Chapter 25
THE MEETING LEAVES me unsettled the rest of the night. I try to distract myself by emptying out my tablets and checking how many are left. It doesn’t take long to count.
Four and a half.
It’s sobering, but I still feel jittery, so I take a bath to soothe my aching joints. Afterward, I don a dressing robe and play with the cat, who doesn’t have a name yet, when there’s a knock at the door and the king himself enters at my invitation. His timing’s off—I’m not brushing my hair.
The cat runs to him, rubbing his face into Drystan’s legs.
Traitor.
“You’re getting fur all over my trousers.
” He sighs yet still bends down and scratches the cat behind the ears.
Fussing the cat, his gaze skims to the silky dressing robe I’m wearing.
“I’ve come to collect you for dinner.” He pauses, mouth open as though a thought has struck him.
“That is, if you care to accompany me.” It’s almost a question, but I’m not sure the king is practiced at questions or requests.
I dangle a string for the cat, who swipes at it, claws out.
“Then I suppose I should get dressed, since I’m such a devoted fiancée.
” With a sardonic smile, I throw a ball and the cat streaks after it while I get up and put away the string.
I raise my eyebrows when I meet the king’s gaze, because he doesn’t seem to have taken my hint—he’s still standing there. “I’m going to get dressed now.”
Realization dawns in the widening of his eyes. “Oh. I see.” I catch a smirk as he turns his back to me. “I forget humans have strange ideas about bodies.”
Yet he doesn’t leave. He just… waits.
I huff a sigh and pull out a dress. It’s a shimmering white embroidered with silvery thread and crystals, with flecks of shell sewn into the fine lace.
It makes my olive skin look darker, healthier, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to wear it.
Glancing over to check Drystan still has his back turned like he’s a gallant knight and not the King of Death, I find his broad back is still toward me, but he’s leaning his brow on his forearm against the door frame like he needs it for support.
Is he ill? I wonder for a second and I’m about to ask, but that has to be some sort of insult in unseelie etiquette, implying someone has a weakness and is less than perfect. Suggesting such a thing about the king is probably a tongue-cutting-out offense.
So I slip off my robe and hurry to pull the dress on, aware of every moment my skin is bare in his presence and the same air that’s touching him is touching me. I even wriggle on my underwear afterward, hoiking it up beneath the gown’s skirts, so I’m not naked a moment longer than necessary.
The gown covers me from its high neck to long sleeves, and I start fastening the many little buttons running up my spine.
And that’s when I realize my error with a soft “Fuck.”
“What’s wrong?” Drystan lifts his head but doesn’t turn.
“Nothing. I…” I pull a face as I twist my arms back as far as I can and manage to pop another button through its loop, but I haven’t got much further than my waist, and the top half of the dress is already trying to fall down and reveal my chest. I hadn’t considered the fastening of these gowns—normally Min helps me.
“Could you… Would Your Majesty send for Min, please?” Pretty sure I shouldn’t be asking the king to run around after me, but I don’t have much choice.
“She’s busy. What do you need?”
“These buttons—they’re…” Only then do I realize what he’s implying.
Luckily, I’m holding the top half of the gown up over my breasts when he turns and says, “I’ll help.”
It seems the king has been learning all sorts of new words. Fairly sure “help” isn’t usually part of his vocabulary—it doesn’t seem like a very unseelie word.
Silently, he stalks closer like I’m a creature he might scare away.
My pulse comes faster, and I have to rifle back through the past ten minutes to check if I took belladonna and forgot, because it certainly feels like it’s running through my system. But no… I took my medicine earlier and that’s all. Maybe half a tablet isn’t enough.
Clutching the dress tighter, I turn my back to him, grateful to be freed from the intensity of his stare.
But the relief doesn’t last long, not when I can feel his eyes boring into the bare skin of my back.
It’s a prickle between my shoulder blades that sets every hair at the nape of my neck on end.
There’s a pressure at my waist where the fastened buttons end. “These?” he asks softly.
The gods did a poor job when they designed humans, because there’s somehow not enough space in my ribcage for my pounding heart and for my lungs to draw in air—at least that’s how it feels as my chest heaves. I certainly can’t manage all that and speech, so I simply nod.
He makes a thoughtful sound, then his hands close around my waist and he lifts me so I’m sitting on the back of the settee, feet on the seat. “Saves me bending over.”
To reach such a puny human being the unspoken end to that sentence.
Before I can make some mocking comment, he sets to work. He doesn’t touch me directly, but the pull and press of him buttoning his way up my back spreads over my skin all the same, encircling my ribs, ghosting through the pressure of the fabric over my stomach and breasts.
I should’ve chosen a different dress. Something that shows more flesh but doesn’t include fastenings I can’t reach.
