Chapter 26
FELORé
Icouldn’t remember falling asleep last night, but Alek was already awake by the time I stirred.
I supposed I should’ve been startled to find him lying across from me, staring shamelessly like he was committing to memory every angle of my face, every lash on my lid as he offered me the kingdom’s sexiest smile.
It was a smile that made my insides wind around themselves, even as he said something so dramatic like, “Fucking gods, finally. You’ve been asleep for ages, and I have been made to lie here without the sound of your voice. Make it up to me, my little fox. Tell me of your dreams.”
I couldn’t say that I fully recognized myself today.
I wasn’t typically so smiley as I chatted with him.
Or mirthful as I bathed. Or fucking giggly as I tried to eat a meal of wilted greens and spiced fig pastries, only to snort and snicker and stop to smack his arm while he did masterful impressions of his father, Neopal, Lucc, and the funniest of all, me.
I couldn’t be blamed for all the giggling. It wasn’t my fault. It was his.
I never thought I’d say it, but the future king of Novithia, a creature as powerful as he was deadly, was also…cute.
I now sat with my legs crossed in his window nook, his favorite book propped open in my lap. I knew it was his favorite book because he brought it to me wearing this ridiculous smile as he insisted I read it aloud to him.
He liked hearing me speak Vultaen. It awoke something inside him, which was why he was smoking a lot as he sat behind me, propping his chin on my shoulder, peering over so he could read along.
A literal demon on my shoulder.
“Try it again,” he said, poking me in the ribs. “What did the chimneys do?”
I dragged my gaze from him, squinting at the complicated Vultaen words on the page. They were stressed with so many different accent marks, any of which could alter the pronunciation completely. “The chimneys, um. The chimneys puffed in…”
“Clouds,” Alek supplied.
“Clouds,” I said, nodding at the word, committing it to memory. “Clouds of…some other fucking word I’ve never seen. Rav-eh. Rav-ehn?”
“Raven.”
“Ahh, raven. Like the bird.” I smoothed my finger under the intricate sentence. “I wasn’t meant for this w-world. I was born for the blue clean of the…” I’d seen the word that followed before. I’d seen it written somewhere in Terrek’s office. “Sapphire? Is that right?”
“Snow Fox.” He grinned against my shoulder, tickling my side as I squirmed. “Gods, you’re fucking brilliant. Mine. My brilliant human.”
I tried nudging him off with an elbow, but he reattached himself like a sucker fish.
“Go ahead, baby. Fight it all you want.” He pulled me closer to whisper in my ear, “Reluctantly mine is still mine.”
Chills raced down my spine as my eyes rolled shut. That was another thing. This claim he’d staked on me, it was…doing things to me.
It was slipping beneath my skin and making me crave more of it. The feeling of belonging.
But I shouldn’t be craving fucking anything. We shouldn’t be touching like this. It was dangerous to flirt, or sleep in the same bed together, or talk of the future. There was no future that didn’t involve what both of us feared, so then what was I doing? What was happening to me?
It was like, inside this lethal demon’s arms, I’d never felt safer.
“Go on, sweetheart,” he said, shaking me gently, his voice low and silken in my ear. “Finish it.”
I reread the sentence in my head. I’d assumed a touch of his posh accent, such that when I spoke, it was perfect Vultaen—“The roads were dingy. The chimneys puffed in clouds of raven black. I wasn’t meant for this world. I was born for the blue clean of the sapphire sea.”
“Fuck. Fuck, it’s so fucking sexy.” He slammed the book shut, the spine creaking in triumph. “Turn around. Look at me.”
I twisted to him, lips pinching into a line to hide my smile as I rolled my gaze skyward. “It was only one page. Let’s not go overboard with—”
He seized me, making me gasp when he dipped me in his lap like we were seated dancers doing a seated dance.
A lock of hair fell over one of his eyes, and the way the sun struck it, illuminating strands of gold pieced throughout—it was enough to stop my breath for a second.
“What are the odds, human?” he asked, smiling that demonic white smile of his. “That you would just fall into my lap like this?”
This fucking prince. I shook my head, brushing the hair from his forehead. “You can’t pull me into your lap, then blame it on gravity.”
“Gravity?”
I jolted when he hovered his hand over my chest. Like I could feel a sudden draw upward, into his palm.
Something about his smile was wry and impish. Up to no fucking good. “A thing so trifling as gravity cannot hinder me.”
I gasped when my entire spine lifted from his lap, arching dramatically as if suddenly hooked by an invisible rope attached to the ceiling.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’d never felt anything like it. I was possessed? Was that it? I couldn’t move, but the warm, glittering sensation spreading across my chest and dripping down my arms was delectable.
“Oh, your little heart is beating so fast,” he said, a smile to his words. “Are you frightened?”
A whimper sputtered from me. No. No, I wasn’t frightened. It was too calming to be frightening. It was an incredible, unearthly sensation, as wild as it was visceral, and I could feel my cock getting hard.
