“I love you too, and I have a feeling I’ll enjoy it as much as you.” She pressed a kiss to his chest. “How long do I need to wear it?”
His hand stroked her stomach. “A few hours to start.”
She balked.Hours? Tostart?
“Let me wash you, and then we’ll eat,” Rennick proposed.
She nodded, feeling the exhaustion, and spoke against his neck. “Only if I can wash you, too.”
Later that night, as they lay in bed with Amelia tucked snuggly under Rennick’s arm, he brought up the one name she’d rather never hear again. “We need to talk about Ora.”
Her irritation rose at the thought. “I’m not sorry for how I acted.”
“You shouldn’t be. I would have forced her out of the palace already, but I didn’t want to take that opportunity away from you.”
On the one hand, Amelia appreciated him honoring their agreement about telling Ora together, but on the other hand, it would have been intoxicating to see her disgraced in front of the entire dining hall after her thinly veiled attempts to usurp her.
Amelia tipped her head up to see Rennick’s face. “We’re meeting her tomorrow at four, correct?”
“Yes, after my meetings. Do you know what you want to say?”
“I thought ‘Get the fuck out of our home’ would suffice.” She craned her neck more to gauge his reaction and grinned when he laughed with abandon.
His fingers ran a soothing path down the length of her arm, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Let me know where you’llbe tomorrow, and I’ll walk you to my study when my meetings are over.”
It was cute, seeing a hulking fae king who killed people because he felt like it want to walk her somewhere like a teenage schoolboy. An unexpected pang soured her stomach at everything they’d missed out on because she was human.
“If I were fae and grew up in one of the fae kingdoms, would we have met sooner?”
For the longest time, he said nothing, and she worried she’d asked a stupid question. Finally, he exhaled loudly. “When a royal hears their mate’s name, they locate them and, if they are from a different kingdom, the mate and their family move to the royal’s kingdom, but not always.”
“It doesn’t seem fair to ask them to uproot their lives when they can’t marry until they’re twenty-five, anyway.”
“Twenty-two,” he corrected. “Most royals marry their mates when they turn twenty-two.”
Another hit. “Either way, asking someone to leave their friends and other family isn’t fair.”
“It’s not,” he agreed, “but it’s for their own safety and the preservation of the royal bloodlines.”
Right. Because royal mates possessed a strong magical bond needed to create stronger heirs.
So much had happened in one day, which made her realize it’d only been a handful of days since meeting Rennick in person. She didn’t even know what his father looked like. She didn’t feel the bond, yet she loved him from years of letters and the days they’d spent together since. But he’d had no way of falling in love with her as a person over the years. Watching her sometimes didn’t give him insight into anything about her other than her looks and daily routine.
He tugged lightly on her hair. “What’s wrong?”
She swallowed, not wanting to sound pathetic. What sane person complained that a beautiful fae king was obsessed withthem, magic or not? “I hate that we missed out on being together for the last twelve years.”
Soft lips brushed against hers. “We have plenty of time to make up for it. Tell me about your friend, Clover,” he said, switching the subject fast enough to be suspicious, but she didn’t want to think too hard about why.
Maybe he’d liked not having her breathing down his neck during his teenage years.
“What do you want to know?”
He adjusted them into a more comfortable position and ran his fingers through her hair. “Did you two grow up together?”
“No.” A memory of the first day she met Clover surfaced. “She didn’t come to the orphanage until after I turned thirteen. I remember thinking how pretty she was and hoping she wasn’t terrible, like Ana and Farrah.”
“Who are Ana and Farrah?”
