Page 47 of The Fallen Fae King

“Like a cockroach,” Lanlin suggested.

I glanced at the vampire who was lounging next to Daire in the bed.

I furrowed my brow, trying to think through the fog.

Horus had entered the chamber and compelled me to follow him to Crocodile House.

What happened after that?

How did I end up here with Lanlin like nothing bad had happened between us?

“Oi,” Daire protested. “I’ll have you know that I’m⁠—”

“God-like?” Lanlin’s lips twitched. “I like cockroaches. They somehow survive impossible odds. And you, Little Raven, survive fire, iron, hunts, and blood sacrifices.”

“What did you survive, while I was buried under that knotless coward’s compulsion?” I reached out, hovering my hand above the claw marks in Lanlin’s neck.

I didn’t touch Lanlin without permission.

Lanlin no longer flinched from touch, but he still needed control over it.

Daire and Lanlin exchanged a glance like they were co-conspirators.

What were they hiding?

Still, at least if they were plotting together, then it meant that they were getting on again.

Daire’s love language was either banter or scheming.

“Nothing important, my dear.” Lanlin settled next to me, wrapping his wing back around me. “You survived, and that is what matters. We are together as we should be, and tonight, we marry. Until then, let us sleep.”

I thought that it would be impossible for me to sleep. Yet held between my two Alphas, my exhausted body had been dragged into rest.

I hadn’t dreamed, which was a relief after the false dream that Horus had drugged me with. I was glad that Lanlin hadn’t asked about the fake reality that Horus had woven around me.

I’d dreamed that I’d lived with Lanlin, Daire, and Aurelius together on a small farm in the mountains of the Unseelie Kingdom. I have never been to Daire’s kingdom, but my mind supplied everything that I’d imagined since I was a kid, which would mean home and safety.

We owned a cow, chickens, and a vegetable patch.

I would never be hungry again. No one could take food away from me as punishment.

Even through the warm sun, however, which somehow didn’t torch Lanlin to ash, as well as the glow of drowsy domestic happiness, I’d been unsettled, knowing that something was wrong with the picture.

Waking to the reality of these dangerous men in my arms, I knew that no fake dream could live up to the intensity of their reality.

I didn’t want a neutered dream.

I wanted the claw marks on the neck, the seared wrists, and the plotting.

Finally, when night fell, we woke up together.

Lanlin’s bat wings folded away into his back.

A rare solemnity settled over us, as we brushed each other’s hair and Daire’s feathers. Then we adjusted our makeup and jewels, readying for the marriage ceremony.

Lanlin ceremonially sheathed Daire’s double bronze daggers at his waist and then added the iron dagger with a curved hilt like a crescent moon, Night Sky Blade, at mine.

I only felt dressed once I had that blade on me.