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“It’s not a marriage, and I am not even ordering you. I’m suggesting you put a baby inside this very lovely female. Her magic and yours are perfect together. Look at the bloody gateway. Don’t think I didn’t recognize it. She can access the source of fae magic, the well itself, and does so at will, which tells me she’s pure of heart. This makes her damn near perfect for the Spring throne. And for you.”
The king stands and faces his commander. “One night. Spring heat. Take the queen.”
D’Artaron glances at me. “No.”
“Fucking her won’t be a hardship, D’Artaron.”
Plates slam onto the table, and the commander’s fist flies into the king’s face.
16
D’ARTARON
When I was a boy, my father and Chloe’s father signed an agreement marrying me and her older sister Claudette. But while I was at the military academy, she got pregnant with someone else’s baby, telling my folks the baby was mine. Trouble is, I never touched Claudette that way. I respected her wish to be married before we had intercourse.
Naturally, after hearing about her lies, I broke off our arrangement and nearly incited a civil war in the province because of it. That was the first, but not the last time my father bartered me for a business contract. Two more followed.
One female preferred other females and hanged herself when she heard she was to marry a male.
The third one now owns a brothel. Grown males pay her for a hearty whipping. I pay her for information, so I guess some good came out of the third attempted marriage. Namely, I gained an informant.
Nevertheless, many centuries later, when Augusta was getting bartered, I had offered to form a union with her. I did it for my king, for the Summer Court and selfishly because I believed seers have no need for mating. It would have been a marriage of convenience. I wanted to keep her magic with us. Now she is a fate and a queen in her own right but at the time, I strongly felt it was my duty to keep her in the Summer Court.
My knuckles burn with the fury coursing through my blood.
Shocked that I punched my king, I stare at him, wondering if he’ll strike me back with his voca magic and make me bleed out of every orifice.
Instead of hitting me back or rightfully slaying me, he addresses the Spring queen. “Don’t be alarmed,” he says. “We do this all the time. Don’t we, D’Artaron?” As he asks the question out loud, he destroys my carefully constructed mental walls, making me grit my teeth so I don’t cry out from the pain that his intrusion causes inside my head.
“Augusta said I shouldn’t push you about this female. I didn’t believe her.”
The pressure he’s exerting on my brain feels like it might cause it to burst. Something warm trickles out of my ear. I’m certain it’s blood. He might make my brain leak out of my ears.
“I’ve always wondered how far I could push you,” he continues.
“And I’ve always wondered when I would strike.”
He chuckles.
I continue because, for all I know, he’ll kill me slowly and now in front of the Spring queen. This is not how I’d imagined I would die, but dying while still loyal to my king and the vow I took to protect him is still a good way to go, for I upheld my promise.
“You deserved it,” I dare to say despite the pain he’s causing me. “She is a queen, and you’re suggesting she become a mere broodmare.”
“All royals are breeders, D’Artaron. We just make an art of it. I’m lucky to have found my fae-ted mate, but my parents and grandparents and nearly every aristocrat in our history weren’t so lucky. They were bartered, bred, and traded so that we could have new magics and overpower the Unseelie courts. You asked me to spare you from that life, and I agreed in exchange for your unconditional loyalty.”
“When you put it that way,” I say out loud, “it sounds noble.”
“Because it is.” He sits at the table, offering me a chair. This means he’s inviting me to converse freely as friends, not as a king and his commander.
I take the seat.
The king passes me his handkerchief. It’s yellow, with a blue Summer Court seal in the corner. I wipe my right ear and pocket the evidence of my injury.
“Impressive shields,” he says, his voice sounding distant as he slowly retreats from my mind.
“You shattered them in no time, so they’re shit, and I must craft new ones.”
“Looking forward to the challenge.”
