Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine Book 1), page 18
“Butterfly,” Florian warned between gritted teeth.
“Fair play,” I sang on my way to the adjoining door, adding before I closed it behind me with a mocking curtsy, “Majesty.”
The sound of crashing glass made me jump, then smile with more satisfaction than any fool should feel after enraging a faerie king.
My smug satisfaction was fleeting.
Not only because I spent the night twisting and turning in the bedding—so much so that Snow decided to sleep upon the carpet—wondering if Florian would barge through the adjoining door to finish what I’d started, but because of the visitor in the king’s study.
The door was closed, and though it was spelled for privacy, I still heard it when I paused in the hall to wipe yet another bizarre gathering of perspiration from my brow.
Faint feminine laughter, followed by a rare and brief bout of Florian’s own.
Zayla said nothing, but she gave Snow a tight look. The wolf had insisted on accompanying us to the kitchen once we returned from a quick visit outside, and her hackles rose when the guard got too close.
I hushed the tiny beast when she snarled at Zayla’s continued assessment, and whispered, “You’ll give away our attempt at eavesdropping.”
Zayla snorted and stayed in the hall as I trekked downstairs to the kitchen for breakfast, Snow trailing.
Kreed did not comment on the wolf, but the twins were delighted. “It’s true, then.” Arryn laughed and crouched before the cub to offer his hand.
Her lips peeled back, but he waited. Slowly, she crept forward to sniff his hand, then allowed the young male to pet her.
I set her awaiting meaty breakfast on the floor. “I call her Snow.”
“Creative,” Thistle teased, arms folded and a smirk curling his lips, while I took my usual perch.
The stool now sat at the end of the island bench, my berried oats and a glass of water waiting. My eyes stung at the sight—at the knowledge I was welcome somewhere.
I swallowed the unexpected emotion and tried to ignore the other one I couldn’t seem to kick aside. After a few mouthfuls, I failed miserably.
My spoon fell with an unintentional clatter into the bowl as I blurted, “Who is that female?”
“You’ll need to be more specific.” Kreed finished drying a saucepan and hung it upon one of the hooks dotting the ceiling above me.
I half rolled my eyes. “You know who I mean.”
He grinned and tossed his worn towel over his shoulder. “You mean the female visiting with our king?”
I glared, lifting the glass of water to my lips and slurping.
The twins chuckled.
Kreed dismissed them, and they both cursed with relief and left via the door that would take them outside. That I’d seen them leave the same way before told me their private quarters were on the grounds somewhere and not within the manor itself.
“You seem...” The cook didn’t even try to hide his amusement as he narrowed his eyes on my face and then my barely touched breakfast. “Bothered.”
“I’m not.”
He huffed and carried a pot to the sink, draining the water from it.
“I’m not,” I said again, and ate another mouthful for good measure. “I wish whoever she is the best of luck in dealing with his insufferable attitude and overbearing presence.”
“Overbearing?” Kreed questioned, sounding on the cusp of laughter.
I decided to shut my mouth, knowing I’d already said and implied far too much.
The king was under my skin. He’d made sure of that before I discovered his true intentions. Now, I could only hope it wouldn’t hurt too much to peel it back and tear him out.
I didn’t want to be attracted to him. I certainly didn’t want to marry him.
And I didn’t want the mere idea of him enjoying another’s company to bother me as much as it did.
Gaining Florian’s trust in the hope of finding enough freedom to escape was impossible when he didn’t trust anyone. I was stuck, and I had to wonder if I loathed him more for that than for tricking me in the first place.
For trapping me in a larger prison.
I’d been so desperate for freedom that I’d stupidly signed over my life to Florian, believing he was fate sent to give me just that and more. All I could do now was rot within this cage of lust and loathing until an opportunity to get to Baneberry presented itself.
Then I would have the protection of the kingdom in which I’d been born.
Until Florian came for us with his armies, of course.
