THIRTY-THREE
“I told you I didn’t want a pet,” I said by way of greeting. “This is the second time she’s been used to lure me into danger, but you insisted.”
Vane drawled, “Marrying monstrous males is dangerous indeed.” Yet there was no humor in those blue eyes. Not so much as a twitch of his mouth.
He hadn’t moved from the black diamond paver he stood on, which led me to believe the wards on the castle began there.
“I do hope you haven’t harmed her.” I remained before the doors and crossed my arms. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive the crimes you’ve already committed.” That ache resurfaced and softened my voice. “Don’t make it worse, Vane.”
“I don’t want your forgiveness, Mildred.” Every word was gritted, almost pushed between his teeth. “I just need your husband to die.”
Although his tone made me more than uneasy, I still tried to delay whatever his plan might be. “Have you seen him?” I gestured lazily toward the thunderous noise coming from the other side of the castle. “I don’t like your chances.”
He dropped Meadow, and she yelped before darting behind me into the castle.
Now, all I needed to do was step back inside and close—
“Mildred?” Phineus called.
Fuck.
Vane cocked his brow, then held out his hand. “I will get to him, and I won’t hesitate to slit his throat and use him instead.”
I looked at that hand. “What do you want from me, Vane?”
“He’s almost here.” He jerked his chin behind me, a crooked smile revealing a glimpse of his clenched teeth. “More of your friends accompany him.”
Their steps were hard to hear over the pytherions in the valley. But they were indeed headed this way.
I didn’t even make it to the paver he stood on. He reached out and snatched my hand. He was too strong for me to fight, and fighting was useless when I’d made my choice.
Between one failed breath and the next, we vanished.
Darkness dispersed slowly, unveiling the star-flecked sky and a series of cottages.
A village.
Two armed warriors stood beneath the broken awning of the home Vane tugged me toward.
Hurried steps over the grass gave my attention to another warrior, who slowed as he neared and rushed out, “Jex just returned with a report, Sire.”
Vane halted. He grunted, “Speak,” as if he already knew what he would say and didn’t wish to hear it.
“They’ve turned.”
His question was flat. “All of them?”
“Nearly.” Fear shone in the male’s brown eyes. “Nineteen. Two are deceased.”
“Then use what remains to take them down,” Vane ordered. “Ready the iron bolts.”
“Sire.” A female approached. A warrior, blood streaking her cheek and gleaming on her armor. “The years we’ve dedicated, the bonds they’ve made with them…”
“What good is a bond with a murderous beast you can no longer control, Saraiya?” Vane growled.
She flinched and stopped a safe distance from the king.
Looking at the male who’d given him the report, Vane said, “Have Jex deliver the order at once.”
The male dipped his head, then ran toward a field beyond the cottages. Lanterns glowed within two tents erected in the long grass.
Vane heaved a rumbled breath and moved his hand down my arm to my wrist, pulling me to the entrance of the cottage ahead. There was no door, and the moonlight barely glazed the steep stairwell beyond the threshold.
Vane yanked me upright before I slipped down the soil-packed steps.
Though shocked he’d bothered, I refused to show gratitude.
A tunnel opened to the right. A torch, thrust into the soil wall at the bottom of the stairs, provided little light to guide the way through the long passage. At the end, two more torches revealed another tunnel. We veered right, encountering poorly crafted cells that stretched beyond view into the torch-lit gloom.
All were empty.
Vane opened the steel door to the first cell and released me once I’d stepped inside. But I wasn’t left alone.
With a whine, the door slammed behind him.
I didn’t believe I’d get an answer, but I still asked, “Where are we?”
Surprisingly, he said, “Hours south. He won’t find you until we’re ready for him to.”
I felt the need to point out, “He didn’t see you take me.”
Vane stood before the door, arms crossed. “But you’re mates ,” he said, lethally quiet. “Eventually, he’ll slip into your thoughts, and you’ll tell him you’re at an outpost in the war-ruined village of Venellah.”
Stunned that he knew, though I shouldn’t have been, I could only say, “Then I’m afraid this plan is futile, for I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You reek of him,” Vane seethed, eyes raking over me with intentional slowness. His lip peeled back before he tamed his ire. “And not just in the usual post-coital way one does after being thoroughly fucked.”
“Getting thoroughly fucked by royal males seems all too common for me.” I licked my teeth, then smiled. “Except when you did so, there was not an ounce of pleasure involved.”
He was on me in an instant, and I stumbled back against the wall—trapped as he drew a knife and pressed it to my throat. He snarled, “I should kill you.”
Foolishly, I glared up at him and hissed between my teeth, “Then why haven’t you, King?”
The blade dug into my skin, blood drawn and trickling. My eyes held his, even as the sting delivered traitorous tears. Even as fear began to overpower my belief that he wouldn’t kill me.
Tension frayed.
Then snapped as he growled so loud, it was almost a roar, and stepped away.
