Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine Book 1), page 19
We talked of Oleander, of the sea that hugged her palace and the sandy city district beyond, and of my futile desire to see it all for myself.
At that, she paused before we came full circle and met the drive at the front of the manor. “Your inexperience with the world you wish to know indeed assisted Florian, but you still breathe for a reason, darling.” She patted my cheek and whispered, “Lean into that reason, and you’ll find more freedom than you know what to do with.”
Trying to comprehend what she’d meant, I watched her gaze darken and then brighten as she surveyed me. Her fingers clasped my chin, and she turned my head side to side. “Skies, you’re nearing the heat.”
My heart dropped, then pounded. For the mere brush of her fingers over my skin caused my flesh to come alive. “I know,” I rasped. I refrained from saying that it wasn’t near, and that I feared I was now deep within its punishing grasp.
I’d had my suspicions for the past week. My appetite for food and touch had changed from one minute to the next, and with such ferocity, the effects were now becoming debilitating.
Gane’s warning of what it meant to reach the mature age of twenty years returned with an ice-layered burn to every part of me. It mercifully dulled the arousal I hadn’t been able to shake—the increased change in my body I’d been warring with since Florian had left me desperate for release in my rooms some nights ago.
I missed the surly goblin. I’d known I would before leaving Crustle, but that was before I’d known I was walking into the lair of an inescapable viper.
The queen released me, and we walked on at a slower pace.
I even missed Crustle. I never thought I’d long for the crowded and polluted streets of the damp city-like town I’d always longed to leave. But I did. Now, I would rather be trapped outside of Faerie than inside it with those who had only ill intentions for me.
The thought of not seeing Florian again shouldn’t have nicked at my chest nor burned my eyes. He was a blood-hungry asshole who’d used me so completely, so unapologetically, that I should wish him dead. Yet I didn’t—knew I likely never could.
Perhaps the heat was to blame.
“How long will it last?” I eventually asked.
Aura slowed to flick ice and mud from an empty bird nest upon the ground, then inspected it. “However long it needs to.”
That didn’t help, and she laughed as she rose.
“Skies, this place is nothing but murderous ice nowadays.” Brushing her hands off, she returned to talk of the heat. “Once you start tending to it, maybe a few days, but for most, it’s about a week. Depends on the individual and the creature in charge of satisfying your awakening.”
That was yet another thing that worried me.
I chewed my lip for a moment, but I had to know. “Is there any way to go through it without...” I made a face when she looked at me. “You know.”
Another laugh, her high cheeks and tiny pointed nose dusted pink from the chill.
She sobered when Florian left the manor and stalked down the steps with Fume at his side.
The two talked quietly. As we neared, Fume made to leave. When he realized who walked with me, he turned back to exchange greetings with Aura.
He clasped her hand and bowed, kissing it before he rose. “I hear you’ve broken our hearts by denying us yet again.”
“You have no one to blame but yourselves...” Aura withdrew her hand and smiled tightly at the warrior as she gestured to me. “For believing I would visit for any other reason than to meet this divine creature.”
Fume finally acknowledged me, his smirk becoming a forced smile that resembled a grimace.
Wishing he hadn’t bothered, I returned it with only a nod.
His brown lashes dipped as he stared at me for a moment that made me grow more tense. Then he nodded to Queen Aura and headed to the middle of the drive to greet the band of warriors climbing uphill, more wagons in tow.
Florian stood stiffly, his hands clasped before him, and covered head to toe in black. His leather coat matched his boots, the breeze barely moving his near-black hair. His eyes stayed fixed on me, his expression unreadable, as Aura walked to him.
She rose to her toes to whisper something in his ear. The king bristled, casting a dark glance down at her before looking back at me.
The Queen of Oleander grinned, fingers wriggling my way before she vanished within a light cloud of sand-stained wind.
Nearing the king, I reached for some of it and rubbed the granules between my fingers.
Snow barreled across the drive, shaking wet from her coat. Thankfully, before she reached my side. I was given a look that told me she wasn’t pleased to have been left behind.
I crouched down to swipe some dirt from her cheeks and murmured an apology.
Florian’s question was low. “How much did Aura tell you?”
“More than you ever will.” Taking in his unmoved expression as I straightened, I relented. “It was nothing you need to be grumpy about.”
As I walked around him to take the stairs inside, Snow running ahead as if fearing I would leave her again, I couldn’t keep from thinking about the small yet precious doses of information Aura had given me.
Hellebore’s king hadn’t always been this way—seemingly without a soul, or perhaps just a heart.
Florian snatched my wrist. “Grumpy?”
I stopped and eyed his large hand, then I made the mistake of meeting those fatal blues. “You’re exceptionally talented at being in a bad mood.”
His mouth twitched. “One could say I have every reason to be after being thoroughly teased, then left to milk my own cock.”
Just the thought of the act ignited my blood and flared my eyes. At a loss for words, I appeased the need inside me by staring as his features slowly lost their fierce edge, and the smirk in his eyes tempted his lips to curl.
His fingers crawled up my arm. I shivered, hoping he didn’t notice when he tugged me close and skimmed a knuckle over my too-warm cheek. “This fucking maddens me.”
