Page 55 of The Maleficent Faerie
“Fuck you,” I breathe.
“Oh, no, little viper,” he murmurs, the tips of his claws trailing through my hair. “This time, I’ll be the one fuckingyou.”
The words are more than a challenge—they’re a promise, directed to the pulsing ache between my legs, the hollow in my soul, the bleeding cracks of my heart that beg to be salved.
“I thought you liked the woman taking control,” I whisper.
“I do. Trust me, I want to be on my face before you, kissing your feet, sucking each tender toe—and I want to be bound, with my back bared to your whip. I want to be lying prone at your mercy, straining for a release you refuse to give. But I like other things too. Like punishing naughty princesses who dance naked for my men and chain me to bedposts without my permission.” He caresses my chin with his long fingers.
I knock his hand away. My heart is beating too fiercely, too hot—every breath incinerates on the way to my lungs. Punishment…naughty Princess… I remember him smacking my rear when I lay across his steed, and the memory makes my pussy quiver.
Malec rises on the ledge, a column of black leather and shimmering dark wings. He quirks his wrist, flexes his fingers, and his tall staff with the green stone appears, materializing in his grasp.
He slants his gaze down at me, as if he’s checking to see if I’m impressed. Vain bastard.
Iamimpressed. But I harden my expression and shrug, pulling my knees up and propping my arms across them.
“Before I take you inside,” he says in a velvety tone that vibrates right down to my clit, “I’m going to reinforce the boundary around this place. Can’t be too careful, now that we know there are hunting parties after us.”
“You’re going to use Void magic?”
“I have access to a little, but not much. Only when I return to the Spindle can I collect more of that power. No, this magic is all mine, partly inherited, but with a few personal twists.” He points to the farthest outbuildings. “See the crooked leafless tree, just beyond the corner of that slanted shed? The boundary I set is about twenty paces beyond it. Keep your eye on that spot.”
I sigh, as if I can’t be bothered, but I fix my gaze where he told me to.
He stretches out both his staff and his empty hand. The orb at the head of the staff begins to glow brighter, while dots of sparkling magic fly from it and from his other palm. Like green fireflies they dance through the air, traveling outward in a great ring before settling down to the grass and sinking into the earth.
Darkness. Silence.
“Was thatit?” I mutter. “I expected more.”
He holds up his hand, a mute directive for patience.
Slivers of green light jab out of the soil where the sparks vanished. They fork and branch and crisscross each other, higher and higher, until they form a tall hedge of vicious-looking vines all around the Chapel grounds. Each vine bears dozens of thorns so long, thick, and sharp I can see them even from this distance, by the verdant glow of the magic.
The green light disappears, soaking into the vines, finalizing and solidifying them. The entire valley is now encircled by a bristling wall of thorns.
“The magic extends above us as well.” Malec sweeps his hand toward the arch of the sky. “If any Caennith Fae try to fly over it, thorns will shoot from the hedge and bring them down. I’ll dispel it when we leave.”
I shouldn’t feel safer, now that he has cut me off from my people. He could be lying about them having orders to kill me. The “message” from the raven might be a trick, meant to keep me from escaping.
What if I could somehow break through his barrier and get away? What if I could run to my people and be safe, out of his reach once again?
Would I do that?
But what if he’s right? What if my blood is the key for this ritual of his, this scheme that could protect our entire realm? The thought of being used for his dark magic makes me shiver with revulsion—but maybe that’s only because I’ve been trained to view the Daenalla as twisted and heretical. My mind has been dipped into a bath of fear and hate so many times that it’s saturated with those emotions, and the result is a physical recoil at the idea of Void magic.
I keep coming back to one fact—that the Royals and my mothers lied to me since I was old enough to know my own name. They fractured me, fused wings to me, falsified my magical abilities.
But Malec walked me through an agony of revelation to find the searing truth on the other side. Whatever else he is, I owe him for that.
I’m deep in thought, frowning heavily at the barrier of thorns, when Malec steps nearer to me, his huge wings flared. “Your thoughts look painful, little viper. Would you like to forget them for a while?”
When I don’t answer, he takes a handful of my hair and pulls my head back so I’m forced to look up at him.
I twist my hips, shoot one leg out, and kick his ankle so hard his foot slips off the ledge and he tumbles into mid-air, his fingers sliding out of my hair. He catches himself on a wing-beat and rushes in again. His muscled arm clamps around my waist and he carries me right off my perch.
We plummet through the air so fast a half-scream dies in my throat. But with a quick flex of his wings, we slow our fall just in time to touch down lightly on the grass by the Chapel.