I closed my eyes. The sheathing of the blade opened them. Breath heaved from me as I placed my hands against the soil wall.
Vane paced the short length of the cell. “Why would you bond to him, Mildred?” He dragged a hand through his crimson hair. “ Marry him? Even before he revealed his true self, he’s proven to be nothing but a monster.”
I could play this game as long as he wished. “Is Morona really an old lover?”
He ceased pacing.
His hand fell to his side, and the anger that had harshened his features vanished. “Did Stone tell you about her, too?”
“Stone told me nothing. I heard you talking that night in the city when you thought I was asleep. You gave yourself away.” I had no interest in defending the lord in hiding, but it was true. “And again just now by confirming what I’ve suspected about Morona since that night.”
Vane stared at the ground, rubbing the scruff around his mouth. “I wasn’t with her when we—”
“I don’t care,” I lied. “You killed my father, my stepmother, and their associates.” The wound he’d given me yawned open, thickening my voice. “You made me believe otherwise while using me to free your people, and now you’ve dragged me here as bait, and you speak to me as if I’m the traitor? As if what I’ve done deserves your ire?” My low laughter faded quickly. “Even if I never knew Atakan, you’ve lost all chance of getting rid of those wards, Vane, and you’ve only yourself to blame.”
“Mildred.” His tone softened, his gaze lifting to my bloodied neck. It stayed there until he said, “Fuck.” He paced again. “What a rotten fucking mess.”
“I’ll say.”
For a while, his crunching steps were the only sound. Then he asked, “How long have you known about him?”
I slid down the wall and draped my arms over my bent knees. “That Atakan’s a pytherion shifter?” I loathed admitting it—and how my weakened tone gave away the betrayal I felt. “I had no idea until tonight.”
“None?”
“No one did,” I snapped, withholding a wince at my defensiveness.
He stared at me for a moment, assessing. Then he laughed, a broken sound that lacked humor. “Of course. If anyone knew, then…”
“He’d never inherit the Seelie throne,” I realized out loud.
Vane kept quiet as he took three strides across the cage he’d penned us in, over and over. I counted twenty-one before he stopped. “With my death, he stands to inherit my throne.”
Although I knew nothing about Atakan’s intentions, I still shook my head. “I don’t see him doing that.”
“Then you’re as naive as you are reckless.”
“I prefer bold.” I dropped my chin atop my arm at my knee. “Daring, even.”
He huffed, then gave in and released a genuine laugh.
I hated the sound. Hated the way it pleased me to hear it. Hated that a part of me—the part that fractured the spell on his lands—still cared.
But not enough. Never enough to forget what he’d done to my family and to the fragile trust I’d given him.
“Princess,” he said. “Believe me when I say that I detest what we did to you, and if I’d known that I would, then I wouldn’t have done it.”
I scoffed. “You said you don’t want my forgiveness.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Well, you don’t have it.”
“Yet you’ll forgive Atakan the heartless after everything he’s done to you?” he asked, incredulous. “He trapped you in a fucking carriage with a two-headed serpent, Mildred.”
“ Me ,” I said, unable to resist smiling at the memory that shouldn’t feel nostalgic. “Not someone I care about. What do you care anyway? You kept your love for another, and I gave you a morsel of mine to set your people free.” I looked up at him. “Seems to me like you escaped unscathed.”
He gazed down at me with an intensity that made my stomach squirm. A familiar look I’d seen countless times before. A weapon, that look. One he’d used to cut me open so I’d bleed for him. “Naive indeed.”
I held his eyes and raised a brow, awaiting an explanation.
He gave none.
He turned to the door and scraped his fingers through his hair. “Do you know all of what Atakan is?”
“The true Unseelie heir.” I flopped back against the wall, my legs dropping to the dirt. “A halfling just like me.”
An amused hum accompanied the slight turn of his head. One of his blue eyes glinted at me briefly before he looked back at the bars caging us. “Then you know he’s stealing the creatures we’ve spent years breeding and training.”
My throat dried.
He continued. “Any faerie noble who can shift is not merely a faerie noble.” Vane turned to me, ice dripping from his deep voice. “They’re an alpha of that species.”
“He knew,” I rasped. “Atakan knew you were breeding pytherions.”
The pytherion who’d appeared to bow to Atakan and the warrior’s report…
He would turn Vane’s power against him—use the pytherions to hunt them all. Every warrior. Atakan had become so much more than the king of the Seelie Fae.
He’d become utterly untouchable.
“I’ve had my suspicions about who his mother was since discovering his blood was used to make the wards, but it didn’t matter,” he said. “Until now.”
As silence reigned, I gave up on finding words. Murmurs crawled down the tunnel, unintelligible. I gazed unseeingly at a puddle in the corner of the cell.
Vane’s attention scalded until footsteps padded over the dirt. “You need to help us end this, Mildred.” He opened the door. “You need to help us end him, or we all lose this war.”