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“Perhaps.” Erik didn’t indulge the woman any longer before tugging me forward.
His focus remained locked ahead, his grip on my arm unyielding. The corridor came to an end at a large, arched doorway with a brass knob, and opened to a winding staircase.
Erik kept a steady pace up the tower steps, but the slightest slump of his left shoulder gave up the limp he tried to hide.
When we were far enough up the steps to be alone, I pulled back. “Who was that woman?”
He seemed surprised at the sound of my voice for a few breaths. “Envious?”
“Not at all.”
He chuckled. “Fione will tell you she is my mate, my woman, whatever you call such matches in your land.”
“Mate?” My blood burned. “What a snake you are.”
Again, the bastard chuckled. “Are mate matches so horrid to earth fae?”
“No, but . . .” I looked once over my shoulder, then lowered my voice.“But youtouchedme. You betrayed her.”
One lithe motion and Bloodsinger had my back to the cold stone of the stairwell, his body pinned over mine, and his palm on my throat.
“I betrayed no one, love.” His eyes dropped to my parted lips for one breath. “As I said, Fione will tell you we are mates based on an old agreement made before our births. Once I took the throne, I saw to it the agreement was dissolved.”
“Does she know this?”
“Oh yes. It does not mean she does not try to get me to see her more appealing qualities.” Erik flicked his brows.
“And have you? Do you play with women’s hearts for your own twisted pleasure?”
“I can’t figure out why you ask such things if you don’t care.”
“I’m sealing in my mind how horrid you are. Keep speaking,” I said. “It only makes it simpler.”
Bloodsinger’s thumb stroked the center of my throat. “I’ve no interest in hearts, Songbird. Put your mind at ease, I always make my intent clear before any woman shares my bed. I’m sickeningly honorable.”
I balked. “You are sickeningly something. Honorable is not what I would call it.”
Erik leaned his mouth against my ear. His breath was warm, his voice seductively low. “I did not hear your complaints when my tongue was slipping inside you.”
I shoved against his chest, ashamed of the sting of tears behind my eyes. Such hopes for the night of the masque had turned into such a nightmare. The first night I’d allowed a man to touch me so intimately, and I’d started a new war.
I turned away, and the king had enough brains not to carry on. Erik took my hand and continued up the staircase.
Four flights up, two guards stood outside an inconspicuous door. The king nor his men made the slightest hint the other existed. Bloodsinger merely shoved through the door and slammed it behind him.
For the first time since entering the palace, he released his hold on my arm. From the outside, I would not have anticipated such an ornate chamber in one of the towers. The sitting room was the size of the whole of my family’s tower at the fort. Woven rugs with blue fish and jade waves covered the stone floors. An inglenook capable of fitting ten men inside was alight with a white and blue dancing flame.
Like a curious child, I reached my fingers for the fire, mesmerized.
Erik slapped his grip around my wrist again, coming from nowhere, and pulled me back. “Do they not teach folk on land to keep away from fire?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. I yanked my hand away and looked anywhere but the king. “I’ve never seen fire like this, I thought . . .”
I let my voice trail off. Nothing I could say would make me sound less like a fool.
“The air here breathes differently,” he said briskly without looking at me. “Changes the shade of the flame. Still carries a bite that’ll boil the skin.”
The fire was beautiful, like molten sapphires. I readied to ask another question about the differences of the two realms, but words died off. Erik was gone.
