Black Rose Fae by T. H. Hann & Teresa Hann

Author:T. H. Hann & Teresa Hann [Hann, T. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“—Rhos?”

I stirred. Mel was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, looking concerned.

“Sorry,” I said. “I…still need some time.”

She nodded in acceptance. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen me like this. “I’ll save some supper for you.”

I lay back down, listening to her retreating footsteps.

I’d taken off the earrings as soon as I’d retreated behind the walls of my rooms, but I could still feel the weight of those beads of iolite, long after I slammed the lid of the jewelry box over them.

How could he make me feel so exposed and raw? Caelus couldn’t even touch me. He came armed with only that golden gaze that sought to strip me naked. That lush mouth curling into a too-knowing smile.

That predator’s instinct for blood.

Blood. That was all I saw when I closed my eyes. Miel in grotesque bloody ruins. The poor stupid courtier with his stupid jackal laugh.

I hadn’t felt horror—or at least, not the kind of horror that the courtiers had experienced. I’d felt elation. Want. My horror was at my overflowing want.

I had slipped. Caelus had seen something of my heart’s desire. He’d marveled at it. Turned it over in his hands. Offered me more.

He was learning how to tempt me. That was the first step in every demon’s bargain.

A rustle in my sheets. Before I could react, Neidr’s snake wrapped around my wrist.

What did he want with me this time? It wasn’t a summons I could refuse, backed up as it was by two sharp little venomous fangs.

Neidr was waiting in the courtyard, as before.

“Calling upon me again so soon?” I didn’t need to restrain my tongue around him, hide my hostility, when he already knew all he needed to know. It was oddly refreshing.

“I saw you at Caelus’s duels today,” Neidr said.

“If you were there, I would have seen you.” I gestured at him, his dark hair and foreign style of dress. “You hardly blend in among the nobles.”

“I was in one of the towers.”

The towers? I remembered now, the shadows of the defensive towers slanting across the courtyard. “And what were you doing there?”

“I live there. I was given rooms there.”

“The most peripheral of the peripheries of the palace. A strange place to house a king’s son.”

“I am only a bastard, and half-lamia at that.” His pale green eyes flicked to around us, the splendid residence that the King’s trueborn son had received. “This is not my lot.”

“Do you resent your brothers, then?” I would not miss my chance to grasp more of his mysterious motives. “Is this what you seek? Supplanting them?”

“Your aims here are transparent. I fear for you if you try to take more active measures like that.”

He accidentally struck home on today’s fears: eyes on me in all directions, dispassionately stripping me bare of all my defenses.

The grain of truth to his assertion only sharpened my temper, the nature of the rose fae that lay buried deep inside me. “Are you underestimating me? You’re the one seeking to use me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.