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“We do. Dirue, our healer, hands them out without blinking an eye, as she always has, even when the law was in place.”
“I think I’ll visit her soon, then.”
His chest rumbled in satisfaction, and his erection throbbed against my ass. “I look forward to it, little human.”
My heart about melted at the soft, sultry nickname. It had seemed like an insult at first, but knowing that he wanted me—not just for sex, but permanently, as his mate—erased any bad feelings I’d had toward it.
“Will you tell me about your life?” I asked him. “I’d like to know you as more than the battle-hardened king who loves books.”
He was silent for a moment, and then finally said, “When I was a child, my parents were very vocal about wanting peace. They led a small resistance, protesting our endless war. The incidents they staged to demonstrate war’s brutality cost many fae their lives on every side. They were not good people, though perhaps they had good intentions. The kings and queens at that time hunted them for many decades without success.”
“That was when people were still mated, and still having children?” I asked.
“Yes. Mated couples began being hunted shortly before I was born. The kings and queens who despised my parents were eventually murdered by those hunters, which bought my family a little more time. I was ten and Eisley was four when members of the cult caught up to us. We were in the forest—the four of us, and two cultists—but my father and mother had sworn away their magic in their effort to create peace. My mother didn’t touch her power at all while she was pregnant with Eisley, so my sister had no ice of her own. I had no idea how to use my magic, but I could feel it in my veins, and I knew that if I couldn’t protect us, we were going to get slaughtered.”
My eyes were wide, my throat so swollen I doubted I could’ve spoken even if I tried.
He admitted, “I threw everything I had at them, but I was an untrained ten-year-old, and it wasn’t enough. Their ice cut through mine with ease, and it was all I could do to throw a protective shelter over myself and Eisley before they could kill us too. I left her inside when I knew the killers were gone, and then buried our parents myself in earth and ice, the way our people always do. With no other options left, I carried Eisley to the nearest kingdom—this one. It was called Prive at the time. A group of warriors led us to the castle, where we were housed with the other orphans and taught to fight.”
My eyes stung with tears. “Veil, Kierden.”
“It was a long time ago. Don’t weep for me, Nissa.” He gently wiped the tears from my cheeks. “You may be able to imagine the rest. My magic was very strong, ironically. I became the fiercest warrior in the kingdom, though I made certain that my sister was a close second, since she had no magic to protect herself with.”
He continued, his voice still soft, “After one of our kings died, our people elected me to take his place. We vowed to put an end to all distractions, and our numbers stopped falling. We haven’t lost a fae during battle in nearly a century.”
“And I thought nine years in a tower was difficult,” I said, wiping at my own tears.
He growled at me, captured my hand, and lifted it to his lips to kiss my palm. “Do not discount your own struggles because they sound less vicious than someone else’s. If I were thrown in a tower for nearly a decade, I can tell you without question that I would come out a rabid, savage beast with little sense of myself. Losing all control like that would scar the fiercest warrior, and yet here you are, still sane, functioning, andkind.”
“I don’t sound so bad when you put it like that,” I told him, still wiping away my tears.
“You arenotbad, Nissa. Not at all.” His grip on my hip and abdomen tightened. “I may have been terrible at proving it thus far, but I feel extremely lucky to have found you. After so many centuries without a shred of interest in the females I’ve known and fought with, I started to wonder if perhaps I’d never be capable of feeling for someone the way I do you.”
“Maybe you should’ve started considering the males,” I mumbled.
His chest rumbled with amusement. “I am not attracted to men, love. I’ve been alive long enough to be certain of that.” He squeezed my hip again. “Tell me about your father, please?”
I grimaced. “It’s not a happy story.”
“Then it’ll fit right in with mine.”
I sighed. “My magic came in on my thirteenth birthday, and I woke up surrounded by vines, fruit, and flowers. It wasn’t exciting; it was terrifying. I couldn’t even get out of my room. My mother left as soon as she saw the plants, and my father spent an hour freeing me from them. By the time he finally got me out of the room, my mother had gotten the rest of the people in the town together. They held tools as weapons while she told me that my magic was a curse sent from the other side of the veil to punish me for the crimes of a past life, but that the town could use my curse to ease their struggles.”
I continued, “My father tried to protest, but there were so many of them. When they started leading me around the town by my hand, he couldn’t do anything but walk by my side until I collapsed after the magic had drained me dry. My feet were blistered when I woke up, and I could hardly move. We weren’t in our home, but someone else’s. When the people came to get me again, my father argued with them, but they shoved past him and took me anyway. We saw the base of the tower, then—and saw everyone working on it.”
My eyes closed, and I let out a long breath.
Kierden’s fingers massaged my hip gently, and the touch calmed me a little.
My voice was quiet when I admitted, “It only took them two weeks to build it. My mother told me and my father that it would be my new home the evening before it was ready. I told her I didn’t want to live there, and she told me she didn’t care, reminding me that I was cursed. That night, my dad woke me up before dawn and told me that we were leaving for my safety. He said that my mother had gone mad—that I was blessed, not cursed. He already had our things packed, so we left.”
“She anticipated it, though. There were guards waiting for us at the edge of town. Everything happened so quickly. They swung at my father, and he fought back. There were three of them, and he was a farmer, not a fighter. I don’t remember who stabbed him or what weapon they used. It felt like only a heartbeat later I was kneeling beside him, sobbing as he breathed his last breaths. He held me as tightly as he could, telling me he loved me while repeating over and over that I was a blessing, not a curse.” Tears leaked from my eyes.
I had never told anyone any of that before, and getting it out made me feel… fresh. Stronger, too. Cleansed, maybe.
I felt like I couldbreathe, again.
So I continued. “They threw me into the tower, still covered in his blood. My mother and I had never been close before I got my magic, but she became the monster who stole everything from me. The town made her their leader, and she stayed away from me. I rarely saw her, even when they tied me up and led me around to make sure my magic would grow everything. I could be actively bleeding from the blisters on my feet, and no one would bat an eye. I meantnothingto them. They only cared about my power.”