And I knew that such a betrayal would never be forgiven—regardless of him being wholly aware of my longing for answers and a place to truly belong.
Aggravated beyond measure, I shoved my breakfast away and ignored the urge to thump my head against the smooth stone countertop until my hopeless and desolate musings were knocked from my skull.
Kreed shot me a curious look over his shoulder, but I could handle no more talk of the king. “How long have you and Olin been dancing around one another?”
The cook’s eyes flared slightly. The only tell he gave that perhaps I’d struck a nerve.
Giving his attention back to the soapy water, he sighed as if suddenly exhausted. “We haven’t been involved for some years.”
I didn’t want to pry. However, I did want to distract myself and maybe learn why this steward was such a damned grouch. I pulled my breakfast close when my stomach growled for more sustenance. “Is that why he’s always so miserable?”
Kreed chuckled. It quickly ended with a rough exhale. “He wasn’t aware I had sons nor that I’d spent a few decades with a female before I met him. Can’t say I blame him for how he feels.” He shook suds from a large wooden spoon. “It’s quite the secret.”
“And why did you keep it?” I gently pressed.
Kreed didn’t respond.
I resumed eating, believing he wouldn’t.
Then, quietly, as though he did not wish for anyone to overhear, he explained, “I didn’t know I had sons, either. By the time I did, and by the time I realized what we were doing was perhaps serious”—he shrugged—“well...”
It had been too late.
The door screeched open atop the stairwell, steps descending.
Her scent preceded her—sunlight and citrus with a faint hint of salt.
Her hair was the color of wet sand, falling straight and long over an ample chest and a torso with enviable curves. Dark-green eyes, reminiscent of seaweed, sparked with her slow-spreading smile as she stopped before me. “You must be the spawn of the enemy.”
I coughed, almost splattering her beautiful ensemble with oats.
She smoothed her hands over the loose and gauzy tunic, the crimson material falling over tight-fitted slacks, and looked at Kreed.
Kreed was bowing.
She smiled wider and waved an elegant hand. “Oh, stop and come here.”
The cook straightened and met the female in the center of the room to embrace her. “Glorious as always.”
She tore away, gripping his large upper arms. “Where are the younglings?”
“Likely chasing some of the female staff into the woods until they need to return to prepare lunch.”
My shock faded, but the awe remained as they talked about Kreed’s sons and Mercury, Aura’s wife. This was no ordinary female. She was a queen.
Queen Aura of Oleander, the southern kingdom of Folkyn.
A queen stood mere feet from me, and I hadn’t even realized—hadn’t shown any respect upon her arrival. To make matters worse, Snow snarled when the queen stepped too close to her breakfast bowl.
I hushed her, about to apologize when Aura’s gaze lit, and she crouched before my beastly cub to offer her hand. “Darling,” she said to Kreed. “Why is there a wolf babe in your kitchen?”
“Ask the spawn of the enemy.”
I scowled at Kreed, but he merely began decluttering the island countertop with a smirk.
Snow sniffed Aura’s hand and decided she was no threat, but refused to eat until Aura rose and stepped back.
The queen observed the cub, who’d already nearly doubled in size since I’d found her wounded in the woods, then looked at me as she placed a hand at her hip. “I can see why Florian’s mood is more foul than usual.”
Kreed chuckled. “Tullia has indeed kept him on his toes.”
I would’ve glared at the cook again, but the queen tapped a short nail against her plump and rouge-painted lips. “They say you were a changeling.” Interest had brightened her eyes to an emerald green. “Raised in the grotesque middle.”
I nodded. “I did not know who you were until—”
My attempt at apologizing for not giving the respect owed to a queen was dismissed with a flick of her fingers. “And you’ve no idea what you’ve been dragged into.”
“I’m starting to learn,” I muttered, unable to hide my displeasure at being reminded of my own failings, and unable to keep from adding bitterly, “I was deceived.”
Kreed coughed.
