I should have been frightened by this—and I was a little unnerved—but I couldn’t deny the thrill that ran up my spine. I was about to try to outwit the Seelie King. Sure, he was a throne-stealing bastard, but he’d been clever enough to depose the previous one and hold on to power all this time.
Let’s fucking play.
He leaned his broad frame against the stone archway, mirroring my pose. “Are we on a first-name basis now, Samara?” The grin he gave me was almost playful. “Usually I demand morerespect from my subjects, but I suppose you are basically my daughter-in-law, so allowances can be made.” He winked.
“Am I?” I gave him a lazy smile, even though I didn’t buy his casual and harmless act for a second.
Those cunning eyes studied me. Erendriel had this ageless quality about him. He appeared to be in his early thirties and could have passed for Draven’s older brother, but those eyes . . . there was something ancient about them.
“I didn’t know my bastard son had it in him,” he mused. “Hiding his magic from me all this time.” His gaze dropped to my chest, not in a leering way, but like he could see the connection to Draven. “And one or both of you have enough magic to form a mating bond.” A crease formed between his brows. “You have . . . three bonds. With who, I wonder?”
Mating bond. The words bounced around in my mind even as I kept a bemused expression on my face, as if Erendriel hadn’t just casually solved a major mystery for me.
The strange connections I had with Draven, Roth, and Vail were mating bonds. Holy shit. In my head, I’d occasionally thought of them as my mates, but in name only. I hadn’t thought it was possible that we had a true mating bond like the Fae talked about in their stories.
Draven and I might have been half Fae, but Roth and Vail weren’t. Did my Fae nature make up for that? What else could these bonds do? Moon bless us, please let the books downstairs have at least some explanations.
Erendriel laughed softly. “You’re good. Many in my court would be jealous of your ability to mask your emotions so well.”
“I’d be happy to give them lessons.” My smile widened. “For a price, of course.”
“I see why Serril was so captivated by you. It’s hard to impress him, but he was quite intrigued when he returned. It’swhy I just had to come tonight to see what all the fuss was about.”
The Seelie King tilted his head, causing some of his hair to slide over his shoulder, the silky strands falling to his chest. His dark blue shirt was unbuttoned enough to give me a good view of his extremely well-muscled chest, and the fabric clung to his biceps as he crossed his arms.
It all felt very . . . posed.
“Oh!” I snorted and then covered my mouth as giggles escaped. “Was your plan tonight to seduce me? After acknowledging I had amating bondwith your son? Maybe you should let Draven show you how it’s done. He does the ‘effortlessly gorgeous’ thing a lot better.”
Erendriel straightened, and the charming facade fell like a mask he’d pulled off.
“It seemed worth a try.” He shrugged. “Velika was easy enough to manipulate.”
“What do you want, Erendriel?” I deliberately didn’t use the wordkingto see if it would annoy him. If it did, he hid it well.
“You by my side. As my queen.”
I waited for him to laugh. He did not.
“First, no. As you noted, I already have a few mating bonds—and I’m quite happy with all of them.” Okay, maybe not the Vail part of it, but whatever. “And before you ask again, you should know I cut the head off the last man who tried to force me to marry him.” I narrowed my eyes. “Secondly, why?”
It had to be my bloodline. He must have only recently learned that my father had been the son of the previous Seelie King. The question was, how? And what precisely did he want me for? To get into places like this?
“Mating bonds can be broken.”
Dread hit me, and I knew I’d failed to keep it off my face. I had no intention of breaking my mating bond with Draven andRoth, and as soon as I could figure out how to share it with Kieran and Alaric, I would be doing so.
Vail . . . I had no idea what I was going to do about Vail. I was still feeling kind of stabby towards him.
Luckily, Erendriel was looking over my shoulder to the stairs below, so he missed all the misgivings in my expression. “Whatever you find in here will not give you the answers you seek. This place was built by the Unseelie Princes—and they are liars.”
Are. Not were. The Unseelie Fae were still alive. At least Erendriel believed them to be.
“And you’ll tell me nothing but the truth, right?” I huffed, slipping back into a mask of haughty indifference to not even hint at what information Erendriel had just given away.
His gaze snapped back to me.
“Join me, and I’ll take care of your aunt for you. The crown has no control over my mind, but it will tell you if I’m lying or not.” He placed his hands on either side of the archway, leaning forward until only a few inches and the thin boundary of the ward separated us. “Right now, you’re a queen in name only. Let me make you one legitimately. Right now, the Moroi and the other Moon Blessed are just children stumbling around in the dark and hoping to not get eaten by the monsters.”
