Cold Iron Heart: A Wicked Lovely Novel

by Melissa Marr

  “Give me your vow that you won’t turn me over to those other faeries,” Thelma asked.

  Irial grinned. “If there ever was a mortal not meant for any other faery court, I think it would be you.” He stroked her hair. “I will amend my vow to say that I will do all I can to keep you safe, Thelma, as long as it doesn’t overly endanger my subjects.”

  She blinked at him. “Your . . .”

  “Subjects, love. I’m the king of this court,” he clarified as gently as he could.

  Her eyes widened.

  “You’re mine,” he said.

  And of course, that’s when Gabriel slid the doors open. Irial glanced over his shoulder at the intrusion. Behind the Hound was Niall, who in his usual way was surely misinterpreting what was happening here. It was a gift of sorts, the way Niall could misread everything to make Irial seem worse than he was.

  Thelma was dazed in Irial’s arms, and he couldn’t turn so as to explain himself without revealing exactly which mortal he held. The mortal they sought, the missing Summer Queen, a woman very much not meant for Irial—and one he absolutely had no intention of surrendering. If Niall realized that he’d already spoken to the missing Summer Queen, he’d report that detail to Keenan, and all would be lost.

  “A minute,” Irial barked.

  Gabriel shut the door with a bang.

  Irial carried Thelma across the room and thumped that door with his boot. It opened to reveal two trusted servants. Neither questioned their king or let the hint of a question cross their faces.

  “Put her in the room adjoining mine.”

  Thelma stirred and looked up at him. “Irial?”

  “I’ll do my best to keep you safe, love,” Irial reassured her.

  He dipped his head and kissed her cheek, and then he handed her over to his fey, straightened his shoulders, and returned to his parlor to await the only person he’d ever needed in a way that had nothing to do with the court.

  Niall

  Sometimes Niall wondered if there were lows Irial wouldn’t reach. Niall had watched a human woman flop limp in the Dark King’s arms. Was this the mortal Jenny had mentioned? Smitten? That was not the word Niall would choose.

  “A minute,” Irial had barked.

  Gabriel jerked the door shut with a thud, leaving them outside as Irial did who knew what to the woman. The massive Hound grinned at Niall. “Miss it?”

  “Ruining the lives of humans? No.”

  Gabriel laughed. “The women, Niall. Do you miss sharing women with the king?”

  And the horrible part was that Niall was afraid to answer, worried that if he tried to say the words that meant that he didn’t miss it he’d find his tongue tied and voice mute. He’d thought of it against a brothel wall with Jenny. The worst lies were the ones a man told himself in the privacy of his mind, hoping they were true. Hoping didn’t make them true, though, and if a faery tried to lie, the words wouldn’t come.

  “Fuck off, Gabe.” Niall turned away, as much to not face the large man’s laughter as to hide the shame that kept him from trying to say the words. “I am here to notify Irial that the Summer Court is in New Orleans. Protocol . . . or has the Dark Court forgotten that?”

  “Mind yourself.”

  “Your court doesn’t scare me,” Niall said.

  Gabriel snorted. “It’s your court much as it’s mine. You’re just too much of a jackass to admit it.”

  “I’m not like you,” Niall objected. It was the best he could say truthfully. He couldn’t claim not to be a monster. He was far worse than the Dark King. He was still poisonous to mortals, his very skin a drug that would addict them and eventually leave them faery-struck, dying despite everything he attempted.

  “You’re like him.” Gabriel nodded toward the door. “Only other of your kind I ever heard of. Gancanaghs are rarer than a virgin in a whorehouse.”

  Niall rubbed his temples as if the headache was from inside, when really it was the Hound in front of him and the faery on the other side of the door that created the painful throbbing in his head. “I don’t seduce mortals. Not since I left the Dark Court.”

  “Left him, you mean. Say what you mean.”

  Niall tried another approach: “I’m not looking for a fight—”

  “But you wouldn’t back down.” Gabriel laughed. “You aren’t so different from him or me. Irial’s just too busy to deal with all the fighting; that’s why he keeps me around.”

