Page 31 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

He doesn’t look at me, striding on ahead. We’re alone now, close enough to his quarters that we only pass the occasional servant, and yet his eyes are still slitted like a cat’s, and the tips of horns poke from his hair.

“What do you mean?”

“‘When poison runs in the veins of the Seelie Kingdom’? I’m the High King, Eleanor, I am the Seelie Kingdom, and when poison ran in my veins from Cebba’s curse, it polluted the land too.”

“So you’re saying I’m the ‘hand of metal’?”

“Yes. You cured me, didn’t you? You cleansed me of the curse and…I feel like I’m forgetting something. Oh yes, it just so happens you have a unique gift for manipulating metal.”

I roll my eyes. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” I say. “Besides, the prophecy mentions the magic of the realm. What’s that got to do with me?”

“That lord at the banquet was right. Your magic isn’t human in origin, which means it must have come from a fae source.”

His matter-of-fact tone, his refusal to meet my eye, sparks a familiar anger in me. The changeling mentioned that my magic was fae, but since she also confirmed that my parents were human, I’m still not sure what that means. Ruskin, on the other hand, looks considerably less confused.

“From the way you say it, I’m guessing this is something you kind of already knew,” I say.

“Yes.”

My frustration increases a notch.

“But you weren’t going to mention it,” I snap.

He looks down at me at last and his eyes darken. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Don’t make excuses. Though I suppose by now I should be used to you knowing things about me you don’t think I deserve to be told.”

“Make whatever assumptions you like,” he says.

I want so badly to shout at his calm, smug face, but that would be admitting defeat.

“I want to go home now,” I say instead, as if commenting on the weather. “I think it’s about time.”

“Tomorrow,” he says.

“That wasn’t our deal. After the banquet. That’s what you promised.”

He rounds on me, forcing me to take a step back.

“I don’t remember framing it as a promise. Besides, it’s too late now. You’d arrive in Styrland in the middle of the night.”

I say nothing, knowing that realistically it makes no sense to leave at this moment but still feeling irrationally annoyed at Ruskin. At least I know that I’m being irrational—and that knowledge is enough to keep me from snapping at him. He couldn’t have known about the iron attack, and yet part of me wants to accuse him of engineering it just so I would stay a day more.

And to what end? It’s not like he’s prepared to apologize—or to try to fix things between us.

“I’ll have your old room made up for you,” he says.

“Don’t bother. I’ll sleep in the library.”

I don’t tell him that I’d rather not stay a night in the room where I was attacked by that snake. The memory of it still gives me the creeps. Whereas the library…that place has decidedly more pleasant memories, ones that creep silkily into my mind now.

I can’t forget the way Ruskin took me against the library table—the heat of his mouth on my lips, my shoulders, my breasts—and then the intensity of him inside me for the first time. He’d made me beg for it then, but his desire had been just as strong as mine. We’d both been desperate to cross that threshold of trust and give in to our desires.

That trust might be long gone, but I know I’m not imagining the spark of that same desire in his eyes now as they lock on mine. My mention of that room has his mind going exactly where mine has, and I watch with hungry fascination as he swallows, the muscles of his throat tightening for a moment.

“Don’t be absurd. I have more than one room in my quarters you can sleep in,” he says smoothly.

But I shake my head. Even if those memories are now tinged with the bitterness of regret, I still prefer to stay in the library. It should be comfortable, anyway, given the size and softness of the library armchairs. I take a deliberate step back, trying to dispel the heat between us, needing to get away from it.

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