Page 21 of Fae Crown

The kind Rush might never recover from.

My headache raged. My mate bond, which I’d only so recently begun to sense inside as a warm cocoon of comfort, was silent, as if it were cowering away from the torment that was soon to come.

And it would. Fuck, it would. How was I to stop it? Should I endanger all Rush fought to save to spare him?

The other females filed in around me and took their seats. Octavia Lily Rose was guided beside me. Again, not good. She was the most innocent of them all.

Several fairies half my height flitted among us, offering us more of the golden fae wine. I clutched full-sized goblets in each hand, certain their soothing effects weren’t capable of the comforting I’d need.

The recessed lights dimmed. A dozen orbs glowing a soft, silver light bobbed around the bed, making it the center of attention. Our chairs were left in the dark. None of the queen’s bloody spies joined us, and why would they? She’d know everything that happened here.

The bed was large enough to accommodate a handful of men. Draped in a minimalist black silk coverlet, it oozed an elegance its owner did not.

When the queen entered the room, it was from a frameless door that vanished seamlessly into the wall around it—no accident, I was sure. I wondered if my father was aware this room existed. Perhaps he did and didn’t care about his wife’s endless indiscretions.

Vases I hadn’t noticed before, lit from within with a soft glow, hovered along the walls at arm’s-length intervals. They bloomed with palm-sized, blood-red flowers I would have called beautiful, mayhap even stunning, if not for the tentacles wiggling at their centers like umbracs. The flowers, like the queen, weren’tfriendly.

As the woman stalked toward the bed, a thick cord of smoke followed, sentient, like an obedient snake, cousin to the flowers. When she kicked off her high heels, the smoke bifurcated, and then bifurcated again and again, until tendrils of it wove around the base of the bed to wait. To strike? I didn’t know. I didn’t think I wanted to know.

Fairies delivered a chair to Ivar and Braque each, and positioned them against the wall, where they’d apparently keep watch. Braque sank into his immediately with a soft grunt. Ivar stood next to his, crossing his arms in front of his chest.

Though I doubted she could see much of us, the queen glanced at the rows of us, found my eyes precisely, and smirked, her red lips widening into something predatory. With slow, exact movements, she unwrapped her robe, a matching black silk, and let it shudder down her body to the floor. A fairy sprinted to retrieve it, nearly getting kicked in the face as the queen climbed onto the bed like a cat, on all fours with her ass in the air. She wore a negligee that covered only enough for her not to be naked.

“Rush,” she purred, and I gulped some of the wine. How had I already nearly drained one of the goblets?

The secret door opened and he stepped in. My insides found their voice, and for the first time ever, in unison they screamed. Every part of me bellowed and thrashed and struggled.

Outwardly, I seethed, still unsure what I was to do: honor Rush’s wishes and let him do what he felt was his duty for the greater good? Or smack some sense into hisidiotic ass and prove there was another way, even if I hadn’t found it yet?

Again, I drank. Rush pulled the door shut behind him with a nearly silentwhoosh. Unlike the slutty queen, he was dressed in a modest tunic, breeches, and boots. I hoped they were fucking glued to his body.

His attention went first to the queen. With her crown perfectly shiny and perfectly perched atop her head, her behind in the air stood out, discordant. His gaze skimmed across the skirt of her lingerie and how it barely covered the swell of her ass. The pale, smooth skin was bright in the silver light.

Next his gaze traveled across the lines of chairs. In this lighting, I imagined we were muddled silhouettes. Like the queen’s, I could have sworn his attention landed on me and held there for long enough that my heart squeezed, daring to hope the lack of interest I felt from him before had been a highly convincing act.

But, too soon, his focus drifted back to the queen, to the expectations she had for him, which if she hadn’t made abundantly clear before, there’d be no missing now.

Rush was to perform like a stallion sent to stud, as if that were his reason for being.

A pair of orbs bobbed along with him so that I could make out every one of his features. The way they were so tight they could string a damn bow. His eyes were so dark, there was no indication they were usually bright enough to suggest their very own light source. And then…

And then his face slackened. His eyes, already darker than I’d ever seen them, appeared to deaden and go blank, too still, as if he were no longer there—as if he had the ability I’d been wishing for all day long to abandon his body and his heart and its many pains.

Something grazed my arm, above where I clutched the wine like a lifeline, and I jerked, whipping my head to the left. It was Octavia Lily Rose, and her hand squeezed my arm in silent commiseration. Perhaps compassion, even, if there was such a thing from acquaintances at this damnable court. I leaned my head toward my shoulder in all the thanks to her I could muster, then studied Rush again.

With those empty, empty eyes, his chest rose and fell with an obvious inhale and exhale, meant to steady him, I guessed, and then his fingers tucked beneath the hem of his tunic.

Natania was on my right, Malina, Coretta, and Eliana beside her, and they, along with several of the other females, murmured their approval as Rush lifted his tunic to reveal tight, defined abs and a gloriously sculpted chest.

I knew already. Everything about his body was perfect.

When he tossed his tunic to the floor, a goblin ran to fetch it while his audience hummed in appreciation at those muscled shoulders.

His tattoos, the one tell of his emotions that he hadn’t mastered, were oddly absent.

The queen craned her neck to peer at him. Hercrown still perfect, her ass still in the air, waiting for him. For the stud to get to it.

Bile bubbled up my throat. If I was going to be sick, I was going to puke all over the queen. If I had leftovers, I was pointing them at Natania.

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