  The heavy sound of wood being slid into the pocket announced Irial’s arrival.

  Niall was almost grateful to see him. He knew the truth Gabriel muttered far too well, and he had no desire to face any of it. Better to face Irial than his own failures.

  “I was not expecting guests tonight, gancanagh.” Irial lounged against the door.

  “Fortunately, I am not a guest.” Despite best intentions, Niall found himself scanning the Dark King, checking for injury or change.

  Irial grinned and asked, “So the wayward one is returning home?” He held open his arms and took a step forward. “Come. Give us a hug.”

  Niall reeled back, fist raised and flying through the air to knock the familiar smile off Irial’s lips.

  Irial caught his hand in an open palm, used the leverage to flip his arm over, and kissed his wrist. “Now, now.”

  Gabriel snorted. “Play nice, boys.”

  Niall jerked his hand out of Irial’s grasp. “I’m not here for games.”

  “Are you sure? We had some fun with our games if my memory serves.” Irial’s voice drew a tendril of lust and something worse, fondness.

  The sound of Gabriel’s laughter lingered as he departed, and then Niall was alone with Irial. From the widened eyes Irial suddenly had, Niall suspected that they both realized it at once. They’d managed to meet with witnesses almost every time their paths crossed for well over three centuries now.

  Niall looked around, hoping for a door to open or something.

  “I mean you no harm,” Irial whispered.

  Niall stared at him.

  “Perhaps we could talk,” Irial said.

  But when he took a step closer, Niall panicked. “I’m here to . . . here . . . to notify you we have arrived to find the Summer Queen.”

  “Protocol then?” Irial prompted gently.

  “Keenan will be arriving soon,” Niall said, feeling all of his resolve and walls crumble at once and wanting desperately to escape. “As advisor to the Summer King, I hereby notify you.”

  Irial nodded.

  “No questions or jibes?” Niall’s gaze went everywhere but Irial. It was easier to pretend when there were witnesses, an audience to remind him of the myths they both created. With only Irial in the room, Niall couldn’t keep the venom in his voice.

  “Another futile quest,” Irial said with a wave of his hand. “The kingling had a dream of the One.”

  Niall sighed. He’d like to argue that Keenan would find his missing queen, that he’d know her from afar, and this long search would end. The best he could say was, “Perhaps this time.”

  They stood in silence. A million questions that Niall would never ask with witnesses had risen in his mind over the centuries. If he stayed there much longer, he’d either kiss Irial or stab him. Both were terrible ideas.

  “If you died, what would happen to the court?” Niall managed to ask.

  Irial smiled and shook his head. “Planning my untimely demise?”

  And despite how many times he’d considered just that, Niall found himself admitting, “I don’t want you dead, Irial. The courts all need balance. I think Beira has demonstrated that for all of us.”

  “I wish peace for you,” Irial said baldly. “Love. Dizzying heights. The things we once—”

  “Stop.” Niall balled his fist again. “Unless you have court business, please, don’t talk to me.”

  “Someday, I hope you can forgive me.”

  Niall turned and headed toward the door, noticing that no servants were in sight there either. “Don’t
count on it.”

  Then he opened the door and walked into the darkness. Coming to this city was wrong. Too many things were amiss. Niall ought to have asked about the mortal. He ought to have demanded Irial have a witness. He ought to have asked Jenny to join him, so he wasn’t left alone with the Dark King.

  But as he left, Niall began to ask himself why Irial moved to make Niall so uncomfortable. Because he’s hiding something.

  That was the most logical reason with Irial: use anger, lust, whatever he needed to make his opponent off-kilter. Niall understood the Dark Court, so he often dealt with them. He was the faery most adept at handling protocol with them, because the Dark still held a part of him that he suspected he’d never get back again. Irial had once offered him the court, eternal devotion, everything a person could want—and no one could fathom rejecting such an offer. Irial himself was temptation personified. How could anyone turn that down?

