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I wasn’t ready to give him the full truth, but he could have a piece.
“I’m an elemental fae who never received a gift, and we’re not made to survive without our land’s magic.” Every word I said was true… they just weren’t the full story.
“Hmm.” The king made no attempt to share anything else. The bastard apparently wasn’t ready to have a heart to heart.
“Where is a room with sheets and without dust? I need to rest so I don’t keep puking.”
His lips twisted in a grimace. “Only one in the castle. Over there.” He pointed off to the opposite side of the massive entry area and staircase for a moment, then resumed cleaning.
“And the kitchen?” I asked.
If the king had a chef, he or she would’ve been scrubbing puke.
“There.” He pointed to a large, open doorway beside the room he had pointed me toward.
If there was only one clean bedroom, and it was located beside the kitchen, I had no question: it was the king’s.
Which meant we were going to be sharing.
That was going to be a difficult thing to stomach in an hour or so, but…
He hadn’t put me in a dungeon. Or tried to starve me. Or tortured me. Or even been cruel to me.
“I’m Vena,” I told him. “If you’re not taking me back to my inn, I’d like something to call you other than Dark King.”
His lips lifted in a slight smirk, and he slowly tilted his head back so he was looking up at me again. “But it sounds so… seductive.”
Fuck, his drawl was way sexier than it should’ve been.
Playfulness clutched me faster than I wanted it to, and my shoulder dropped a bit, my chin lifting and my hand stretching out toward him. I put on a thick Night Court accent as I drawled, “I didn’t see you there, my Dark King. How lovely to meet you.”
His smirk stretched into an expression that almost resembled a plain-old grin, and he caught my hand deftly. My stomach clenched as he lifted it slowly to his lips, holding eye contact with me as he brushed his mouth slowly over each fingertip. The gesture wasn’t from my own culture, but I recognized it anyway.
“And I you, my Dark Queen.” His voice was low as he turned my hand and pressed a final kiss to my palm before easing me one small step toward him and placing it on his heart.
There, he released me.
My palm was flat on his chest, feeling the steady, slow beating of his heart for a moment.
He returned to cleaning the floor—without answering either of my questions, I had noticed—but made no move to pull my hand from his skin.
Not that I really expected to, given the small, powerful ceremony he had just performed in his damned castle.
I slowly peeled my palm from his chest, stepping away with a spinning mind. I turned a bit too fast and lost my balance, but a strong, steady hand landed on my thigh and held me up with ease.
“Careful, Lemay.” His voice was smooth again, embedded with that cocky humor he’d had in the inn. My stomach clenched even more at the word, though.
Thetitle.
I hadn’t recognized it immediately in the inn, but now, I most certainly did.
And because of it, I didn’t say another word as I (more carefully) headed toward the bedroom.
The king was from the Night Court. I had his magic running through my veins, keeping me alive. It had sustained me through years of torture and abuse.
But the ceremony he’d performed was one only practiced by fae from the Lunar Isle. I had seen it as a child, while I was being transported across the seas to take the king’s magic and save his life. Because the lunar fae had been destroyed by the ice ones so long ago, the few that remained mostly acted as thieves and assassins, destroying lives around all of Bluhm.
The ones I’d met were a couple, and I had asked them about the finger-kissing and never forgotten their response:
