Kingdom of Villains, page 11
It was still tangled in too many places, but it looked better than it had in nearly a week, so I left it in its usual haphazard mess of long and unruly curling waves and dropped the brush by the sink. The wound on my head had almost healed. I didn’t prod or stare at the fading cut, a shiver threatening at the mere memory of those talons taking the guard’s life.
The stairwell mercifully spiraled all the way down to the first floor.
The dining room was easy to find. Laughter and hushed murmurings floated into the hall. I followed the noise to a grand foyer. My feet slowed as the ever stretching row of arched windows gave a breathtaking view of the star-dusted forest floor outside.
To my right, the foyer shaped like a star beckoned, purple and red roses unfurling from tall plum-colored vases at each point. I entered, knowing people were waiting but hypnotized as I gazed up the grand staircase to the floor above. The stone beneath me rolled into a dark, glittering marble like the stairs. The banisters curled into the face of a dragon at each end. Atop the staircase on the wall, the late queen watched over the empty space below from a large gilded portrait.
Eyes of such familiar, eerie gold shined down at me, her hair the same shade of obsidian as her son’s. Her lap was dusted with petals beneath a cluster of wildflowers. Slender fingers held them loosely, and those of her other hand smoothed over a petal.
A perfect, pink bow, her lips were upturned in one corner, giving a spark of soft mischief to the intimidating bone structure she’d also gifted her son. Queen Cherith wasn’t just beautiful but also ethereal. As though some mystical presence glowed from within.
It wasn’t an incorrect assumption, given her pyrotechnic abilities. She’d also spawned the first dragon Gwythorn had seen in hundreds of years.
Footfalls, clipped but unhurried, broke my trance with Colvin’s voice. “Mother’s quarters are up there, but I wouldn’t pay her a visit unless invited.”
I spun around, somewhat flustered to have been caught staring at his other mother.
He only smiled, brief but still reassuring, and looked down at the glass of wine in his hand. “If the queen is in her rooms, she’s done with duties for the night, which includes talking to anyone.”
“She still grieves.”
He lifted his eyes, but not to me. To the portrait of his mother, a heavy exhale leaving him. “She will until she dies.”
I swallowed over the thickening in my throat. It was often said that losing a mate was akin to having a part of oneself perish, dooming them to forever wander throughout their remaining days with an ache that never ceased.
“And you?” I asked, wanting to kick myself. I wasn’t supposed to care, and I didn’t want to care. I was just… unbearably curious.
A knowing smile glinted in the prince’s eyes when he gave them to me. “The food grows cold.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I will, just not yet.”
Annoyed, I trailed him out of the foyer and down the hall that ended in a large arched doorway, giving way to an even larger room.
A table, an oiled slab of thick, ginormous oak, stood dressed with dishes and beverages and crystal vases of violet roses in the center of the room. Two intricate chandeliers hung from the ceiling, their silver wrapped in threads of gold that glittered with every soft sway of the dozen candles within.
Beyond each head of the table were windows shrouded in heavy, obsidian curtains. On one side of the long room was a black marble fireplace, and on the other, a wooden bar lined with liquor.
“Don’t worry, there’s wine,” said a familiar voice, and I looked from the glass-cased liquids to the table as Persy raised her wineglass. “Not bad either.”
“There’s no such thing as bad wine,” said the male with hair reminiscent of burning caramel seated next to her. The strands stood in uneven, eye-catching tufts as though he’d been struck by lightning.
His voice alone told me he was the male who’d been sparring with Colvin, but that hair confirmed it.
His coal-dark eyes glimmered as he leaned back in his seat. “Perhaps there’s no such thing as a feral Seelie princess, either.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is this audacity of yours due to losing another bet?” I smiled when his eyes widened. He glared at Persy, who coughed wine back into her glass as I rounded the table to sit before the only untouched meal on the other side. “Jarron, I assume.”
