The Ever King: A Dark Fantasy Romance (The Ever Seas Book 1) by LJ Andrews

Author:LJ Andrews [Andrews, LJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victorious
Published: 2023-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 25

The Songbird

I was pressed between the wall and the hard planes of the Ever King’s body, and I could not recall anywhere I’d wanted to be more. I ought to run, to claw at him, to curse him for stealing me away, but I leaned into him like reaching for a flame in the darkness.

An enemy to my people, and still I thought I might collapse if he removed his hands.

Erik speared his fingers through my hair, gripping the braids at the roots, and tilting my head. My lips parted, and his tongue slid against mine in slow, masterful strokes. He tasted like the cool sea air and a bite of smooth ale.

I shouldn’t want him, but wanting him was the least of my worries—I craved him. When Erik left, I noticed. There was a missing piece of me, and I didn’t understand it.

He pulled back, breaths heavy and tangled with my own. “Because you’re bonded with the Ever. You took the place as my mantle, and I took you. I won you. That is what you’re feeling.”

I blinked. “How . . . how did you know what I was thinking?”

His thumb ran over the rune on my arm. “You have it, too, a pull to me, maybe even the ability to sense things about me. Open yourself to this connection, and I suspect you could feel my thoughts the way I feel yours. A dangerous bond for a king to have, love. You might learn exactly how to break me.”

All gods. I’d absorbed the magic from the Ever King’s talisman. I didn’t understand it all, but the truth of it burned in my breast—I was his mantle, the amplified power of the Ever.

A groove of disappointment furrowed between his brows, and he took a step back. “That’s what this is, Songbird. This pull is nothing but an unwitting bond.”

He took another step from me. I glared at him, annoyed. Bond be damned, nothing felt so perfectly in place as his hands on me, and I should scream and curse the gods for such a twist of my fate. Every kiss, every touch, every moment of longing was a knife in the backs of my friends, my family.

Erik dragged his fingers through his thick hair. He was leaving. It turned my stomach in sick.

From the first moment I laid eyes on the boy king, kneeling and defeated before the sea folk were locked away, I wanted to know him. Before the mantle. Before the rune mark. Before it all, I’d wanted to know him.

I was a traitor to my own people because I still wanted him. All of him. I reached for the king, curling a hand on the back of his neck.

A grin twisted the corner of his mouth. “Careful what lines you cross, Songbird.”

“Those lines will change nothing.”

“Still detest me then?”

“Still plan to keep me captive?”

Erik slid his hands along the curve of my waist, and he dipped his face alongside my cheek. “I have many plans for you in my head right now.

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