  Niall had, but that didn’t mean he forgot what it was to be in the bosom of that court, or to be cherished by the embodiment of temptation.

  And tonight, Irial had manipulated him so thoroughly that Niall hadn’t even asked about the woman. She mattered—enough that Irial had been uncharacteristically vulnerable.

  Or pretended to be.

  Niall ducked his head against the night’s chill as he walked down St. Charles. Between one step and the next, he donned a glamour and disappeared. It didn’t remove temptation, but it hid him from mortal eyes.

  That was his chosen penance: he stood at the side of a king who romanced mortal after mortal. He willingly subjected himself to their presence. That way he would never forget how awful he’d been, how many lives he’d stolen. He wouldn’t be free until the Summer King found his mortal, and then, maybe then, Niall could find peace.

  “Let this girl be the one,” he prayed.

  Then, after a flicker of a pause, he added, “And let her not be the one in Irial’s arms.”

  That was a coincidence. Not even Irial would be so brash as to seduce the mortal who would free the Summer Court. Would he?

  Tam

  “He’ll come up when he’s able,” the seemingly young faery said as she showed Tam around a room that dwarfed Tam’s entire rented home.

  The whole of the room looked like it ought to be in a nobleman’s estate. Against the far wall was a wardrobe of heavy wood. The pulls and knobs on it glimmered like silver, and the etchings in the wood were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. On the other side, a brocade divan and chair sat as if they were awaiting a couple who would pause there for an intimate drink. To further that image, a silver tea service stood glistening on what appeared to be a low table fashioned of curled bronze and a polished slab of black stone that she couldn’t identify.

  Heavy silver and black drapes hung from ceiling to floor in a semicircle beyond the table and seats. The center of the room was filled with an enormous wooden bed; moving it would likely require several massive men—or the Hounds, which she suspected were the Wild Hunt itself.

  At that thought Tam had to muffle a laugh. The Wild Hunt. She was staring at a bed that was more than likely carried in by the infamous Hunt that thundered through towns on unearthly stallions. Gabriel, the one with the horse in the bayou, was such a creature. Irial was the king, the faery who led the monsters. How was that even possible?

  “Miss?” The faery girl was not frightening as some were, but her teeth were, peculiarly, green. Her skin was much the same shade, and she appeared as if she’d just stepped out of the lake.

  “He’s your k . . . your . . .”

  “King. Irial is the Dark King, and he’s your protector.” The faery gave her a reassuring pat with her damp hand. “He’s vowed your safety. We all felt it when he declared it.”

  “You felt it?” Tam echoed.

  The faery nodded. “You belong to the Dark King now.”

  “I see,” Tam said, but she didn’t see, not really. It all seemed baffling. She didn’t belong to anyone.

  The faery straightened to her full height, and her voice took the tone that Tam had only heard when priests spoke of God. “He’ll protect you. We will, too. You can trust the king to do what’s wisest and best.”

  Tam reassessed her opinion of the faery’s age. Such zealotry was the hallmark of youth—not that Tam thought herself long in the tooth, but she was beyond the age of such intensity. Adult women were more serious. They simply had to be.

  “Enter,” the girl said, her reply almost simultaneous with the knock that visibly rattled the door.

  Two large men carried in several buckets of water. As they did, the young faery went over and pulled back a curtain. On the other side of it was not a window as Tam expected, but a raised dais with a massive oversized claw-footed tub. Beyond it, thin silk curtains hung over the windows, providing privacy but still allowing a bather to look at the city. Such a sight while submerged in the steaming water that the Hounds poured into the tub was a luxury she’d never had, nor dreamed of having.

  “Lavender?” The green-tinted faery held up a vial of oil. “We have others, too. He thought you’d like to relax.”

  Tam stared at her, blinked a few times to clear the sheer impossibility of this being her day. She felt like a princess, except this fairy tale seemed to include being protected by a dragon king rather than a sweet prince.

  After a moment, Tam managed to say, “I like lavender.”

