The Stray Prince (Royals Book 2)

by Ella Fields

  For I hadn’t noticed, and somehow, I was aware that the wine had enhanced my senses while being aware of nothing at all.

  I was seeing him, the vivid colors and shapes of the room, as he saw them.

  As a full-blooded faerie.

  “Marvelous,” he crowed, chair scraping as he stood. “This is going splendidly.”

  I hadn’t the desire to ask him what he meant. Not when his hand folded over mine, and the sensation of his smooth skin evoked mini rippling shivers.

  Such atrocities he’d caused with that hand, free of bloodstains yet forever marred.

  I lifted my other hand as he pulled me out the doors and into the hall. Mine were exactly the same. Smooth yet roughened with every harsh act of my own.

  A carriage, dark with a white-rimmed door and window trim, waited outside what had to be the front entrance to the castle.

  I was tugged down four steps, furbanes and other creatures carved into the glittering stone, across the warrior-strewn forked bridge and carpet of dew-crusted grass, and with his hands around my waist, thrust inside the grand interior of the carriage.

  Filigree patterns jumped out at me from the cushioned seats, and the king ushered me to sit before doing the same.

  Within seconds, we were airborne, and I gasped, allowing his hand to take mine once more as we lurched into the air.

  “You did not see the furbanes, I take it.”

  There was laughter in his voice, humor that dragged my eyes to his. “No, and I didn’t know...”

  “To use them in such a way?” he asked, his thumb stroking my hand. I had enough sense of self to pull it away. He smirked. “They are free to roam wherever they wish, but in my stables, I keep two, and the stable hands will change them out every few weeks.”

  I was surprised he cared enough to do such a thing, and he must have read the shock upon my face, in the words I refused to say.

  “Darling queen,” he purred, that dimple appearing. “You’ve only to look at yourself if you seek to understand me.”

  Yet... even if I was of rational mind, without faerie wine swimming through my bloodstream, I wasn’t sure I could do that.

  “Look,” he said, gesturing to the window.

  I leaned over, shifting the frilled white curtain aside to find the stars. The winking and twinkling expanse was broken up by the occasional flying insect or bird-like creature. “What was that thing called?”

  He’d heard its screech, but even if he hadn’t, I suspected he knew exactly what I was referring to. “A glondolin. Ferocious, especially during breeding season.”

  I’d thought it was eternally spring here. Still, I asked, “When is that?”

  “All the time,” he said, nonchalant. After some moments, he broke my focus on the tree-speckled land and its midnight waters. “You shocked me senseless, I must admit.”

  “With the glondolin?”

  He hummed, and I felt his fingers skim the ends of my hair at my lower back. I stiffened. “I was torn between the need to whip you myself and the desire to fuck you for days.” My breath froze, his voice lowered. “I wanted to do both.”

  In my addled state, I tried to gain some wits. “That is too much pain for me to consider pleasure.”

  “Really?” he said, his touch gone, yet I did not look at him. I kept my eyes fixed out the window, thankful for the crisp night breeze. “You’d rather inflict it than accept it?”

  “Wouldn’t anyone?” I challenged, turning to face forward.

  His eyes burned into my cheek. “No, there are those who relish in being hurt before their afflictions are soothed.”

  The memory of Zad’s teeth scoring into the softest part of my neck singed. “With the right partner, I daresay you might be right.”

  The king goaded me no further, as the carriage dipped and took my stomach with it.

  He laughed, raucous and beguiling, as I gripped the window, and we jostled before hitting the earth with an unexpected smoothness.

  “You’re too much fun,” he said, wiping beneath his eyes. Then he stepped out and, to my surprise, held out his hand to help me do the same.

  My slippers sank into deep green grass, the breeze rustling dandelions and, to the east, a field of wheat in the distance.

  Accompanied by two shifter wolves at our backs, we crossed the soft blades until our feet met cobblestone. Rising high into the hillside nestled amongst a dense line of woods that rolled toward the sea, sandstone, onyx, and wooden shops sprawled into a serpentine city.

