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Dade
A fucking tea party.
I’d been flying across the southern farmlands of Vordane when something began to crawl beneath my skin. Landing in a paddock, I startled the shit out of some cattle, then shifted back and opted for faster travel when the feeling didn’t abate.
Warping inside the Keep, I knew instantly that something was amiss, so I interrogated Fang until I feared I’d rip his head clean off, and there she was…
Sitting amongst the fucking toadstools and flowers, drinking tea with the elves.
Fang had nearly pissed in his trousers when I’d appeared before him on the terrace after finding Opal’s rooms empty, her scent leading outside. “Where is she?” I’d growled.
Collecting himself with a curse, he’d straightened from where he’d been taking a nice little nap against the pillar. “She wanted to explore the maze.”
“And you just let her?” I glowered. “Alone?”
“They won’t harm her, I’m sure.”
I’d snarled, rippling into shadow inside the maze, only to discover her scent led up into the sky, trailing toward the woods beyond the maze, and then vanished suddenly. I’d landed and traced it again upon the breeze, following it into the trees.
To find her smiling, drinking tea as though she hadn’t skirted danger and made my stomach churn and twist in such a disgustingly foreign way. Elves surrounded her, sitting in the grass, standing before her with enraptured faces, and one even perched on her leg.
“My king.” One of them finally noticed I was in their midst, standing by a tree, and my swan… oh yes, that was panic in her eyes as she lowered her thumbprint-sized teacup and glanced my way.
I tilted my head, eyeing her. What have you been up to?
She looked away, helping the tiny creature off her leg and setting her onto the grass. “Thank you for the tea,” she said to Beshal, whose eyes bounced back and forth between us as she carefully placed the teacup upon the tray. “It was the most delicious I’ve ever had.”
Beaming, Beshal forgot all about my presence and curtsied. “Please do come back.”
“I’d love to.”
I withheld a grumble and waded over, snatching my swan by the arm. The elves took note but wisely didn’t say a word as they scrambled back toward their homes, and I took my swan back to her rooms.
Inside them, a shadowed breeze still fading from our arrival, Opal whirled on me. “That was so rude.”
“Rude?” I kicked the door closed, perplexed to the point of near-laughter.
“You just… just”—with a groan, the swan flung her arms out—“took me, and you didn’t even offer them a greeting.”
“What do the elves care for greetings?”
Her eyes widened, gold jewels catching on mine. “You mean to tell me you do not even know them?”
“What’s to know?” I eyed the bookshelves, tiring of this conversation. “They are Little Folk and of no importance or use to me.”
Anger lit her eyes, and I found myself struck stupid by the glow of them, the way the high rise of her cheekbones reddened. Her mouth, the perfect pink bow, spread, but then her lips closed. I couldn’t look away as I watched that ire rapidly melt, replaced with a deceptive calm. “Why?” she said at last.
I could hardly stand to blink and did so quickly so as not to miss a moment of staring. “Why what?”
“Why do you want me here? What use am I to you, especially given what the stars have foretold.”
She went there, straight there, and I should’ve known she’d muster up the courage to eventually. Why, watching as she was forced to grow into herself, to adjust to her ever-changing surroundings, adapting to things that happened to her while she hoped to control and reverse it all… stu
I placed one foot in front of the other, my leathered armor still reeking of blood and terror, and took note of the way her heart pounded harder, her skin flushed deeper, and her entire body locked.
But those eyes, they didn’t waver from mine.
A sheltered princess, most certainly, yet one who’d made it her mission to absorb everything in the world around her, searching for things others couldn’t afford to waste time looking for. She ignited intrigue and study like nothing else ever had, and I knew, even without the stars meddlesome intervening, it would be so regardless.
Opal didn’t move even though the rational part of her, the part that thought me nothing more than a savage beast, longed to. Her scent infiltrated, flooding deep, and I groaned lightly as my head swam with it, and my blood heated and bubbled with desire.
Fingers coated in dried blood slid under her delicate chin, and her eyes closed when my head lowered. “Because my troublesome swan, I prefer to keep my most worthy adversaries right where I can see them,” I whispered, her eyes reopening as my nose bumped gently into the side of hers. “Right under my snout.”
I tore myself away at her sharp intake of breath, the air between us growing taut enough to snap with leashed need, and forced myself to the door.
“Wait,” she rasped.
My eyes closed briefly, and then I peered over my shoulder.
She wrung her hands before her, her mettle shrinking with her shoulders, and then she turned for the window. “Never mind.”
Her torment should have satisfied me, but instead, it worsened that pit of foreign feeling inside my stomach, causing it to crawl into my chest.
“You could just take her,” Scythe suggested, tearing a chunk from a glossy red apple and gri
The thought alone, of her struggling and wailing beneath me, as I’d seen happen to some females before during attacks, disgusted me now as it had then.
“No,” I barked. “Savages we may be, but we are not thieves.” Scythe raised a brow in question, knowing I was indeed a hypocrite. I didn’t care. He knew. He’d been there when I’d made it extremely clear that I would not tolerate such abuse. “Only vermin take what is not offered willingly.”
He nodded once, returning to his apple. “Wine then. She is sure to forget how much she loathes you with some wine in her soft belly.”
I gnashed my teeth at him, and he laughed, flinging his middle finger in the air as he bowed and left the war room.
It was now empty, save for Fang and myself. He and Scythe had stayed back after the meeting with my uncle about the human royals’ clever deception in the cove. It would seem the golden thread had indeed left our shores, but we hadn’t the desire, nor the worry, to seek it out.
Let the humans barter with it.
No one would come to their aid, no matter how much gold they accrued and sold. Those across the sea had to know it would be suicide to involve themselves in a war that did not concern them.
They’d take their gold, make their faulty promises, spill lies easily as humans so often did, and meanwhile, we would continue. We were close now. Only the queen remained, and those in her court who could not be trusted once we took their land for our own.
“Scythe wouldn’t know what to do with a female unless they landed in his lap,” Fang said, snatching my attention from the coordinates on the map of Nodoya.
The red stakes indicated the landmarks already destroyed. They covered lovely fat little chunks, like blood trickling through a snow bed. The black indicated the three remaining strongholds to be taken.