6. Chapter Six
Evelia stays silent and stiff on our journey home, and she refuses to hide her face against me to protect from the frigid air higher in the sky.
I worry about her comfort and safety, so I fly closer to the ground despite the aggravating hazards of trees and buildings.
She also rejects my attempt to cover her in my cloak, so I simply raise my temperature to steady hers.
The tower she usually sleeps in isn’t ready for her.
I nearly strangle the servants in charge of it, but Evelia is angry enough at me.
My instincts tell me showing her more death will only ruin her homecoming.
I also sense that taking her to my room, as I desire, will also enrage her, and instead, I take her to a room close to mine.
It’ll give her the space she needs to process everything and eventually accept my love for her.
She backs away from me when I set her down. “Don’t touch me! I don’t want touched!” She trembles like she thinks I will take her by force.
“I will not touch you unless you desire it. There are, however, rules, and if you follow them well, I will not kill your father.”
Her eyes widen, but her face quickly falls into a scowl at the second portion of my sentence. “I thought marrying you kept my father alive. I traded my freedom for his life.”
“You have freedom within the bounds of my lands and to the extent that is permissible.”
“No real freedom at all. What are the rules?”
“No leaving my border. We are bonded, and it would bring harm to us both. There are also many dangers out there that you should not face.”
“Maybe you should teach me to face them.”
I raise an eyebrow and study her for a moment to gauge her sincerity. “If you desire to learn how to fight, I won’t prevent it. It will be something I teach you because no one is allowed close to you. Ten servants will be assigned to give you anything you wish.”
She closes her eyes, and a tear slips out. “I wish to be left alone.”
I reach my finger out to catch her tears but drop my hand when she flinches. “You’re safe here. No harm will come to you at my hand or any other.”
“Maybe only at mine.” She shuts the door with enthusiasm.
Her words scare me enough that I ward her window, so she can’t tumble from it on purpose or accident. She lets no one into her room for the next three days, but the blood oath that bound us to each other tells me she is physically fine.
On the fourth day, I send her red roses, and she returns them with all the petals plucked. The next day I send her blue ones, and they are returned the same. Each day I choose a different color and finally move on to different types of flowers. She destroys them all and sends them to my door.
“I do not believe her problem is the type of flowers you are sending, Your Majesty.” My main advisor, Basim, says.
He’s a lanky man with a long, wide nose and small lips.
His skin has deep wrinkles, reminding me how frail humans are.
They rapidly decline, and that thought startles me.
Evelia will age like the human she was unfairly born as.
“What do you suggest I do then to please my wife?”
“You could set her free, but I have a feeling you won’t like that suggestion.”
I clench my fists and take a deep breath.
“The suggestion makes me want to strangle you, but I will let it go because you preemptively understood it’s wrong.
” I pace the stone floor in my bedroom as I think everything over.
“Maybe I could give her freedom in activity. We have many things she could do, but I fear if I offer the options to her, she will reject them. Can you give her the choices?” I tell Basim five different hobbies Evelia can participate in safely.
He leaves and returns after a short time. “She says she wishes to bake.”
“That wasn’t one of the options. She could burn herself, and then I would need to slaughter the kitchen staff for allowing it to happen.”
“That would more than likely make her hate you more. She insists baking is the activity she wants to do.”
“Fine but provide her with more than adequate protection from burns and have a healer in the room.” I remove the piece of the prince’s heart from my pocket and think of all the things I can do with it.
It could control him, but I haven’t exactly decided how yet.
I place it in a warded box and stick it in my personal cabinet, placing a spell to tell me if anyone touches it.
Evelia enters the room and sends me a gorgeous smile that makes me want to lay my entire kingdom at her feet.
Her hair is tied back in braids that wrap around her head.
The purple gown she wears teases me as it leaves too much to my imagination, but it flows nicely around her tantalizing body.
“Hello, husband, I have brought you a pie.”
My heart leaps at her title for me, as I believed she’d never use it. After four weeks of hiding away from me, hearing her voice at all seems too much to hope for. “Let me try this pie. It will be the best pie I have ever had, I am sure.”
