Chapter 10
Igot out of the carriage that evening with swollen lips, but I was pretty sure no one noticed since Incendis followed after me and stumbled down the single step to the ground.
I made his knees weak. And it turned out that traveling by carriage wasn’t so bad as long as I had things to do. Like a recently unvirginized prince.
“As soon as they get the tent up,” he whispered in my ear, “you’re mine.”
Most of the time, he was an absolute sweetheart, but I did like it when he got a little grrr.
Setting everything up for the night was a complicated process—probably because of the royalty involved.
There was a big tent and several smaller ones.
Fires to light and torches to set up. The horses were corralled, watered, and fed.
I tried to help, but they kept shooing me away.
Then someone gave me a blanket and a mug of spiced cider, which pretty much said I should leave them alone.
Incendis smirked at me. I ignored him.
Dinner was venison steaks, roasted potatoes, and yet another kind of gourd. I’d always thought the little ones were just decorative, but apparently not. I was getting a little sick of them, though.
It was nice sitting around the fire, especially when Incendis invited anyone who didn’t have something to do to sit with us.
But I had a sudden pang of missing my friends because this was the sort of thing we did together.
Milo had wanted us to spend the night in the forest because it was one of the few remaining dark places where we could see the Milky Way.
I could look up and see stars now, but they didn’t look quite the same.
It just reminded me that I was elsewhere, and they weren’t here.
“What’s made you sad?” Incendis whispered beside me. He took my plate and mug, handing them off to the person collecting them.
I shrugged. “Missing my friends. Hoping they’re okay.”
He put his arm around me and snuggled me into his side. The kiss to my temple made me smile.
I must’ve dozed a little because I woke as he was picking me up. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to bed. Nothing’s wrong.”
I relaxed in his arms, loving that he could carry me so easily. Still wrapped in my blanket, I was deliciously toasty from the fire and from Incendis holding me.
He set me down on something that looked like a giant bag and felt like a pillow stuffed with pillows. I wiggled into it, feeling like I was in a nest. Last night’s bedding had been simpler—I liked this better.
“Hold still,” Incendis said on a laugh. “Let me get you undressed.”
Well, sure. I flopped onto my back and let him do all the work.
“You promised me something earlier,” I said once he had me down to my skimpy yet old-timey underwear.
He grinned and started working on his own clothes. “You’re tired.”
“I’m not that tired.” I demonstrated by helping my semi get happier.
Incendis chuckled and shook his head, but I had his complete attention. He even stopped undressing when he only had his vest unbuttoned and trousers open. When he swooped down to take my mouth in a filthy kiss, I wrapped one leg around his thigh and got two handfuls of his auburn hair.
He ground against me, way too much cloth still between us. When he broke away for a breath, he fumbled himself completely free and rolled his hips against mine. Good, but not great. I wanted more. As he kissed my neck, I said, “Will you fuck me? Please, baby, I need to feel you.”
Moaning against my neck, he nodded. Yay! When he moved back to find the lube, I turned over, dug my splayed knees into the pillow bed, and rested my cheek on my hands. The position seemed to really distract him, making me giggle at him.
But then something very wicked twinkled in his eyes and had a devilish grin stretching his lips. I shivered to see it. Here comes the grrr…
He kissed the back of my neck as he leaned over me and played with my hole. Slippery and so naughty he teased me mercilessly by fucking me with two long fingers that barely brushed over my prostate. It wasn’t nearly enough, and in between moans, I might’ve started growling.
When he fit his cock to my hole, I caught my breath and wailed as he filled me. Oh, he felt so good! He was perfection in girth, length, and now technique, too. My strong prince was doing pushups over me, his cock taking me with every drop down.
“You’re so terrible,” I said on a laugh as I lifted higher to meet him.
He chuckled, too, and dropped down to cover me, press me into the bedding. Just barely rocking his hips, he ground his cock into me, and had me whimpering against the back of my hand. “So terrible you’ll hump the pillows to make yourself come?” he asked with a rumble to his tone.
Oh, what a monster I’d made.
“Don’t need to,” I said between panted breaths. I was moving with him, but his aim was impeccable. I was going to come…any…
I hollered as a rush of brilliant release zinged through me. He moaned in my ear, his hips bucking briefly, and I smiled to know I’d taken him with me.