Aura looked at him, an eye narrowed, then back to me. “Indeed. Your anger and self-loathing are delicious.”
Discomfort bit at my words. “Is it that obvious?”
“Darling, you wear it as a perfume.” After a moment of inspecting me thoughtfully, her words softened. “You are so dreadfully young. The art of careful trickery and deception has yet to touch your soul enough to teach you better.”
Those words straightened my spine, a rebuttal forming and failing. I closed my mouth because she was right.
The glint in her eyes still irked.
My stomach then soured, and I clutched a hand over it.
Queen Aura noticed and hummed. She studied Snow when the cub sat at my feet and licked her breakfast from her lips, warning when I made to leave, “I wouldn’t go up there for a while if I were you.”
I frowned and lowered back to the stool.
Kreed groaned. “You refused him again?” His question would have concerned if it weren’t for the fact that Queen Aura was mated and married.
Noting my confusion, Aura laughed. “War, darling. Florian seeks some of our military to sufficiently squash your father.” The queen snatched a strawberry from the bowl Kreed set upon the countertop. Holding it to her crimson mouth, she said flippantly, “But he doesn’t need us, of course.”
“Then why does he seek your assistance?” I couldn’t resist asking.
Aura chewed, licking the fruit from her teeth as she watched me. “Because he is obsessive in his pursuits. There will be no gaps in his armor and not a crumb of opportunity for defeat.” Her green eyes roamed over my fluffy robe before she snatched another strawberry. “Though perhaps that is changing.”
Kreed cleared his throat and shot Aura a look I couldn’t decipher.
She sighed in a way that said he was spoiling her fun. Her gaze twinkled at me. “Another time.”
I watched her leave the same way she’d arrived.
Kreed waited until she was well and truly gone before whispering, “Aura enjoys knowing everyone’s business, Princess.” He shook his head. “But that is all. She never gets involved in anything.”
So that was why she was here when she had no intention of aiding Florian.
I pulled my breakfast back to me, hungry again. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The look he gave me in return before he left the kitchen was some type of warning. But as my head began to pound, I lost the ability to care about the games of the Fae.
Apparently, Aura had meant it when she’d said we would talk another time.
My wolf cub bounded through the sludge and snow while I tried to shake the foggy residue my midmorning nap had left behind.
I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but after returning to my rooms to bathe and dress, I’d lain upon the bed to pet Snow, then woke to a gentle tapping upon the door.
Zayla had followed us outside, but after a look from Aura, she remained on the drive with an unmistakable grimace of displeasure. Guilt niggled at me, for she was surely going to earn a scolding from her king for not following my every move.
Sensing what was on my mind as I glanced back down the path behind us, Aura mused, “Does he think you’ll fall through his fingers if he doesn’t have someone watch you breathe?”
I laughed, shocked by it, and said thickly, “He doesn’t trust that I won’t try to get what I want.”
“And what is that?”
The sun broke through the clouds overhead.
Ice clung to the snow-swept stones beneath our feet. Frost shimmered among the ivy crawling over the fortress we walked alongside, thorns glinting like diamonds. The chill of this kingdom was almost unbearable, but its beauty and magic were undeniable.
My captor’s cold realm was everything I’d dreamed of one day experiencing, and I couldn’t say that I wasn’t excited to glimpse this estate once it was touched by autumn—the only other season to visit Hellebore.
All the while, I hoped I was long gone before it arrived, memories of wandering these grounds swept away with the melting snow.
“A way home,” I finally said.
Aura slowed as we rounded the rear of the manor, dark crimson and blue roses within white-glazed hedges all that remained in the gardens. “You made a bargain with a king,” she assumed correctly. “Believing that it would take you there?”
I didn’t need to answer that, but she was a queen, so I nodded. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”
“Desperation,” she murmured as if to herself. “And fate.” Before I could ask her what she’d meant by that, she surprised me by saying, “Florian wasn’t always this way, you know. Calculated and cold to his core.”
