by Ella Fields
“Not yet, sunshine.” He erased those two steps, then crouched down before me. “Not yet.”
His scent ran rampant, a flood of stained air I wanted to eradicate, and when his finger reached my chin, tilting it up, I snatched his wrist and glared into those wasted pretty eyes.
He smiled, breathtaking in a way he did not deserve, those dimples exposed. “There she is.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“I do believe you’re touching me.”
Releasing him, I shifted back, and his eyes fell to the carpet. “Did you have a tantrum with your belongings?”
I didn’t answer him. Instead, I rose to my feet and headed for the door. He was there, a gathering of shadow that formed a tall, broad-shouldered male in a second, blocking the door. “Enough dallying, tell me why you’re here.” He sighed when I stepped back and turned away. “Is it to marry the human toad?”
“You deserve nothing, and you will get nothing from me ever again.”
“Opal,” he said, right behind me, and I jumped a little when his breath washed over my neck. “Answer the fucking question.”
I whirled, our chests nearly meeting as I seethed up into his face, “Or what? You’ll murder me, too?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’d have been dead weeks ago if that were my intention.”
That shocked and cemented something I didn’t want to pay any attention to. “Just go.” My voice broke on the last word, and I lowered back to the ground, dizzy once more and lacking the energy to parry with him, let alone alert someone to his presence.
“I didn’t eat his heart,” he said after a heavy moment, still behind me, his gaze burning into the top of my head as I tugged a gown over my legs. “I mean, usually I would, but I spat it out.”
I snorted, my throat and chest too tight. “Because that makes the fact I will never see him again easier to bear.”
He could say nothing to that, the silence stilted as though he was at a loss for what to do. Then he rounded me, and asked in an edged tone, “What are you trying to do?”
“I must weave gold into all these”—I lifted the dress—“and I’m tired, so please…” I whispered, exhaustion overlapping my fear and hatred of him. “Just leave already.”
He bent low. “I will when you tell me why they’re making you do such a thing.”
I didn’t, and I let him deduce from that what he would.
He didn’t leave. He watched, eyes transfixed on my failing hands. I pulled away when he reached for one, and he said, “Trust me.”
I almost laughed. “Never.”
He nodded once but took my hand regardless, and I was too weak to fight him as he lowered to the floor across from me and said, “Try again.” When I gaped, he grinned. “Go on, I dare you.”
Frowning, I did and gasped as gold thread not only wove through the fabric but danced along the hem and neckline with such speed, the dress shone with it within a handful of stuttered breaths.
Blinking at it, then up at his contemplative expression, I asked, “How?”
“You did it. I merely… assisted.” He released my hand and tugged the cloak free of my leg, placing it on my lap over the gown. “Again,” he said, a cold demand.
I wasn’t sure how it was happening or why I allowed him to touch me once more. I only knew it was happening, and I was grateful. Not to him, but just… relieved.
Within minutes, the entire trunk of clothing had gold spun through every thread of stitching, and with a feral grin, the king of wolves gazed at me beneath his long lashes. “We make a good team.”
Reality slammed back in. I slid my hand out from under his silken, callused fingers and hurried to my feet. “We make a good nothing.”
Collecting each item, I folded and placed them upon the closed lid of the trunk while the king stood there, watching silently.
“You should eat,” he finally said, and then he was gone.
As promised, the prince visited the next morning, his smile stretching into his cheeks. “You did it.”
Indeed, the servant who’d delivered my breakfast had gone to inform them of the clothing piled upon the golden trunk. I’d remained where I was, lying over the crumpled bed in the same clothing I’d arrived in, as she’d left and returned with a friend to collect it all.
Now, still seated upon the bed, I was tearing at the mound of hard bread that’d come with breakfast, forcing little pieces down with sips of water. I’d almost thought it a dream, a trick of a misery-addled mind until the items were carefully carried away—the reason for the gold-embroidered clothing a ghost haunting my every thought.
“Opal?” the prince asked, unmoving from where he stood beside the open door.
“I wish to be alone,” I finally said. Not meeting his eyes, I let my own slide away from the finery he wore.
“Mother says you are permitted to leave your chambers for a walk in the gardens…”
“I said I would like to be left alone.” The bread started to crumble in the firm grip of my fingers.
The prince cleared his throat, then stepped out. “As you wish.”
The door closed and locked, and it did not reopen until that evening as I was leaving the bathing chamber in a white satin robe I’d found hanging over a hook beside the shelves of bath salts.
“Good, you’re clean. Herma was beginning to fret about the stench that might befall this room.”
I didn’t bother informing her that whatever stench I left in my unwashed state would not be detected by their inferior sense of smell, my fingers twining my hair into a loose braid that fell over my shoulder.
The queen finally met my eyes when I said nothing, her own widened with expectation.
Still, I remained silent, and she huffed, turning to the door and ushering someone in.
