Molkan knocked me from my stomach-snatching confoundment.

  “Six months later, you were swelling her stomach and feet. We felt the pregnancy had taken well enough, so we eagerly spread the news.” He gestured wide with one hand and nostalgic words. “Celebrations took place throughout the city in the days to follow, your mother and I watching it from the balcony of our rooms.” His hand returned behind his back. “But the bliss and hope and the feeling of finally making things right was short-lived.”

  “Lilitha found out,” I guessed.

  “She was always wild, untamable, Hellebore’s beloved yet reckless princess,” he mused quietly. “But never more than when she discovered Corina carried you. In the middle of the night, not three days after we’d set the news free, I woke to find her standing at the side of our bed, tears in her eyes as she gazed at my sleeping wife.” There was a slight croak to his voice. “At Corina’s growing stomach.”

  Skies, I couldn’t imagine. Waking to find someone watching you sleep was concerning alone, but witnessing the evidence of betrayal from a mate you thought had been yours despite everything he had or hadn’t promised?

  I willed the empathy morphing into a scaled beast unleashed by unbearable hurt to fade.

  It didn’t.

  It writhed within my chest as Molkan said, “I should have been the one to tell her, I know. I see that now, but back then...” He made a sound of flat humor. “I was only concerned about my pride and the marriage I had to keep. So I forced Lilitha from the room before Corina woke, thankful that the pregnancy kept her sleeping like the dead, and we fought for hours in these gardens while she paced and cried and failed to understand why I would betray her by impregnating my wife.”

  We’d reached a large cropping of rocks at the rear of the palace, damp from the water I could hear trickling between the gaps from deep below. The springs, I surmised.

  Walking on, we crossed the grass to the shade of swaying leaves from a thick line of maple trees.

  “Lilitha left, but she came back. Time and again, she returned and waited right there.” He gestured past the row of stone houses, likely for the palace staff, to a lone wooden corpse of a tool shed. “Despite telling her not to, she came at least once a week for two moons until Florian caught wind of what she was doing.”

  He laughed low. “I should have been grateful for his intervening, but it was too late. I’d given in so many times by that point that I was almost as resentful of your impending arrival as Lilitha was.”

  Before the sting of his words could settle deep, he sighed. “The following week, I received a sparrow instead of a visit from my mate, Lilitha’s tears smudging the parchment and ink. She’d been caught and forbidden to see me again. But when Lilitha disobeyed Florian not two weeks later, he arrived minutes after his sister, and he knew.”

  “That you were mates.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We were friends, allies, but of course, I ruined that when he first caught me with Lilitha when she was but seventeen years. Though finding out why I’d been with her, and that we were mates, did not redeem me in any way. He knew Corina was pregnant, and he knew we were forever bound by marriage.”

  “What did he do?” For he’d certainly done something.

  “Florian took her home and returned that night to warn me that if I broke his sister’s heart any more than I already had, then he would marry her off to one of his most trusted warrior friends—someone who would not take kindly to another sampling what wasn’t his to claim.”

  I couldn’t help but wonder if that particular warrior friend had been Fume.

  “I’d never been so angry in my entire life, but he left without another word or warning. Florian knew how much I cared for Lilitha, despite my failed attempts not to. And he knew to shackle his sister to anyone she hadn’t chosen herself would slowly kill her.”

  “So you let her go.”

  “We had what I’d thought would be a final meeting, and I told Lilitha it was finished. That it had to be. I told her of Florian’s threat. She called me a liar, claiming her brother would never dare do such a thing to her. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made,” he said roughly. “Like plunging a knife into your own chest and watching your blood stray from you, but it had to be done, for her sake and mine.”

  Birdsong filled the following silence.

  Just as I began to assume we would turn back, Molkan lowered to the grass beneath the maple trees. He patted it, and I sat a few feet beside him and pulled my skirts over my bent knees.

