Chapter 2 #2
Daire hisses in a sharp breath, feeling my touch through our soulmate connection.
I smile, raising the mark to my lips. I kiss it slowly.
Daire’s long, thick eyelashes flutter.
Yet I can feel him through the bond; the pain and fear, which he is trying to shield from me.
I hurriedly snatch up a clay pot of rose oil and rush to the edge of the baths. I drop to sit on the side, swinging my bare legs to be swallowed by the warm water.
I place the pot down and grab Daire’s hand.
I need to be close to my mate.
Immediately, Daire entwines our fingers with a smile like he’s never wished for anything more than my touch; he’s burned himself on iron from the moment that we bonded for the chance to hold my hand. “Are you okay, my soulmate? I’m here. And no matter what happens, I will always be at your side.”
Shadows flutter around his wings, reaching for me.
“I’ve had better days.” I slip into the mouth of the water. By the Shadow Gods, that feels good. Daire grins at my moan of delight. “Admittedly, just made better.”
“Let me make it even better and show you why I am worshiped.” Daire grips me by the shoulders and turns me to face the side.
“You know how to massage…?” I ask, warily.
“They don’t call it the Courtesan Guild for nothing.
I took classes in seduction, singing, and learning to walk into a room and make everyone instantly forget about anything apart from the aching between their legs.
” Daire’s gaze becomes wickedly half-hooded.
“The Raven King doesn’t need help with any of that. But their massage class was useful.”
“Show me.”
Daire pours rose oil into his palms, before beginning to work out the stiffness in my shoulders.
My groans before indecent.
“It may have been a cover for the murders, but us fae can’t help but be good at the seductive arts.” Daire’s elegant fingers rub in circles, relaxing my muscles. “I am…”
“God-like.” I stretch, casting a glance over my shoulder at Daire, who looks suitably pleased. “Shit, that’s good.”
I become wet with slick.
I often wondered how much of Daire’s slinky sexiness was learned or natural.
Now I know.
He should be a professor at the Guild.
“Also…” Daire leans close enough for his sharp teeth to graze my ear; the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I should never forget that this Alpha is deadly. “…this is a way to cover, while we plot. Maximinus has spies everywhere.”
I stiffen.
Maximinus, Aurelius’ uncle, has been controlling all of us.
If Aurelius hadn’t come up with the plan for the marriage to the Shadow Vampire King, then Daire and I would have been executed because of Maximinus and the Head of the Council, Decima.
Daire presses his fingers deep into my muscles, and I melt. “I’ll be with you in the Blood Kingdom. I may be a mess, but I’ll still protect you.”
“And I’ll protect you.” My eyes are heavy, lulled by the massage, oils, and the warmth of the bath.
For the first time, the lack of sleep, food, and drink are catching up on me, as the rush of adrenaline dies away.
“We’ll be secret co-conspirators going into an enemy kingdom again,” Daire murmurs. “This is becoming a habit.”
“At least we’ve had practice.”
“But this time, it’s far more dangerous. You mustn’t allow them to know your secret identity as the true Omega Queen. Let the princess have died as a baby with her parents like everyone thinks. If the Bloods orchestrated that massacre at Orm, then they wanted your royal line wiped out.”
My blood chills.
“Those raven starving bastards.” My breathing quickens.
Daire sweeps my hair to the side and presses a kiss to my scent gland in comfort. His pheromones settle over me, calming me.
“Don’t worry, all their attention will be on me. Wolves haven’t been the Bloods’ enemy for a generation, but Unseelie never stopped being at war with them. I’ll be the popular one.” Daire swims to lean on the side of the bath next to me, folding back his wings.
My eyes widen. “But Aurelius said to trust him and that this plan would save us.”
“Do you trust that he has a plan to pull us out after we betray the most powerful Shadow Vampire in the realms? When you tear out the heart of an unhinged bloody monster, do you think that he won’t return the favor?
” Daire’s laugh is bitter. “Aurelius likes to do this: Ruin me first and then pretend to be the white knight. But he isn’t.
He’s the destroyer. And the worst of it is that the arsehole dragon played me.
He’s smarter than I guessed. How did I let myself forget that we were enemies?
How did I allow myself to think that he respected, liked, and saw me?
I’m an idiot. The moment that he hands me over to Sin, he has signed my death warrant.
He’s feeding me to the one person in the entire Shadow Realms who hates me more than Aurelius does himself. Here, clean my wings for me, aye?”
“Okay.” I roughly grab Daire’s wing and then regret it, when he winces.