Two men carried three knapsacks each. All were promptly upturned onto the red carpet before the now empty golden trunk. With swift bows, they then hustled past the queen with their sacks and left.
Sabrina gestured to the new mounds of clothing. “We will give you until the day after the morrow.”
A shocked laugh slipped out. “You’re giving me time limits now?” She folded her hands in front of her, straightened her posture, and I shook my head. “What happens if I fail to complete them on time?”
“Certain allowances might be taken away.” With a coy smile, she spun for the door, her brown and gold gown dragging the unswept breadcrumbs with it. “Good night.”
I stared at the closed door, then looked at the mountains of expectation on the floor, and decided to finish my chicken dumplings instead. They lacked the flavor, the love of the earth, from back home, but they weren’t terrible, and after not eating well for a time, they probably tasted better than they truly did.
Afterward, I unlocked the door with a touch of my hand on the wood, smiling to myself as I left the tray outside, then closed it. A silly victory that did nothing but show a little defiance, and hopefully a hint to Herma, the servant, to keep out of my rooms.
As I’d feared, the moment my fingers touched the thread of the finery I’d laid out before me upon the large single bed, nothing happened.
Nothing save for the stitching that was already there growing stronger. Unyielding.
While I was certain most humans would appreciate such a thing, I knew the king and queen would not and glowered at the clothing as though it had been created to dupe me.
“Need some assistance?”
My eyes shot to the window. How he’d arrived, so silent and undetectable, was beyond me. “How are you getting past the guards?”
“Warping,” he said as though I were daft, and perhaps I was for not having considered that already. In my defense, I had defiant un-gold stitching to contend with, and the blood king had mercifully flitted to the back of my mind.
Until now.
He climbed through as though he had every right to and crossed the room, hands tucked within the pockets of his long leather coat as he surveyed the space. “A pr
etty cell for a pretty faerie princess.”
“It’s not a cell,” I lied. We were both well aware that it was.
Humoring me, it seemed, he didn’t bite back, just dipped his fingers into the bowl of vegetable soup upon the nightstand. He put them into his mouth, and nausea assaulted me when his lips curled around them, and my blood rebelled, heating. Then he winced, hacking with his tongue out. “Stars above, that is fucking foul.”
“So is your presence,” I muttered, clearing my throat. “Kindly show yourself out.”
“If this is about your father, I fear I cannot apologize,” he said with a calm apathy that alarmed more than it angered. “Duty is duty, and I cannot falter from the path I’ve been set upon.”
I tilted my head back to blink at him. “Your duty is to murder hundreds, no thousands of our kind?”
“If necessary, yes. Humans, too.” He tapped a finger against the unlit lantern, and it sprung to life, flame bouncing. “I do not discriminate, sunshine.”
I scoffed. A red haze caused a film over my eyes as I clenched my fingers around the scarf. “You’re disgusting.”
He took a seat on the bed, uncaring that I wished him ill, and folded his long legs beneath him, the wood groaning under our weight. “Give me your hand then, and let’s get on with it.”
I pulled my hands into my lap, and he watched the action with a maddening half-smile and tilt of his head, strands of blond hair creeping down to brush his forehead. “Why come here?”
His brows climbed, and he stared at me as if I should know why he’d shown up yet again. “Swan, any place you go, wherever you find yourself, I fear I am bound to follow.” From the sharp edge of those words and the ice lightening his eyes, I couldn’t convey whether he was pleased about what he’d stated.
My throat thickened, ire strangled by fear. “I would much prefer you didn’t.”
“You only say that because I killed your father and a great many other creatures.” Waving his hand, he collected a robe and stole my own. “Be furious later. I’ve things to do after this.”
Stunned once more, I didn’t pull away. I glared down at the robe between us as though my loathing alone could peel back his skin but then noticed the contrast in the size of our hands, mine too tiny and nearly hidden by his.
Gold unspooled, flowing like a dotted river along the edging of the robe. My teeth knocked together, but I couldn’t help it. Knowledge was power. “Dare I ask what things?”
“You may ask, but that doesn’t guarantee an answer.”
I sighed as he tossed the robe to the side and spread a large coat between us, our hands still joined. “Maiming, torturing, fearmongering…”
“Politics bore me,” he said. “If you must know, I’ve a meeting with my uncle and two of my…” His nose twitched as he paused. “I suppose the easiest thing to call them is friends.”
I wasn’t sure if he was attempting humor or if he truly hadn’t been aware that these so-called friends of his were his friends until now.
“Your uncle?” I said while he swapped the finished coat out for a gown. I’d heard next to nothing of the fearsome general who’d supposedly been the late ruler of Vordane’s brother and best friend. Only that he was cruel, merciless, and hundreds of years old but still without a mate.
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 donned when I’d woken from a restless sleep.
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.
