Page 42 of Delphine's Dilemma

“Of course, I understand.”

Even if I wasn’t the king anymore, I still wanted to protect my home. I knew what happened when elven courts were left unguarded.

14

DELPHINE

When Arven asked me to wait for vengeance, I nearly flung myself through the in-between to hunt Locke myself. Arven promised that the wait would be worth it. He tried to distract me with furniture shopping for the new apartment.

The whole ordeal left me feeling queasy. I couldn’t focus on anything happy while I knew Locke was still out there. Locke had gotten away with literal murder for several decades. I wanted to put an end to himnow.

In the middle of the furniture warehouse store, Arven took both of my hands in his and turned me to face him. “Can you trust me on this?”

His voice was gentle, but the vicious red light of his beast flashed in his eyes. He wanted to hunt Locke as much as I did. If that was the case, then what was holding him back?

I ripped my hands out of his and stormed away. Tugging at my braids, I savored the release of crackling stress as if pulling at my scalp helped make room for all the hot air building up inside me. I shoved through the Ladies Only bathroom door so that Arven couldn’t follow.

He didn’t call out for me or try to stop me. Arven let me walk off and handle my feelings on my own. He trusted me that much.

Why couldn’t I offer him the same trust?

I could see Locke’s beaten-potato face in the darkness behind my eyelids. I gripped the edge of the grimy porcelain sink and cringed. All I wanted was freedom from my past, freedom from the ghosts haunting my nightmares every time I tried to sleep. My court deserved vengeance so that I could be at peace.

Yeah, that was a selfish statement, but I was exhausted. Runnig from Arven and Beryl had taken so much out of me, and I hadn’t really noticed until now when I caught my reflection the mirror ahead.

There were sunken dark circles under my eyes. My usually dark skin seemed ashen and drained. Even with a glamour over myself, I couldn’t hide the effects of this deep-seated fatigue.

With a sigh, I shoved back from the sink and washed my hands—both of the bathroom grime and of the pain of my past. I could take today for myself…right?

The bathroom stall behind me creaked open. At first, I wrote it off as just a mortal woman using the restroom. I paid her no mind, thinking that she was approaching the sink to wash her hands.

The tight cord of a garotte circled my throat before I could react. It bit into my skin and threatened to cut off all circulation as I met the gaze of my attacker in the mirror. The familiar face should have bothered me.

The assassin was a fae woman I’d met here and there while taking bounties. Like me, she’d been without a court. We’d had a kind of kinship that was mostly unspoken. It seemed that only extended so far.

She yanked me backwards so that I would lose my footing. The weight of my body, if I fell, would help her choke me out completely. I twisted and caught myself. For a blessed moment, the garotte slackened. I jammed both my thumbs beneath it before the fae assassin could tighten her grip again.

“I knew this would be difficult,” she grunted.

I kicked at her knee, trying to buckle it inward. She grunted and stumbled, taking me with her. The thin wire yanked at my throat but wasn’t sharp enough to slice through—thankfully.

“Why…did…you take…” Speaking wasn’t easy with a woman jerking me around by a wire. “This…bounty?”

She spun me around and shoved me into the stall doors so hard the entire structure shook. “The money was good. He must really hate you.”

Locke, I realized.

A moment later, I warmed thinking about how I would have blamed Arven only a week ago.

My heart thumped an excited beat. Even with danger at my throat, literally, I never felt more alive. This was what I’d craved. The past couple of days had been slow and quiet, and I’d been hankering for a fight even while trying my hardest to be a soft domestic woman for once.

That would never be me.

With a grip on the wire, I bent and took the other bounty hunter with me. I threw her over my shoulder, into the bathroom stalls. She lost her grip on the wire and crashed into the porcelain throne.

I stood over her with a smug smile spreading over my lips. When I opened my hand to materialize my crossbow, I cursed because I’d forgotten about my crushed domain. Everything in it, even my weapons cache, had been destroyed.

The fae woman had enough time to grunt and pick herself up. Her stance was shaky, and I could see the question in her eyes. She watched my empty hand because she likely knew what I was trying to do. One shot of my poison would mean the end of her.

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