“What does?”
“The feelings you wear all over your face,” he said, and tightly. “The arousal that colors your cheeks and glosses such dark eyes.”
I wasn’t sure how to do this anymore. Not now that I couldn’t fall into his touch and naively hope for more. Not now that I knew he didn’t want a wife.
He wanted a pawn.
When his fingers brushed my jaw, my eyes fluttered, and I looked up at him with too much hope for someone who’d already been made a fool by daring to rely on hope for survival. “Will I ever be free, Florian?”
His thick brows lowered.
As the riders and wagons began to fill the drive, I stepped closer and laid my hand over the black leather covering his chest. “Will you ever let me go?”
The wind whistled and threw my hair around my cheeks, Florian’s expression and jaw granite and his touch falling away. “Never, butterfly.”
I’d known what he would say. Perhaps that was why it didn’t hurt to hear it leave his luscious, lying mouth.
I nodded once, resolve building brick by brick inside me.
There weren’t many things I’d had the chance to excel at, but I was an expert at one thing.
Biding my time.
The king groaned a curse as I backed away to the steps, his nostrils flaring. Those depthless blue eyes lightened as they drifted down my body to settle upon my lower stomach. Loathing the way it quaked in response and how my thighs longed to squeeze together, I turned and strode up the steps.
“Tullia,” Florian called.
It was the name that made me stop, but I didn’t turn back as his alarmingly brittle order burrowed beneath my skin. “Do not leave the manor.”
A tear threatened to spill from my eye.
I had no unearthly idea what was wrong with me. It wasn’t as if I didn’t already know I was a captive—the enemy’s spawn—but his order to stay trapped indoors after I’d just reminded him of my lifelong dream for freedom was another small cut to the chest.
Zayla followed me from the foyer as I kept my head down and hurried for the false safety of my rooms.
Florian did not return to his rooms that night.
The following morning, over a breakfast I couldn’t stomach eating, Kreed informed me he was gone. He wouldn’t tell me where, and I didn’t ask. He did tell me that the manor staff and many of Hellebore’s warriors were busy with preparations for the looming Frost Festival.
But I had no desire to make the most out of the quiet grounds.
As per the king’s request, I stayed indoors and kept to my rooms. Not simply because he’d requested it, but because I was growing too uncomfortable to be anywhere else.
Night arrived with no return of the king. Days of increasing torture followed, and with them, no sign of Florian. After sleeping until midmorning on the third, I woke with a hunger I feared would be fleeting.
I tightened my robe to take Snow downstairs. Zayla had seemingly decided I was not in any state to attempt escape, for she was nowhere to be seen.
My bleary eyes snapped wide open when I caught his scent. It was fresh. We slowed on the steps as a voice I hadn’t heard for days looped around my body and tugged.
“I do not want her there,” Florian said from deep down below.
The door to his study must have been open.
Another voice followed. Fume, I noted, as we reached the landing before the last flight of stairs. “It’s part of the plan, Flor.”
Silence.
My hunger immediately abated.
Then Fume saying low, “Word spreads.”
“Then let that be enough.”
“But we both know it isn’t. Let it be seen and wholly believed. Molkan will hear of it before dawn can touch the sky.”
“The heat is upon her,” Florian said after a long pause, as if he hadn’t wanted to say it aloud. “Any creature can smell it should they get too close.”
Fume cursed. A moment later, he suggested, “Just keep her at your side, as you should regardless.” Carefully, he asked, “What are you to do about her evolvement, anyway?”
I assumed evolvement was a nicer term for what I was currently struggling to endure—the final stage of maturing into a faerie.
Typically, a full moon would prompt most young females of the age of twenty to evolve. A process that would grant us a heightened chance of finding a mate of the soul, and allow us to discover what our magical abilities might be, should we be blessed by the goddess with any.
And those of pure blood were almost always blessed with something.
I lowered to the bottom step above the landing, uncaring that either male could leave the study and scent where I sat—and know that I’d overheard them. Snow nudged at my hand with her damp nose, then laid her head upon my lap as she settled on the stone beside me.
When Florian finally responded, it was nearly too quiet for me to hear. “I wait until she asks for assistance.”
My heart both bloomed and shrank, the feeling painful and aggravating the dull ache in every limb.
“You would see her through it?” Fume cursed again. “But you’ve never done it before, Florian.”
Instant and intense relief shamed me at hearing that.
“That doesn’t mean I’m not aware of what it will require from me.”
My heart skipped and stalled in the stretched silence that followed. My bare toes curled over the dark whorls in the cream stone, my eternally flushed skin welcoming the touch of cold.
Fume’s voice rose. “And what about what you require? How will you possibly be able to—”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” Florian seethed. “You are not to talk of such matters, and you know it.”
A screech of chair legs over stone. “I need to visit the barracks. I’ll see you tonight.”
Florian gave no response.
The warrior friend must have taken another exit, for his steps in the hall faded in the opposite direction to where I was still seated on the grand staircase with Snow.
The word assistance stalked me for the remainder of the morning and haunted my fever dreams of skin and teeth and pleasure and feeding.
