Page 40 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

He didn’t come the next night. Nor the other next. Nor the rest of the week. To my luck, he’d been kept plenty busy by his court and only spent a few hours in his bedroom each night. Whether I had many to rely on and trust to help in my rule, he didn’t. He checked on everything—severe or not, it had his attention. I’d heard him argue many times with his captains and generals regarding orders they had issued themselves without seeking his permission first though it had been nothing a king should worry himself with. He counted signatures, noted whatever document he signed, kept thick journals with copies of each document. The Night King was a paranoid psychopath.

Right after cleaning up, I bolted to Amaris, electricity skittering around me even after just to make sure I’d scorch his precious gardens. The man was obsessed with his flowers.

Soldiers littered the grounds everywhere, they clustered the entrances, murmuring to one another while wearing spite in their faces as they traced each of my movements. Uneasiness had turned to annoyance pretty soon after I’d started coming to Adriata.

Someone muttered under their breath in Darsan something resembling my mother’s name and I stopped, turning to them. “What did you say?” I rarely paid attention to their offences, but I was bored—I wanted to play.

He clenched his jaw tightly, steeling a look ahead and refusing to answer me. Courage was a funny little warm. It came out of butt cheeks to scream and once it felt the outside cold, it slid right back in with all the shitty audacity.

Stepping right before him, I trailed a finger over his sweaty brow. “Why are you sweating, dear?” Slowly, my hand slipped right over his heart, thin ice gliding over my nails to form claws. “When you can just bleed.” The tiny organ was warm in my hand and the owner was piled like a dump on the ground.

Weapons were unsheathed, bows were stringed with arrows in my direction, and I barked out a laugh when the soldier nearby raised a black steel sword to my neck.

They wanted to play as well? I dropped the heart and stepped closer till the black metal was cool against my skin. I fought the tremble. Fought it till my jaw was hurting from how hard I’d clenched my teeth. “I had planned to torture some other soul tonight, but yours will do just fine.”

Everything went utterly quiet out of the sudden and the soldier lowered his weapon and stared wide eyed somewhere behind me.

He stood there, his shirt and britches dirty with specks of soil, hair dishevelled and falling over his silver eyes that had veiled completely black. “Kneel,” Kilian ordered, his voice a lethal frost that made the warm air shiver, and every soldier went down on a shaking knee and knelt before me. “Now bow, face down, no one dare even look at her.” The soldiers did as told and Kilian cocked his head back, surveying all his men. “Good. And that is how you respect your queen.” Pulling each finger out of his gardening gloves he asked, “Why was it hard to comprehend the first time I taught you that, hm?”

I could feel it—the way fear shivered in the air and how the current suddenly charged with too many loud heartbeats to count.

The soldier before me sputtered blood from his mouth and collapsed to the ground, his body turning ashen like charcoal before blasting into little specks of black dust.

I shuddered, my shoulders bunching and that stomach turning fear crept up my throat. Though they couldn’t be seen, I felt the crawling shadow monsters from my nightmares circling me.

He turned to the rest of the soldiers, regarding them as he calmly said, “Everyone who raised a weapon in my wife’s direction will come tomorrow morning to my court chambers with your own two feet. Leave goodbyes behind to your loved ones. That is all the grace that I’ll offer and perhaps the last.”

What was he doing?

They all bowed their heads again and shouted in unison, “Yes, my king.”

The air was chilled against my skin. I could taste their fear on my tongue. And I could taste his magic, too. Thick with spice of dark terror and death.

Why—why was he doing this?

As if nothing had happened, he turned to me and gave me one of his smiles. “Hungry?”

Willing my feet to move, I backed away and walked toward the castle, trying my best to breathe out all the fear of feeling his magic brush so closely past me and the flash of forget when he looked at me. Why did I keep forgetting who he was and what he’d done to me?

A massive arm wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me against his body. “I asked you a question. Are you hungry?”

Again, I didn't answer. If I opened my mouth, I’d scream. I wanted to scream. But if he knew I was losing my mind he might think he had already won over me. This is what it was, wasn’t it? This was what he’d intended to do to me.

He leaned in my ear, hot breath raising gooseflesh all over me. “Cheese. Bread. Grapes.”

“What?”

“Trying to rouse this little beast,” he said, smoothing his other hand over my stomach and my body surrendered to his touch. “Pie. Mushroom pie. Mushrooms on toast. Fried mushroom and cheddar. Chestnut mushroom. King oyster.” My stomach growled as if on command and he chuckled in my ear, my knees weakening. “There it is.”

Electricity zapped my body and he hissed, letting me go. “Your foreplay is a bit advanced,” he said, blowing a breath on his hand. “But I like it.”

Slowly, I took steps away from him till I stood in his bedroom.

Rage surged to the surface. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to hurt me as if only to invoke the monster who’d been haunting him since I was eleven. As if to only invoke every deadly thought I’d had about this man before I could put a face on him—before I put this face on him.

But he was not scared of me. He was not scared for anyone either.

Except—