by Jade Kerrion
“Nithya…” he breathed her name like a prayer.
Desire was like a wave, and she was drowning, not even pretending to gasp for air.
She slid her fingers through his hair, drawing him close, not letting him go, and caressed his back—smooth skin layered over hard muscles. They tensed and relaxed, then tensed again. The sound he made, deep in this throat, sounded like pain of the most exquisite sort.
He was still fighting it.
Nithya laughed, the low husky sound of a powerful woman. Desire was wrecking him as much as it was destroying her. “You can treat me like a lady later, but now, I want you to have all of me, any way you want.”
“I want you forever.” His words were so quietly uttered that Nithya was not even certain she heard them.
Varian scooped her off her feet and carried her to the bedroom. He set her down on her feet. She stared up at him and for the first time, felt…not afraid, but small—as if she had unleashed something greater than herself, that she had no hope of controlling.
His eyes, so dark, seemed to burn into her. Passion, she recognized, but it took her several moments to put a name to that dark edge.
Control.
Absolute, perfect control.
The combination was the sexiest thing she had ever seen.
He kissed her again, this time slowly and deliberately, as he unlaced her dress and slid it off her shoulders. The linen pooled at her feet, followed by the soft cotton of her undergarments, until she stood naked before him.
He studied her with the dispassion of an artist for his art, except for his unsteady breaths and the raw need in his eyes, still perfectly under control.
He wanted her as desperately as she wanted him, but he would not be rushed. One day, Nithya promised. She would rip that control from his hands, but tonight, she was his, to be taken any way he saw fit.
She shivered, not from the cold but from his touch, from each fleeting brush of his fingers, never twice in the same spot yet always where she needed it most. He teased her skin with each carefully timed and placed touch, until she was shaking.
Her need was moist and molten between her legs, but desire—desire was everywhere. Every inch of her body quivered, begging for more of his unpredictable, arousing touch.
“How do you do this to me?” he murmured. “Drive me insane from wanting you—all of you, from this sexy dimple—” He caressed her lower back, just above the curve of her buttocks. “—to this wicked, clever mouth—” He breathed a kiss on her lips, teasing her with a flick of his tongue against hers. “—to the core of you.”
She trembled against him, needing, wanting his fingers in the slick heat between her legs, but he bent his head and kissed her left breast.
Right over her pounding heart.
Nithya froze as if struck.
She was certain she had been in love with him before, but in that instant, she tumbled headlong into a pit of love so deep, she knew she would never find her way out.
Loving Varian would never be convenient, but the rightness of it seared her; it grounded her; it sent her soaring. She drew her fingers through his blond hair. “Take off your glamour. Show me your face.”
For an instant, he stiffened against the request, against her, but then his hair darkened until it was as black as a raven’s wing. She held her breath as he raised his head, but she saw only Varian’s face—the exquisite face he wore in public as the prince of La Condamine.
The disappointment was sharp and scalding. The witches shunned glamour as artifice—layers of false beauty that did more than hide the face; they concealed the soul.
The fae, however, treated glamour as if it were one of the immutable laws of the universe, wearing it so consistently that most of them had no idea what they really looked like any more.
Apparently, Varian was no different.
He’s a fae, Nithya told herself. And a prince. He’s probably more fae than most fae. Glamour is part of him.
And this face is how he wants to be seen and remembered.
She stroked the sharp slash of his cheekbones and ran a finger along the straight line of his nose, memorizing his face.
In seventy-two hours… Her chest hitched on a silent sob.
“Don’t,” he said softly, as if he sensed the direction of her thoughts. “Stay with me—here and now—in this forever moment.” He dropped to his knees. His hands gripped her hips, and he drew his tongue along her moist heat, wrenching a soft gasp from her lips.
She dug her fingers into his scalp, riding the rising crest of raw arousal as his tongue, his lips, his teeth abraded her, worshipped her. Her breath caught, trapped in her lungs, when the wave broke over her, drenching her, drowning her.
Her legs crumpled beneath her, but his strong arms held her up before lowering her gently to her bed. The silken sheets were cold beneath her heated skin, sensation piling upon sensation, until she thought her mind would explode.
Cloth rustled, and a moment later, he stretched out beside her, propping himself up on one elbow so that he could look at her. She smiled as she ran her hands over his lean, muscled torso and narrow waist, before curving around to caress his tight buttocks. “You’re beautiful.” With the glamour, or in spite of it.
He managed a tone of mock offense. “Beautiful isn’t a term preferred by men.”
“But certainly by the fae.” Nithya gave him a dimpled smile. “It’s hard to outshine a fae in beauty.”
“No one could outshine you,” he whispered, bending his head to breathe kisses on her forehead, over her eyelashes, and along her cheekbones—the contact as light and teasing as the brush of butterfly wings.
Nithya laughed softly. “Flatterer…” He was lying, of course. What was a human compared the practiced, perfected glamour of a fae prince?
He smiled against her cheek. “All eyes look to you the moment you enter the room. You’re not tall, but you command attention. Maybe it’s the arch look in your eyes, or the upward tilt of your nose and chin, as if daring the world to take you on. Maybe it’s the smile, as if you’re silently laughing at the ridiculousness of the fae.”
