Chapter 21
Lor
Aoife leaned on me as we walked through the dark streets of Fairwitch Isle, humming softly, not the angry, defensive queen I’d expected when I arrived at Ceri’s dress shop. I’d woken her up and led her out, and she’d let me.
Now we were nearing the castle, and I kept my arm around her waist, steadying her.
“You’re drunk,” she said, looking up at me with her golden eyes that were rimmed with green. “Wait.” She blinked. “No, I’m the one whose drunk.”
I huffed out a laugh as we approached the sweeping white stairs that led to the castle doors.
“Mr. Perfect would never get drunk,” Aoife said, words slurring as she stumbled into me, and I had to put both hands on her waist to steady her. “Not Lorcan Wolfgang.” She lowered her voice and adopted a mocking tone. “Kings must never get drunk. Kings must always be alert.”
“That’s what I sound like?” I asked. “No wonder you have a hard time listening to me speak.”
She giggled, then hiccupped. “You think I’m a terrible queen.”
I thought about what Ambrose had revealed to me, and I shook my head. “No I don’t.”
She looked up at me again, her eyelids heavy and drooping. “Yes you do,” she slurred, then tripped on the first step. “You’re just too polite to say it.”
I tightened my hold on her waist and righted her. “Okay, up you go. One at a time.”
She pushed away from me. “I know how to walk up steps. I’m not a baby. You’re a baby if anything. I’ve got thousands of years on you.”
She pointed at me while tripping again, but she caught herself and made it to the top.
“The queen is drunk.” Barty sprang to his feet, pointing a long talon at Aoife.
“Whoa,” Tal said, also standing and cocking his head. “And she’s not fighting with His Majesty.”
I came up to a stand beside Aoife right as she started tipping over, her balance completely off. I caught her, and her hands pressed to my chest, heat flickering where they lay, the pressure of her body on mine feeling so foreign and surprisingly good.
“We were just arguing,” Aoife said, directing her attention to the gargoyles.
“I knew it.” Barty reached out to open the door.
“How could you have known that?” Tal asked, opening his door.
Golden light from the chandelier hanging in the foyer spilled out over the front steps, bathing Aoife in its warmth.
Under the light, I could catch the shimmer of her skin, the same shimmer all the Fair Folk had, but I’d rarely been close enough to Aoife to see it, the way her russet skin glittered.
“Because I notice things, okay?” Barty continued while Aoife and I stared at each other.
“Yeah right.” Tal snorted. “You didn’t even notice when I started posing differently.”
“When did you start posing different?” Barty asked.
“Exactly!”
“And they think we’re bad,” Aoife said, breaking me from the spell I was under.
I cleared my throat and removed my hands from her waist, roping an arm around her back and leading her into the castle.
“Thank you Barty and Tal.”
The doors slammed behind us, the voices of the arguing gargoyles fading in the background.
“I can make it to my room from here.” Aoife walked forward, then ran right into Sir Arthur.
“Your Majesty.” Sir Arthur’s arms came around Aoife, and she giggled.
“Wow you’re sturdy.”
“King Lor, I think something is wrong with the queen.”
I waved a hand. “No, no, she’s fine. Just a little incapacitated.”
Sir Arthur gasped. “Has she been cursed again? Where is the scoundrel who did this? I will avenge her!”
I walked forward and gently pried Aoife from his arms. “No curse. Everything is okay, Sir Arthur. I’ve got this under control.”
The suit of armor paused, his helmet swiveling in my direction. The gap where his eyes should be was nothing but darkness. “Why aren’t you two arguing? Unless you’re both imposters.”
I did not have time for this. I was tired and had touched Aoife more in the last ten minutes than I had in the last two years. It was doing something to my body, my brain, that I didn’t like, not when that would only complicate things further between Aoife and me.
The floor began rising beneath us, like a pedestal lifting us up and away from Sir Arthur. The knight arched his head but didn’t make any move as we lifted away from him.
“Wheeee,” Aoife said as I clasped tight to her arm. The last thing I needed was for her to fall.
I looked up as we approached the ceiling, bracing myself right as it cracked and we shot through it and up into a carpeted hallway, one I didn’t recognize.
Aoife pointed. “Oh look. My room.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. For two years I hadn’t known where Aoife’s room was. She’d never spent a single night in the room I’d had redecorated for her, and she’d refused to tell me where she was sleeping, only that it was in the castle as I’d requested.
She walked down the hallway and toward the single wooden door that looked worn and splintered in places. The walls were bare, just plain white stone with no decorations like most of the castle. Where were we?
She fished a key out of her pocket, attempting to shove it into the lock and missing each and every time. “Oh no, the lock keeps moving,” she said, and I couldn’t help the smile that came to my face.
“Here.” I walked up behind her and gently took the key from her hand.
“Let me.” I unlocked the door and it swung open to reveal what looked like a small, narrow closet with a bed pallet and just enough room to crawl in and sit there.
