Page 40 of The Fury Queen's Harem

Rai blew out a breath. “We have to be completely honest with you, Daisy. I think your curse is connected to ours. We were cursed in our young twenties. We don’t know by whom, how, or why.”

“We have powerful enemies,” Blaze said.

Rai grunted. “Overnight, we were unable to shift to dragons, and it affected all the dragons, except the oldest Dragon King,DaghdaDanaenyth, your grandfather.”

I narrowed my eyes in rage. “You thinkDaghda had something to do with the curse?”

It could be. I’d come of age and become the threat to his throne, so he’d whisked me away with a curse. Without knowing that, when I’d finally had means sending him a message calling for help through an Archangel, he immediately sent three spaceships of bounty hunters after my ass.

What a nasty old bastard! He would pay if I ever got out of this.

“We investigated,” Iokul said, watching me carefully. “He has nothing to do with our curse. I don’t think he hexed you either. My intelligence says it might be the dark Fae, but we can’t find any proof.”

My enemy could be Fae since I was half-Fae. Dragons and Fae had been at war with each other for a long time.

Rai nodded. “Fae is malicious.” He gave me a look. “Especially dark Fae.”

Was I on the dark side?

“I don’t know any more about my Fae heritage than you do,” I said. “Fae was a forbidden topic in the dragon realm where I grew up.”

“That’s fine, Daisy,” Blaze said, giving me a small smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

“The three of us have been burdened with a second curse as well,” Rai said. “We’ve been wearing this mask for close to a century.”

“When the curse first hit us,” Blaze said, “we all heard a menacing voice in our heads: ‘Only when you cut the three heads of the Fury beasts will your curse fall off.’ And we’ve been searching for the Furies in all the realms ever since. It was fruitless, even though we collected a lot of beast heads. And when we heard King Daghda’s announcement, we came here right away. He specifically pronounced the name Furies, and we thought that our misery would finally come to an end.”

The fire prince gazed at me apologetically. “I didn’t know you were cursed to be Furies. I almost killed you.”

“You’re the one who shot down the rockets that almost got me,” I said softly, yet my voice still sounding grumpy and croaky. “Iokul ordered the men not to fire upon me. And Rai disabled the drones, healed me, and saved me.”

“You called my name,” Rai whispered. “I thought I was mistaken.”

I smiled at him. If I were in my Fae form, my grin would look better.

Blaze coughed. “Let’s stay on topic, shall we?”

“We have a conflict of interest,” I said, giving all three of them an equal measure of look. “I need a kiss from three loves to get rid of my curse, and I’m not sure if the three of you are the ones I’ve been looking for. And you’ll have to cutthe three heads of the Furies—my heads—to remove your curses.”

“Our interest actually merges,” Rai said. “I haven’t finished the tale of the second part. The first voice demanded we claim your heads, but then a second, different voice followed the first vicious one.”

“And it said, ‘Or make the Fury Queen fall in love with all three of you,’” Iokul chimed in, icy silver eyes sparking with fire, even at the sight of my hideous beast form. I remembered how his icy fire had burned for me when we’d first met. Like his brothers, my Furies didn’t turn him off.

All three of them had seen me beyond the forms I took.

“But we, the shallow, arrogant dragon royals laughed at the concept of gaining the heart of the beast queen,” Iokul said.

“We aren’t laughing now,” Blaze said. “At least I’m not laughing. I’m only happy we haven’t hurt Daisy.”

All cards were on the table now.

“So, our curses have to be connected to yours,” Rai said.

“All we need is to gain Daisy’s heart instead of cutting off her heads,” Blaze said cheerfully.

“And you think that’s easier?” Iokul retorted.

They flicked their gazes between the three of my beast forms, evidently pondering how to gain my heart when every day I had only an hour as a Fae, and there were three of them.

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