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If I stared long enough at the ring of mountains that encircled the Effren Valley, and Baylaur by extension, I told myself I could see the water. The wide balcony that jutted out from the goldstone palace gave me an expansive view across the valley to the eastern half of the mountains. The Tower of Myda loomed at the edge of the city, near the center of the valley, as if guarding the citizens from the fell beasts that lurked beyond. A cunning illusion, like most things in the elemental kingdom.
Several levels below, I could see the courtyard and other balconies attached to apartments occupied by elemental courtiers. If I looked left, I imagined I could see the Northern Way, with its choppy gray waves. Straight ahead, and I would glimpse the Split Sea, its legendary still sapphire blue surface.
But the truth was that I’d never seen a body of water larger than the turquoise pools of the water gardens where I’d been raised.
From the way my council watched me, half of them wished I’d never emerged from my tranquil prison. While the other half worried I might retreat back to it and never return.
How was a fae princess who’d been kept hidden away for most of her twenty-five years of life to rule a kingdom?
The answer was easy—I didn’t mean to.
The royal council could have at it. The Brutal Prince, when he arrived, could fight it out with them for control. Me? I had other matters to attend to.
My eyes flitted down from where I stood on the edge of the palace, built into the side of the mountain, to the city beneath. A strip of desert separated the edge of the city from the base of the mountain, a stretch of innocuous open sand. I felt a smile curve the edge of my mouth.
Maybe when I finally caught the villains who’d murdered Arthur, I’d take them there. Drag them into the middle of that open expanse, beneath the unforgiving Annwyn sun, and watch as they were devoured alive by the Gremog.
“What are you planning?”
Parys’ voice cut into the very enjoyable vision I was constructing for myself, full of blood, gore, and begging.
“Why do you think I am planning anything?” I asked, raising one eyebrow in his direction.
He rose from my bed, reaching his hands above his head and stretching so that every muscle of his lean body was outlined in the midmorning sun. He didn’t both to cover up his cock, soft and spent from the punishing ride I’d taken him on just an hour before. When I woke with my blood threatening to boil me from the inside out, the physical release of climax was the only thing that could calm it.
Still naked, he strode toward me, taking up a position in the middle of the balcony.
Whispers reached our fae ears, their words clear enough I wondered if Parys had summoned them on his wind.
“The Queen and…”
“Such a specimen…”
“…arrival of the terrestrial delegation…”
“—Brutal Prince.”
Parys’ gaze slid to me even as his wind encircled the balcony, ensuring that no one would hear our words as easily as we’d listened to theirs.
“They are wondering what you will do with me once the Brutal Prince arrives,” Parys said.
I shrugged. “Perhaps he will be interested in a threesome.”
That earned me an eye-roll. “Clever.”
Parys stepped back inside the bedroom long enough to return with sustenance. The male was always thinking of food—always hungry. For food and flesh, it seemed. He tossed me the shining red apple at the same time he spoke.
“We both know this cannot continue, Veyka.”
He called me clever, but he was the one with a mind crafty enough to make every elemental jealous. Parys’ brain seemed made for the intrigues of this court, while mine was perilously one-track. Throwing me the apple so my hands would be busy when he dropped that little tidbit of his into the void between us.Clever, indeed.
“Maybe you are my mate,” I joked, digging my thumb into the rich red flesh. But even I knew it was a useless attempt at humor—one I didn’t even feel.
“Grasping at folklore and fairytales now, are we?” Parys said.
“I am the queen,” I pointed out, taking a bite.
“Whose king is set to arrive any day now,” Parys said between mouthfuls.
