Page 14 of Conquering the King of Storms

“Just go snuggle with them,” Ivy told me, hip-bumping me toward them.

I stumbled, almost landed on my face, and then scowled at her. “Shhh. Not all of us are go-getters, okay?”

She shrugged. “Didn’t take much go-getting for me. I didn’t have to go—Flame was always just there.”

“Don’t make me flip you off,” I grumbled at her, stalking over to my own space on the other side of the fire. I felt someone’s attention on me, and from the corner of my eye, saw that Storm was staring at me.

If he had asked me to lay with them, I was almost positive I would’ve said yes.

And that made me feel… too many things.

Nope, I was not ready to deal with them yet.

So I curled up on the ground and went to sleep.

When the morning came around,Storm’s eyes were glowing again. I was worried that Dove would be devastated, but she stayed cheerful. She practically skipped when we started walking again, dividing her time between me and Tariq.

It made me feel good to see her that happy. Spending so much time with Storm—Sirus—while he was sane had clearly been good for her.

We didn’t reachthe city that day, but the day afterward, we were finally walking up to the gates. They were tall and elegant, made of what looked like sand, but I assumed it was something else because a sand gate would be pretty damn useless.

The water fae looked like all of the other fae we’d seen; there were a variety of skin colors, hair colors, heights, and body shapes. I hadn’t figured out the races or ethnicities, but there were clear differences in the facial structure between many of the fae. Even Quake, Flame, and Sirus all looked vastly different.

Unlike the people in the earth fae city, the water fae smiled and waved when they saw us. I felt awkward about it, but Ivy and Dove waved back at everyone who waved at us.

All of the long, flat-roofed buildings looked like they were made of the same sand-like material that their gates were formed out of. It wasn’t my idea of pretty, but I liked the way it looked like it was part of the beach, rather than a city that had just been dumped on the sand.

A few people came up to chat and walk with us. I was tucked away in the middle of the group, so I listened to some of the chatter but didn’t participate.

“This is creepy,” Margo muttered, as we made our way down the wide main road that led toward the castle. “No one should be this friendly. What are they hiding?”

“Some people are friendlier than others, even on Earth,” I murmured back. “I grew up in Georgia, and if you smiled and waved at someone random, they’d smile and wave back. When I moved to Phoenix for college, they’d glare.”

“Yeah, I glare. If a random person smiles at me, I’m going to assume they want to kill me.” Margo didn’t bother lowering her voice.

I snorted. “Better hope you’re not a water fae.”

She grimaced. “Guess I can be glad I didn’t end up mated to Flood. Though I actually think I’d take the over-friendly fae over the bastard I got paired with.”

Sometimes her negative attitude annoyed me, but this time, it made me grin.

Twenty minutes later,we were strolling into the castle. Our group was a rag-tag bunch, if royalty could be called rag-tag. We all looked pretty damn different, and we had everything from insane and insanely powerful kings to sane but absolutely powerless humans.

When we stepped into the massive room that reminded me of a throne room from a TV show I used to watch, we found a couple waiting for us. A tall, muscular guy with pale skin and a shock of white-blonde hair stood hand-in-hand with a gorgeous, curvy woman. She had an assload of blonde curls a shade lighter than mine—literally, they fell to her ass, insanely thick and perfectly shaped—along with dark brown skin and vibrant blue eyes. I ignored the stab of envy in my chest at the way her hair cooperated. No amount of hair product or extensions had ever been able to make mine look that good.

My fingers poked at the puffy ponytail on top of my head.

Sheesh.

My face flushed, but no one was paying attention to me. Tariq was holding Dove, and the couple’s attention was on him and Ivy.

“Flame.” The man’s voice was warm as his free arm opened wide. “Finally, a fire king who understands the value of the water fae.” He winked at Ivy. “And you are?”

A lucky woman.

She was mated, so the guys could talk to her like she was an actual person.

“Ivy.” She held a hand out, and the man eyed it with a funny expression. “Sorry, in my world we shake hands when we meet new people,” she explained hastily, her face reddening a little as she pulled her fingers back. “You’re Flood?”

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