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“Now is not the time to recruit her!” Cerri threw her hands in the air. There were strained lines etched into her face and dark circles under her eyes. “We need to pay Beryl a visit and get this over with so we can free you from this castle.”
I studied my love a moment longer. She seemed gaunt. Her skin held almost no color, only shadows. They hadn’t been there during our lovemaking, but I could tell that this wasn’t something that’d happened all of a sudden. Our task weighed on her so much that it was constantly draining her.
Closing the distance between us, I cupped her cheek and forced her to look up at me. “Tomorrow.”
She blinked, startled. Her lips parted in question. The furrow of her brow told me that she might already know what I meant, but she didn’t want to believe it.
I held firm. “We will pay that wench a visit tomorrow. There is no need to rush her tonight while you’re still drained. Get some sleep.”
Cerri glanced down at the coffee cup in her hand. She sighed deeply and lifted it to her lips. The moment the still-steaming liquid hit her tongue, I watched some of the tension bleed out of her. She lowered the cup and sighed deeply.
Still, she turned sorrowful eyes towards me. “I don’t want to spend another night without you.”
And I didn’t want to be apart from her, either. I held her tight with no plans of letting go even though I knew she should have gone back to the Seelie castle. That’s where they needed her the most, but that was also part of the reason that she was so tired.
There were others who could pick up her slack for tonight. They would understand. I wouldmakethem understand if I had to. This job was destroying Cerridwen. If it went on any longer, then the Seelie would have no queen to follow.
I wanted to press my lips to hers and see if I could be the one to make all of her worries wash away. It’d been only a handful of hours since we’d last made love, but my core clenched and my manhood filled with need all over again.
Did she feel the same? I didn’t dare ask for fear of making her feel like she had to serve me, too.
Instead, I told her to go sit on the couch. She lifted a brow as if to askwhat couch, this is a castle.Perhaps it was decorated like a hunting chalet from the heart of France, but it was alsomycastle. When I told her to sit on the couch, a couch appeared.
This was something I could get used to…so long as I could leave eventually. The prospect of being trapped here forever didn’t sit right with me. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing these walls every day of my life.
Cerri didn’t deserve to be trapped here with me. Nothing magical kept her here, but I knew that she stayed out of love for me. So long as I was trapped here, then she would stay. Tonight, we would treat it like a lovers’ retreat, but after that I needed to find a way out so that she didn’t feel like she had to do everything for me.
I would not be the weight that dragged my queen down.
Though I still called her princess, she was the queen of my heart, and she deserved so much more.
Cerri
The ideathat Hilda was still lurking somewhere in the shadows left me irritable, but the moment my butt hit the soft cushions of the new couch, I melted and forgot about everything. It was like Rhoan had somehow enchanted it to whisk away my worries. I couldn’t ask him because he’d stepped out of the room.
I closed my eyes for what I thought was only a second, but when I opened them again, there was a low coffee table filled with all sorts of foods and drinks. Beyond that, a flat screen television now hung above the mantle. A beast laid on the floor between the couch and the coffee table like an overgrown house pet.
Upon seeing me wake, the beast lifted its head and purred sweetly. It nuzzled my leg dangling off the side of the couch.
I let out a breath and felt myself melt all over again. Sleep almost claimed me until I noticed Rhoan watching me with a broad smile on the other side of the couch. He’d traded in his medieval fae attire for a pair of black sweatpants and a threadbare band t-shirt that was half a size too small. It clung to the broad plane of his chest and left a bare sliver of skin between the hem of his shirt and the waistband of his pants.
The sight of him turned my blood warm. I slid over so that I could lay across him and press my cheek to his chest. He wrapped an arm around me, and I almost fell apart. Tears burned my eyes as relief overcame me. It was so sudden and unexpected that I couldn’t hold them back.
“This…isn’t how…I wanted…this…to go,” I sobbed into his shirt.
Rhoan rubbed my back. His warmth sank into me. I clung to his shirt out of fear that this might vanish at any second. It felt far too much like a dream. I must have fallen asleep back at the Seelie castle. There was no way that this could be real.
“I promise you I’m real. I’m here,” Rhoan said as if he could read my mind.
It only made me sob harder. I had to have looked a mess, but Rhoan gently cupped my chin and kissed my lips despite my stuffy nose. I pressed into him, eager for more. He pulled back with a gentle smile and reached for a tissue for me.
I sat back and blew my nose. “We should be getting ready to take on Beryl.”
There were no Sluagh present, only the beasts that Faust had trapped the same way he’d trapped Rhoan. If we were going to launch an assault on Beryl in her dreams, then we needed to figure out our plan of action.
But Rhoan pulled me back into his chest and settled me on his lap. He nuzzled my neck and growled, “We don’t have to do anything other than sit here and rest.”
I squirmed uncomfortably. There was too much to do still. No matter how badly I wanted to lean into him and eat the snacks he’d brought for me, I knew that I wouldn’t know real rest until I defeated Beryl. The guilt would eat at me, and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself in the slightest.
