Страница 58 из 105
The other was a green so velvet, like moss after rain. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t dare ask what happened, knowing without asking that he would never share that information, as something told me it wasn’t a battle injury.
“Why?” He sheathed the blade in a holster at his hip, his gray tunic falling over to conceal it. “You didn’t do it.”
“I know, but I just mean…” Flustered, I curled my fingers at my sides. I clenched them, forcing out, “It must have been agony.”
His upper lip curled over glowing white teeth. “Many things get the title of agonizing, swan. But this”—he pointed at his missing eye with his thumb—“this deserves no such honor.”
I did my best to swallow down the boiling shock before it could move over my face. It must have anyway, for his grin grew truly menacing. “You should return to your birdcage now.”
“I’m not a prisoner.”
He sketched a hand toward the giant dark doors. “Then, by all means, allow me to escort you out.”
The rain hammering against the Keep, tapping ceaselessly at every window, made my face scrunch. Curiosity won out when I eyed his pants, the mud-splattered boots and the weapons that were surely hidden beneath. He’d just returned from somewhere. “What were you doing with the dagger?”
“Admiring it.”
I ignored those biting cold words. “You thought I was up to something?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I wouldn’t have hurt you if that’s what you’re getting at.” His grin turned feral then, entering his eye in a way that made it glow a brighter green. “Our dear king would never forgive me.”
“So you would if it weren’t for that?” I wasn’t afraid, nor was I angered. If anything, I appreciated the honesty. Lies were an old comfort that I now found myself tired of encountering.
Which I think he deciphered when his eye narrowed and his mouth closed, his stiff stance loosening somewhat. “If you were not his mate, your feathers would be a pretty little vase filler by now.”
I laughed even as I inwardly winced. He only eyed me with more suspicion, but his expression slackened when I released a heavy breath. “You think me the enemy when I have killed no one.”
“You don’t need to have blood on your hands to be a murderer,” he stated coolly. “Besides, you released the scummy human prince, proving your untrustworthiness. Mate to the king or not.”
“I did because another kill doesn’t repair anything.” I leaned against the stair railing. “How can you support it? All this death?”
Scythe huffed. “The same way you and yours supported it when they moved against us in the first war.” Taking one step closer, he whispered heatedly, “You started this. Maybe not you, but your family.”
I found nothing to say to that. There was nothing to say when words were becoming so few and futile against numerous allegations.
He smiled, not kindly, and turned on his heel to head down the hall. “Fear makes monsters out of beasts, Princess. Remember that next time you find yourself so ready to condemn.”
I watched the darkness of the hall take him, then returned to my rooms and stared at my cooling di
Two days passed with the same mind-bending routine. I supposed it was safe to assume he wasn’t coming for me. That no one was coming for me.
But it was never safe to assume anything with the king of wolves.
For the first time in days, I left my rooms and ventured downstairs, the relentless rain outside splattering the Keep’s windows. The vines that encased the exterior created a violent rattle and tapping as thunder boomed overhead.
I didn’t dare go farther than the library, though my curiosity, this insufferable tugging beneath my skin, had me longing to delve deeper into the Keep.
He was here. He’d been here for three days. I’d felt it. Listened to his late return each evening to his rooms while wondering if he’d acknowledge me in mine. He never did, and on the fourth night of silence, the bad weather heightening the edged vibe that’d filled the Keep since its arrival, that incessant longing won out.
I didn’t know what I would say, only that when I reached the landing below the stairs leading to our rooms, I had to follow the sound of his laughter. Up the set of stairs that led to the other side of the highest floor in the Keep, a place I hadn’t yet explored, I trailed his scent, the noise escaping into the halls, and discovered an enormous room.
A ballroom.
Glittering silver chandeliers hung from the rose-painted ceiling, and beneath them were columns wrapped in more vines. Twinkling fireflies bounced inside of tiny glass orbs that looped around them and floated throughout the room.
Flames danced in black sconces and flared with the energy in the giant space, and given the raucous, wild barking laughter and activities, they were roaring toward the ceiling.
I halted in the doorway, unsure what was going on when it dawned on me that nothing special was taking place. This was no ball, but it was a party of some sort.
Naked females danced together around a large velvet-looking circular chaise in the corner, and my eyes widened when a male approached one and spread her legs, hauling them up around his neck until the female quit laughing. Her back arched, her head and shoulders the only parts of her remaining on the large chaise as the male feasted between her thighs and another crawled over her, his member nearing her mouth.
“A black swan darkens our doorway,” Fang drawled, seated upon a giant throw cushion with a brunette, a pipe between his lips.
“Fuck,” a red-haired male with a deep scar cutting through his cheek muttered from a table overflowing with drink, cards, and piles of coin. “Tres, fetch the king.”
A golden-haired male who I assumed must have been Tres thumped his ale to the table, coins bouncing. “You fetch the king.”
“Just do it,” snapped a raven-haired female beside him.
“The asshole can do it himself,” Tres said, picking up his ale. “And as if he doesn’t know there’s a bird in here.”
“What did you call me?”
“Shit.” Fang slowly rose from the floor, his stu
“You fucking heard me, asshole.”
The tankard went flying, narrowly missing my head as I stepped aside, and it clanged into the hall behind me.
It happened so fast, and just as it did with the king, I barely saw it. A series of slight crunches, night coalescing in shadowed tendrils, and skin turned fur. The males were full wolf by the time they collided in the air over the table and took a chair with them to the floor.
The chair splintered into pieces. Growling, snarling, and cheering erupted, but it didn’t last longer than a collection of short seconds.
From the other side of the cavernous room, in a corner I couldn’t see that faced the naked females upon the circular chaise, came a snarl lethal enough to rupture eardrums and haunt dreams.
Dade took his time. In a loose steel-gray long-sleeved shirt that gaped at his chest, giving a glimpse of the fine hairs dusting his sun-warmed skin, his long legs—thick thighs hugged tight by black pants—ate the quick to clear space of the ballroom.
The silence became so complete that each thud of his knee-high boots grew into an echo.
With one dark glance my way, he sighed and looked at the misbehaving warriors who were now in their Fae forms, standing ramrod straight, waiting on reprimand.
“Change back,” Dade ordered, and then the males were wolves once more, formidable in size and height, but nowhere near the monstrous size of their winged ruler. “Walk home and stay home until told otherwise.”