  It was small, but it was bustling with faeries. Many paused, dropping into a deep bow at the sight of their king. Eyes—some feline and others beady, huge, or glowing—stared openly at my presence beside him.

  “Welcome to Onyx City,” the king said with a laziness that spoke of indifference. Too much of it for such a vibrant, humming hub of activity.

  Perfumed desserts carried on the breeze, and I waited for the putrid stench that always came with crowded quarters to make itself apparent, but it didn’t arrive. Steam rose from little carts between alleyways, horned venders with swishing tails bowing to their king as they flipped some type of meat upon a portable stovetop.

  In the distance to the left, above the water falling into the river, loomed the castle.

  Moss shrouded with squared turrets, it pressed between the hillsides on either side of the flowing water that burst into the deadly drop below. It was bound to the earth with tree roots, vegetation growing thick around the onyx stone. A tree trunk, I realized, almost as large as the city we were walking through, bridged across the water and supported the castle’s lower levels. The stone reinforced it on both sides, reappearing through the vines in a checkered fashion. The higher levels were as I thought, wood and branches bent to the maker’s will.

  I didn’t know who that was, but I found myself wanting to. “Who was the first ruler of the Onyx Court? Of Beldine?”

  The king gazed around at the shopfronts, garlands with glowing beetles were strung above doorways and windows, lanterns and candles sat in and outside of others. “Olynda Allblood. Our fate dealer, alongside her daughters.”

  “A female?” I asked, pleasantly surprised.

  “Indeed,” he said. “It’s rumored even she did not know of how she came to be, let alone how she’d been named queen of a land rife with monsters. Some say she schemed so much in her human life for coin and status that not even the darkness would take her, and that if it were riches and power she coveted, then that is what she’d receive.”

  “Be careful what you long for,” I muttered dryly, skirting a puddle of something fluorescent yellow, tiny white flowers sprouting around it through cracks in the cobblestone.

  “Too right, you are,” he concurred smoothly, and with what sounded like a dose of experience. “Some say we are descendants of the darkness, of the Unseen himself. Others say we are the cursed, thrust into the in-between, welcome in neither the darkness or the ever.”

  Peering around, I tried to stomach that, but it was taking longer than I’d have liked to clear the fog in my head. One could argue that being cursed to live in such a place was no curse at all, but I knew all too well that the beautiful were not always what they seemed.

  “Olynda failed to birth a healthy daughter. She tried, and to numerous males, but all that granted her was five surviving sons and two dead daughters. The last male she was with married her, becoming the first king, and then murdered her when she lost her mind to grief.”

  Ryle sneered at a passing insect, swatting it with force at a water well. It splattered, staining the dark stone a vibrant green. “A kindness, they say, for she was no longer of this world in spirit. Her husband, Jahne, then declared himself High King, spreading his lovers and their babes over our vast land to help govern it.”

  “Rosinthe,” I said. “What court did it belong to before it was cleaved from Beldine?”

  “No one knows for certain,” Ryle said, seemingly annoyed by this fact. “It is thought that, due to the harsher cli
mes of your land, that it once belonged to the Silver Court and the Bronze Court.”

  “It’s not winter in the Silver Court.”

  “You would know after your little display of defiance.” He snorted. “No, it’s not, but it grows cooler than any other court, and gold is warmer. I daresay that many years of separation from its true home has caused your continent to fall into the extreme of what it once was, for there is no longer enough magic to help keep the balance.”

  We continued uphill, past boutiques with finery that shimmered and a shoe shop with slippers dancing in the arched window, but we did not need to walk far.

  Amongst a crowd of waiting citizens, a dais taller than my head emerged from the ground, shaking it. I almost grabbed for the king’s hand but planted my feet and waited until it’d finished its rumbling ascent.

  “Are you to kill someone?” I asked, looking away from a young green-skinned girl with reptile eyes and orange braids.

