“Shut up.” Lilac barely heard him over her own heartbeat. She didn’t register the musicians exchanging confused glances and halting their instruments, the entire room freezing to watch them. All she wanted was to be in Garin’s arms. To sit in his lap, straddling him and the throne, her throat exposed, dress drooping.
She wanted to comfort and be comforted—to be cured from this dastardly spell put on them both, even if doing so meant accepting a most wicked fate. She imagined him fucking her with his teeth inside her again until she cried out, wanted to nuzzle into the spot where his neck met his shoulder and taste him, a flood of his own memories pouring out. To know him, the story of his mother and the secret apothecary under the brothel, the one that helped women.
Lilac took a step toward the table, her body flooding with warning adrenaline.
“Your Majesty.” Piper was suddenly there, shouldering Rupert out of the way and beaming with wide, alarmed eyes. There was a sharp pinch on her forearm.
“Ow,” Lilac snapped, yanked from her trance. The rest of the room came into focus. The only ones moving were Myrddin, precariously picking his way through the crowd along the right- hand wall, and Yanna and Isabel who made their way over from the desserts table. Disbelievingly, Lilac watched the warlock stride up to Garin, gripping the vampire’s arm and jolting him from his unruly stare.
When Garin’s hungry gaze finally snapped onto Myrddin, the pressure left her body. Emotion poured into the hole his stare had drilled into her.
Whispers erupted in the Grand Hall.
“How are you doing, Your Majesty?” Piper said under her breath, gripping Lilac at her elbow. “What can I bring you? A stiff drink? A warm croissant? A bucket of ice to dunk your head into, perhaps? Anything to stop the both of you from eye-fucking each other across the ballroom.”
She exhaled, desperate to compose herself. Sheneededto get away from him, even if for a moment. A breath of air from his pull, lest she go to him. Lest she give in.
“It’s time for a trip to the washroom.” Lilac tugged Piper to the doors. She curtseyed before the tittering crowd and then rushed into the corridor, Yanna and Isabel tagging close behind.
27
GARIN
Whoever gifted Eleanor this wine should be sent to the gallows, or perhaps a dull guillotine. The taste was strange: bitter, then sweet, the savory lingering on his tongue—no combination of fruit he’d ever had. He didn’t consider himself a slave to the bottle by any means, but it usually numbed his thoughts when his instincts were raging. It was why he indulged after every pub brawl he’d broken up, every close encounter he’d had with the Le Tallec hunting troupe, to douse the fire of his adrenaline. It was why he sipped Lorietta’s heaviest scotch when he’d asked Lilac to supper on the night they’d met, so she might not preemptively becomehissupper.
He’d downed half the fucking thing, but it wasn’t enough to dull his senses—nor the scent of her bleed, which made his gums throb. He might’ve felt himself getting drunk, but Garin was still desperate to bury his face between her thighs.
The only thing that remotely helped was fantasizing about smashing Rupert’s skull in.
Garin was the one who had ordered Lilac to go with him out of spite; he knew he’d regret it the moment he’d spoken the words. It wasn’t her fault, yet he couldn’t help the visceral anger that bloomed from watchingthe bastard walk her down those steps, away from him. He’d watched them dance, their bodies awkward yet unsettlingly familiar around one another. They’d conversed with sweet Emma, both their faces red.
It was really none of his business, Garin told himself repeatedly. Lilac was the queen—a free woman, and he wasn’t the type to build a cage around her.
Throat burning, he unwillingly remembered who he’d become under the influence of the Dragondew Mead, and the pulsing music that had filled the halls of The Fool's Folly. That wasn’t him. The completion of their bond had even granted him a strange relief in at least dampening that frightening hunger for her—and the violent voracity that came after drinking from someone who wasn’t her.
It was why he’d encouraged her to take the dance with Rupert. Deep down, he’d wanted to know what it would be to watch her with another. To test himself, to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he could stomach it.
Therein, Garin discovered, lay the problem. It changed nothing. He didn’t begrudge Lilac for taking the dance. He adored her just as much, desired her all the same. He did, however, find the mental image of tossing Rupert out the window for touching what washis,rather comforting.
His stomach growled, his heart aching in its slow, heavy beat. Most of all, he envied Rupert the ability to converse with Lilac about trivial matters so casually, without the lingering bloodlust or worry over an uncertain future.
What did that feel like?
What was it to be human? Twenty-something years with warm blood and a quick-beating heart had not been enough to answer this question. He’d been too preoccupied with throwing himself at the distraction he’d found in Alor’s group of misfits.
Come to think of it, his discomfort had begun at the countess’s unexpected mention of the duke’s son. He’d glared in Lilac’s direction, but all he saw was Bastion lying in the blood-streaked snow. The bodies of the other friends he’d lost to Laurent.
For decades he’d struggled with the change, unable to accept what he had become. There was a period he had fucked and drank his way through the boroughs, reveling in many of the firsts the throes of war had stolenfrom him. Finding The Fenfoss Inn was his solace, his second chance. There, he devoted his endless time to rediscovery, learning and clinging to anything that reminded him of the humanity lurking deep beneath the surface: Their garden, his fae-rooted plants. Assisting Lorietta in her kitchen, indulging when he simply couldn’t help himself—which was often, for his friend was the best chef he knew. Nighttime strolls, which most recently led to Lilac’s balcony. Staring at the forest that had become his fiercely protected home, face basked in moonlight.
Garin prided himself on the person he’d worked on becoming. He was a good man, or at the very least a chivalrous one.
Their thrall bond had undone all of it.
He thought the wine would help quell his anxiety, if not his unending hunger for her. He’d never been more wrong.
Jaw clenched, Garin watched Piper approach Lilac. Her handmaidens were close behind. They were going to leave.Lilacwanted to leave. Good. She was safe, especially with the redhead as much as he hated admitting it. The two had their own unique bond, whether they sensed it or not.
She was in good hands. He’d made a mistake in coming, but he’d left himself no choice?—
