I didn’t know he was my mate.”
“But he knew you were his.”
That made me look up at him, and I pretended I had no inkling of his intentions. Pretended to be the besotted half faerie who never thought she’d win the nonexistent heart of Prince Atakan. “Since when?”
King Garran waved his finger. “I see what you’re doing, Princess, but I’m afraid even if you were more believable, your time here has now come to an end.”
“Why?”
He sent me a flat look. “You know why, Mildred.”
“But where shall I go?” I blinked furiously—as if to fight back panicked tears. “Home to Bernie?”
“Your body, yes, along with a sorrowful apology for failing to save you from the Unseelie king’s invading forces.”
He was serious. Of course he was.
As torrential fear tried to make me lose my perilous footing, I scrambled for something to say. Anything to say. “Killing me would be unwise, King. Not only will you then need to contend with my sister, who will see through your lies, but also your son.”
“Atakan understands that your very presence is a threat we can no longer tolerate. Hence why he snatched you from The Bonelands before you could further damage those wards or make them fall entirely.”
He was lying. We both knew that wasn’t why Atakan had come for me. But as the dagger moved from behind his back to hang at his side, it didn’t matter.
And there was nothing I could say that would matter.
Atakan said he was coming and to stall his father. But there wasn’t anything left to do but set the egg down and find a way to defend myself. Garran was all of four steps away, so I said, “Give me a moment,” and headed to the bed.
As soon as I set the egg on the bedding, the king was at my back. The tip of the blade poked through my cloak to nick at my side.
“We can make this painless, Princess.”
I didn’t want to do it, but I trusted the scales were as strong as any metal. Quickly, I heaved the egg over my shoulder. Garran grunted as it met his face.
Stumbling back, he clutched his nose.
Then he growled and moved faster than I could have anticipated, taking me down onto the bed.
The egg rolled toward the pillows, the wind knocked from me as Garran landed atop me with the blade poised at my jugular. Blood dripped from his nostril to my cheek as he grinned. “Painful it is.”
A different growl came from the balcony. But I couldn’t spare a glance at the beast who’d alighted upon it.
Garran did, though, and it cost him.
I shoved the blade from my throat before I lifted my knee to his groin. He grunted but barely moved. Not until Meadow snarled in warning as she entered the prince’s rooms.
He rose then, dagger in hand. It clattered to the floor when the felynx leaped at him.
I screamed, the sound covering Garran’s howl of pain.
She might have been strong, but she was not yet fully grown, which showed as Garran tossed her off his arm.
Meadow slipped over the wood floor. Blood dripped from her maw. Garran’s.
It soaked the sleeve of his tunic. He kept his eyes on the felynx as he reclaimed his dagger. She bared her teeth, hunching to strike again.
I ran.
The king whirled before I reached him and grabbed me by the throat. I kicked and clawed at his wrists, but it was futile. He walked me backward, the blade raised at Meadow when she growled.
The king threw me down onto the bed once more.
As the dagger returned to my throat, his other hand twisted behind him. Meadow released a rasped mewl, her advance halted.
The king’s eyes stayed fastened to me. His jaw tightened, and the hand holding the dagger trembled slightly. Energy gathered like wind, bursting in a flare of warmth when my felynx slumped to the floor.
Tears welled. He’d used his air magic on her lungs.
Satisfied, the king gave his entire attention to me. “Now, be a good little halfling, and I promise I won’t kill your pet after I finish with you.”
I sneered, “Your promises don’t mean—”
“Hush.” I feared even swallowing as he pressed the blade into my skin. “This has already taken far longer than—”
The door crashed open.
Atakan’s scent was a cloying cloud providing instant relief, and his venomous tone a sweet song. “Unless you wish to wear your entrails as a crown when I chain you in iron and bury you alive, remove yourself from my bed and my mate.”
But Garran didn’t move. His eyes stuck to mine. The blade shook at my neck.
