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“If you come to my bed, there will be no sleeping,” I promised.

I dragged my tongue over my bottom lip, tilting my head to one side.

He could make whatever excuses to himself that he needed to about my eyes and their inexplicable lack of lusty glow.

I was close enough to see the burning in his eyes flare brighter as he leaned in. His breath slid over me, warm and musky, down the sensitive skin of my throat toward my breasts.

His lips grazed the corner of my mouth, that tender indent where my lips met.

“When I come to your bed, it will be because you beg me for it,” Arran breathed. “Not because you are trying to distract me to get your way.”

Then he stepped past me, brushing me to the side. Every point of contact, every place where his clothed body brushed against mine burned with need. But pride pressed my lips together, kept me from telling him that the want I felt was for myself.

I would never beg for him.

Leaning over, Arran tossed the limp male body over his shoulder. “I trust your Goldstones know how to dispose of him.”

I said nothing. It was not a real question. I’d sent my blade through his heart and slit his throat. But given enough medical attention, if the power in him was strong enough, the male could possibly recover. The only sure way to kill a fae was to behead them. My Goldstones understood that without question.

Arran walked to the door, not bothering to look at me even when he paused to say, “If you want me, I’ll be right outside your door.”

He closed it just in time for my knife to embed itself in the thick wood—rather than his back.

25

VEYKA

The terrestrial brute stayed awake until past midnight, every single night.

I dismissed my handmaidens early, not even bothering to have Carly untangle my mass of hair still braided from dinner. Luckily, I’d built a habit of seeing to myself in the evenings. I could have done without a handmaiden at all—had done, for all those years of seclusion.

I could draw my own bath, fold my own clothing, and plait my hair. But a queen was meant to have handmaidens.

When they’d first been assigned to me, in the weeks after my father died and Arthur assumed the throne, I’d tried to dismiss them. Arthur had persuaded me to keep them on—playing at my guilt. It was an honor to be selected to serve the princess. It would bring shame upon their family if I dismissed them. They would be turned out from their home.

I did not know if any of it was true. Though the more I learned about the elemental court, the less I doubted my brother’s veracity.

Charis, Carly, and Cyara had become my friends, of a sort. At least they had started to become such, before Arthur’s murder had shoved me into my pit of despair and apathy.

But they took their evening dismissals in stride, smiling and nodding. They passed into their connecting chambers to spend the evening at their leisure. I wished I could have housed them elsewhere, both for their sakes and my own. They deserved to partake in the pleasures the court had to offer, even if I was determined to lay listlessly in my bed. But they could not leave me, their only path to freedom through my bedchamber—a path they would rather die than tread.

So it was only when the sounds ebbed from their shared chambers, when my betrothed ceased moving and his breath came in regular intervals, that I slipped from my bed to the secret door on the veranda.

This time I was clad appropriately. I wore the same deep amethyst tunic I’d worn earlier in the day, gossamer held in place over my torso and breasts by silver clasps. But I’d exchanged my flowing skirt, open at the hips to reveal my legs, for billowing pants that whispered in the wind.

I was no more than a phantom as I descended the thousand stairs below the goldstone palace to the forested mountains. It was a slow path, but a secure one. As I moved through the clearings of stunted desert trees, every step brought me closer to vengeance.

Until a sound pricked my delicately pointed ears.

Behind me, I heard the brush of wool against wood.

I was not alone.

“Very clever.”

Arran’s voice sliced through me. It might as well have been his battle axe.

I forced the tension from my shoulders, channeling Parys’ cocky smile as I turned around, one hand planted on my hip.