Page 45 of Bound to the Shadow Prince

“Alas, I am high summer, three days after solstice.” I smile into the darkness, cocooned against him. “Didn’t feel much like celebrating this past year. I just turned twenty-four.” I pat his hand again. “Next question.”

“Did you leave a lover behind?”

Oh. I’m surprised he asked that. Perhaps he’s not as detached as he’s pretending to be at the moment. I stroke my fingers over his hand on my belly and consider my answer. Most men don’tlike hearing that a woman has experience in bed. They seem to think that we don’t have needs or desires like they do. That we’re supposed to be pristine, virginal goddesses until they deign to stick their cocks into us and “make us whole” or some such drivel. Erynne waited for her marriage to Lionel, and she told me that her wedding night was so awful that she cried for a week.

I’ve never regretted being free with my favors. But I also don’t want Nemeth to think less of me. “I left a great deal of lovers behind,” I say, deciding to go for a teasing manner. “But if you are asking if I had my heart on someone specific, the answer is no. Court was just…court. Everyone there was bored, including me. You amuse yourself the best you can, and sometimes you end up in someone’s bed. It means far less than you’d think. It was mostly flirting, and sometimes flirting would go a little too far. But no heart attachments, no.”

I hold my breath, waiting for his response. Waiting to see if he’s going to shame me for my immorality.

“So…this Balon…he is not a great love of yours?”

Oh, is he jealous? I’m thrilled to my core at the thought. “Balon? Please. He wants to marry a Vestalin.”

Nemeth chuckles. “So it is not true love?”

I snort. “Very clearly not. He got bored and stopped visiting. If he really loved me, he’d be out there constantly. He’s just fascinated by me because I’m an incorrigible tease and I have an important family name. Even if he was in love with me, his family wouldn’t allow it. Balon will need heirs.”

“Ah. So you don’t wish to give him heirs?”

I pause. “No one will marry me. I have the blood curse, and it makes me barren.”

“This blood curse. You’ve mentioned it before. What is it?”

I turn my head, as if I can look back at him in the darkness. His breath fans over my face, and it’s warm and pleasant andsurprisingly cozy. “How many questions are you going to ask? You’re not very good at this game.”

He squeezes his hand over my belly, sending a pulse of heat straight through my body. “Just tell me. I wish to know.”

“Do your people not have the blood curse then? The First House of Darkfell?”

“No curse at all.”

Figures. I consider for a moment, wondering if I should tell him. He’s still the enemy, even if I enjoy cuddling with him. Even if I’m starting to have filthy daydreams about him. Would he use this information against me in the future? But…we made a promise that whatever was shared in the tower would not be used against each other. I decide to trust in that. “The blood curse dates back to Ravendor Vestalin, the first of our line. Have you heard of her?”

“Everyone has, yes. Even those of us monsters in Darkfell.”

I poke him for referring to himself as a monster. The more time passes, the more I’m convinced that he’s just a man. A man with wings and fangs and weird legs and possibly a tail, but definitely a man. He has people, just like I have people. “So you know of Ravendor Vestalin. Then you know that she was the first of her line, and she was born from starlight. She wasn’t given the name Vestalin until her quarrel with the Golden Moon Goddess. Back then, they called the goddess Vestal. That was before we lost the right to call the gods by their names. Have you heard this story?”

“A version if it, but very different than yours, I imagine. Keep talking.”

“So Ravendor was a fierce warrior who sold her sword to whoever would pay her. The goddess was upset because Ravendor had killed the goddess’s son in battle. He was supposed to be impossible to slay by any blade, so Ravendor used a club given to her by a male of the First House of Darkfell.The goddess was extremely upset and appeared in the sky as the Golden Moon for the first time. She demanded that Ravendor and the male from Darkfell pay a penance—to give seven years to the goddess. Seven years of piety and prayer, and the goddess would forgive them. Ravendor agreed, and so the goddess rose the tower from the land itself—this tower—and Ravendor went inside. The Golden Moon hung in the sky for seven long years, watching over the tower to ensure that Ravendor and the Fellian did not leave. Once the seven years passed, Ravendor stepped foot outside of the tower, but the goddess was furious because Ravendor had been blessed by the Gray God during that time and had given birth to a child.”

“The Gray God, eh?”

“Yes,” I say. “And so the goddess named Ravendor as Vestalin—under Vestal’s eye—and cursed her line. Some of the children are born with a blood curse in their veins that will destroy them from the inside out. It’s only through prayers to the Gray God that we figured out a potion that enables me to live.” I shrug. “But that’s why the Golden Moon Goddess rises every thirty years to harass the new generation of Vestalin and your people, and why she gets so very mad when her demands aren’t met.” It’s the only reason the goddess’s name has survived for so long. Mankind lost the ability to refer to the gods by their names in another war, another time, but the Vestalin name has remained even though the names of the Gray God and the Absent One are long-forgotten.

“I see.”

He sounds amused, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why. It irks me. “You think it’s a funny story? That everyone in my line has a risk of death? That I have to take potions for the rest of my life because the goddess is angry with my ancestor?”

“That’s not it at all.” He shakes my hand against my belly, as if I’m a child to be jiggled into paying attention, but instead ofmaking me attentive, all it does is remind me that I’m pressed to his body, and we’re sharing warmth, and I’m starting to ache in all the spots that most definitely should not be aching. “You are misjudging me, little princess. I laugh because your story is so different from what I have heard.”

“Okay then, what have you heard?”

His breath is warm against my hair. “Well, the Fellian legends are similar in regards to the war.”

“But?”

“But that the human Ravendor fell in love with the Fellian Azamenth when they went into the tower. It was he that gave her the club that killed the goddess’s son, and they were lovers before they went into the tower and continued when they were there.”

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