I was concentrating hard. I had never hated him before, not really; we were all fairies, so maybe I thought we all had something in common? But I never liked him, and I remembered how he used to treat the pixies and it made me sick. I remembered the irons. My skin, burning. I thought about him—really, really thought about him, about his big, stupid nose on his big stupid face and his long, dark green braid and his giant black boots and how shitty he was—how absolutely shitty everything was---and I tried to scream at him, to yell, to let him know…
And something happened. A giant glass bubble wound its way out of my mouth, the long, sinuous shape scraping past my teeth. I could feel the tiny fangs I glamoured into perfect squares bite into my tongue as I coughed and choked it out of me; I bent over, doubled, and fell to my knees. The glass burst from behind my lips with a faint ‘pop,’ and I tried to catch my breath as it re-shaped in front of me, the sphere bobbing in the air. Strong, gentle arms wrapped around me, lifting me off of the ground; I felt them pull me tight against a broad, warm chest, and I relaxed instantaneously. I felt safe, without even knowing where I was. My legs dangled in the air, and I reached up and put my arms around the neck of the strong body that had picked me up as I tried to catch my breath. It gave me a perfect view of my bubble.
It surrounded Shrentun. Like a giant, bloated glass cage, the bubble had expanded and somehow sucked Shrentun into it. I couldn’t hear him screaming, but I giggled into the shoulder of the strong man who held me. “That’s what I’ve felt like all these years,” I said out loud to no one in particular. Speaking hurt my raw throat, but that didn’t stop me from jumping down and yelling at Shrentun, slamming my fists against his bobbling cage. “You prick! This is what it’s been like! For TWENTY YEARS!” I laughed so hard I almost started choking again, and that’s when I noticed there were tears on my cheeks. It didn’t stop me. I tried to keep slamming my hands on that bubble the same way I’d slammed them on the basement door, years and years ago.
And then the strong arms wrapped around me once again, gentle but unyielding. “Princess Alenya,” a deep voice said just beside my ear. “You’ll hurt yourself. Please let me accompany you upstairs.” It wasn’t really a question. The strong man scooped me up and left the room, apparently unconcerned with Shrentun’s plight. I was gasping, trying to get one full scoop of air in my lungs before they collapsed, and tears ran freely down my cheeks. I wasn’t even sad, so I didn’t understand where they were coming from—I was furious. But as the shadow walked up the stairs and down the hall to my bedroom, I began to feel self-conscious for the first time. We moved through the doorway of my bedroom and I placed a hand on his cheek. He stopped moving instantly.
I still couldn’t see him properly. The hood of his cloak shielded his face. I trailed my fingers along his cheek until my fingertips reached the edge of the fabric, and then gently drew it back. My movement brought our bodies even closer together, and I could feel my chest pressing against his. In the brief moments I’d spent this close to human boys, I mostly enjoyed the immediate intake of their breath, the shock in their eyes—they could always tell something was different about me, and I learned long ago to stop accidentally enchanting them and just watch their hormones dance, just long enough to back away again. But this time… It was me who was dancing. I knew my heart was rumbling so loud inside of my ribcage that this… Guardian, for lack of a better word, must know exactly the effect his proximity had on me.
Which was ridiculous, because I didn’t—I’d never felt anything like this before. Playful? Curious, sometimes even a bit mischievous? Check. But… Swooning like some giddy weak-kneed girl? Never.
“Hello, Princess,” he said softly, and even the tone of his voice shot through me like a bolt of lightning. I took in his face for the first time and the sensation only got worse.
He had deep, dark eyes—eyes so rich I’d never seen the like before. They were almost black, the pupil almost indecipherable from the hazel iris, with thick lashes surrounding them top and bottom. His hair was also sleek and black. Thick, but so shiny I knew it would be like threads of silk beneath my fingers. His face was strong featured, with high cheekbones and a jawline so sharp they could carve a block of wood. In the center of it all was his mouth, with a plump bottom lip that was practically made for sucking.
Like I said, I had never, ever thought these things before. “Hullo,” I whispered. I hoped he wouldn’t put me down. I hoped he would carry me over to the bed and do things to me I’d only heard my high school girlfriends whisper about. At the time, those activities seemed so foreign as to be frightening, even—but now… Every second I stayed in his arms I felt myself attaching to him in a completely new, completely physical way.