  “I was planning a small trip,” he continued, so soft, I almost missed it beneath the volume of birds above. “Your mother wanted to sail down the Heartline River one last time before your arrival, and I was willing to do just about anything to see her happy, for doing so made some of the longing and misery within me lessen enough to remember what was right.”

  Molkan folded his legs beneath him. His eyes remained cast upon the lake and the stone houses surrounding it.

  “Lilitha had sent an urgent request to meet, and so we did by the docks during my inspection of the boat.” He shook his head with a grimace. “I had to know she was okay, and it would seem she wasn’t. An arrangement was being made. She would marry one of Florian’s friends after all.” Contempt filled and lowered his words. “The mere thought made me sick. I couldn’t have her, but she was still mine.”

  I ceased stroking the velvet blades of grass.

  “I told her so, and she told me it was my fault. That I was a coward for not killing my own wife.” His laughter lacked humor. “For not choosing her. She pointed her dagger at my chin, saying I was a stain on her soul. A mistake made by the goddess, and that she would see to Corina’s end herself regardless of the babe in her womb.”

  “My fear and fury were such that dirt crumbled beneath her, and my mate stumbled to her knees. I snatched the blade she’d dropped and gazed down at the wild creature who’d made it her mission to ruin my life so thoroughly.”

  I knew how this ended. He’d killed her.

  My heart still raced. My eyes stuck to Molkan’s profile, of which was half hidden by sunshine and shade.

  “I knew it would destroy me, but it had to stop.” He pressed his lips together momentarily, then parted them with a harsh breath. “At that moment, I knew within my soul that it would never fucking stop. That I would want Lilitha forever, but I could never truly have her.”

  So he’d made sure no one would.

  Despite knowing what had happened, horror still gripped my chest.

  “Yet I didn’t mean to. It’s all a strange fog. One second I was staring at her with so much anger, it burned as hot as the sun, and the next...” He groaned. “She was limp in my arms, the dagger in her chest. The pain,” he rasped, his hands unfolding from his lap for one to splay over his chest. “It was so acute that I burned alive for years, wishing I had turned that blade on myself instead.” He thumped his chest. “I still feel it even now, though there is nothing in here but scorched earth.”

  I didn’t try to fill the somber quiet.

  I sat with the destruction Molkan had depicted and rose only when he did. We walked in silence along the line of maple trees toward the eastern grounds.

  When he finally spoke again, his voice broke. “Lilitha just...” He coughed a little. “Perhaps she didn’t think I had it in me, for to lose a mate is unthinkable, but to kill your own...”

  Fume and Florian’s conversation returned to me then.

  Difficult, Florian had said, as though the word barely scraped the surface of accuracy. Perhaps that was why Florian had stalled in his vengeance against Molkan, and I still breathed.

  Perhaps I was still foolish enough to want to believe that.

  “She threatened my wife—and consequently you. I did what I had to, though it killed half of my soul, and she didn’t fight me,” Molkan said, as if angered that Lilitha hadn’t. “She just let me sink that blade into her beautiful heart. And if she had known I was capable, then maybe she’d wanted me to end it. The suffering we continuously endured at the hands of a fate meant to be a blessing.” A short and clipped laugh. “Not a fucking curse.”

  We traversed a slim pebbled path between hedges, the sun beginning to drop.

  “I couldn’t hide it. I didn’t want to. I had her taken home, and then I began to fortify my own to forever trap me with my regret. He came before I’d succeeded, of course. Mere days later, word of Lilitha’s and King Hammond’s passing reached every corner of Folkyn.”

  We’d almost circled the entire palace, and though I wished for more shade and water, I wanted to know. I needed to know. So I said nothing and waited for Molkan to give voice to what had transpired next.

  “Florian came with his threats and his heartbreak, and he terrified my wife. I didn’t wholly believe him, this pompous prince who only wished to fuck and drink himself stupid, but Corina did. She believed he’d seek vengeance until the day she left me. So much so, she tried to flee—to leave out of concern for your safety. I found her, of course. I vowed to take her fear seriously, and I did. I warded our walls, and I sent you away.”

