Page 5

The Unseelie King

The snow muffles my boots, turning the world soft and silent. Makes it easy to stalk my prey through the dead forest without alerting her. This hunt is instinct, bred into what I am. A predator made for the kill.

And I’m fucking starving.

It’s a hunger I haven’t felt in centuries.

Not since the early savage days when my sole purpose was the vicious thrill of the hunt.

When the scalding rush of blood and stolen life force filled the aching void within me.

But tonight, no number of torn throats or broken bodies will ever fill that void.

Starvation and I are intimate as lovers. I remember her embrace all too well.

The woods are eerily silent around me, nothing but the restless wind and my own heartbeat pounding in my ears like the drums of war. The stillness suffocates. Reminds me that she is not here to fill it with her smoky laugh or teasing when she calls me a brute. Her consort.

Hers.

The cold kisses every bit of exposed skin, nipping like the bite of an unseen blade. But I barely feel it. The only chill that matters is the one lodged deep in my chest. A splinter working its way between my ribs.

It’s been there two months, nineteen days now.

She would hate me for what I’ve become.

I force the thought back into the locked box where it belongs.

Now is not the time. Not with the beast prowling so close beneath my skin, I can feel its hot breath and ruthless appetite.

Its hunger numbs the gaping wound I pretend isn’t there.

The phantom pain, as if I’ve been carved open and left to bleed out slowly.

As if loss were a weakness I could admit to feeling.

The fae’s scent cuts crisp through the cloying musk of snow and pine. Woodsmoke and wool, rabbit fur and magic. Wrong place, wrong night to be Seelie and wandering in my territory. But I’ve chosen her, and so her fate is sealed.

When she’s a mere twenty paces away, some primal sense alerts her to the threat. She stills, her breath seizing in her lungs. I stay cloaked in shadow, tracking her tentative approach through the frantic rhythm of her heart alone. Her magic quests outward, fear lapping at my senses.

I make my presence known with whispered words in her ear. “Keep walking.”

She startles. “Your Majesty.” A bow of her head. “I wasn’t aware I’d wandered into your territory—”

“You should have stayed closer to your queen. Keep walking,” I rasp, teeth gritted. I’m no king tonight. Not civilised. “Don’t make me ask again.”

I sink my power into her, ruthless hooks piercing deep.

I seize her weak mind in my fists and bend her will, making walking into the looming dark her entire world.

Until there is only my palm at her nape and the shadows pressing close on all sides.

Until her senses narrow to me alone—my touch, my breath, my power straining against its fraying leash.

We’re deep in the woods now. No sounds but the restless wind and my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. No distractions. No witnesses.

Only prey and predator.

“Do you require a donor?” She asks it softly, deferentially. As if she has a choice.

I trail my fingers up the fragile curve of her throat, feeling the wild staccato of her pulse. So easily broken. I could snap her bones with barely a thought. The shadows writhe and coil around us, anticipating the imminent feast.

I gentle my touch for her, tracing the elegant line of her jaw.

Lies and false comfort. I prefer the brutalities.

The thrashing struggle in my unbreakable hold, the ragged screams as I clamp down, ruthless and unrelenting.

Drinking in those final terrified gasps as my prey shudders through its last throes beneath my teeth.

Helpless to resist, she sways into me. Into the illusion I craft. Into the trap. My touch, my voice, my power wrap tight around her. I am everything.

“Take what you need.” Her lashes flutter as she bares her throat. “I’m yours to command. Just please don’t—”

I grasp her nape and tilt her head back. Expose the mad flutter of her pulse. My lips ghost over her skin.

“Don’t speak again,” I murmur against her neck, “or I’ll cut out your tongue.”

I sink my teeth in deep. She manages a single strangled gasp before I pierce vein and artery. Beautiful, in its own way. Music to urge the monster to wakefulness.

Then her body goes limp against me, supported only by my grip.

Hot blood fills my mouth, the first scalding gush over my tongue—untainted divinity, a benediction and absolution.

I take what I need. What I crave. Seelie, Unseelie, human, it doesn’t matter.

I’ll take whatever I find. I have since my power was returned to me in full—every brutal, hungry bit of it.

This hunt stretched too long already. The gnawing void hollowing me from within threatens to swallow the last shreds of sanity if not fed. It’s a constant pain, this ferocious emptiness tearing through my veins. Ever since she—

I tear my teeth free with a snarl and shove the fae away. She crumples to the frozen earth. Still alive, just barely.

I scrub the blood from my mouth, slick and hot beneath my palm.

The rich iron tang of it coats my tongue but does nothing to satisfy me.

The hollow pit within me gapes wider than ever, howling and insatiable.

There are no rituals or magics to fill this ruthless famine carved into my very bones.

I am the infection festering beneath the skin of this world. The creeping rot hollowing its heart.

I scoop the fae’s limp body into my arms. Her head lolls against my chest, pale lips parted as she struggles for each shallow breath. Blood slicks her throat, stark crimson blooming across the front of her dress. Ruined, like everything I touch.

I don’t linger. She served her purpose. I drop her shivering form just over my sister’s border. Proof of what festers in the dark spaces between realms. What nightmares roam the hills after night falls.

Let Aithinne have my latest bloody calling card.

Let her see what happens when those loyal to her accidentally cross my border.

See if she’s any closer to grasping what I’ve become.

That the brother she once thought to save is long dead, devoured by the gnashing jaws of famine.

I’m what’s left—the rabid beast, the plague, the unmaking.

My shadows cling as I return home through the woods. They wrap me in their cold embrace again, welcoming their ruthless king back. They whisper promises of the violence yet to come. Of enemies laid low and empires turned to ruin. Of conquest and retribution.

By the time the silhouette of my stronghold crests the cliffs ahead, bloodlust simmers hot beneath my skin. My heart pounds out a vicious cadence, urging me to raze this foetid world. To break and devour until only salt and ashes remain.

The guards at the gates bow without meeting my eyes as I pass, sensing their king is in no mood for pleasantries after the hunt. One approaches, hesitation written in every tense line of his body.

“Some patrols sensed a disturbance at the border. Traces of foreign magic. I dispatched a unit to investigate.” He pauses, and I hear what he doesn’t say out loud. See it etched across his features. “They haven’t reported back.”

“The Queen?” Ice coats my words. “Unclear.”

If Aithinne starts this war now, I’ll end her. It always comes to this between us. Kill or be killed. “Send out your trackers. See what they turn up.”

“She keeps humans with her now. Your conso—” He cuts off before the word fully forms. “What are your orders if we encounter the Falconer’s companions?”

Consort. Mine.

Words that applied when I still answered to the name Kiaran MacKay. When I thought myself deserving of soft words in that smoky voice of hers, of her wicked laugh and teasing looks. Before death tore her away, and our bond snapped, shattering the tethers of anything soft in me.

I curl my fingers into my palm, tracing over the ridges of the mark there. A scar now, a dead vow permanently etched into my skin.

“I don’t give a damn what you do with them.” My voice is raw and vicious. “They mean nothing to me.”

The sentry jerks his chin in a sharp nod and turns to obey.

I stalk toward my private chambers, shadows coiling restless in my wake.

They wrap me in their familiar dark embrace, welcoming their ruthless king home.

My kingdom of carrion crows and rot, of conquered graves and futures gone to ash.

Of vicious hunts in the wolf hour of night when the monster within me strains hardest against its tethers, threatening to drown out the last fraying remnants pretending at humanity.

And I am always starving.