  The king laughed, gesturing for me to move first up the steps.

  I did and slowed halfway. They were made of dirt. The entire platform we crossed to the center made of soil.

  All the better to absorb the blood.

  “No, my dear Audra,” Ryle said, the words caressing my ear. Removing a blade from his sleeve, its hilt embedded with three blood-red rubies, he said, “You are.”

  Unmoving, hardly breathing, I stared at the two bound faeries that appeared. They stared back, their silver eyes shining with fear, and their golden hair braided with tiny leaves.

  “What are their crimes?” I asked.

  “Does it matter?” The king circled behind me. “It only matters that they are guilty, or they would not be here.”

  I studied their faces, the thin slant of their chins and the translucent, papery wings upon their backs. “They hail from the Silver Court?” Ryle’s footsteps ceased. I turned away from the prisoners, facing him. “I am not your executioner.”

  He shrugged. “You are my pet, a year and a day, and had you no penchant for bloodshed, perhaps I’d not ask this of you.” His expression hardened, as did his tone. “But because you do, and because their deaths will be worse at my own hands, you will kill them. A small mercy for those who deserve none.”

  He wasn’t compelling me, but he was reaching the end of his patience, which I knew did not extend very far.

  I knew because even though I did not know him, I knew myself.

  You’ve only to look at yourself.

  “I do not kill for sport.” I curled my lips, uncaring if he snapped. “I find it rather... dull.”

  “Well,” he said. “You do kill, and you do it so well.” Gesturing to the faeries behind me, he tilted his head. “So go ahead, gut them like the filthy swine they are.”

  My eyes flicked over our audience, small in size, everyone going about their business as though attending an execution was not mandatory, nor was it something of interest.

  They’d seen too many of them for it to be anything other than normal.

  “If I don’t?”

  “I will make them suffer, and it is your face I will press upon their minds to carry with them into the darkness.”

  I licked my drying lips, the blade within my palm heavier than it ought to be. Turning back, I did not wait, and I did not hesitate any longer.

  I struck, the dagger embedding itself in the faerie’s chest. Before the dead faerie’s partner could make a sound, I lunged across the dirt. With her dying accomplice’s blood covering the blade, I sank it between bone, cleaving flesh, and felt her last breath stain my cheek.

  When I finally let myself meet their eyes, I found them staring up at the night sky. The dagger slipped from my bloodied hand, falling soft onto the dirt, as the faeries dissolved, no longer flesh and blood but glittering red air that rained over the soil and our skin.

  “A blessing,” the king said. “To have the dead wash over us.”

  I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t talk. I snatched my hand away when he reached for it to help me down the stairs and walked a healthy distance ahead of him.

  The audacity. To keep me and have the hide to call me a pet.

  I might have been a half-blood, but I was still a queen, regardless of whatever deal I’d brokered with the black-and-gold-eyed demon.

  And I did no one’s bidding.

  My anger was searing enough to break the magic of the wine I’d drunk at dinner, and it was apparently evident enough for the king to say, once we’d climbed back inside the carriage, “They were spies.”

  The door had just closed, and my neck cricked as I tried to keep myself straight while being jostled into the air. I needn’t have asked for whom they were spying. “Queen Este,” I said instead, forgetting my rage long enough for curiosity to seep in.

  Ryle nodded, staring at the window behind me. His legs were spread, jeweled fingers between them, hanging. Draping his other arm across the back of the seat, he expelled a breath, rubbing his sharp chin. “It would seem she’s not very impressed with me.”

  Remembering the argument she’d had with her wolf, the flash of white fur, and the look in her eyes when I’d wrested Zad from her, I couldn’t imagine she would be.

  Apparently, I wasn’t the only linked creature incapable of forgiveness. “She lost her mate over the act.”

  “They’re mates. They’re destined to get over it.” Ryle spat the words and rolled his eyes as if he actually knew anything about the life-altering bond. “I fucked her brains out many moons ago. If there was a time for being petty, it was then.” Narrowing his eyes on me, he smirked. “You interrupted before she laid with Zad, correct?”