“I am. Every moment of the day.”
He laughed, a warm sound that rang with humor. “You unsettle me. You always have, from our first meeting, and every meeting since. I never know what you’re going to do.”
“Oh, you’ll know.” She rolled onto her stomach and threw him a wicked glance before lowering her lips to his arousal. She drew a deep breath. His rich, male musk evoked memories of cedar and pine against the crisp bite of freshly fallen snow, and something more—something dark, like the shadow of a black timber wolf against the pristine white landscape.
He was a fae, but he was not simple as the witches tended to perceive the fae. He was prince of the fae. Dark shadows lurked at the edges of his brilliant, glittering public personality. A hunter. A predator. Implacable.
And at that moment, a man nearly flayed raw with need.
Varian was long and painfully hard, but he held still as she tasted and teased him. His fingers dug into the covers; his breath grew ragged, and the muscles in his abdomen were so taut that she could clearly see its well-defined tone.
Still, he did not thrust into her mouth even though it was clear it demanded every shred of his willpower not to.
That damnable fae nobility. All the good manners drummed into him.
She took him deep into her mouth, until she could almost feel him at the back of her throat, and she hummed the national anthem. The tune came out unintelligible. At any rate, it was inaudible beneath Varian’s sudden, strangled cry. His hips jerked, and his seed exploded into her mouth. She swallowed his scent and his taste, drawing every last bit out of him, stroking him until he finally softened.
Nithya raised her head and had the utter pleasure of seeing Varian with his eyes closed, his chest heaving—vulnerable, wrung out with pleasure. His eyelashes fluttered and his eyes opened. A smile touched his lips and he opened his arms to her, drawing h
er head down to his chest. She snuggled against his warmth, the curves of her body fitting perfectly along the hard planes of his. She drew patterns on his bare hip. “You’re not promiscuous like most fae, are you?”
“That’s the third time you’ve insulted my people in the past hour,” he said, his voice absent of rancor or anger. “Does it come naturally or are you working especially hard at it?”
She giggled. “The fae lend themselves to drama and melodrama. But not you.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No, you’re different. Is it because you are a prince?”
Varian was silent for a moment, and a quiet sadness replaced the light in his eyes. “Perhaps. Intimacy creates obligations, but also because of this.” He rubbed his chest. The sickness in his lungs. “It’s not something to pass on carelessly, just because my bed is cold at night.”
“And you take all your responsibilities and obligations seriously.”
His eyes narrowed as he frowned. “Is there another way?” He turned his head to cough into his fist. His shoulders shuddered, and pain twisted his features.
Nithya winced at the tearing sound. “Do you have any sachets of your medicine?”
Varian shook his head. He opened his mouth to speak, but another coughing fit ripped through his lungs. He rolled out of bed, his hand pressed over his mouth as he reached for his clothes.
“Here.” Nithya held out a towel to him. “It’s all right,” she told him when he hesitated. “The blood will wash out.”
He pressed the towel to his mouth until the coughs stopped, although it seemed to Nithya that they did not so much stop as Varian’s body was too worn out to cough further. “It’s worse than it was two weeks ago.”
“It’s just stress.” He sat up slowly and leaned his head against the side of the bed.
“Could someone be trying to hurt you?”
“Why? In seventy-two hours, it wouldn’t matter.”
“Exactly…” Nithya murmured. “It doesn’t make sense. Who supplies the powder for your tonics?”
“The royal apothecary. His family has served the royal household and many noble families for generations.”
“Is he personally loyal to you?”
“At this point, almost no one is personally loyal to me, but would he hurt me? I don’t think so.”
“Who benefits if you die?”
“Conrad.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Who have you offended?”
“Everyone.”
“I meant before you starting arresting all their family and friends. Think back—a month ago, a year ago. Have you offended anyone since taking the throne? Who were your father’s worst enemies?”
“He didn’t have any, at least none who would have benefited from his death. Outside of the family and the royal physicians, only the council knew about his sickness, just as they—and now you—are the only ones who know about mine.”
Nithya frowned. “Someone wanted his death to be painful.”
“Or they wanted it to look natural.” Varian shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was the natural progression of the disease. The doctors found no evidence of any poison. Maybe I’m overreacting.”
“What about the conversation I overheard?”
“That’s not evidence.”
She glared at him. “What about the deliberate attempt to sabotage your speech?”
“You have no proof that any of the people you overheard was a member of my council.”
“A preemptive arrest wouldn’t hurt.”
“Yes, it would. They’re members of the council, my most trusted advisers. Grimaldi was to my father what Tristan is to me—a friend closer than a brother. If I arrest any member of the council for high treason—murder and attempted murder of the royal family—without absolute proof, I’ve broken faith with them and with my people.”
“How much more proof do you need?” She pointed to the towel stained with blood he had coughed out of his lungs. “Why isn’t the fact that someone is trying to kill you throwing you into a panic?”
“Because in three days, I’ll be dead anyway.”
