by Ella Fields
My lips curled slowly into a grin. “Do not flatter yourself, Lord.”
Zad’s eyes flicked up, a playful menace within, then I was in his arms, and his teeth were pinching my neck. He inhaled deep, his exhale a mixture of mirth and desire. “Do not lie to me, my queen.”
“I do no such thing,” I said, but I was nothing but heating flesh and shaking breath.
He reached between us, and my head fell back, angling to the side.
His tongue lapped at my carotid, his finger delving inside me, finding my need-drenched lies. My thighs clenched around his waist. He released a throaty groan, then rumbled, “I’m going to see my friends.”
“Your…” I stopped, swallowing when his teeth grazed my skin, his finger rubbing now. “Your faerie friends.”
He hummed in affirmation, and I heard the buckle of his pants come loose. “I will return by nightfall.”
“Not if you do not leave now,” I said, silently begging him not to by rocking my hips.
A wicked laugh climbed out of his throat, rough and coating my body in a wave of shivering excitement.
My back met the wall, and I bucked, my own teeth sinking into his shoulder. With one deliriously slow thrust, he was inside me, and I moaned, my legs tensing around him as I tried to adjust to the invasion. So thick, so long, but so achingly perfect.
I felt him throb, felt his next exhale tremble out of his mouth to wash over my neck, and then I felt the wall. Its cold, rock-roughened surface scratched into my lower back as he pulled out, then pushed in.
“Shit,” I hissed, the pain of it crawling along my skin to meet with pleasure.
Unforgiving, he withdrew, then rammed back in again. “Do not,” he grunted, repeating the torment with each demand. “Hide.” My nails raked into the muscled mounds of his forearms, my thighs shaking already. “From me.”
I couldn’t respond, could only lose myself to the wild only he possessed and could coax from me.
But then Zad stilled, and I almost screamed, lifting my head to glare at him. I rocked onto him, breathing hard. “Don’t you dare stop.”
His nostrils flared, lashes hovering low over burning eyes. “Answer me.”
“You did not ask a question,” I panted, shoving my hair from my face. “You made a demand.”
He merely lifted a perfect, dark russet brow.
I groaned, clenching around his length. That brought me a smirk but nothing else. “We might be linked, but I am still your queen.”
He stared at me for a moment. A moment that made me feel so much more exposed than I already was, naked and filled with him, our sweat and breaths and insecurities mingling. “Exactly,” he finally said. Something sparked in his eyes and in the slight croak of his deep voice. “You are mine. My Audra. My queen. My fucking heart.”
I froze, my heartbeat slowing and my shoulders drooping.
Slowly, I leaned forward, my chest pressing into his, and sank my fingers into the thickness of his perfectly tied hair, happily ruining it. “Okay, my lord.” I kissed him, the rough pads of his fingers sliding up my back and into my own hair. His eyes closed, his mouth softening beneath mine, and I repeated, “Okay.”
Zadicus
The sun was crawling toward its highest destination in the sky when I reached the estate.
With no time to waste, I waved off the sentinels at the gates and dismounted, leaving Rivers at the foot of the stairs to the manor.
She was trying, of that I was certain. For months, she’d handed me pieces of herself that’d been locked away. I shook the dust from them, saw them shine, no matter how small they might be, and appreciated them for the gargantuan gift they were.
But this, the force across the sea that stole into her dreams and lured her from the safety of her bed, complicated things. Complicated was putting it fucking mildly. The intrusion, the uncertainty and fear, had her retreating into that dark cave where nothing and no one could hurt her so long as she didn’t allow anyone inside.
To coax her out was akin to taking a blade to the chest, trailing it over the organ within, all the while hoping it did not puncture.
Audra was scared. She loathed to ever admit it, but if my queen adored one thing above almost anything else, it was control.
And something, someone, was robbing her of it.
For years now, all I’d wanted was for her to want me, to love me with the same savage need I harbored for her. I’d finally gotten all that I desired, and now, well...
