Page 23 of Fae Crown

The queen hissed again, bringing into sharp awareness how I’d lost track of the passing seconds. How I’d lost focus.

Maybe taking the umbrac poison had been a poor idea… Without it dulling my senses, I was already playing a very dangerous game.

“How dareyoupresume to speak forme?” the queen seethed out at the darkened rows of chairs.

I blinked—and she was on all fours on the floor instead of the bed. I hadn’t even registered her movement.

Fuck, Ireallyshouldn’t have taken the umbrac stuff.

The coils of smoke slithered around her in unending loops, concealing her feet and calves save for flashes of pale, creamyskin.

“M-me, Your Majesty?” stuttered Malina, her question so soft I barely recognized it was the usually arrogant, obnoxiously promiscuous woman speaking.

“Yes,you.” The queen squatted onto her haunches, her hand to the floor in front of her swallowed up by the vibrating smoke, as if she were designed to crawl on hands and knees instead of walk. No, not crawl. To run. To charge. To leap.To destroy. As if she were as adept at the beast-like motions as she was at slinking across one of her great halls as a woman in heels and a crown.

Wait … it happened again. She was several feet closer to the chairs now.

This time, I was certain I hadn’t blinked. When had she moved?Howhad she moved?

In the past nearly four years she’d forced me to live at her court, she’d shocked me continually. More often at first, before I’d learned there was no limit to her unfathomable cruelty. Recently, there was little she could do or say that rocked me to my core.

But here I found myself studying her profile, the strong lines of her back, arms, and hips—wondering what secrets they held. She had never moved this way before.

“But I…” Malina said, trailing off, as if finally getting a good look at the woman who was barely woman at all.

“Youwhat?” the queen insisted.

With the animal-like position of her body, I expected her question to be a rasp dripping venom,blood, or both. But the seductive purr of those two words was somehow worse.

I guessed everyone in the room felt it. If the females hadn’t been sitting, surely they would have been stepping back. Ivar and Braque alone leaned forward, as if forever drawn to protect or collude with their queen.

Her crown sat precisely atop her head even as she jerked to sit onto her butt, leaning back onto her hands, spreading her legs for an audience that likely didn’t expect that view despite the fact that they’d willingly come to her bedroom. I didn’t know if she wore undergarments or not. I’d purposefully avoided looking.

Partial darkness attempted to conceal the females’ faces. But I could make out enough of them to identify their shock—at what, though, I couldn’t be certain. These women were the worst of Embermere—save Octavia Lily Rose and perhaps that Elowyn Ashira who’d stood up to the queen in ways not even her soldiers dared.

“But you … what?” asked the queen again, drawing my attention back to her, once more highlighting how sluggish my reactions were. How easily I lost my focus, zoning out to my own disturbing musings.

“But I … I’m ever so sorry, Your Majesty,” Malina finally spit out, more wheedling than I’d heard her in a long time. “I meant no disrespect. I meant only to show my admiration for Your Majesty’s haste in punishing disobedience.”

“No disrespect,” the queen mimicked, and the skin at the nape of my neck prickled, reminding me of thevial I concealed there, of the evidence I wouldn’t be able to easily erase.

“Y-yes, Your Majesty.”

I could see little of Malina, and yet I could clearly feel her terror. It coated the air. “Truly, I swear, I meant no disrespect. I mean none now, either. I … I don’t know.”

“You don’t know,” the monster in a crown repeated.

“Uhh … y-yes, Your Majesty.”

I’d pity the female if not for how many times I’d overheard her referring to me as barely more than an erect rod for her pleasure.

She could burn along with the queen.

“My queen,” Ivar said from behind me, and I swiveled in his direction, unnerved by the fact that I’d allowed the queen’s favorite viper to sneak up on me without my notice.

Oh, the umbrac poison had indeed been a very bad idea.

“It is the wretch Elowyn who hit the countess Natania.” Ivar enunciated “the wretch” as if it were this Elowyn’s title.

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