  Molkan’s rough and milder tone returned as he went on. “His sister’s death was my fault, and that of his father too, who’d taken his own life just hours after learning his daughter’s fate—as he’d had even less to live for.” He swore under his breath. “He blamed me, yet Hammond had wanted to leave this world for years. Florian knew that, but they’d once been as close as any father and son could be, so I suppose he could not bear it. Hammond would take Florian everywhere with him. Trained him. Taught him. Made him. Skies, some say he even read to him when Florian was old enough to read on his own.”

  That fissure in my heart panged. “Before his mother died?”

  “Right. Crystal’s death began the slow erosion of the Hellebore family. A unit that was once the source of envy across the land for the seemingly perfect life Hammond and Crystal had made for themselves.” He hesitated before saying, “Many talk of Lilitha with fascination. We faeries love nothing more than a bloody tragedy. But more quietly, for fear of Florian’s icy wrath, Lilitha is spoken of as the creature who cursed her family—sent by the beast of Nowhere himself.”

  I frowned down at the grass, wiping my sweaty palms over my teal-green skirts. Then I carefully asked, “And what do you think?”

  As though shocked I’d asked, his thick brows rose and he gave me a small smile. “I think none of us were ready for Lilitha, but should I ever meet her again”—determination gritted his voice as he looked toward the sky—“I will be.”

  The terrace neared, and I thought our conversation might be done for the day.

  Then the king said, “Florian vowed to take everything from me. When you were born, your mother’s dying wish was for you to have no part in his revenge. After she was gone, I was lost to grief, to the realization I’d lost not only my mate but also my wife, so I told my most trusted to decide what to do with you. Admittedly, I hadn’t cared. I spent days, months—years, really—wondering if that was how Hammond had felt, but I refused to leave my people. I refused to give in to the longing to end it all, for I was the one who’d caused it. I would endure my penance.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected when he finally gave voice to dumping me in the middle lands, but such cruel honesty wasn’t it.

  “It would be years before I even cared about Florian’s threats, and by the time I did, he’d already started toying with me. It started small. Most of it insignificant enough to arouse mere annoyance. Prized mares were found missing from the stables, our boats overturned along our rivers.” A flick of his hand. “That type of thing. But I should have known...” He shook his head. “He was simply flexing his muscles.”

  “Now, he has taken our people, killed and kept them chained to him in surrender. He has burned and butchered factories and greenhouses and fields of staples. Coin, finery, livelihoods—he takes it all. Our ability to trade with the other kingdoms. Even our jewel troves hidden within tunnels beneath our city walls were stolen a decade ago.”

  One part puzzled me. “I thought the other kingdoms were not involved.”

  “Oleander might claim they want nothing to do with this feud, but all that means is they want nothing to do with me. And Aconite,” he explained, referring to the realm in the far northwest of Folkyn, “even if King Ruben would trade with me, I am not so desperate that I would sell my soul to a Nowhere-bound hellion such as he.”

  Evidently, only so much could be gleaned from books and murmurings. I was almost tempted to ask more about King Ruben, but Molkan wasn’t done.

  “Florian humiliates me to no end, wearing me so thin that when he finally decides to take this very soil from beneath my feet, I will have no choice but to surrender.” He paused, and I did too, shocked as he turned to level me with a dark look. “I might have robbed him of what little heart he once had, but this has gone on long enough.” A careful lowering of his eyes over my features was followed by a slight smile shaping his full mouth. “With you now in my possession, I have hope we can turn this tide.”

  “How?” I asked, a little breathless from all he’d told me.

  I couldn’t yet decide how to feel about it, nor understand why I couldn’t. It should have been obvious, especially after all I’d endured, that Florian was a monster who needed to be stopped.

  But just as Gane had warned countless times, nothing was ever as it seemed within these lands.

  Molkan only winked, then resumed walking. I followed, my steps lighter from just that one wink, as he said, “The heat. Have you already succumbed to it?”