“Shhh, baby,” he whispered, lips brushing my ear, lifting his hand higher, forcing my spine to arch more. “I’ll catch you if you fall—”
Then I did fall.
With a crash, I flopped into his lap, as he twisted over his shoulder to cough brutally into the crook of his elbow.
I pushed myself back up, but it took me a moment to orient my body in time and space. The aftermath of his possession was like a pacifying drug, but I managed to scold, “Fucking Alek.”
He yelped when I shoved him, laughing between coughs, twisting away to conceal how horrific it sounded. It sounded like liquid in his lungs. Sludgy and deep-rooted liquid.
“It’s so irritating when you do things like that.” I shoved him again as he winced. “When it only makes your condition worse.”
“My condition?” he asked, his voice hoarse as he scooted back, resting against the wall. “And just what is my ‘condition’?”
Being born too reckless. Too stubborn. Too fucking good.
“It’s called starvation, Prince, and it’s numbering your days.”
“Ahh, well, if my days are going to be numbered,” he said, winking as he brought the cigarette to his lips, “then I should probably enjoy them.”
My frown deepened. “Not if your enjoyment brings you one step closer to death’s door.”
“Darling,” he chuckled. “It’s not that grim. It’s just a little cough.”
“No, it’s not, either. It’s an indication that you’re not saving your strength like you should. How much time do you have before you’re able to see this doctor of yours? And that’s assuming he’s even going to have a ‘cure’. An alternative to eating.”
“He discovered these, you know,” he said, lifting the cigarette. “Would you have thought that possible?”
I flared my nostrils at it.
“He’s on the verge of something special. He’s almost there—”
“But almost will not save your life.”
He parted his lips and sealed them again.
“Look, I’m not saying the cigarettes aren’t impressive, but numbing your hunger and feeding it are not even close to the same thing.”
A smile stretched his perfect lips, but something about it was contrived. “So, what would you have me do, my love? Would you have me find some human who’s willing to die in exchange for feeding their children?”
I took a breath, prepared to argue but couldn’t. It was what I’d always hated about the whole system, and it cut straight into my heart.
“Or perhaps I find a human on their supposed deathbed,” he said, flicking ashes. “A human that someone has declared as good as dead.”
I swallowed, blinking at my hands in my lap.
“Except that someone is quite often a vultus, aren’t they? And well, if you don’t see what’s problematic with that, then you’re either blind or refusing to see it. But hey, at least you’d be in good company. Everyone refuses to see it, so that we may pretend it’s something other than what it is.”
I inhaled, high in my chest.
“I cannot be the king of change if I myself refuse to do what is necessary. Refuse to sacrifice just because it hurts.”
“You cannot be the king at all if you’re gone, Alek.”
“My Snow Fox,” he said, showing me that dazzling smile once again. The one that melted me. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m sorry, darling, but you lost.”
I blinked, eyes narrowing. Lost?
“You lost so horrifically last night, that now you are stuck with this demonic puppy, possibly forever. I won’t let something so silly as starving to death come between us.”
A spot of levity bloomed bright in my chest at the same time a smile tried to tempt my lips. He had to know how ridiculous he was.
“Possibly forever, huh?” I asked. “Bold words from a nineteen-year-old.”
“Oh, it is hardly the boldest thing this nineteen-year-old could say to you, Feloré.”
“No? And what would be the boldest?”
“I’m so glad you asked. Come,” he said, beckoning with his fingers. “Come closer.”
I leaned an ear toward him.
“Closer than that, darling. It is a secret, after all. A brave secret.”
I rolled myself forward onto my hands and knees, the chain tumbling between my legs as I crawled to him. He twitched wildly, and part of me suspected he just wanted to see me like this.
“You ready?” He grinned as he leaned into my ear, cupping a hand around it to whisper in Vultaen, “Plum wine makes you snore like a miniature troll.”
“Oh, shut up, Alek,” I said, whacking his shoulder. “Gods, fuck you.” I hit him again, failing to hide my grin. “You wouldn’t know that if you didn’t wake early to watch me sleep. Like a pervert.”
“See, human? With your name-calling and your violence.” He lifted one brow as he pointed to the shoulder I’d hit. “Am I not brave?”
I was struck with a sudden urge to kiss his stupid face. Then hit it while I called him names. Then kiss it again.
I was giving him a smoldering glare when the smile suddenly vanished from his face.
He canted his head toward the door, hitching into stillness, his eyes going vacant as he listened.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
“It’s…” He trailed off, drawing a finger to his lips. “A lot of footsteps.”
I squinted, trying to hear, but it was useless.
“Precise footsteps. They’re guards.”
Fear instantly struck my heart. He must’ve heard that, too, because he glanced at my chest.
I tried to hide the panic in my voice as I asked, “You don’t think it’s him, do you?”
He hesitated. Then he nodded. “My father is here.”