She wasn’t the only one afraid.
I hated leaving her. No matter how capable Audra was of defending herself, there was naught to be done about who was currently knocking on the door of Rosinthe.
But we had to try. I had no idea what he wanted. It’d been hundreds of years, over half a millennia, since I’d last seen him smiling with grim satisfaction, my soul hanging from his hands before he’d swept himself into the breeze and disappeared.
Ever since, he’d been forbidden to come for me, to goad me into another fight he might not win, yet here he was, goading my heart instead.
Emmiline met me at the door, dusting flour from her hands onto a pale pink apron. Her golden brows lowered. “What’s the matter?”
There was little point in hiding anything, not when everything was about to change. “He’s here.”
Her apron slipped from her fingers, her lips falling apart. Emmiline was my mother’s sister, and at that moment, the fear filling her eyes brought back memories I’d long left behind. Memories I’d rather have wait for me to beckon into this wholly different life of mine than expose themselves before I was ready.
I was about to call into the void and demand to know where the assholes were when Kash and Landen swept in and hurried down the hall to the foyer. “We felt it again,” Landen said.
Kash slipped a small knife into a hidden pocket inside his sleeve. “Dace is looking for Cross.” Cross was a shifter, one of the giant wolves residing in the woods outside my estate.
I strode by my friends, marching to the study. They followed, Landen saying, “I fear it’s time we meet with him to find out what he wants.”
Pushing books aside, aging tomes with chipped gold filigree wrapped around each spine, I pulled forth a dust-layered box. Made of white Ashwood, it too was engraved with filigree, and it only opened at my touch. A low hum, barely detectable to most ears, preceded a click, and then I pushed open the lid.
The hinge creaked from years of disuse. Inside, resting upon a small green cushion, laid two onyx stones. I’d only need one, but I’d kept two just in case.
“Whoa, not like this,” Kash said, walking up behind me. “You need to stop and think for a fucking minute.” Reaching around, he slammed the lid closed.
My teeth snapped, and I whirled on him. “He toys with her while she sleeps. She woke in the middle of the bay, surrounded by ice and creatures that could easily have torn her flesh from bone.”
Landen cursed.
Kash didn’t move an inch, just stared at me with challenging dark eyes. “Have you considered that maybe this is what he wants?” His arms crossed over his chest. “That perhaps it is you he hopes to lure, not your queen? Remember,” Kash warned unnecessarily, “how well playing his games has served you in the past.”
My chest was rising and falling too fast, but I couldn’t quell the tension, the anger that clenched my hands into fists. That ache, so old it was barely noticeable, pinched beneath the skin at my back. “I need to find out what he wants.”
“Not on your own,” Landen said with a bark of sharp laughter. “Treaty or not, you will land yourself in a trap.”
I reopened the box, staring at the onyx inside. “He cannot harm me, but he can harm you.”
Kash made a snorting sound, but he did not protest further.
To rise against the king of Beldine, no matter how strong, skilled, or powerful you were, was to die.
He was the soil. The trees. The blood. The heartbeat of a land older than life itself.
&nbs
p; You couldn’t best power of that magnitude. For it was not power, it was life, and it was death, and he chose how to wield it as he saw fit. Often in cruel, unforgiving, and unstoppable ways.
“Ry—”
I gnashed my teeth at Landen. “Do not speak his name.”
“That is but a myth, surely.”
Some said to speak the king’s name brought yourself unwanted space inside his mind while others said the wind would carry it to him. I didn’t know if any of that was true, but I knew enough not to discredit anything. “Nothing is ever but a damned myth.” Besides, after everything he’d done, and all he’d do if given a chance, he deserved no such recognition.
“The wind has ears,” Kash murmured, then sighed. “Okay, so we’ll all go on this merry little journey then.”
“I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll need you three to head to the castle and remain there.”