I woke sprawled sideways across the bed, midafternoon casting my bedchamber in an orange glow, as the mattress dipped behind me. “You have not eaten today.”
The first words the king had said to me in days.
I curled away from the tempting heat and energy emanating from him.
“Do you detest me and your circumstances so much that you would starve yourself?”
“I tried to eat,” I croaked, my eyes closing. “And yes,” I whispered. “I do detest you that much, but I would not give you the satisfaction of ending my life before it’s even begun.”
A touch of humor thickened his response. “You are not human, butterfly. Such a thing won’t kill you.” He paused as though thinking about that. “At least, not for many months.”
Irritated by his hypnotic voice and struggling to find the will not to roll into him and ask for him to assist me through this torment, I snapped, “Was there something you needed, Majesty?”
Though I wasn’t looking at him, I could sense he’d gone so very still.
I kept my eyes squeezed closed and curled tighter into myself. My stomach cramping worsened with the emptiness I refused to ask him to fill.
“Roll over,” Florian ordered, and when I ignored him, he leaned down and said to my ear, “Roll the fuck over, sweet creature.”
I bit the inside of my cheek as the storm of heat and his harsh demand spread through my body in the form of a blistering caress.
I gave in and did as he said, but I wouldn’t meet his eyes. I stared up at the canopy of netting coating my bed and nearly moaned from just the slight touch of his fingertips at my stomach. He opened my robe, and I knew it was over.
I was going to let him assist me, and skies, I couldn’t even care to loathe myself for it.
His fingers brushed across my stomach. It contracted in response, expectation and exhilaration unfurling. The anticipation faded when he merely continued to stroke my skin.
“Do you ever eat, Majesty?”
“Florian,” he corrected, but with none of his usual annoyance. “And did you not watch me eat when I took you to dinner?”
The memory of that night, of how confused and disappointed I’d been, returned. “I didn’t watch you,” is all I chose to say to that. “You never eat here.”
“I do. Earlier than you in the mornings, and other meals when I get time.”
“Where?”
The demand earned me a huffed noise that was almost a laugh. “Do you wish to poison me with something harsher than sea salt?”
“It would be fair play,” I said, though the quiet words lacked conviction.
He chuckled, the deep sound brief but beautiful. From my lower stomach to my ribs, his cool fingers traveled and soothed.
“You’ve made your touch cold,” I rasped and finally looked up at him.
His jaw was clenched, his gaze upon my exposed skin and breasts. “Too cold?”
“Perfect.” My eyes closed at the sight of his throat dipping, the impulse to rise and lick his skin painful to fight. “When will this end, Florian?”
“When you decide it does.”
I hadn’t been solely referring to the torture my body endured in the name of full maturity. He was aware of that, but he said nothing else.
I then realized even if I pleaded for him to help me now, he couldn’t. Not with the Frost Festival taking place at sundown. But I also knew he wouldn’t refuse me, and the thought of ruining his grand plans to display me to his people made my desire to surrender and have him fix me nearly impossible to resist.
Yet the unbearable heat receded with every swipe of his fingertips over my skin. All too soon, exhaustion cloaked as if I hadn’t slept in eons.
“You must think me extremely stupid,” I whispered.
“For what reason?” Florian asked as though there were many.
My fingers curled, and I longed to reject his much-needed touch. I didn’t. I couldn’t. He was a poison I needed, his frost-tipped fingers a balm loosening every tense muscle.
Then he murmured, “I think you’re young and desperate and without options.”
I scoffed. “So, essentially, yes.”
His next breathy huff washed my annoyance away. That is, until he said, “I also think you want me to feel guilty for taking advantage of that.” He skimmed his fingers beneath the curves of my breasts. I shivered. “Even if I were capable of feeling remorse, butterfly, I would not.”
The alarming admission was not malicious. He was being honest with me.
For once.
“Well, I’m no longer desperate,” I said, the ire in my tone faint as sleep beckoned. “So kindly find someone else to tend to me throughout this heat.”
His fingers stilled, his words a caustic rumble. “If I believed you wanted someone else...” His stroking resumed, moving to my lower back when I curled onto my side. “Then I would make you watch as I took my time ending their existence.”
Chills erupted over my skin, the threat reaching the marrow of my bones.
“But you do not truly want me,” I said, hating that I’d let such vulnerability be known. “You only want to use me to further humiliate my father.”
Florian was silent for so long, I was falling into the warm depths of sleep when he whispered, “I can want both, butterfly.” He traced the indent of my spine. “And I will have what I want.”
Florian was gone when I woke to a knock on the door.
Zayla entered, eyeing me with amusement as I pushed hair from my face and sat up on the bed. “We leave on the hour.”
It took a moment for sleep and the king’s visit to leave and make room for remembering what lay ahead. “The festival.”
Zayla nodded. “Delen will arrive any minute to prepare you.”
With that, she closed the door, and I hurried into the bathing room to freshen up, feeling better than I had since I’d arrived in Folkyn.
It would seem the king’s power and hands were good for more than wringing blood from his enemies. I still struggled to feel gratitude when I was about to be put on display as a show of his strength.
