Page 38 of The Cursed Kingdom

Chapter Fifteen

MASON

I SHOOT KIE a sharp look, beyond annoyed, but he only shrugs and continues forward.

“She’ll turn around once the magic begins to thin,” he says.

It’s already begun to thin, and the dawdler is still meandering about, galivanting through the forest. I can tell by the uneven footsteps that she’s trying to remain quiet—sneaky, even—but she’s unsuccessful.

Does she know I can sense her? That I can hear her jagged footsteps and smell her sweat? Probably not.

Faeries have little to no experience with my kind, and they continually miscalculate my abilities. They think shifters are below them, always have, and that assumption will be their downfall. Without magic, they’re nothing, but my kind don’t need it. We don’t rely on some flying dust to keep us alive, and that will always give us an advantage over them.

It’s why we expected the dawdler to return to the wall once the magic began to thin.

Kie walks several steps ahead of me, leading the way. His dark hair stands out against his unusually pale skin. He’s been keeping to himself these past few months, too busy preparing for his ascension to spend any sort of meaningful time outside. He’s beginning to look sickly. I should tell him that.

I should also tell him his pale skin makes his hair appear darker. He does a poor job pretending he doesn’t hate his black hair, and if it weren’t for his violet eyes and slightly pointed ears, people might confuse him for a shifter.

He sidesteps a tree, his fingers grazing against the rough bark. There are deep, horizontal gouges across the trunk with thick, yellow sap still seeping out. A shifter, maybe several, recently passed through here.

“She’s going to get us killed,” I point out.

She’s too loud, and she’s guaranteed to draw unwanted attention. We should just kill her and be done with it.

Kie frowns, peering at me over his shoulder. “She’ll turn around soon.”

He’s been saying that for the better part of thirty minutes, and it’s yet to be true. What’s she even doing out here? Faeries never venture into the forest, not without reason.

We’ve gotten some recent reports regarding a small faction of faeries working for the shifters. They’ve aligned themselves with my father, but we’ve yet to uncover their identities. Maybe she’s one of them.

We should question her. I packed several sedatives in my travel bag, and I should have enough to keep a faerie unconscious until after we’ve met with Zaha and returned to the capital. We’ll have to carry her, which is less than ideal, but I’ll manage.

We could get some useful information from her.

“I can just—”

Kie cuts me off. “No.”

Bullshit. I drag my fingers through my hair, pushing the strands away from my face. It’s about time for a trim, but I like how the brown waves curl around my ears. It leaves no question as to who I am.

I want every faerie I come across to know I’m a shifter—not that I make it easy to forget. It’s the reason Kie’s being so prissy about this woman. I’ve been too violent toward the faeries, and with his ascension rapidly approaching, it’s time to make amends. I need to issue apologies, issue promises, issue my fucking cock up on a silver platter.

I’m not much interested in any of it.

This woman chose to enter the forest of her own volition, and it’s of no consequence what happens to her. Faeries don’t rule this land—shifters do. Nobody will come looking for her, and her death won’t be traced back to us. To me.

My lips curl as I recall the first time I met Kie. Our parents were heavily engaged in peace talks, but I wasn’t interested. No. I was out for blood. Royal faerie blood.

I was nine, just old enough to understand the hatred between our kinds, and the second my family arrived at court, I went straight for Kie. I thought I could shift into my animal form and kill him. My parents would’ve been pissed, but the other shifters would have regarded me as a hero.

I wasn’t anticipating a forked mate bond to snap into place the second I touched him, though. He’s the mate of my mate, and that bond is the only thing that kept him alive.

My smile falls as I recall how every adult in court saw it happen. The faeries enjoyed watching the wild shifter fail at killing their beloved prince. The mate bond is a tricky bitch, and I feel nothing short of humiliation as I recall how my execution attempt ended in me frantically trying to heal the bloody neck of a sobbing six-year-old Kie.

I was terrified, and I’ll never forget the fiery agony that spread through my bones as I slapped a hand over Kie’s neck to try to clog the puncture wounds. Even as a young boy, my animal form was large.

It was just too easy to wrap my jaws around Kie’s neck and give a little shake.

---