She sets it in front of me and takes the seat adjacent to me to watch. “Your chef told me white peach is your favorite. I added an extra ingredient. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. I am very pleased with the pie and your presence.”
The doors to my dining hall fling open, and my five top generals march into the room. “Your Majesty, you are needed on an urgent matter.”
“This better be tremendously urgent for you to interrupt my dinner.”
“Sarek has broken through the border gate.”
I charge for the exit, changing from a man into smoke. “Get Evelia to her room and post thirty guards at her door. Tell the staff to preserve the pie for later.”
Evelia screams to show her father mercy, and she may very well be the only reason I don’t dismember him while he still breathes.
I fly through a crack in the wall and out into the field in front of my castle.
The army in blue belongs to Sarek, while the red belongs to the wicked Queen Zantara.
She is evil and cowardly, hiding behind a projection of herself while letting her soldiers face death.
Sarek is many things, but not a coward. It is all I respect about him.
I rematerialize into a man and face Sarek from the top of my wall. “What do you want?”
He rides up on his horse to stand right beyond my black iron gate, which is the main entrance into my castle grounds. “Give me Evelia! She is not yours. She is not anyone’s.”
“Is that what you told the prince?”
“That was not your choice to make! It was not something you had any right to question. She is not yours and will never be yours!”
I lift the moving, glowing vines of my blood mark that binds Evelia to me. “This says otherwise.”
“That is something you forced! Zantara is going to curse you and sever that, and I hope when she does, you suffer!”
“Tell me, if you did not wish me to interfere, why did you send me notice it was happening?”
He opens his mouth like he's not sure how to answer it. “It was to tell you, you lost her forever.”
I take a step closer to the edge, so that only my heels rest on the roof. “You really are an idiot if you thought that would keep me away. I’d have stolen her from her marriage bed if necessary.”
I stretch a black tendril to his throat and lift him until he’s level with the top of my wall.
Arrows fly through my extended limb, the same as if they'd fire through clouds. Horse hooves pace frantically as they debate how to free their king safely from my grasp. Sarek’s eyes bulge as he gasps and gags.
“If Zantata ever becomes clever enough to properly curse me, you won’t be around to see it.” The moment he becomes a little too blue, I drop him and cackle at how his plummet makes his men frantically try to figure out how to save their doomed king.
His men are so grossly incompetent that they can’t organize to rescue him, so inches from the ground, I catch him and set him gently down. He stumbles back and stares up at me with unfocused, wild eyes. So weak humans are that he can’t even mask his fear. His shaking delights me.
I twist and pull tentacles from my back until dozens emerge and wave through his armies, putting lovely holes through vital areas on their bodies. They fall, and Sarek’s rage is a wonderful beat that joins the screams of his dying men. They squeal like pigs burned alive.
Sarek is on his knees with his hands on his head. “What have you done? You’re a monster! A beast!”
“When will you realize all your power existed because I allowed it? Because I took pity on you and devoured your enemies. You brought this on yourself. Go grovel to the queen and see if she is as generous as me.” I leave him to find a path through his slaughtered men and freeze when I spot Evelia watching me.
She drops her hand from her mouth. “There are rumors of what you are. I want to hear from you.”
“What do the rumors say I am?”
“A monster, a god, a beast, and an atrocity.”
“Hmmm... No longer your fire fairy, I see.” I walk past her and into my castle, ready to try her pie.
She rushes around me and steps in front so I can’t move any farther. “We’re not children anymore. I realized long ago you weren’t a fairy. That’s all you’re going to say about it?”
“Yes, I find it interesting what has been concluded about me.”
“You’re not going to tell me which it is?”
I step around her, amused by her curiosity. “Which do you believe it is, my rose?”
“I am not your pretty flower to keep locked up so I can’t be plucked by any other!”
“You have plenty of thorns to keep yourself from being plucked, but I have learned my way around them, haven’t I?”
“Force, power, and manipulation are all you have used. Nothing clever about that.” She charges down the hall.
“Are you going to watch me eat your pie?”
“Choke on it!”
She isn’t wrong about someone choking on her pie, and I find my servant face down in the fatal dessert intended for me.