Dark Prince's Desire by Slade Jessa

Author:Slade, Jessa [Slade, Jessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-11-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

The court palace was never the same when he visited. Raze knew that, of course, since he’d been the one to anchor the magic that siphoned the worst of the phae’s devastating passions. The emotions hadn’t simply vanished, though. Instead, the seething energy fed the palace’s never-ending metamorphosis.

Though the beauty or terror of its exterior were never entirely indicative of what might be found within, he’d learned to be cautious of the place when it was at its most heartbreakingly lovely. Because while the phae had renounced the true emotion that had once been their Undoing, they had kept their keen appreciation for irony.

He stepped just far enough within the doorway to let Yelena enter behind him without fully exposing her to any lurking dangers, then paused to let his perception adjust to whatever the palace might present.

His stomach twisted when she edged out around him and gasped.

He had seen wonders before, but this... The Queen had quite outdone herself.

Probably because she was teetering on the edge of becoming Undone.

His sacrifice could not come soon enough if his other option was being trapped in this lushly overblown boudoir. The palace had become literally—if not actually—the center of a dusky-red rose, with curving velvety walls that arched overhead to reveal only glimpses of something like sky. The bright flutter of butterflies passing above sent sparkles of prismatic light cascading down between the multi-story petals.

He started walking, listening for the soft patter of Yelena’s bare feet behind him.

“It’s stunning,” she said.

“It feels like a labyrinth, and more than a few have died making their way to the heart of any labyrinth.”

“Should I knot a thread of my dress to the front door and unravel it as we go so we can find our way out again?”

He’d get to see her naked again. His pulse surged at the thought, and agreement hovered on the tip of his tongue. And other tips of his anatomy. But just as the Minotaur had eaten both Athenian youths and maidens, the Queen’s hungers were equally...democratic. Teasing her would be foolish.

“Such simple tricks won’t save us,” he told Yelena.

Her long stride brought her to his shoulder and let the musky warmth of her fill his senses. “Are we going to need saving?”

“Someone will, mostly likely.” He had ceded rule of the phaedrealii to the Queen, though his own claim had been stronger, because he’d had more pressing concerns, but some things he would not share.

The tigress was his.

The depths of his selfishness should have disquieted him, especially when he’d already made note of the court’s fracturing and forfeited so much to stop it. But part of obsession’s power was its willingness to succumb utterly and eagerly to entrapment. To the phae with their ruses, such commitment was almost impossible to believe.

And apparently even more impossible to resist.

The curves of the petal walls tightened as they went, forcing Yelena closer to him. “We must be getting near the center,” she said. “We’re almost going in circles.”

When the back of her hand brushed his, the skin-to-skin contact jolted a word out of him.

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