He wasn’t going to back down. I knew it within my quaking bones. He was a king. A king willing to do whatever it took to hold on to victory.
A king enraged.
He roared, forced away from me by the armor covering his torso, and was tossed to the floor. He rose onto an elbow, glaring at his son and seething between clenched teeth, “You know what needs to be done. If you won’t let me, you must handle this problem yourself.”
I sat up, chest heaving.
Atakan, dressed head to toe in tight black, didn’t remove his gaze from the king. “I’m well aware of what we need.” He jerked his head to the open door. “A word first, Father.” Not a request but a cold command.
He turned on his heel, apparently confident the king wouldn’t attempt to kill me while his back was turned.
My hand came away dotted with blood when I touched my neck. Garran had barely broken the skin.
The Seelie king finally tore his furious gaze from me and peeled himself off the floor, lacking the graceful fluidity of his son. He whispered tauntingly, “If you wish to give us something new to hunt, now is the time to flee, Princess.”
The door slammed behind him.
I hurried to Meadow, brushing my hand over her fluffy cheek. She was breathing. Shallow, but breathing.
“You’ve gone too far.” Garran’s voice floated through and beneath the door.
So I sat against it, listening as I watched Meadow and determined they stood on the stairs to Atakan’s rooms.
“Why would you accept a bond with the creature who can undo everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve? Are you as fucking mad as they all say?”
“Far worse, I’m afraid,” Atakan drawled. “I intend to marry her.” Silence stunned like a blade slowly arcing through the air. “Tomorrow.”
My heart stopped.
Garran laughed—an avalanche of humorless disbelief. “What beneath the skies are you playing at?”
If Atakan answered, I failed to hear it.
“Why?” Garran seethed so quietly that I almost missed it. Then each word became louder, growled in growing rage. “Why would you marry a halfling? A creature you’ve incessantly claimed to loathe?”
Atakan’s tone remained aloof. “Call it insurance for the kingdom. Bloodshed will drown these lands any day now, and we need to ensure our longevity.”
Garran shouted, “Since when do you care about this fucking kingdom?”
“Since I’m the new king.”
Not a moment after those chilling words, a thud echoed up the stairs.
I barely breathed in the eerie silence that followed, staring wide-eyed at a pair of Atakan’s suede boots.
He couldn’t have, surely. But I knew before I rose on trembling legs and opened the door.
When I peered over the railing, I knew I would find Garran sprawled beneath the spiraling wooden stairs.
What I didn’t expect was the dark hole in his armored chest.
Atakan didn’t move from where he leaned against the railing a few steps below me. Staring at his hand, he murmured with a calm that shouldn’t exist. “Go and bathe, dread.”
But I couldn’t remove my eyes from his crimson hand—from the heart he held within it. Couldn’t keep from wondering how in the darkest skies he’d pried it from a chest, and one covered in armor.
“Mildred,” he said too softly.
And too close.
The use of my name delivered my eyes to his. There was nothing there. No remorse. No fear. Nothing. Just bronze burning in the dim of the tower’s innards.
On the step beneath me, our noses nearly perfectly aligned, he observed me with a faraway look in those ever-changing eyes. They turned a hypnotic green as he ran his finger over the organ in his hand and lifted it to my mouth.
I should have, yet I didn’t recoil as he pressed that bloodstained finger to my lips. “Let this be our little secret.”
My eyes closed. My heart slowed.
His finger slid over my mouth, replaced by his whispering lips. “He’ll never touch you now.” He kissed me, then licked Garran’s blood from my lips. “So go bathe while I tend to this unfortunate mess.”
Even if I had the desire to argue with him, I knew it wasn’t the time. I opened my eyes and stared into his, then nodded and slipped soundlessly back into his rooms.
Nearly tripping on the way to the bathing room, I gripped the bedpost. I blinked over at Meadow, then at the bed where I’d almost died three times.
Twice from a blade and once from an hours-long mating frenzy.