Random objects were strewn on either side of the pallet, shirts, shoes, vases.
We must’ve been in the wrong place, but Aoife just hunched over and dropped onto the palette, peeling her tunic off, revealing her back with its soft folds and her dark waves hanging down it.
She shimmied out of her trousers, her legs so long and rounded.
She was a tall woman, not quite as tall as me.
Her body was thick and strong and my cock twitched as I stared at her, her round ass cheeks peeking out from the undergarments she wore, dimpled and making me imagine just what it would be like to have her bent over in front of me.
I wheeled around in the doorway while she still knelt on her pallet. “Aoife,” I said. “Where are we?”
“My bed chamber,” she said, then paused. “Why are you turned around like that?”
“Because you’re nearly naked,” I said through gritted teeth, and I just gawked at you like some schoolboy with no control. “And you’re very drunk. I suspect sober Aoife wouldn’t be so willing to get undressed in front of me.”
She made a noncommittal sound, and I heard the rustle of fabric. “There,” she said. “Am I proper enough for you now?”
I turned and my mouth nearly fell open. She sat on the pallet wearing an oversized plain tunic that fell to her knees.
The tunic had a little patch on the breast pocket with the image of a butcher.
It was my tunic, the one I wore when I was in the brotherhood, when I’d been recognized with the honor of becoming the Butcher of the Brotherhood.
That tunic had disappeared shortly after I arrived here, and I’d assumed it had been thrown away, but Castle must’ve moved it here, to this place that seemed to be full of random things that nobody wanted.
“I found it in here,” she said, gesturing to the corner by the oval window with its dark blue stained glass panes.
Moonlight lit the closet in a silver glow, lit Aoife in a glow that was hard to look away from.
She was beautiful like the rest of the Fair Folk, but lit in a silvery blue hue, she looked ethereal.
“What?” she asked, eyes blinking sleepily. “Why do you keep looking at me like you don’t recognize me?”
I bent over and dropped down on the pallet next to her. “I don’t understand, Aoife. Why are you sleeping in here? How did you even find this place?”
She lay down, rolling over on her side and drawing her knees to her stomach. “Castle brought me here.”
My jaw locked. “Was the bed chamber I had redone for you that repellant?”
“I couldn’t stay in there.”
The words were so quiet I almost didn’t hear them.
Her eyes were closed now, her chest moving with each slow and steady breath. “Too many bad memories.”
I stiffened, her meaning becoming clear.
I was such an idiot. An ass. Of course that room would’ve belonged to Fairwitch.
It wasn’t even something I’d considered.
That meant Aoife served as a slave in that room.
The thought sent hot rage through me as I watched my wife laying there, her face bereft of its usual hard edges and lines, so soft, so unbelievably beautiful.
I flexed my hand, resisting the urge to brush her dark strands from her forehead.
Even in her current state, she’d likely break my fingers if I tried.
“But why a closet?” I murmured, looking around the small space, the walls and ceiling almost feeling like they might close in on me.
“I think Castle knew,” Aoife said, and my gaze snapped to her. I thought she’d already fallen asleep.
Her breathing turned slow and heavy. She was surely asleep now, and I’d get no more information from her.
Castle knew what? I shook my head, unable to believe she actually would want to sleep in this place, but I didn’t dare move her anywhere else. She’d never forgive me, and she’d likely see it as another ploy to exercise my control over her.
I stared at her moonlit form for a few more minutes before I shook my head as if awakening from a dream. I needed to get back to my own bed chamber. Inebriated Aoife might’ve not minded me sitting here by her side, but sober Aoife would likely have very different feelings about it.
I moved to get up when her hand stretched out, clamping tight around my forearm.
“Stay,” she mumbled, eyes still closed, grip viselike. “Please,” she said.
I could’ve gotten out of her hold on me, could’ve gotten up and walked out of the room. Except there was something in her tone that made me stay. Longing, maybe? Tinged with sadness.
The last time I’d fallen asleep by her side it had turned out disastrous.
Aoife had been sick, then, out of her mind with fever, and I’d done the only thing I knew to do and brought her to her bed chamber.
I’d stayed awake all night watching her, and as soon as her fever broke, I’d accidentally fallen asleep next to her.
Heat pulsed in my body at the memory of what had happened when I’d awoken, how she’d been rubbing herself against me, moaning and dreaming.
How hope had flared in within me, and then it had been dashed just as quickly when she’d said another man’s name.
I’d never told her about that, never told her what she’d done because she’d likely be horrified.
The memory still plagued me, but even so, I wouldn’t deny her this, not when she said “please” like that.
So I laid down next to her, and her hand relaxed its grip on mine as she snuggled into me, laying her head on my chest and letting out a sigh like she was perfectly content.
Like we were a normal husband and wife, and for the first time ever, as she slept soundly, curled into me, I wanted us to be.