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He’d never given me reprieve, yet here he stood, asking it from me.
To his credit, he did not tremble, and he did not waver as he pushed through his teeth, “I merely wish for you to succeed and not fall, Dade.”
Glaring at him, nearly nose to nose, I seethed, “You made me, honed me into all that I am, so don’t you dare stand here and act as though you do not know any better—act as though you do not know me.” His tunic slid through my clawed fingers, tearing as I unclenched them and shoved him away. “If we falter, even for a breath, we lose the advantage. We lose this war. That is what you told me. That is what I know to be true. So keep your prophesied worries to your fucking self.”
The doors opened and slammed on his face as I stormed through.
I waited, claws long since retracted inside the beds of my nails, until the raw fury Serrin had stoked to life, the ember that never extinguished inside me, was reduced to a controllable smolder.
Outside the door to her rooms, I stood, listening. Her heart wasn’t racing as fast as it had been when we’d arrived, but oh how it still danced, pumping blood into those gorgeous extremities, fueling each stride as she paced on the other side of the door.
I never saw her coming. Along with so many other fables, the swan princess was just a story told around campfires and before bed. Some were true stories of past events spun with fiction, others entirely imagined to frighten younglings or entertain brethren or would-be nightly companions.
All this time, she’d been a myth. A myth now given flesh and blood and burning golden eyes.
Mine. She was all fucking mine. And Errin’s perfect prince now had a glowing mark upon his back. His death would arrive far sooner than we’d predicted. Far sooner than what was wise.
He’d have ample time to ponder his regret for touching my creature while locked within the bowels of my keep, his blood collecting slowly beneath his hanging feet.
As though she could scent the flare of my ire—the air warmed with my hunger for vengeance—the pacing on the other side of the door ceased. Smoothing a hand over my already perfectly tousled hair, I opened it with a grin.
And was struck in the head by a candelabrum.
I swayed but only momentarily, catching my swan atop the stairs with my arms looped around her.
She squirmed and raged, legs flying behind her to kick me in the shins. I didn’t care. I barely felt it. I carried her back to her rooms and set her on her feet, taking in her swirling golden eyes and the heaving of her ample chest.
Noticing where my attention had landed, she snarled. I smirked. “You are displeased with me.”
I kicked the candelabrum out of the way and closed the door as something trickled down my hairline.
“You killed my father,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “You deceived me, tricked me, and kidnapped me.” Her smile was anything but comforting yet still shockingly beautiful as she growled, “Displeased is far too mild a word, King.”
Lifting my hand, I collected some blood from where she’d struck near my brow and rubbed it between the pads of my fingers. “Try another one, then.”
“What?” She glared, marching backward to the bed when I advanced.
“Another word. Loathing, contempt, ire, hatred, disgust…”
Stopping, she narrowed her eyes and then dropped them to the furred carpet before the bed, long lashes cresting her cheeks. “Just… go away.”
“So you can try to escape again?” I asked, intrigued and humored. “Tell me, sunshine. Why wait until I arrived when you could have easily found another way out?”
Her silence was telling, loud in the way it spoke of all we both already knew.
“Because I’d find you,” I said, gently, softly, clasping her chin in my bloodied fingers and lifting her eyes to mine. “Wherever you go, no matter how far, nor where you hide, this”—I rubbed the blood on my thumb over her bottom lip and watched her pupils explode with her rush of breath—“will never fail in uniting us should one of us seek the other, and my swan…” Her eyelashes fluttered, my thumb brushing, tempting those perfect lips to close around it.
I gri
My lips skimmed her temple, a low groan accompanying my words as hers wrapped around my thumb to be introduced to her silken tongue. “My darling swan, never will there come a day, a night, a fucking minute of time when I won’t need you near.”
I vanished before I did something reckless. Before I bent her over that bed and lifted her skirts to explore the flesh I knew my words, my touch, stars—my fucking presence alone, had dampened.
I vanished to my rooms, and in the silence, the roar of my blood in my ears helped drown the one that ravaged my throat as I gripped my length and rid the need she constantly stoked to life.