Page 67 of Hell Fae King

Typhos Lucifer.

And I was a slave to the power unleashed from his lips to mine.

How…?I thought, breathless.Why?

One moment, I’d been ready to kill him. To hate him. To… toscreamin protest. Yet now I felt utterly possessed.

By the time he released me, I could barely think. He hadn’t even slid his tongue into my mouth. Just used his lips. His aura. Hispower.

“This is an exercise in trust, darling queen,” he said, the endearment rendering me speechless once more. Not that I had enough oxygen in my lungs to formulate words. “Watch and learn. And most important of all, believe that your mate will protect you.”

His lips ghosted across mine once more, then he released me with a suddenness that rivaled how quickly he’d grabbed me.

Only, a broad chest caught me before I could stumble backward, and strong arms encircled my waist. Then Melek’s mouth brushed my ear. “I believe there was mention of a need for a bath or a shower,” he murmured, his voice silk against my senses. “Let’s start the negotiation there.”

CHAPTER 18

AJAX

Ifolded my arms, my eyes glued to the pile of ash on the cell floor.

That pile used to be Dakota.

Or what was left of her, anyway.

I’d taken down Lucifer’s glamour—a trick Az taught me shortly after the Hell Fae King had left—and had waited for Dakota’s mind to resurface. Only, she hadn’t moved. Hadn’t spoken. Just stared at the wall with a vacant look, like she was still trapped in the past.

I could have uttered an enchantment to knock her out of it and forced her to come back to the present and face me. But seeing her in the flesh—her Unseelie disguise having vanished when I’d dismantled Lucifer’s nightmarish enchantment—had done nothing for me.

“You seem disappointed,” Az said, his tall form lounging against the wall beside me. He was the picture of casualness with one ankle resting against the other, his stance and expression indicating he was unbothered by the death spell I’d just performed in front of him.

“I guess I expected to feel more,” I told him. “But I don’t feel much of anything at all, except for maybe relief.” Which was strange.

Whenever faced with my past, I usually experienced pain. Sometimes sadness. And I always reacted with fury.

Yet… I felt oddly at peace right now. Like I’d just closed the cover on a finished book.

“Cami has changed everything for me,” I whispered out loud, aware that she was the source of my contentment. Or perhaps my growth. I wasn’t quite sure what label to put on it, but I recognized what she meant to me, how she’d helped me heal. “I don’t think she meant to, but she did.”

“She’s changed everything for all of us,” Az replied, sounding amused. “I’ve never seen Melek serious about anything, nor have I ever heard Typhos apologize. Yet both of those things have happened more than once in the last week alone. And as for me…” He trailed off, considering. “She makes me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt before.”

I nodded, understanding what he meant. “She taught me what real love is,” I said, then winced at how cheesy that sounded out loud.

But it was the truth.

Emelyn Jyn was my first love.

Camillia De la Croix was my true love.

The former taught me how to feel, how to care, how to open my heart and experience small doses of warmth in an otherwise cold world. Then her death encased my soul in a frigid tomb for ten very long years. Until Cami broke through with her rebellious energy and alluring persona.

She woke me the fuck up and yanked me headfirst into her fiery world. And I’d been trying to catch up ever since.

I stared at the pile of ashes once more, waiting for some profound experience to take over. Mere moments ago, thosewalls held a nightmare I relived often in my mind. Yet taking down the spell felt oddly relieving, like closure. As though I could finally move on with my life and reside in the present instead of the past.

Does that make me a bad Midnight Fae?I wondered, still focused on what remained of Dakota.Or does it make me a good Hell Fae Warden?

I contemplated the questions, let them roll through my mind, and decided that neither was truly correct. I wasn’t a bad Midnight Fae for moving on, and I wasn’t exactly a good Hell Fae Warden for it either. I was just me. Ajax. A Midnight Fae tied to the Hell Fae Realm.