Страница 28 из 105
The king hummed. “Indeed, Serrin was once a very rotten fellow, and now I fear I am more rotten than even he.” He looked up, teeth flashing. “It’s a curse, this excruciating need I have to win.”
I could barely dare to imagine just how wretched his uncle and whatever creatures he called friends were. “I assume one of those friends is the real Fang.”
“Fanerin is his real name, which, of course”—he smirked down at the gown—“he loathes, so it’s always been Fang.” His fingers linked between mine over a new item of clothing. A gentle, cautious movement that I pretended to ignore. Beneath his lashes, he peered up at me. “Do you know my name?”
“The blood king.”
That strong, straight nose crinkled.
“The king of wolves.”
He nodded. “That one is much better.” Scrubbing the stubble on his cheek with his fingers, the sound stiffening my every muscle, he said carefully, “But what is my birth-given name, Opal?”
“Dade Volkahn,” I whispered, unsure why, and averted my eyes from his.
Silence permeated, and he cleared his throat as he selected another garment, fingers unwilling to release mine. The high collar of his coat brushed his arched ear as he bent forward slightly. “My mother was dead before she could name me, but my uncle knew the two names she’d been struggling to choose from.”
I couldn’t help it. “What was the other?”
“He never told me, still refuses to,” he said with a huff. “The arrogant shit.”
Asking him about his mother, how she’d died, seemed too dangerous a road to travel with his skin upon mine, warmth unfolding from both our bodies into the fabric between us and heating the room.
Without words, we swapped out one item of clothing for another, Dade seemingly content with the mundane task. Surprising, considering I knew he was a creature with far more than paltry parlor tricks up his sleeve.
As the last few items of clothing joined the pile, I found myself too curious not to say, “I’d thought the blood Fae couldn’t mend. That such things were not only beneath you but also not within your realm of power.”
Vordane’s king rose, stretching, and released a cold laugh as he waded to the window. “I’m not doing anything, swan. I’m merely opening the door for you to do it yourself.”
He vanished before I could ask him what he’d meant, shadowed tendrils dissipating in his wake.
The prince arrived before lunch the following day, and I paused in my pacing of the room, fingers spreading over the violet and cream gown I’d do
It was hideous, entirely too big, and constricting with frothy lace erupting in the giant skirts and over my chest, making my breasts appear bigger than their already generous size. But my soiled dress had been taken away, and other than being a reminder of home, of why I was here, it hadn’t been much comfort either.
Dreams of blood and teeth and fur and feathers plagued me in the hours following as I tried and failed to piece the dream back together to make sense of something so scrambled.
“Good morning, Princess.” Bron bowed, knowing he didn’t have to but showing me respect all the same. “I know you might not be up for it, but I was hoping—”
“Yes,” I said, already walking toward him and then past him out the door. My clenched and tense muscles jerked with each step. I needed the sunshine, the taste of rain that’d dampened the early hours of morning upon the breeze, and open space.
“Okay,” the prince said slowly, laughing a little nervously as he followed me down the stairs.
At the bottom, two stone-still guards with those odd-looking helmets upon their heads glared at me. Bron said, “This way,” and gestured to a hall a little ways down the one we were currently in.
It was narrower, less cluttered with ornaments and pictures than the other few I’d been in. There was no sign of anyone else, save for another guard stationed outside the wooden bracketed door Bron unlocked for us to step out onto a stone pathway.
A few feet away from the watching guard, I stopped and tilted my head back to the sky, inhaling deeply. The tension slowly leaked out of me as I exhaled and removed my eyes from the heavy white clouds above.
“You have been cooped up for some days now,” the prince said as though he’d been searching for something to say, for some explanation for my odd actions.
And they would seem odd to him. To someone who hadn’t any ties to their land except for what it could give them.
“It feels like it’s been half a century.”
The prince chuckled, and we continued along the hedge-lined path, wide steps taking us down the long length of the castle and into the gardens behind it. Green, dotted with bursts of color and fruit-laden trees, stretched for at least half a mile toward that impenetrable wall in the distance.
“You’re…” the prince huffed, “incredible, Opal. Those garments…” We slowed by a marble bench seat with potted ferns on either side of it, and he turned to face me. “Mother has secured a sale for the lot.”
“How much?” I wandered to the geraniums across the path, fingers gliding over the glistening petals, and watched their color sharpen.
With an audible intake of breath, the prince did too. “I’m not at liberty to discuss such matters. I’m sorry.”
“Liar,” I purred, throwing a coy smile at him over my shoulder.
His eyes left my fingers, the petals that unfolded over top of them, and met mine with a start. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You’re not sorry,” I said simply and straightened, raising my arms and moaning with the stretch of muscles in my back.
Bron’s gaze was heated, darting over my face to my chest when I turned back, and though I held no interest in the human trickster, I still smiled. My mother had been right about many things in her absent ramblings to me in our two decades together. Males, especially human males, were easily bested when played right. “Can you sense lies?”
I’d never been too interested in games of lust. As coddled as I had been, I’d been content to wait for an all-consuming love like my parents had found. A love that stretched the bounds of forever into eternity.
I hadn’t the desire, but I’d also had little need to worry about such matters. The same couldn’t be said now.
“Not in the way you think,” I said and patted his arm before moving deeper into the garden, passing tomato vines and cucumbers. The workers with shovels and gloves moved on when they saw me approach.
Beneath an oak tree at the perimeter, I found another bench, this one wooden, and picked up a fallen apple from the ground. Bron joined me, slowly, as though curious of what I’d say or do next as I rolled the fruit over my gown, granules of dirt spoiling it.
“How long?” I asked, taking a bite out of the apple and finding it, as well as so many other things in this magic dry kingdom, lacking.
Bron slid closer to me on the seat, brows crinkled with confusion. “How long?”
“Until an army can be raised.” Even as I’d said it, something inside me protested at the idea of the male who’d visited my rooms to help me thread gold dying upon a battlefield. Quickly, I squashed the feeling. He deserved nothing but the hardship and torment that awaited him. A death as gory and grotesque as what he’d given my father—if not worse.
“I’m not entirely certain.”
I took another bite, chewing as I talked, and knocked the image of my mother berating me, of Dade’s talk of ma