  I nodded.

  He waved his fingers. “Well, there you go. There ought to be nothing to act foolish over then.”

  He hadn’t loved.

  He hadn’t known love at all. The only person to ever show him an iota of it was gone, his wings returned. He was also his biggest rival. A threat. “Matters of the heart are far more complicated than you could ever guess at.”

  “My king,” he said, lips twitching.

  I raised a brow, and he continued, “While in my company, while you are a guest in my lands, I am your rightful king.” Eyes slithering over my frame, he sneered, “Act as such.”

  I said nothing, and neither did he, but I could feel him watching me as I looked out the window to the stars. In my lap, my hands clasped, the blood of Queen Este’s spies already dry. “So she sent her spies, but what for?”

  “Revenge. Perhaps they were assassins.” He sighed, slumping back against the seat. “I care not.”

  “You did not question them?” My chest squeezed, a time that seemed so long ago infiltrating. Of my uncle Rind asking me the same thing. For a fleeting heartbeat, I pondered what he’d make of this whole mess—the strategies he would’ve used to right it—and if my own methods of survival would shame him. “They might have had something useful to say.”

  “What is there to question?” Ryle said, impatient. His eyes closed, his crown tipping forward over his forehead. “They are traitors, so they die.”

  I decided it didn’t matter what Rind would think.

  There was no room for shame in games of life and death.

  Zadicus

  Emmiline gasped, her hands splaying over her mouth. “He gave them back.”

  She’d known I’d returned. I’d sent word but not the details. I flexed my wings, new and old muscle folding as I walked up the steps of my manor.

  “He didn’t give them back,” I said, bitter cold but unable to help it.

  Kash took the horses to the stables, Landen kissing Emmiline on both cheeks, and Dace followed before leaving us alone in the foyer.

  Moving forward, she reached out as if she’d touch them. I hadn’t regained enough strength to glamour, so we’d left under the cover of full dark, a large cloak thrown over them, which was rather pointless given their size.

  Not that it would matter should anyone see them, but with Rosinthe’s queen mis
sing, the city of Allureldin was in shambles and Mintale was struggling to contain it. So it was best not to further the flames of their fear and create new rumors by showing off.

  Seeing my expression, Emmiline pulled back and, instead, walked around me, inspecting them. “Alahn does splendid work. How is he?”

  I withheld the urge to snap at her for the stupid question. “I wouldn’t know, on account of these”—I jerked my head at my back—“being forced upon me while I was bound to the floor.” It was strange to feel both offense and annoyance for something that was essentially me—for the wings I’d spent decades missing and dreaming of after they’d been ripped from my body.

  But it was impossible to feel grateful for something I had learned to live without, when their return stole something I could not.

  “Forced?” Emmiline said, rounding to meet my eyes. It seemed to dawn that I was here without Audra, and that I was far from fucking happy about it. “I’ll put on some tea.”

  Kash joined us in the study in time to fill in Emmiline on what’d happened.

  “What does he want with her?”

  Leaning against the wall, I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t, so I stared at my full cup of tea, trying to keep my hands from breaking the delicate porcelain.

  Kash did. “I’d wondered the same thing.” I shot him a look, no patience remaining. He sighed. “To entertain himself, of course. It must grow lonely, being despised.”

  Emmiline’s plum dress shifted as she brushed apple cookie crumbs from her lap. “You ought to have killed him.” Meeting my eyes, she lifted her chin. “Do not fail next time.”

  Landen snatched a cookie from the desk. “It’s his brother.”

  Her eyes remained on me. “He has proved himself unworthy of your mercy time and time again.” At that moment, she reminded me so much of my mother I felt my wings twitch with memory. But then her expression softened. “You managed to keep your soul by leaving, but to ensure it stays, you must return and do what should have been done hundreds of years ago.”

  I knew exactly what must be done, and I’d do it, but... “I have no desire to rule Beldine.”