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“You’ve not been here,” I retorted, hating that I sounded miffed by that fact.
“I have, but I’ve been training a faction of my warriors that were under Serrin’s command, as well as riffling through the reports delivered by some of our scouts and preparing things for when we leave tomorrow.”
“Reports of what?”
“I’m keeping tabs on those human royals, of course.” He hummed, a finger dragging up my arm, heating flesh in its wake, and stopping under my chin once he’d tilted it closer to his lips. “Especially that prince you seem so fond of.”
Outrage roughened my voice. “I am not fond of him.”
“You saved his life, betrayed me to do so.”
I could say nothing to that. I had done both those things, and despite my actions, he was trusting me. He was putting a great deal of trust in me by telling me those two seemingly insignificant facts about his whereabouts.
“I’ve been waiting,” he said then, his lower body pushing into mine, hard, hot, and I immediately tingled all over. “Hoping you’ll return to my bed, that you’ll simply just return to me.”
“I want to,” I admitted, far too breathy than I’d have liked.
Husky and low, he murmured to my cheek, “So why deny yourself? Why deny me?”
“I thought you’d come for me,” I released another truth, closing my eyes against such foolishness. “You never did.”
“I did. I left you presents.”
The roses. Smiling, I reopened my eyes, turned my head until our lips almost touched. “Unlike you, I ca
He pondered that as if he hadn’t considered it before now, then groaned as if frustrated. “Come now then. We can talk more in my rooms.”
Hypnotized, I allowed him to lead me up the stairs but halted when we reached the landing to our rooms—when I saw those large doors that would open to reveal a memory-stained space of another time.
“It’s like another world,” I heard myself say, fingers pulling from the king. He turned to me, confusion dancing within his eyes. “Being in that room with you, all those hours…” I shook my head, smiling even as something inside me screamed to walk closer and kiss that disappointment from his a
“I want you.”
Such simple words. Such simple words with drastic complications.
“We will enter that room of yours, lose ourselves in one another, and risk everything by arriving at Gracewood sleep deprived, distracted, and infatuated.”
“Infatuated,” he repeated, as though tasting the word quietly.
I walked closer and took both his hands in mine, allowing myself that much when I wanted and needed so much more. I burned with it and squeezed as I implored, “Dade, this is not a game to be won any longer. This wedding… it could turn into another war. My mother is wounded. Gravely with the loss of my father, and I won’t lose her, too.”
He blinked slowly. “I won’t harm her.”
“Your armies will join us, will they not? It will end in another massacre if my mother does something foolish from a place of grief.”
“No,” he said, and relief flooded me. “It’s just you and me making the journey, taking the risk, a risk I am willing to take a thousand times over because I fucking want you.”
A throbbing started inside my chest. He wanted, and to him, it was that simple, that important. I had to wonder if he truly had never wanted something in this way before. If maybe his willingness to take such a risk was a result of never knowing true consequence. If maybe, he knew nothing of complications beyond the physical—beyond what he could only see.
And I didn’t know how to make him understand when I wasn’t sure that was possible, when he’d stated himself that he was a male without empathy, and when it would mean acknowledging things better left alone.
So I nodded, falling into him when his hands left mine and drifted to my face, lips brushing my forehead. “She ca
“I do. We will marry and return home.”
Home. Again, that word, used for two entirely yet not so different places. She would be safe, but the king, this king of mine that I didn’t want but now could not bear the idea of seeing harmed… “What if she tries something?” I said, peeling away and rubbing my chest. “What if she tries something, and…” and I couldn’t voice the dark thoughts. “Why don’t we just wait?”
He cocked his head. “Wait?”
I nodded fast. “We could wait. Wait until we can reach a better agreement. Perhaps more solid ground on which we can wed.”
“No, thank you.” Dade captured a curl that had strayed from my braid and looped it around his finger. “We will go anyway.”
I laughed, my eyes watering. “Lovely ma
“Your mother would not agree,” he said, eyes upon my golden hair. “And for her to believe I care about you, it must be this way. She must see that despite any ideas she might have, I will do this regardless.”
He was quite possibly one of the most powerful creatures on this continent, if not the most, but outnumbered, that would not matter.
The king sounded amused. “Swan, are you concerned for my safety?”
Dropping my hand from my burning chest, I gri
“Daden.”
I whirled, blinking back at him in confusion.
“My real name, though I would prefer it never used, is Daden.” When I continued to stare, he smirked. “We leave at sundown.”
Daden.
He’d gifted me with a secret—a name I’d never heard though I didn’t doubt was real. Flutters had swarmed and warmed my chest ever since hearing those quietly uttered words, the vulnerability that lurked even quieter beneath them.
A vulnerability he’d hidden so well that I wouldn’t be surprised if no one else knew it existed beneath that veneer of calm deadliness. And tomorrow…
I paced my rooms, uncertainty flowing through me and creating dark thoughts.
What if he was hurt or worse, he was killed? What if others were hurt and or killed?
She wouldn’t harm me, my heart, not without good reason, but to see the blood king fall was reason enough. Except she did not know. My mother had no idea what he now meant to me.
I had no idea what he now meant to me.
When di
Mine. Whether I was okay with it or not, that was what he was.
A king. A savage. A murderer.
Mine.
When I’d first met him, it had felt as though a string had looped around my waist, tempting with daringly gentle tugs to be closer, nearer.
Over the span of weeks, that string had grown into rope, and now, I was in chains—bruised and sore for fighting a brutal pull that would never fucking cease.
I didn’t bother knocking and opened the door that co
Dade opened the door at the other end, hair deliciously mussed and his head tilted, releasing soft light into the dark chamber. Curious ghostly blue eyes drank me in and paused on the fish pie in my hands. His nose wrinkled at the scent, then he stepped back.
Two sconces on either side of that monstrous bed were lit, and I kept my eyes averted from the perfectly pressed linen I’d once tangled so thoroughly. “Not fond of fish?”