Page 124 of Dance of Kings and Thieves

Elise shifted in her seat. “I was simply wondering where your people are from.”

“What is your guess?”

“I’ve heard you are nobility from a different kingdom.”

“Is that what people say?”

“That is the hope. Many a mother would happily toss their daughters at your feet.”

A rush of heat flooded my veins. The connection of what this past Valen had felt in the moment speaking to his future queen spilled into me in a dawning realization. He’d fought an attraction to the woman. If he did not look so miserly and weak at my side, I might laugh at how foolish it was to fight the budding sensation in his heart.

“Wouldn’t work, I’m afraid,” he told the memory of his wife. “I prefer my women off their knees, upright, and standing on their own.”

“At your back?” Elise asked snidely.

“At my side.”

I knew I liked the Northern King.

I tapped Valen’s arm and gestured at Elise’s expression. “I can feel that this is when she saw you as someone who could take her heart. Look at her face. She’s seeing you differently.”

Valen rubbed slow circles over his chest. “Where is she, Malin? I want . . .”

His voice cut off as his chin dropped. Valen’s body trembled with exertion. I shot a narrowed glare at the looming darkness, silently cursing it. The pain, the pull to blood would not take him. Not when this was working. This was the answer; it had to be.

“Shall we see more?” I smiled and hid my elation when Valen tried to grin back.

Moments shifted from smoke and mist, curling, and unfurling into various images: moments where a future king and his future queen began to fall in love. I witnessed Elise tending to Valen when he was suffering from his ‘ailment’.

His thoughts gave away that he’d succumbed to his curse, but Elise didn’t know. She called him Legion; she cared for him.

There was an attack. I held my breath as they fought against rogues in their kingdom, as Elise killed a man for the first time. Valen held her through the stun of taking a life.

In a memory with soft candlelight, I crouched to listen as Elise admitted to her Legion Grey about the loss of her fingertips. Bile burned the back of my throat, not from my distress, but from the memory of Valen. He shifted in his seat as she told her tale, for he’d cut off the tips—no, not him—the beast inside.

“I didn’t know this,” I said.

Valen nodded as the scene shifted to a narrow cooking room. The memory of the king paced, hands in his hair.

“I could’veslaughteredher that night.” The memory of the king dug his fingers through his tousled hair. “This must end, it’s too great a risk.”

“She lived. More of a sign this is fated,” an old man told him. “She is your answer.”

“Gods,” I whispered. “It’s Bevan.”

“He kept the curse at bay quite often,” Valen told me and turned back to the memory.

“No.” Past Valen shook his head. “No. I can’t do this to her. We know how this ends, old man.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It requiresblood. What the hells do you think that means?” Valen snarled.

“I don’t know,” Bevan spat back. “But Elise is not a lamb meant for slaughter. She is meant to play a role in your life. Do not stop because you went and felt something deeper for the woman. Think of your companions. They suffer the same as you. Now, see it through or be cursed to forever live with the monster.”

I stood by Valen’s side as we studied memory after memory. Laughter, pain, attraction. We paused to watch as new images formed from the smoke. Tense moment of shouting, pleading, of pain when Elise discovered the truth of his lies.

Though she did not know it at the time, Valen’s heart had shattered when she looked at him like a monster. Like a beast.