His matter-of-fact words, uttered quietly, broke her heart. She drew a deep, shuddering breath, but even then, she needed several moments before she could speak without her voice trembling. “Twenty-four hours. One day. Give us one day together, and I won’t ask for more.”
Nithya and Varian left La Condamine early the next morning, riding out beneath the massive triumphant arches that defined the boundaries of the city. The charming cobblestone streets gave way to trails marked by the passage of cart wheels. The tightly packed houses in the city spread out into small village clusters, and eventually opened into wide spaces and low, rolling hills, pockmarked by ruined structures spread far apart from each other.
“Once, these were farms,” Varian said quietly. “Perhaps, one day, they will be again.”
She glanced at him. He still wore his princely face, as she had come to think of it, but his hair was blacker than a moonless night. Somehow, it suited him better; it gentled the stark darkness of his eyes. “Tell me what you see.”
Varian drew a deep breath before speaking. His gaze darted across the landscape, seeing nothing, imagining everything. “I see green instead of white. Vast foliage of aspen, birch, and oak spreading beneath the tall pines. Fields of golden grain at the foothills, and an ocean, sparking blue, beneath the sun. There will still be white—in the caps of the waves, the sails on the ships, the clouds in the sky—but there will be many other colors, an abundant profusion of them.”
Nithya looked around. All she saw was white snow, as lifeless as a burial shroud, and shards of pale blue ice, like spikes in the frozen heart of the land. “I wish I could see it too.”
He flashed her a wry smile. “Perhaps if you could, you wouldn’t think I was crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy. I just don’t agree with what you’re doing.” Her eyes narrowed. “At all.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Avoidance. That’s a fae thing, isn’t it?”
“Are you starting up again? I thought you wanted twenty-four hours just for us.”
“I do, but there weren’t any stipulations about not arguing.”
Varian chuckled. “Fair enough.”
“This is us, Varian.” She smiled as she reached out to him. He took her hand immediately. The contact thrilled her, and it anchored her. How odd that it should accomplish both concurrently. I never imagined that love could simultaneously protect and liberate. “This is us as we truly are. No illusions.”
“Right. No illusions about getting along or agreeing on anything.”
Nithya waved his ironic comment away. “Agreement is for the spineless.”
“Some of us like to provide a rationale for agreement,” he said mildly.
“The truth is in the eyes of the beholder.”
“Is it?” He frowned. “Truth is truth.”
“For someone as determined as you are to bring color back into the world, you have an extremely black-and-white perspective.”
“I sense sarcasm.”
Nithya laughed. “What you sense is truth, not sarcasm. Your morality is remarkably rigid.”
“In some circles, that would have been perceived as a good thing.”
“I would have thought that someone as enmeshed in politics as you are would have developed a much grayer point-of-view.”
“I am the prince, not a courtier. I don’t have to curry favor or gamble on the goodwill of a whimsical monarch. The steadier a course I maintain, the easier is it for those around me to align their plans.”
“I see how that could work, and backfire.”
“Do you always see two sides to everything?”
Nithya shrugged. “Truth is a two-sided coin. Nothing’s absolute, Varian. Not faith. Not even love.”
He pulled the reins on his horse. “You’re too young t
o be this cynical.”
He’s beautiful, she thought. A handsome, dark-haired fae prince upon a black horse, like the great seal of life, defiant and unchanging, against the white and silver backdrop of eternal winter.
Yet it was more than the stunning imagery he evoked.
It was who he was—convicted passion, married to ambitious vision, built upon a foundation of timeless morality.
The first two made him a tyrant. The third saved him from being so.
Varian represents the best of fae nobility, however annoying it is in the daily grind of life. He doesn’t let it wear him down. He keeps going in spite of all the obstacles thrown up in his way.
Obstacles, like me.
Guilt was a scalding iron next to her heart. If only you weren’t you, and I wasn’t me.
These twenty-four hours were intended to be that period of grace, when Varian was not the prince of La Condamine, and Nithya wasn’t the small thorn in his side, bleeding his realm of the magic he so desperately needed for his plans to succeed.
She drew a deep but tremulous breath. “I’ve seen family and friends fail to come through in moments of need.”
“Sometimes, failure can’t be helped.” Varian shrugged. He sounded remarkably sanguine. “The only question that matters is whether they tried.”
His black horse tossed its head, the only visible sign of its impatience, yet it did not move until Varian nudged it gently with his ankles.
Absolute power under perfect control.
Nithya, on the other hand, was enjoying her spirited palomino mare, a loan from Varian’s stables. She leaned forward to stroke its neck. “Why did you name her Dandelion? She’s too beautiful to be a weed.”
“She’s a hardy little thing; she seems to enjoy even the coldest day.” He glanced up at the warmth-less sun. The wind was light and lacked its usual sting. “We’ve picked a wonderful day to head into the countryside.
“Where are we going?”
“I have a cottage in the mountains. It’s not much farther.”
“Do you come out here often?” she asked as Dandelion followed Varian’s horse off the trail and toward the tree line.
“Frequently when I was younger. I haven’t been out here since my father died.” He shrugged. “Responsibilities of state…it’s hard to get away.” Varian glanced at her. “I’m sure it’s hard for you, too, owning your own business.”
