Page 23 of Heir to His Court

The amusement in his tone offered distance from the intensity of moments before. I grasped the olive branch eagerly, easing away from the maelstrom of his declaration.

“As if your scent isn't perfuming the air as well,” I retorted. “You just want to prove I don’t control you.”

“Sweetling, all I want to prove is I can make you come a second time before the first is even finished.” He bit the inside of my thigh, gave me one final lick. “Imagine what I will do to you when you finally take my cock. I will tear you apart.”

I was Fae enough that I found those words erotic rather than frightening.

As the inferno of desire simmered down, there was nothing to take its place except my tangled skein of emotions. Betrayal and hurt, the awful anguish I had been trying to drown in alcohol.

I shoved at him and he eased my legs to the ground. I stumbled away from those bright, feral eyes then stopped, collapsing against a tree when there was some physical distance between us.

“I'm sorry,” he said behind me. “I enjoy your pain, but not that kind of pain.”

Pain, and pain. The same word, on the surface. But it wasn't. One screamed of blood and sex and the bliss of depravity, the other seeped betrayal. The ache of a heart ripped out and left stranded.

He'd left me. He'd exiled me from the home away from home that had been my safe harbor, from the male who'd beenmyanchor. Then he hadn't let me keep him in the misty place. Not as himself. He'd give me Darkan, but it wasn't the same. I'd wanted Raniel. Even when I'd forgotten him.

The Raniel who's other self had killed Maman.

I leaned my forehead against the tree, trying to shove my anguish outside of my body.

“I didn't betray you, Aerinne. I simply withheld the memory of my identity, and our bond. It was done to protect us both. But if you didn't remember Raniel, you had Darkan. Our thoughts and minds have been entwined for over two decades no matter what you called me. Does that mean nothing?”

“Ask me when I'm sober.”

Was it good or bad that he was finally beginning to verbalize that Raniel and Darkan were the same person, were him? He didn’t mention Renaud. I dreaded the day he finally picked up the last pieces of his mind.

He sighed. “I will not let you destroy yourself in the meantime. If you desire oblivion, you will come to me. I will give it to you in any form you chose, saving your death, and even that, I can at least offer a taste. But you will not put yourself in harm’s way again.” He sounded doubtful, though.

“I'm not in—”

“You are, my halfling. The entire city knows you belong to me. The list of your enemies has grown, as is fitting, the greatest of them not even in Everenne—which is perhaps more concerning than fitting.”

I almost banged my head against the tree—because this was such a High Fae way of thinking—but had some small concern for my dignity. What little remained of it.

I heard him approach, and then his arms were around me, drawing me away from the tree I hugged. I was going to hate myself in the morning.ThreeDragonflights. Or was it four?

“You can either return to the palace with me, or you can return to your home,” Renaud said, stroking my hair with his fingertips. “Those are your options. Choose one or I will choose for you.”

Such implacable words, so gentle a voice.

I protect what is mine, though what is mine is reckless.

ChapterEight

“What would you do if you were not Aerinne, Lady of Faronne, scion of Kuthliele?”

We’d left the grove, and though I knew he’d intended to escort me home, I stopped when he asked that question, staring blindly into the revel.

People passed us as we stood there. He must have a light glamour on, even if I couldn’t detect it—they were not nearly nervous enough for Fae walking casually by their mad Prince.

He tugged me closer to him, giving an oblique glance to a male who meandered too close, attention on me a little too long. Renaud’s eyes flashed electric blue as he tucked me firmly against his side, his expression as cold and deep as a tundra. The male jolted, and scurried away.

I took Renaud’s hand and pulled him to the side of the path, rolling my eyes as I sensed his reluctance to do something as humble as move out of other people’s way.

“That’s simple,” I said finally, accepting the temporary truce inherent in the change of conversation. It was impossible to hate himallof the time. Trying would exhaust me. Maybe I should reserve hating him for special occasions—like compulsory Court functions. “I would expand my businesses, ruthlessly crush my competitors in the import/export trade of human goods, and build a damn cell tower outside the city—whydo we live in a gaslamp novel? With actual modern technology we would have the internet, and movies.”

“We had a stadium in Avallonne. That is simple enough to accomplish.”

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