  The way he’d ignored my question had left me wondering about his plans, so I was about to blurt the truth until something stopped me. “No,” I said, my cheeks warming. I let them, as it was to be expected. “Not yet.”

  Molkan slid his gaze to me, but he just said, “Do make sure you let me know when you start to feel the effects.” Then his pace quickened toward the stairs.

  I stayed behind, afraid to ask what he would have done if the heat hadn’t already swept through me like a raging storm. Would he have had one of his servants tend to me? Or perhaps his golden-eyed adviser?

  Relief gnawed like a parasite.

  Florian had intended to kill me, yet I still couldn’t envision it—giving myself to anyone as wildly and completely as I had him.

  I was shown to a dining room for dinner that night, the king’s tragic tale still stopping my every attempt at new thought.

  A round table big enough for twelve stood in the center. Candles in varying sizes and citrus scents sat upon the rattan cupboards and slim shelves lining the room. The arched fireplace was empty and dark behind the grand chair likely reserved for the king.

  There were two place settings, but the king would not be dining with me.

  Avrin entered long after the meals had been delivered.

  I’d grown tired of waiting. I’d thought I would be dining with Molkan, who was my father, and so I’d assumed he wouldn’t mind. If I’d known he would not be joining me, I would have served myself the lemon-crusted fish and fruit salad far sooner.

  I lowered my cutlery, shock pausing my chewing as the golden-eyed male took a seat before the other place setting. He immediately helped himself to the food while saying dryly, “Thank you for waiting, Princess.”

  I scowled and finished chewing, then sipped some water. “I’ve grown accustomed to dining alone.”

  “There are two place settings.”

  “I do have eyes,” I stupidly said.

  He snorted. “Doesn’t seem like they work very well.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means...” Done with dumping fruit onto his plate and licking cream from his fingers, Avrin smirked at me. “That you’re maddeningly blind.”

  I knew he was referring to Florian. I refrained from taking the bait. Instead, I merely said with a false calm that made me proud, “What’s done is done.”

  “If you say so,” he murmured, and reached for the wine. After taking a slurping sip and setting his goblet down, he noted I hadn’t poured any. “So ashamed of your bad decisions you would keep from one of life’s finest delights?”

  I half rolled my eyes. “If you consider wine to be a source of happiness, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Oh but I have many sources,” Avrin emphasized with a flash of his teeth, “of happiness.”

  I carved up more fish. “Am I supposed to blush?”

  “Rumor has it you were eternally red for a certain frosty king.”

  My attempt at remaining unbothered was officially ruined. I choked, coughing as I snatched my water.

  Pleased, Avrin went on, his tone riddled with knowing. “Of course, rumors are often disappointingly inaccurate, but in this case...”

  I’d had quite enough of arrogant males.

  The goblet of water hit the table with a thud. I made to stand to take my meal to my room until his chuckle and waving arm halted me.

  “I’ll stop,” he said, and though I didn’t believe him, I sat back down. Mirth and unmistakable judgment sparked in his gaze, in the smile that didn’t quite reach those bright eyes. “It seems I’ve touched a very tender spot.”

  I cursed, but before I could stand, his hand stole mine.

  Shocked, I looked down at it—at the way it covered mine on the table. “Stay,” he ordered, then added gently, “I apologize. I loathe him, and that you’ve spent any amount of time with him just...” He released a harsh breath. “Well, it blows my fucking mind in the worst of ways.”

  I stared at his hand, then looked at his seemingly earnest features.

  I made my tense shoulders slump, and I slipped my hand free to resume eating. Making new enemies was incredibly unwise, especially within a court I would need to start thinking of as my home. “I loathe him, too,” I finally said.

  Sensing that I’d meant every word, Avrin blinked. “Is it too soon to ask what he did to you?”

  I nodded once.

  Quiet settled as we ate, the dark growing and the candles surrounding us glowing and swaying.

 

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