Because I did.
“That’s not very kind,” he tutted as he walked toward my bedside.
I had forgotten that Lazarus could hear my thoughts, and I scrambled to move away from him as he sat casually on the edge of the mattress. Maybe he had done all of this to kill me in his own home. His own bed.
It was despicable. Twisted. Perverse. It was—
“Now, Arwen, why would I wish to kill you?”
I swallowed hard as he feasted his silver eyes on me. I had been wrong before, when I met him the first time on the beach of Siren’s Bay. They were nothing like Kane’s.Nothing.
“Maybe because I’m the only person in this world that can end your life?”
“Yes,” he said, sipping from his mug. “A valid point. You are also the only thing in this world that cancreatelife. At least, the only life I’m interested in creating.”
I blinked.
Once.
Twice.
I wasn’t following. And my mind was pounding and spinning.It was just dawning on me that I was likely in the Fae Realm of Lumera. I wasn’t mere days or weeks away from Kane. I wasn’t even in the samerealmas him.
“I’m sure my son will show up here soon enough.” Lazarus smiled. “Won’t that be a nice surprise for him—the woman he loves, betrothed to his own father. A little perverse for my liking, but—” He shrugged. “What can you do?”
“Betrothed?”
Lazarus patted my thigh through the duvet and I recoiled. “I would never kill you, dear Arwen. In fact, Ineedyou. For you shall give me the one thing I have desired for over two thousand years. The one thing I have never been able to succeed in giving myself. Full-blooded Faeheirs.”
Revulsion crawled through my veins like beetles and ants.
“Now that the blade has been destroyed, neither you nor any of our true Fae children can harm me. And why would you wish to? Together, we will repopulate this once-flourishing land with true, pure Fae.”
“I will never, ever be your queen,” I breathed. “I’d rather die.”
“After you’ve given me my heirs, I’d be glad to oblige you.” His lips curled back from his teeth as he beheld what must have been defeat or horror—or both—in my eyes. Then he stood from my bedside and swept through the ornate entry, closing the door behind him with a sickeningclick.
