Page 131 of Bride of the Fae Prince

We could really use this.

In fact, this might be the missing piece we need.

“You have your thinking face.”

Her voice startles me back into the present. I blink, realizing that I’ve made my way to my desk but am pacing behind the chair instead of sitting in it.

Stella smiles.

That smile catches me off guard. It’s a sweet smile—one of understanding. One that says she can read my mind, and she likes what she finds.

“I . . .” I trail off stupidly, not sure why I started a sentence when I had nothing to say.

She marches to my side. She’s wearing one of her new dresses: a lovely blue day dress with a square neckline, long draping sleeves, and a skirt with beautiful, gauzy layers of fabric. For once, only half of her hair is up in a bun, leaving the rest to cascade down her back.

She takes me by the elbows, and I let myself be pushed into my chair and a quill pen shoved into my hand.

“I see that clever brain of yours working,” she says, finding me a blank sheet of paper and laying it in front of me. “So let it work. I will go practice glamours with Edvear.”

I drop the pen, catch her round the knees, and scoop her up into my lap as she gasps in surprise. “I will do what you say,” I murmur against her ear as I pull her as close as I can. “But first, you must give me a kiss.”

“If we start kissing, we won’t want to stop. Which simply isn’t productive.”

Mountains of Ildrid. Why can’t she stop being so unintentionally adorable?

Her breathing hitches when I splay one hand possessively across her waist and bring my face to hers so we are nose-to-nose. “I’m not letting you go until you kiss me.”

She stares at me, her eyes so large and rounded. I’m beginning to think she might have cast a spell over me. Because even though she will probably leave me, even though the weight has not shifted from my shoulders, I can do nothing but soak up whatever sweetness we have left.

When she closes her eyes and brings her mouth to mine, the most exquisite delight fills my soul and burns through me like a heady wine.

She is all that matters. The High King, the throne, revenge—none of it matters anymore. Only her.

Only her.

She pulls away just as I am trying to catch the back of her neck to deepen the kiss. Protest rumbles in my throat, but I know she’s right to scramble out of my lap and scurry halfway across the room. Her face is bright red even as she tries to compose herself—forgetting her glamours already.

“You need to work,” she says sternly, straightening her spine and lifting her chin. “And so do I.”

I don’t reply. I just smirk at her like a silly fool and let my gaze take her in from head to toe—which has its desired effect of making her even more flustered.

With a flounce of her skirts, she turns around and marches out the door. “You are not helping.”

I’m laughing when she closes it behind her.

Once she’s gone, however, my mind returns to the matter of her magic and my ever-present problem of the High King. I’ve toyed around with various plots over the years. It’s easy enough to enrage or distract Faradir; it’s the matter of removing him that has continued to give me difficulty. My last plan collapsed with Faradir’s plan to raze the human lands. I cannot kill him without giving up my claim to the throne—which is less of a price than the rest of the fae would face as a penalty for the same crime. But what is the point of deposing him if no one can then sit on the throne? Thus, I’ve stayed focused on tricking him off the throne—nullifying his own claim via him breaking his own laws. But Faradir is clever and careful.

What if . . .

CouldStellakill the High King? Can he see through her glamours like he can see through mine? Or could she be invisible to him?

My quill hits the paper, and before I know it, I’m completely enveloped in possibility.

I think I know what to do.

I think I can get the High King off his throne. Before Lulythinar. Before I’m bound to decimate the human armies.

Maybe—just maybe—I can do it and keep Stella as my wife.

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