Kash’s brows rose, but Landen nodded.
“I need someone to watch Audra every moment even though she’ll hate it, especially while she’s asleep...” The box fell from my slackened hand, the rocks hitting the rug.
A shadow moved across my vision, and something tugged at my chest with enough force to shift my feet to the window.
“What is it?” Kash said.
No. The word howled through my mind, useless and empty. I could scarcely draw enough air in order to rasp, “We need to go now.” I fumbled around the desk, disorientated with a wave of panic I wasn’t entirely sure was my own, searching for the dried rose I kept in the top drawer.
“You can’t,” Landen said. “Someone will see you.”
It was growing far too late to worry about hiding a damned thing. “Something is wrong,” was all I managed to say, clutching the rose and urging the air to pull me into the void.
Wind howled inside the never-ending dark. Time and distance clashed together and wasted precious seconds as it swept me from my study and spun me to the original source of that dead flower.
I landed with a jolt and immediately broke into a run in the rear gardens of the castle.
Guards blinked and muttered curses as I leaped past them into the drawing room and raced down the hall. That feeling, the one that’d prompted me to take a risk I rarely took by sweeping into the castle grounds, was building inside me. A raging, barreling storm thundered in my ears as I hurried up the stairs and down the halls leading to Audra’s rooms.
Azela, second in the queen’s personal guard, stepped forward from the closed doors. “My lord?”
I knew what I’d find. Deep down, I’d known before I’d even swept from the study of my manor, but it still didn’t prepare me enough for the sight of it.
And it could never make it any easier to bear.
The doors crashed open with a raged thought before I reached them, and I looked at the bed, its sheets rumpled, then at the windowsill. The bedchamber was empty.
Azela followed me inside, asking questions I couldn’t hear so much as answer. The dressing room where I’d had her just hours ago was also empty, as was the sitting and bathing rooms.
“She’s gone,” I said, barely a sound, and reentered the bedchamber. “He’s taken her.”
Stunned, Azela opened and closed her mouth, her face paling as her eyes bobbed around the room. “Who?”
Ainx rushed in, followed by Mintale, who was huffing and puffing. The latter blinked, demanding, “What in the darkness is going on?”
“She’s gone,” I said it again, louder, and a searing panic strangled my vocal cords, warping the words, my breathing, the sluggish beat of my heart.
“What do you mean, gone?” Mintale asked, understanding I hadn’t meant she’d slipped out for a stroll in the gardens, and looked at the bed. “I was just in here an hour ago.”
“What was she doing?” Ainx asked, and I was thankful at least one of us had the mind to do so.
Mine was lost, reeling, swimming in darkness.
“She was, uh,” Mintale started, then shook his head. “She was sitting on the bed.”
“Did she fall asleep?” I finally managed to ground out.
When his furry white brows lowered in puzzlement, I stomped over to him and grabbed the lapels of his shirt. “Did she sleep after you left?”
“I-I-I do not know, m-my lord.”
Of course, he wouldn’t have known.
Grappling for some sense of rationality, I released him and raked my hand through my hair, causing some to escape its tie and fall into my eyes.
“Perhaps she is merely somewhere else in the castle,” Ainx suggested.
Azela disputed that. “But she never even left her rooms. My lord”—she stepped forward, hesitantly—“what does it matter if she was asleep?”
Clutching at my hair, I ran my eyes over the bed, the bureau, and the armchair, then behind me to the sitting room, which gave a view of the glass case housing her crown. One of the windows was open, its drapes rocking on a faint breeze that gave away his scent. My nose followed, eyes snapping back to the bed, where, tucked underneath the pillow, a glimpse of white could be seen.
Snatching the parchment, I absorbed the words. His scent smothered it, and my blood pushed at the confines of my skin, boiling.
I have your queen.
If you wish to see her again, you know what you need to do...
Make haste, for I have tasted her dreams, and they are delectable indeed.
Sincerely, R.
