Page 20 of Crowned By the Fae King

The fae woman behind the duke stepped forward and knelt, holding up a sheathed sword. The thing was huge, and definitely meant to be wielded with two hands. Though the black sheath was plain, the handle was anything but, with the horizontal metal bars made in the shape of leaping lions and a roaring lion head for a pommel, clutching a huge uncut black garnet in its jaws.

"A sword fit for a King, and suited for your hand," the duke said, casting his eyes towards the ground. He glanced towards my feet. "Perhaps a matching dagger could be made to suit Her Majesty."

Thunder rumbled in the distance. I risked a glance to see that the dark clouds over the mountains were approaching faster than I preferred. We're going to get fucking rained on, I thought, dour. Wasn't that just grand.

"We accept your token of fealty, your grace," Cass said in the same level voice he'd used for Ace. "You may go, with our appreciation."

Tech stood and bowed. The lady with him set the sword in front of Ace's meteorite box, and the two of them descended down the stairs.

Fuck, I was going to have to remember these people's names, wasn't I? "Your grace" would only get me so far, and I'd be damned if I was going to use my mental shorthands for people without their explicit permission. It was all well and good to picture the Sagebrush Duke with his serpent cane as the ace of clubs, or the lean Misted Duke as a bundle of wires, but calling them "Ace" and "Tech" to their faces would probably cause a diplomatic incident.

I didn't have a mental image for Cass. He was just Cass.

"If people keep giving me swords, I'm going to need an armory," he muttered, his expression flat.

Next to him, Danica's winged soulmate smirked. "Think of how upset they'll be when they discover battle-trained healers fight with wooden staves. Or when their pretty iron gets soaked from that storm."

Cass lifted his lip. A moment later, the next nobleman climbed into view.

Unlike elegant Ace and hardass Tech, he looked like he could have been a main character in a medieval fantasy TV show, one of the ones where you get loving shots of ripped dudes sprawling in bathtubs and wiping blood off of their mouths. His narrow dreadlocks were tipped in brass and pulled back into a half-pony, long enough to brush his collarbones. He had an easy smile, and deep brown skin and broad features that reminded me of the Ghanaian man who ran my favorite corner kebab stand.

He moved with feline grace, almost sauntering, the sunlight flashing off of the gold embroidery of his deep violet clothing. When he caught me looking, he flashed me a wink and sank to one knee. "Your majesties," he said in a low purr, "I present myself, Talien Shamais, the Duke of Flies, and I present to you a token of my fealty."

Flies. The Duke of Flies. We'd been sending the opals south to somewhere called Flies—to him.

In my imagination, whoever had okayed the opal mine had to be some eminently-punchable trust fund baby, or the fae equivalent of it. Ivy league haircut, square chin, surgically-perfected nose, arched brows over soulless eyes—billionaire chic. I'd been stolen from my world and made into a slave at an illegal mine, for fuck's sake.

And here he was, with the gall to be hot.

Lion, I decided, trying not to snarl at him. I'd remember him as a lion.

He hadn't brought any people with him. The duke pulled out a gleaming wooden box about the size of a paperback and opened it, tilting it so the sunlight fell across the contents.

Color flashed. The fire of a pair of enormous black opal cabochons shone, orange and green and red, set on bed of embossed black leather. Fingerless gloves, I realized, staring, color rising to my cheeks as anger settled under my ribs. There were people buried alive for those stones, and more dead. He'd stolen those stones – stolen them from Cass – and now here he was, presenting them like a gift.

A gust of wind hit us so hard that the duke's dreadlocks whipped to the side, the metal tips chiming against each other. I could hear gasps and murmurs from down below. For one moment, a feral expression of pleasure flashed across Talien's face, as bright as lightning, before vanishing behind his flirtatious smirk.

"I have heard Your Majesty's touch is more powerful than most," the duke said with easy warmth, pitching his voice to carry even with the wind whistling across the barren stone. "These gloves are designed to scatter power. Perhaps you will find them useful." He glanced towards the storm, amusement playing across his expression.

My breathing dropped into regimented calm as Cass stared at the gloves. Lightning flashed in the distance, with the thunder rumbling behind. The sense of electricity played across my scalp and prickled along my arms.

It was him. It was all him. Land-tied, I thought, trying not to let the shock show on my face.

"We accept your token of fealty, your grace. You may go, with our appreciation," I said, because Cass was sitting there with his fingers digging into his rose-thorned throne and wind dragging his storm towards us, and I wanted Talien to close the box.

The Duke of Flies bowed from his kneeling position, but he did close the box. He got up, backed away three steps, then turned and sauntered away as the first heavy drops of rain hit the stone.

"Cass," Vaduin said in a low voice. "Lean into the storm. Send it south of us."

Cass started breathing harder, some of the quiet tension leaving his frame as the Duke of Flies vanished down the steps. He closed his eyes and nodded. A faint line appeared between his brows. The wind shifted, menacing rain turning over the valley instead of riding up the edge of the mountains on top of us.

I glanced over at him, taking in the tension of his hands where he gripped the arms of the throne and the way his wings were half-cocked, the feathers slicked down into a single deadly blade. Dark spots marked the ground around us, and thunder rumbled deep in the storm. "Not a fan of opals?" I murmured to him.

His jaw clenched. "I don't want to talk about it."

I wanted to wad the interaction up and chuck it in the proverbial dumpster, but I was bound to Cass and to his Court. There was no running away. So, instead of deciding not to give a shit, I tucked it in the "deal with it later" column, right alongside the Deathless thing, the soulmate thing, the land-tied thing, and the fact that there was a man hundreds of miles south of us with his hand sticking out of the bedrock.

And then I smiled at the next dignitary in line, and pretended I didn't want to scream.

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