Rise of a Huntress: Fae Fantasy Romance (The Wild Hunt Book 3) by H J Reese

Author:H J Reese [Reese, H J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HJ Reese
Published: 2024-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

22

VALENTINA

Ipeeled open my eyes to the sight of the reddest apples I’d ever seen on the pillow next to me.

My mouth watered.

“You can eat them, but you must do so outside of the bedrooms,” came Kade’s voice from the chairs near the large window.

My spirits faltered. I floated from our rooms to the kitchens and back again, sometimes only leaving once a day. Something was still nipping at my mind, and it exhausted me. I pushed the pillow, and the apples rolled off, disappearing into the sheets.

Suddenly I was tugged, pulled through my cozy warm den I’d arranged, and thrust to cold sheets and nippy air. I growled at Kade’s hands, but they stayed like vices around me.

“Ready to tell me about this?” He traced the rudely tattooed waterdrop mark along my collarbone with his fingertip.

I frowned. “Will you let me eat the apples after I do?”

“Maybe.”

I sighed, and my mouth watered. “Fine. I carved it into my skin myself, hiding in the dusty rafters of Elaria’s Otti Theater when I was ten. I wanted to fit in. To be like the rest of Summerfae.”

“It must have hurt.”

“Being alone—feeling different—hurt more.”

He was quiet for so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep. I reached for an apple.

“I’m proud of you.”

I turned to him, then. Blinking into dark eyes, swallowing me whole. “For what?”

“For surviving, by any means necessary. But, Valentina, I’m going to need you to do it again.”

I grumbled and turned back around, pulling the sheets that held the apples closer.

“You can lie in bed and stay in my Underworld. But you cannot lie in your despair forever. We must move on. Keep going. Come, brush your teeth, wash this hair, get food outside our room. Santi will come in and clean.”

But the thought of someone else cleaning my messes bugged me to my core. “I’ll clean the room.”

“Santi will be thoroughly insulted. Come,” he urged.

And we spent the day eating and drinking in the banquet room. I learned Malek liked to keep an orderly library and Artos often destroyed it. Orion was their warrior. He came back during dinner covered in a black slime. His shadowwolf at his side was panting with its tongue out. Zedekiel held the knowledge of knowing where souls go, either the Underworld or the Otherworld, a burden I didn’t think I could bear. Gavriel was by far the friendliest, often laughing at the others’ expense. He was also the best at the card game they played.

Do you want to play? Kade asked through mindspeak as he saw me smiling at Artos, who flipped the table when he lost.

Oh, definitely not. I didn’t know how to tell him that I wasn’t the same Valentina he fell in love with. I hadn’t resolved this undertow of turmoil in my gut. This sweeping feeling like at any given point something was going to kick out my legs, and I’d fall and fall and fall. There was a sudden unsteadiness in everything I’d ever held solid.

He was home here.

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