  The men left, and the faery had Tam test the water. Once declaring it perfect, Tam was somehow disrobed without so much as a word. The faery held her hand to steady her as Tam stepped into the tub. The water, the scent, the view: it was sheer perfection.

  She sat, staring out at the city, wondering at her world as she soaked in lavender scented water in a tub larger than any she’d ever seen. Her day was, because of Irial, the single most remarkable one she’d had—second only to the one she’d spent with Irial, walking, talking, and dancing. This wasn’t love. It couldn’t be. She was a human, and he was a faery.

  Did the Dark Court love?

  Tam had no answer. All she knew was that she felt safe and cosseted in the home of the Dark King. It was a singularly surreal experience for a woman who had scraped and saved to have enough funds to indulge in a monthly plate of beignets.

  Eventually, when the water had begun to cool, Tam let the green-tinted faery wrap her in heated towels.

  “Come and rest, Thelma,” the faery said. She held up a long nightdress, a rich deep blue, silken material that was richer than anything Thelma had worn in her entire life. “Rest will make everything clearer.”

  Tam dressed in the silken nightdress, and the faery pulled back the covers on the absurdly soft bed.

  Then Tam was alone in the vast room, staring at the wardrobe, at the brocade divan, and the lush rug. It felt like a different sort of danger to be in such an elegant space. Tam hadn’t ever been swayed by wealth, or the lust for it, and she hadn’t changed her mind.

  That didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate it.

  She had never slept on such soft sheets, and the mattress felt like it had wrapped around her, cocooning her and lulling her to relax. As much as she wanted to give in to that, she’d just discovered that she was being offered a bed in the house of the Dark Court. It was no shock to Tam that Irial was a part of the Dark Court, or that he was strong, but a king?

  She closed her eyes for a moment, not imagining she could actually sleep there.

  When she woke, the room was darker, but enough light spilled into the room that she was aware that there was a body in the chair across the room. The shape of him was too small to be a Hound, and too large to be any of the other faeries she’d seen.

  “Irial?”

  “Yes, love,” he said lightly. “You didn’t think I’d let strangers in while you were off in the land of nod, did you?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  He paused. “You know I can’t lie, so perhaps let this question stay unanswered until dawn breaks?”

  The
re was something intimate about being in a room with a man, more so when she realized that all she had for clothing was a silken shift that the green-tinged faery had offered her. That and the down-filled duvet were somehow scant barrier with a man in the room with her.

  “Shall we discuss that kiss?” Irial asked softly. “Perhaps repeat the act to be sure I recall it correctly?”

  He said nothing more, came no closer.

  “And after that?” Her own voice sounded breathy, as if she were trying to entice him. It wasn’t on purpose. She was all but shaking. “You’ve kissed me wordless, sent me to be indulged in a luxurious bath and fine linens. What follows these moments, Irial?”

  “What do you want?” His voice was somehow richer there in the shadows, as if the darkness made him even more tempting. “I do not believe in force, Thelma. In all my life I’ve not bedded the unwilling, not fey or mortal. I can’t say they were always clear-minded, or that I was either, but I have strived to be sure that consent was a part of every naked adventure.”

  At that, Tam giggled. “Naked adventure? Are you sporting in the wild, Irial? Bare in the bayou? Sans trousers in the sand?”

  “Yes.” His voice sounded amused and enticing all at once. “All of that. Love, I’ve lived more centuries than your kind has records. There is little I’ve not tried.”

  The reality of that made her shiver, from what he undoubtedly knew better than any human in the world and and the insecurity that washed over her. She was utterly inexperienced. He might as well have invented the act.

  “Why me?” she asked.

  Conversations of friendship were gone from her mind. Perhaps Deirdre was right. Perhaps such a thing was impossible between men and women. Yet, at the thought, she rebelled. She liked Irial, too. This wasn’t simple lust for her—and she didn’t believe it was for him, either.

  She amended her question: “Why me when you could surely have anyone in your bed?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. I find you intriguing.” Irial stood and walked to the edge of the bed. He looked down at her.