“I think…it’s you…who’s mine,” I whispered.
He didn’t say anything, but I felt him nod.
On the second day, just as the sun began to set, we arrived at the king’s ruined castle.
It really was cut in fourths by the thick glass-like structures of the barrier.
Maybe the castle had been beautiful once, but now it looked like the crumbled remains of an ancient civilization.
And though the barrier going through it was weird, weirder still was that there was no village surrounding the castle like at Incendis’s.
Villages had lined the roads we’d traveled, but then it was just a wide open field with the king’s castle.
“Why was he so isolated?” I asked Incendis as we walked closer.
He was glowing with his fake fire, letting us use that to light our way as the stone walls cut us off from the warm tones of the setting sun.
Compared to Incendis’s castle, this place felt cold and…
empty. It very literally had nothing inside but cracked and fallen walls, wide open doors, and broken windows.
“Before he made us,” Incendis said, “his castle was the center of the Seasonal Court.”
“But there’s no village.”
“Oh, yes.” He cleared his throat. “Father made the ground absorb the village about a week before he cast the curse.”
I gasped in horror. “All those people… Murdered.”
“Goodness, no, they were fine!” He stopped on top of a part of a ceiling beam that had fallen to the floor. “I mean, he made them relocate, but they weren’t killed or anything so heinous.”
Well, that was a relief. I took his offered hand to get over the beam. “Why did he make them leave?”
“He didn’t want witnesses.”
There were times when I understood the king and times when I just wanted to hit him with something hard.
And though I wanted to say something about how he must’ve known he was doing the wrong thing if he didn’t want witnesses, I held my tongue for Incendis’s sake.
He felt bad enough without me rehashing it after the fact.
I did hope the castle was missing paintings, furniture, and literally everything else because the villagers had looted the place before they left. That only seemed right.
Thankfully, the center of the castle where the king was encased was on the ground floor, because some of the staircases we passed were destroyed or looking way too rickety to even attempt.
Going under all of this mess to a basement was not something I wanted to risk either.
Honestly, the old man should’ve had the ground eat the castle, too, because this was a wreck on top of a wreck.
I understood now why the guards had hesitated to let us come in here alone.
But then, there it was. I was a little ashamed that my first thought upon seeing him was to remember the mosquito in amber from the Jurassic Park movies. He didn’t look like a bug, but he did look startled and frozen in place with his hands up. My second thought was…
“Well, hello there, Lars.” The portrait was one thing, but here he really was right in front of me. Every gray hair, wrinkle, and stitch of thread was perfectly preserved inside a cylinder of amber.
“I wonder why he chose that name,” Incendis murmured as he looked around the space.
“He’s not King Lars?”
“No. King Citron.”
Weird. “I suppose if I’d known him as that name, we’d all have figured out who he really was a lot sooner.”
“True.” He peered around another pillar.
“What are you looking for?”
He stopped and shrugged.
My heart broke a little as I realized he might’ve hoped Lars would appear to him here. Incendis had wondered why he hadn’t shown himself to his son. Why me? Why not him?
“Maybe he can only be seen by someone affected by the curse.”
“I’m affected.”
“Okay, wrong word. Someone who’s been baked into the curse?”
“Oh. Yes. Maybe that’s why.”
I was walking over to him, wanting to offer comfort since it was clear he was disappointed when something snapped overhead. I stopped and looked up only to gasp as a large curved piece of stone and a huge wooden beam started falling.
They were going to crush me.
Suddenly, hands grabbed me and pulled me away seconds before the wood and stone crashed to the floor exactly where I’d been standing. I was safe but I still screamed, adding to the deafening noises.
As a plume of dust billowed toward us, Incendis curled over me and used the collar of my shirt to cover my nose and mouth. He coughed a couple times before using one of the layers of his frilly neck thing to breathe through.
And as I stared up at him, this fae prince who’d just saved my life, I absolutely knew with every atom in me that I could so easily fall in love with him.
Something strange started happening. It felt like the floor was vibrating. We both stumbled around, and then more massive chunks of castle started falling all around us.
Incendis didn’t hesitate to grab me up and fly straight out of there. I’d had no idea he could move so fast, but boy, was I glad he could. Because it wasn’t just the castle that was crumbling—the barriers were coming down, too.