So of course he set me down.
“Wait--” I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t have a good reason for him to stay any longer. Instead, I just stood there in the middle of my room like a total idiot, blinking up at him. He pulled the hood back over his face and moved towards the door.
“Princess,” he said softly, “I should help your father’s servant. It will not please his majesty to leave him in the living room.”
“Do you know how I did that?” I stared after him helplessly. Me! I wanted to say. Forget Shrentun. You’re here to help me!
“With magic,” he said, facing away from me. He stopped, though, and I saw his head tilt as if he were cocking an ear in my direction. “Do you mean to say…”
“I don’t know how to do anything,” I said, and walked towards him. I was feeling a bit desperate, in all honesty—was he just going to sulk around my house, hiding his gorgeous face and undoubtedly gorgeous body under that cloak, never even looking in my direction? What a load of… “I have no idea how I cast that spell—I can’t do anything, except glamour myself, and that was practically an accident… Can you look at me when I’m talking to you?”
He turned towards me, and I saw a frown turning down the corners of his plump lips. “Yes, Princess.”
“And drop the ‘yes, princess, no princess’ stuff, please? None of the pixies ever talked to me that way.”
He hesitated, then reached up to pull back his hood. His dark eyes locked on my face. “Your own people failed to address you as their ruler?”
“They’re not my people,” I said, and some of my fire was gone because hello, gorgeous. A bit distracting. “They’re my father’s people.”
“You will be their queen, Princess,” he said slowly, as if shocked I didn’t know this. “You will have control over the greatest amount of power anyone in the Courts can have—you are the heir of the Sunstone.”
“Whatever that means,” I said, and something about my tone started to rub off on him. It was nice, that little twitch in the corner of his mouth.
“The Sunstone…” He stopped, staring at me. “Have they told you nothing?”
Needless to say, he touched a nerve. “I can tell you loads of garbage about where to shop in the mall, the Presidents of the United States—not that I’ve seen any damn states besides Ohio, but, still—and I’m pretty handy in the kitchen. But I know exactly nothing about anything Sun or Stone or Fae, really, and even though I am super pumped to have a nanny that isn’t going to ditch me to bang dudes in the garage—although I guess, you could, I am hoping you won’t--I don’t want to feel this dumb every time we talk. Let’s just assume, for argument’s sake, that I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about, okay?”
His mouth snapped shut, and I noticed a faint line appear between his eyebrows. Suddenly, being cuddled up against him was only better, and only marginally, than seeing that spark in his eyes. He looked like his soul was on fire—his black stare put shivers in my body I knew weren’t there before, and all I could do was stand still and hope he couldn’t hear my heartbeat. Because damn. Something about being bad around him felt very, very good.
It aroused him. Not that I could tell—not that I knew, in that moment, it was sexual arousal. Just that it made his energy—his shee
r power—crackle in the air around him almost audibly. And that was when I knew I was about to indulge in a round of post teen-age rebellion—I would indulge in anything, anything at all—that made him look at me like that.
“Your language is atrocious,” he said bluntly. “Princess.”
“So spank me,” I said, and I knew he could tell I wished he would.
In fact, for a minute there… I thought he might.
So that was when he left. This time he didn’t bother with a courtly good-bye.
Fine, I thought. It gave me the chance to slam the door, jump on the bed, and try to figure out what the hell just happened.
Is this what falling in love felt like?
Or was it just lust?
I didn’t care. I cracked the door and listened to Shrentun’s bubble burst, then his angry squawks and squeaks as Maddox lead him through the house to the basement door. I tried not to giggle as Maddox shut down each of his petty requests, all of his bluster, rejecting each threat as soundly as he’d stared me down. Maddox didn’t answer to Shrentun, and you could definitely tell by the way he kicked his Goblin ass back to the Brightworld.
I really thought I might be falling in love. And if I wasn’t, it was as close as I cared to come. Maddox became my obsession—my lightning rod, my center of gravity. If he was supposed to monitor everything about me, down to my hymen, I was going to make his job hard—and hopefully, if I did something right… I would make other parts of him even harder.
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Betrothed to the Moon Page 13