“Correct,” he muttered.
Before I could sit, Colvin appeared. Either I was getting too good at ignoring his presence, or he was growing more talented at surprising me. For he did so again, untucking my chair.
I looked at it, then up at him, venomous words swelling my tongue. The way he wouldn’t meet my eyes made me trap them behind my teeth, and I reluctantly took a seat and let him tuck me in.
The male and female across from us stared down at their plates, their shoulders shaking with laughter they tried and failed to hide.
Seemingly at ease despite the sniveling and watchful eye of his friends, the prince sat next to me and resumed eating what was left of his meal.
A giant hunk of meat soaked in a spiced, yellowed sauce and surrounded by baked vegetables awaited me on my plate, indeed barely warm when I collected my cutlery and took a bite. Determined to keep my approval hidden as the beef all but dissolved over my tongue, I sipped from the glass of wine poured for me by the prince.
“You’ve left me to fend for myself since I arrived,” I clipped, setting the wine down. “No need to start fussing now.” Though even as I’d said it, I knew it wasn’t entirely true.
Deep down, I knew he’d been helping me as much as he could while also trying to give me the space I’d needed to acclimate after so much turmoil, and in a land I’d always feared would rather eat than welcome me.
Colvin didn’t respond, and a small spike of unexpected shame pricked at my chest.
Persy cleared her throat. “Have you left the castle yet?”
“Not really,” I said, knowing she already expected as much, and therefore wondering what she was about to try on.
A look at the prince with a small smile on her lips, and I was growing more tense by the second. “You should show Fia the woods, Col.”
Colvin smiled down at his plate. “Fia has likely spent half of her life in the woods. She knows what they look like.”
“But she hasn’t seen ours.”
The prince set down his cutlery, and I feared he’d give me away and tell them of the spying I’d done earlier. But he merely asked dryly, “Any particular patch of trees you might be referring to?”
Persy pursed her lips, a large bite of potato held suspended before her. “Oh, I could think of one particular place.”
Jarron placed his wine on the table. “I think we should get to the meaning of this lovely little dinner.”
I knew it. Always with the ulterior motives. “You mean to tell me you did not wish to simply get to know me?”
His sharp gaze pierced mine, and he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin before revealing a smirk. “We know all about you, Princess.”
Persy thumped his arm.
He glared at her. “What? You can goad, but I cannot?”
She rolled her eyes but then looked at me and said, “We do want to get to know you, but we also seek the book, Fia.”
Confused, I slowly finished chewing, then swallowed. “And which book would that be?”
Colvin cursed into the hand he rubbed over his mouth and jaw. “Leave it.”
“The Blood Bound Book,” Jarron said, ignoring him, all playfulness wiped clean of his features. Which were shockingly cruel when still, his dark eyes stamped on me as he relaxed into the high-backed wooden chair and waited.
That book.
My gaze turned to the prince, who rose and walked to one of the arched windows and opened the curtain, his back to us.
Of course, he would want to ensure that particular book was out of the wrong hands. Within its pages were spells and potion ingredients—including where to find them—to aid in weakening, capturing, and even killing the most dangerous types of beasts in Gwythorn.
Including that of a dragon.
We might have been immortal, but Colvin was as close to indestructible as any creature could get. Fire couldn’t harm him behind those scales when he breathed and conjured it himself. It would take an army of arrows to wound him. No one could get close enough to behead him.
But as he’d said himself some months ago in the dungeon, there was a poison for everyone.
Remembering that only made my eyes narrow further upon his back as he continued staring out at the trees.
Over many millennia, the Seelie Kingdom added their findings to the Blood Bound Book and had kept it sealed within the archives of the cellar beneath the royal library. But it was no longer there. I’d searched for the book myself. Many times. Not just because it was supposedly mine, but because I was curious.
I was also the only one with the ability to unbound the pages. The only one who could open it. It had been handed down to my mother from her own, and as she’d perished after delivering me, my mother had then left the book to me.
