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So, she’d decided on verbal sparring. As good a way as any to avoid the tenderness that had disappeared between us.

She bit her lower lip, and I thought she might stick out her tongue at me. Instead, she reached for the bedpost again. “I suppose I need to make an appearance before the court, to reassure them I’m still alive after that spectacle in the throne room. And we have about a thousand things to discuss at the Round Table.”

As she spoke, her fingers curled around the bedpost and she heaved herself up once again. I might have admired the way the muscles in her arm flexed, if I hadn’t had to rush forward and grab her elbow to steady her.

“Will you stay in the damn bed?” I said, trying to ease her back down. She found the strength to resist. Of course, she did.

“There was a time I could hardly drag you out it,” I growled.

“Times change.” Everything had changed.

Veyka did lick her lips then, gazing up at me, her breath coming a little too fast. “I’ll stay in bed if you come join me and do very un-kinglike things to me.”

I wanted to take her up on it. I wanted to lay her back on the bed and make love to her, ravage her body, find our completion together. My body had been begging me for it from the moment our blood mingled together. To solidify the mating bond.

But that wasn’t what Veyka wanted.

And while that had been enough, once…

“I will arrange for a feast,” I heard myself say. “Once the court is assuaged, we’ll see to the Round Table.”

I watched the bob of her throat, wanted to lick it, taste her on my tongue. But I swallowed the impulse.

“Tonight,” Veyka said, her voice steady.

I wanted to argue. But I knew she was right—the sooner the court saw her whole and in control, the better.

“Rest until then,” I said. And knowing my mate well enough, I swept my arms under her knees and deposited her back on the bed before she could argue.

14

VEYKA

Cyara dressed me without asking for approval. She knew what choices to make, I knew well enough to trust her instincts. I let her drape me in burgundy silk held in place by a gold filigree bustier. The translucent fabric gave the illusion of my curves while cleverly covering the newly healed over cuts that still marked my skin. On any other fae, they would have already been invisible. But my skin was so pale, the pink stood out in horrible reference to my journey through the realms.

I’d recounted it to Arran. Knew I would have to tell the Round Table as well once we convened. But aside from a frown and rubbing his chest, he didn’t have any insight to offer. Neither did I.

My magic slumbered inside me. I didn’t feel like I was about to be pulled apart and flung through time and space at any given moment. I’d happily let it rest there. I had no desire to relive that feeling, the total loss of control.

Finished weaving a strand of garnets into my plait and adjusting the amorite studs pinned along the shell of my ear, Cyara turned to pour the tea she’d set to steep earlier.

The rich brown liquid splashed into the teacup, echoing louder that it ought to in my ears.

My apartments were so quiet these days.

How could it be that when all I’d wanted was silence and darkness, there had always seemed to be a bevy of interlopers chattering and giving advice. Yet when I was High Queen and needed their advice, I was suddenly alone?

Dead.

So many of them were dead—Charis, Carly… Gawayn.

My chest ached. For once, not from the mating bond.

“Pour yourself some as well,” I heard myself saying, scooting around on the chair to face my handmaiden. My friend. “You ought to be attending these things with me now, as a Knight of the Round Table.”

Cyara huffed, her white feathered wings contracting above her head. “I would thank you for the invitation, if we didn’t both know that you dread these things as much as I would.”

She handed me the tea and perched on the edge of the bed, much like the bird shifter I imagined must live somewhere in her family tree.