“Oi, I’m firing you as my masseuse.”
“I won’t clean your wings, until you tell me what you mean.”
“Only,” Daire answers with a fake casualness that I am getting better at reading, “that until the dragons betrayed the vampires, they fought against the fae for years. Remember how I once told you that in one of those battles, I killed Lanlin’s ma, the Alpha Queen KalaKant? I’m the infamous Shadow Queen Slayer.”
Terror races through me.
I collapse forward onto Daire’s wings, taking desperate breaths of his bedraggled feathers that smell of frost in a sacred grove.
Daire’s shadows flutter out, caressing my cheeks. “This is meant to be a purifying ritual. I’m not feeling very pure right now.”
I mouth at his feathers, kissing and licking, as I try to think of a way out of this, or at least, a cunning plot to save Daire.
“Don’t come,” I mumble around his plumage.
“Merciless.” Daire shivers. His cheeks flush. “When did I become an Omega chew toy?”
He struggles to remain still, however, as I suck on his feathers in thought.
His black feathers…
I sit back in shock, and he whines.
His feathers are as sensitive as his cock. I love making him come untouched just by brushing them.
“All your featherglass don’t have raven wings, right?” I demand.
“If you’re suggesting that I hack my wings off,” Daire’s voice becomes frosty but also, horrifyingly as if he’s been considering doing just that, “then the answer is that you may as well suggest that I hack off my knot. And no, most of the featherglass aren’t lucky enough to have as impressive wings as me, but many have wings of some sort in all colors of the rainbow. ”
“If Lanlin has spies in the Shadow Court, then he may know that Aurelius brought back King Daire in a lavish parade, renamed as a pet called Kit. But he’d also know that the featherglass were also captured.
What if we rename you and pretend that you’re only a member of the featherglass who was made into a pet and trained as a courtesan? ”
Daire turns with uncanny speed to face me.
His expression is unreadable, but a storm is raging in his eyes. “First, I lost my crown and kingdom. Then I lost my name. Now, I am losing my own identity. I was a god, worshiped and revered, but I am to be reduced to courtesan and vampire snack…?”
I arch my brow. “But a snack who is still breathing.”
“I’m pretty distinctive looking, love.”
My shoulders slump. “I’ll find a dye for your hair and wings. Or maybe…”
“Rune magic.” Daire’s eyes light with mischief.
My expression brightens.
I have always been obsessed with ancient fae rune magic.
When I was an orphan on my knees scrubbing the floors of the Great Hall, I would watch Bard, the wolf prince, reading forbidden books on rune magic and wish that I could ask him about it.
Now, I am bonded to the fae King himself, and he is offering to show me his sacred magic.
It may be a matter of life or death, but who says that an Omega can’t enjoy their treats where they find them?
That must be a rule, right?
But then, I wrinkle my nose.
I must ask something that has troubled me from the moment that Bard rejected my bond in the cave, leaving me howling in agony and shame, before Aurelius swooped down and carried me away.
“Back in Fang Kingdom, Bard had a book on ancient rune magic,” I say, quietly.
“He was as fascinated with it as I was. I never worked out why he was hanging around in the caves near the fae borders, when you were about to be ambushed by the dragons. My kingdom should have been ancient allies with the fae but we betrayed our loyalty to them, seeking protection from the Dracanians. King Ulf bended the knee, the raven starving coward. Bard acted like he had no interest in politics. Instead, he was a scholar, who only led the heathen wolves because his dad forced him to, whipping him regularly for his military mistakes. But somehow, why do I feel like Bard was risking everything to spy for you?”
Daire ducks his head, allowing his silver curls to fall over his eyes. “Fae live by the rule of not asking questions that we don’t want to know the answers to.”
“So do I, which means that I really do.”
“Even when Bard broke your bond? Even when he chose his worship of me over his love for you?”
“What?” Ice-cold, I swim back from Daire.
“It doesn’t matter how many times I insist that I am a god, you don’t believe me.
” Daire’s voice vibrates with primal magic; he is the fae of legend speaking now, one of shadows and cold death.
“On the other hand, Prince Bard did. His heathen wolves are believers in the old feathered gods. They were working on overturning the Orm Court and taking over from King Ulf. Of course, then they’d have entered the war on my side.
Where do you think he got that book on rune magic? It was mine.”
Daire’s book.
The magic that saved me on the night of the Mate Hunt had been Daire’s. I have been connected to my soulmate from the start. He protected me, even before he met me.