“Your hair,” he murmurs before gathering it up and draping it over my shoulder, lighting up a hundred points of sensation—hair tickling my neck, more skin suddenly exposed and the warm brush of his fingertips over my spine. My breath catches. I shiver and curse Min for being busy.
The thrall from earlier comes to mind. I see him so clearly. His eagerness. His hollow stare that only lit up for Lady Gewyne.
I am not attracted to the King of Death.
I am not attracted to the King of Death.
I am not attracted to the King of Death.
Fine. So I am. A little.
In my defense, he’s fae, and they’re known for their beauty, their charm that beguiles us mere humans.
Besides, it’s been a long time since my body felt like anything other than a burden.
I’m long overdue a little pleasure, a taste of what it might feel like to be desired.
He doesn’t want me, I’m sure of it, but I can pretend.
A little indulgence. Some fantasy before I go back home and settle in to live the rest of my life without pretty dresses or fae kings who stoop to fasten them for me.
So I close my eyes and eat up every single speck of experience. The slight coolness of the air where it touches my skin. His breaths seem louder than usual—he’s so close. They blow over my spine and between my shoulder blades, where I’m still bared.
I catch the edge of his scent. Feel the lack of it in that hint. Crave more of it. The ancient solidity of it. The encompassing richness of it. The smoked warmth.
He makes a soft sound—I don’t think it’s a word, but I can’t be sure, and an instant later I’m distracted by the warmth of his hand on that same spot between my shoulder blades. His fingers flex, pressing into my skin.
My breaths have stopped.
But my pulse seems to be trying to make up for it, hammering even faster than before. I lean in to his touch, every ounce of my attention on its warm sweep as he moves upward. He reaches the nape of my neck, fingertips and thumb first, tracing the column of my spine, and my head drops forward.
I fail to bite back a groan as part of me wants, begs for him to plunge his fingers into my hair, pull my head back and kiss me to within an inch of my life.
He doesn’t. Of course.
And I’m mortified to have made such a sound. For him of all people.
He catches my hair again—sadly, not a grab—and twists it more tightly. “Take it.” The roughness of his voice is a shock in the silence and I obey without thinking, grasping the lengths so they’re out of his way, our fingertips brushing as I do so.
Even that feels like the heady buzz in the air as a storm gathers—electric, dizzying, a maddening pressure in need of relief.
He isn’t gentle as pulls the edges of the dress together, confining me in its fitted shell.
The fine lace that forms a V between my breasts tightens—this gown isn’t low cut, but it might as well be with sheer fabric the only thing covering my cleavage…
which I now have, I realize. There must be something about fae food that’s helping me put on weight.
I smile to myself, tucking away that small victory among the memories of this moment that I’m etching inside my heart for leaner times.
He fastens a few more buttons, then tugs again, and the silk grazes my nipples.
That tiny movement streaks through me, dragging a gasp down my throat.
My nerves catch fire. My body pulls as taut and ready as a drum. I am a blank page that he’s just starting to fill in.
I press my thighs together, unable to help squirming as molten heat gathers low in my belly.
He works his way higher, fingers brushing my neck, my hairline, teasing, promising.
And then he’s done.
I sit there a long while, swaying, before I realize and the disappointment sweeps in. It would be pathetic to manufacture more reasons for him to touch me like this, I know, but damn is it tempting. I blame my illness and the isolation it forces upon me. I have needs, after all.
“How readily you respond to a simple touch, even though all that lies between us is hate.” His voice weaves between us, low and rough. “It would be so easy to make you my mindless little thrall, wouldn’t it?”
The twin fires of shame and desire burn my cheeks. I hate that he isn’t entirely wrong. The life of a thrall must be so easy. A singular purpose. Simplicity of intent. Quietness of mind. No pesky feelings save the joy of pleasing your master.
I don’t want it. And yet for a brief, flickering moment, I understand the appeal.
A shaky breath, then I chuckle. “You really think I could ever be mindless?”
He laughs, and it deflates the suffocating tension between us.
I manage to straighten, head spinning, mind giddy like it hasn’t registered there’s nothing more to come.
“Here.” Strong hands fasten around my waist, then I’m in the air, lifted off the back of the settee and set on my feet. His hold lingers a moment, leaving me to gather myself before I go to the dressing table to pin my hair up, since that seems to be the done thing in the Underworld.
“Leave it down.” His voice comes from the doorway.
I assume his instruction is a product of impatience—no doubt the unnecessary number of buttons on my gown has made us late. But when I turn, there’s no flare of irritation to his nostrils, and his gaze is boring into me like golden fire, something dark and demanding at the center.
So I dab a little oil on to my fingers and run them through my loose hair before joining him in the doorway. He nods in approval and offers his arm, then we set off into the corridors of his fortress.