“Is that why you entertain him?”
She smiled, the touch of her fingers upon a thorny branch in the hedge causing the frost to instantly melt. “Yes and no. After hearing the rumors of what he’s been up to, I simply wanted to see it and meet you for myself.”
It should have shamed me to think of anyone in Folkyn learning what a fool I’d been.
Instead, I couldn’t ignore the curiosity—the overwhelming desire to know more about this king who’d touched me like I was rare treasure while making plans to trap me. “Dare I ask what he was like?”
“Insatiable.” She noted my immediate scowl and laughed. “In every way a faerie prince should be, darling.” Exuberance filled her velvet voice. “He was reckless and wild, both unbearably cruel and sweet, and rarely without a substance to abuse.”
“Substance?”
“Oh, he partook in every delight available, of course. Bodies, liquor, mushroom melts, toadstool dust...” The queen waved a hand. “My wife and I used to adore hosting him, even if we’d need to send him to the stables by the end of his stay. We cannot indulge the way we once did.” Nostalgia tinted every word. “He was beloved and feared then, too, but in a way that was so very different to the stern loyalty and terror bestowed upon him now.”
“Then his sister died,” I said quietly.
“His father, too,” Aura said, then nothing more for a minute as we walked on.
Snow roamed toward the trees beyond the paddocks. We passed an archway dusted with icy darkness that led to the courtyard in the middle of the manor, and I watched my breath plume before me, lost in thought.
Lost to imagining all Florian had once been.
“He raised that female,” she whispered, throaty as though she might cry. “Florian might have been a typical ghastly and mischievous prince, but there was a wildness to Lilitha from the moment she was born. Florian lost his mother to the difficult birth, and Mercury and I have always wondered if perhaps his way of grieving her was to be the parent Lilitha never had.”
I frowned. “But their father was still here?”
“He was here but also not,” Aura said. “Hammond lost his mate, half of his soul, and he could seldom look at his daughter without being reminded of her.”
“But she was his daughter.”
A sharp look was cast my way. “And we are not human, my darling.”
I swallowed and nodded. “So Lilitha rebelled because she lacked the nurturing love of parents?”
Aura laughed, the liquid velvet calming some of the tension that hadn’t left my body in days. “Again, we are not human. Princess Lilitha would have been such a way, even if her mother had lived,” she claimed. “I know it, and so does Florian.” A light scoff. “Despite what excuses he would constantly make for the wildling.”
Ahead, a curved row of small buildings came into view.
Arryn or Thistle—I couldn’t be sure who, due to the distance—exited one and hurried through the snow toward the manor. As we drew closer, I noted the buildings were cottages for the staff. Smoke climbed from the stone chimneys toward the treetops beyond them, the other twin following moments later.
We watched them disappear down the side of the manor, Aura releasing a humorous breath.
I returned to our conversation. “Florian raised Lilitha, then.”
“As best he could while tending to his own whims, yes,” Aura said. “Though if you ask me, and I told him this hundreds of times, she was born for the Wild Hunt, not a royal house of Folkyn.”
“The hunt do not belong to any house of Folkyn.”
She raised a finger. “Exactly. Those who wish to disregard the laws and traditions we’ve upheld since the dawn of our existence have their options—the middle lands or the hunt. And she ignored as many as she could.”
“Yet she didn’t want to go anywhere else?”
Aura snorted. “Not to either of those places, no, and Florian would have refused.” She sighed, stopping beneath an overflowing arch of roses as we rounded the corner. “No, Lilitha wished to go anywhere and do anything she desired, despite everyone’s insistent warnings, and in the end, it was her end.”
She shivered, though I sensed it was not from her lack of proper clothing in the cold. “Great goddess, I cannot wait to leave this cursed place.”
I knew then that the conversation I greedily wanted more of was over.
Queen Aura might not wish to unite with Florian against my father, but she would not betray my betrothed by dishing out all the many secrets sitting behind her pursed lips.