A fact of which these Unseelie creatures obviously knew.
Searing anger scored through me, and I too pushed away from the table and stood. “It hasn’t been seen in years. I cannot help you.”
Persy said carefully, “But you were the last one to see it.”
Brolen had been curious about something, he’d said, but that was all. Otherwise, I might not have known of its existence at all. I’d been too young to care or remember much. All I could recall was the glimpse of my mother’s looping handwriting and wishing I’d been able to read what she’d written.
Instead, I was left with the scent of damp, age-worn pages, and I’d later discovered from my aunt that the book had been hidden elsewhere.
“I was barely five years of age. I don’t know what Brolen wanted with it, nor what happened afterward. Wherever he’s hidden it, we’ll never know. He didn’t even tell my aunt. It’s likely he told no one. So”—I met the prince’s golden gaze when he turned, his hands folded before him, my tone as cold as I could make it—“do excuse me.”
Outside in the hall, I slowed, my pounding heart quieting enough for me to hear, “She speaks the truth.”
Jarron asked, “And how would you know?”
“Her reaction,” Colvin said simply.
My teeth gritted. I forced myself to keep moving to the stairs that would take me back to my rooms.
Releasing my nail-breaking grip of the stone wall on the landing, I blinked back the growing damp in my eyes when I entered the hall and, one by one, flames began to dance, lighting the way to my rooms.
I swallowed the emotion clogging my throat. It sharpened my breaths, and I found myself grateful that the narlows had been taken to bed as I shut myself in my rooms.
I’d barely removed my slippers before the door opened.
“Haven’t you heard of knocking, dragon?”
Colvin closed the door, ignoring my question and crossing the room to where I stood at the end of the bed. “You’re mad.”
I huffed, walking to the dressing room for something to wear to bed.
“More than usual.”
His attempt at humor didn’t work. It only made my eyes sting as I flicked all the various gowns aside in search of a nightgown. Spying a tunic, perhaps meant for riding, I snatched it from the hanger and paid no mind to the prince while I stripped.
In nothing but undergarments, I pulled the tunic on before reaching beneath it to free myself of their silken constraints.
Behind me in the doorway, he said low, “You’re wearing a tunic to bed?”
“And?” I quipped. “Or do you require I dress a certain way for you, too?”
“I’m not complaining, believe me,” he said, and I couldn’t bring myself to turn around yet, to face him as he added gently, “I don’t require anything of you, Fia.”
“Except for the book.” This all made more sense now. If they got the book, there was far less chance of my uncle getting what he wanted—in succeeding in ridding Gwythorn of dragons for good. “Do tell, what will become of me when you get everything you want?” For once he had that book and a permanent thumb pressed upon Callula by marrying me, he truly would be invincible.
Finished with unclipping the undergarments, I tossed them to the floor.
“Right now, all I want is to see those violet eyes.”
My tunic only reached the top of my thighs, but he didn’t look. True to his word, his eyes seemed to soften to a more yellowy hue when I gave him what he wanted. I crossed my arms. “What would you like next, dragon?”
“I should say nothing,” he murmured. “But I’d be lying.”
It was maddening—how just one look at him could spike my ire or melt my resolve. “I cannot get you that book. He’ll kill me or send me right back if I return.”
“Fuck the book,” he said, voice rougher than moments before.
I frowned. “But you…” I lost what I was saying, what I was even thinking, as he straightened from the doorframe of the dressing room and erased the space between us with three calculated strides.
I stared at the spots of dried tea on his collar, my heart running too fast. His scent rid my brain of the ability to think, and his towering form blocked my view of anything but him.
He clasped my chin, forcing my eyes to his.
They skipped over the growth at his perfectly squared and overly obnoxious chin to glimpse the parting of his soft lips. His nostrils flared, and I surrendered, finally fusing my gaze to his. “You expected a dinner with us, with me, trusting even after all you’ve endured, that you’d be safe.” His thumb brushed beneath my lower lip. “Instead, you were ambushed again.”