Immersed in the warming water, I withheld a crazed laugh when I thought of the latter. The extremes that had befallen me within a matter of hours. I laughed before I could cry. I laughed until the sound grew hoarse, then I turned off the faucet with my toes.
I was stirred awake by hands slipping beneath my water-wrinkled body. Instinctively, I clung to Atakan’s neck.
“I said bathe, not sleep,” he muttered.
“Tired,” I mumbled, and tucked my nose into his neck.
“Obviously.”
I inhaled him deep into my lungs and felt something within both awaken and settle.
He set me upon the towel he’d lain over the bed. “I never gave you your own,” he whispered, patting me dry with another. “I couldn’t, of course, and I also wanted you to smell like me.”
Those words roused me.
The memory of Garran returned with his scent that had yet to fade from his son’s bedchamber. What he’d tried to do. That he’d intended to kill me. And what Atakan had done.
He’d murdered his own father. The Seelie king was dead.
Atakan was now the uncrowned king of Ethermore.
I gazed up at him, his features still blurry, as I rasped, “How did you do that?”
“By refusing to put another towel in the bathing room,” he said dryly. Pieces of blond hair fell over his brow as he took his time rubbing water from my stomach and breasts.
“Not that.” I placed my hand over his at my chest, then pushed my elbow beneath me to rise. “Your father.”
We were so close, I could feel the warmth of his breath on my lips. I could lean forward and kiss him. Bite him.
Vow to punish him forevermore for bonding me to him without my permission.
But loathing him for the mating bond was pointless when I’d asked him to marry me to fix the alliance between our kingdoms—and when I remembered the strange things he’d done. Such as locking me in the dungeon to keep word of my return from reaching his father.
As if waiting for my vitriol, his lips wriggled.
I scowled.
He whispered against my mouth, “I think you’re far more interesting when you talk in your sleep.” Then he gently pushed my shoulder.
I fell back onto the bed, but snatched his wrist before he could leave. “Liar.”
He glared at my hand, then at my face.
“You killed him, Atakan.”
Exasperated, he swiped his other hand through his hair. “And?”
Those strands stayed right where he’d put them, and I observed the shadows gathering beneath his luminescent eyes. “We both know it wasn’t to save me.”
He stared down at me, expressionless yet again.
He remained that way, eventually saying, “I assume you know why the Unseelie began to attack us before we formed the alliance with your father.”
“Yes.”
Atakan waited.
I frowned, but said, “Queen Kalista fled from the Unseelie king and fell in love with your father.” I stroked his wrist. “Who claimed he’d rather see her dead than suffer a marriage of torture. So when she tried to return to her homeland to stop her husband’s violent hunts for her, Garran killed her.”
“Somewhat true.” He peered down at my roaming finger. “Kalista’s husband indeed hunted and caused ruin for years, not knowing the creature providing his wife refuge was my father.”
“How did he never discover she was in this castle?” He knew just as well as I did that secrets danced through castle halls.
“She was tucked away in a cottage deep within the woods surrounding this castle. My father’s love for a queen that was not his to keep made him a blight on this realm.” His laugh was brief and absent of humor. “A curse worse than any other.”
“Because he killed her?”
“Because he should have. Instead, he eventually sparked the rumor of Kalista’s death and gave her the means to flee.” He stared at the ceiling, his whispered words riddled with scorn. “Not only from her Unseelie husband, who vowed to ravage these lands until he drew his last breath, but also from this continent.”
Stunned, I watched his throat bob and those long lashes flutter toward his sharp cheeks. The drained coffers Pholly had mentioned when she’d told me how she and Phineus had ended up at Cloud Castle…
Breathless, I said, “Queen Kalista lives?”
“Yes, though only the goddesses know where.” Atakan rose from the bed. “In return for her freedom, she had to agree to leave me behind.” As he vanished from the chamber, he said, “My mother left and never once looked back.”