I wanted to roar until the glass shattered from the windows, until it drowned out the ringing in my ears and the echo of my panicked heart, until I could fucking think.
I wanted to kill him, and it seemed that was exactly what I’d finally need to do.
“Lord Zadicus,” Ainx said, sensing I now had some idea of what’d happened. “What is that?”
I scrunched the parchment, and his eyes popped as it turned to dust with my clipped words. “The king of Beldine has taken her.”
“The king of Beldine?” Azela repeated, her brows knitting. “But... that’s the faerie king.”
Ainx licked his lips, trying to make sense of something that would make little sense to them at all. They did not know the true history of the royals. Of the Fae. They knew what had been forced upon them for over a millennium and, therefore, would find it hard to fathom why the creatures of Beldine held an interest in their queen.
“What does he want with her?” he finally said.
“I will handle it.”
Mintale balked. “How?”
I crossed the room, allowing them what little they needed to know. “He does not want her. He wants me.”
“My lord.” Mintale scurried after me to the doors. “I am failing to understand. Why does he want you?”
I fingered the dried mint leaves from my pocket that’d once grown on the garden atop the roof of my manor and felt the admission leave me like a sigh of pained relief. “I am his brother.”
Then I caught the sudden wind and swept back home.
Audra
That scent. It was back.
Only this time, it was everywhere, the air stained with the essence of it. My eyes fluttered open to find a spiraling tree-woven ceiling. It didn’t seem to end, its branches wrapping and twining and overlapping higher than the eye could reach.
I’d never seen anything like it, but the scent of rainbows, of every delicacy and beauty one could dream of, was something I’d encountered before. It filled my nose, brushed soft hands over my skin, and clapped right next to my ears.
Wake up, it seemed to say. The trilling of birds, rushing water, and laughter enticed and shot arrows of fear into every slow-firing brain cell.
Beldine.
I’d fallen asleep.
I’d fallen asleep, and this time, I hadn’t even left the confines of my room. He hadn’t arrived. He’d already been there, and I’d followed like magnets had pulled us together, and then the world was empty, dreamless, and now I was gone.
“They say that to dream is to glimpse the e
ver,” a sharp, rich voice danced through the shadows.
I scrambled to sit up, pieces of something beneath my fingers. Feathers, I realized, glancing down. The soft crush of boots stepping over them snapped my gaze forward to where the pointed tips of a burgundy pair appeared.
I forced myself to remain still, unsure if I was asleep or if this was real.
And then the shadows in the room retreated, slowly revealing him. He crouched down, a familiar smile upon a familiar face, only more serpentine. “To that, I say, why would anyone want to glimpse certain eternity when you could very well craft your own dreams instead?”
“You,” I said, soaking in every feature—the perfectly straight nose, the dusting of faint freckles over paler cheeks, and the short midnight black hair that licked at intense cheekbones with its slight curl.
“Ah, indeed, we’ve met before.” He lifted a long finger. “But not fully, so allow me to introduce myself.” His golden eyes, the iris darker and larger than Zad’s, sparkled with excitement. “I am Ryle, King of Beldine.”
My lips parted, but that was all the shock I could muster because if I were being honest with myself, I knew that. I was certain that, deep down, I’d known who he was for some time now. Ever since I’d first glimpsed him through the window, down on the street outside of the castle one night while Zad had slept.
I just hadn’t known what it had to do with Zadicus—why they looked alike. Honestly, I hadn’t been sure that I wanted to know.
My failure to respond had him continuing. “I do believe you’ve mated to my brother.”
That answered my question while also giving him the desired reaction he’d been waiting for. “What?”
“My brother,” he said, toneless and as though I were daft. “Zadicus Allblood.”
I sat with that for a moment, and seemingly amused, he let me, his eyes tracking my expression as though I were revealing buried treasure. I wasn’t sure what he was searching for, but I did what I could to keep every rioting feeling from showing.