He was right, so I bit back the urge to say it didn’t matter.
For some reason, it did.
“I did warn them it was a bad idea, but I will admit that I am desperate enough to accept their reasoning and ignore good sense.” His lashes lowered and lifted, long and calling to my fingers, which itched and curled at my sides. “Because we do need it, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t also want to eat with you and that I didn’t want you to meet my friends.” He smiled then, quick and amused. “Although it seems you and Persy had already met.”
“Stop it,” I rasped, but the request was feeble.
“No,” he said. “I need that book, but regardless of whether I get it, I’ll still need you.”
His thumb traced a tear that leaked from the corner of my eye without my permission, and it grew worse, this feeling of wanting to leave my overheating skin and run. But I didn’t. There was nowhere to go, so I whispered, “What could you possibly need me for, dragon?”
“Too much,” he countered, and I ceased breathing. “Right now, I’ll settle for your mouth on mine.”
This barely contained energy inside me sprang free, pushing me to my toes and my lips to his. My hand splayed over his chest, the other rising to his head, pulling it down to feel his incredibly soft hair—to better taste him as I pried his lips apart with mine.
He was wine and heat, an explosion of sensation with just one tentative touch of our tongues.
His hand framed my face, fingers threading into my hair while the other landed upon my lower back and pushed. My body collided with his. A groan, throaty and low, tingled over my tongue as I withdrew and meshed my lips violently to his.
He met my every bruising press, our breaths loud with nowhere to tumble free. Hard and tempting me to touch, his erection dug into my stomach, his fingers a contradiction to his typically gentle demeanor, tangling deeper into my hair and digging with bruising focus into my lower back.
It gave me all the permission I needed to do the same. I gripped the thick strands of his hair and desperately clawed at his shirt, needing him closer, needing more.
A moan pushed past the punishing dance of our lips when he picked me up to pin me to the wall. Clothing fell around us, as innocuous as leaves falling from a tree.
He ground into me, and I gasped when he pulled away, his wet mouth scoring a fire-lit path down my chin to the hollow of my neck. I rocked over him, moaning again, every part of me alive like never before. Each panted breath coated in his scent, his taste, his essence, like that of new air I couldn’t gulp fast enough.
“You taste like salted honey,” he grunted, tongue lapping at my pulse. “A touch sour and so fucking sweet.”
A shiver rippled through me. “I can feel you,” I whispered, my mind vacant. He’d knocked down every shield. “With every brush of your tongue…”
“Here?” He thrust his cock into my core while his tongue swiped at my pulse again.
I shivered harder, my thighs, clutched within his bruising hold, shaking.
A dark chuckle washed over my skin. I tugged his hair, needing his mouth back on mine before I did something absurd, like erupt from nothing more than the velvet feel of his tongue at my neck. “Kiss me, Prince.”
His husky words and the luminescent shine of his hungry eyes held me transfixed. “Whenever you like.”
Starving as if I’d never had a full meal in my life, I clasped his cheeks, my lips and tongue at war with his. My teeth trapped his bottom lip, and I sucked it into my mouth, releasing it with a tiny daring bite.
I knew it was a mistake to toy with him in this way, but I didn’t care.
I wanted, so I took.
I nibbled and lapped at his tongue. I drank him down like the rare tonic he was, the smoky essence of him making a home within my taste buds and body. He groaned, my thighs inching higher and my lower body rocking harder.
Close, I was so close, my lip stolen by his teeth, his mouth sucking and his hips thrusting with more precision. If it was this good with his pants on, without our skin even meeting, I was almost afraid to find out what might become of me if we ever truly fucked.
And then I pulled too hard, his next groan more of a snarl as my eyes flew open. His were hooded, and when his lashes lifted, a glowing red.
