The king stepped between his companions toward me. My heart pounded from the intensity in his eyes. They consumed me wholly, roaming from the hem of my skirt upward with deliberate intent until they met my own.
I slid my hand into his as he escorted me down the last few steps.
He held my gaze, speechless.
“Wow!” Tarrin said. I broke the gaze to see the king’s second-in-command grinning at me.
“Wait for us in the other room,” the king said, keeping his attention on me.
I’m not sure what came over me, but once we were alone, I took a step back from the king, released his hand, and showcased myself to him with a slow, dramatic turn. His shoulders rose with his breath, and my own flutters multiplied with every moment he drank me in.
He closed the gap between us. Even with heels on, I had to tilt my head up to meet his burning gaze. Those flutters deepened into something different. Bringing a hand up, his thumb grazed my cheek as he said, “You look resplendent, Nyleeria.”
I would have smiled at him using that word,resplendent—there were times when his diction couldn’t mask his age. But there was something in his tempestuous gray-blue eyes that swept away any thoughts beyond that moment.
I slid my hands to his waist, feeling his muscled body through the finery. His deep, earthy scent encased me as he leaned in closer.
“Pardon the interruption, Your Majesty, they’re here,” a voice said from the doorway Tarrin and Nevander had exited through.
The king and I stayed still for a moment until he took a slight step away, taking his hand from my cheek and placing it on the small of my back.
Ushering me forward, he said, “After you.”
As we entered the room, my breath caught. I would have stoppeddead in my tracks if the king’s steady hand wasn’t still firmly in place, urging me forward.
Two fae males stood on a small, raised landing. My mind began cataloging every detail. They looked humanoid, as had been described to me, but also not. There was something intrinsically ethereal about them, but I couldn’t articulate it. Otherworldly, maybe? Or perhaps it was the unseen glow of divinity still coursing through their veins.
I wished I had the luxury to stare at my leisure and take in all that was similar and different between our people.People—was that even the correct term?
“Your Majesty,” the taller fae said with a slight bow, dark-mahogany-brown hair sliding forward from the movement.
“Well met,” the king said. “Welcome to my lands, my home.”
“An honor.”
“Is this your first time valenning?” the light-haired fae asked. There was no emotion or judgment in his words. In fact, it was a polite question given the history of the veil and our well-known ignorance of the fae and their magic.
A shiver ran through me at the thought. Nevander had explained to me what valenning was. Apparently, some of the fae possessed the power to jump through time and space, a form of teleportation.
“It is. For all of us,” the king said.
“We can each take two at a time. You will be here one moment and at our destination the next,” the dark-haired male said.
A letter had arrived after we’d accepted the invitation explaining as much. The four of us had already discussed that the king and I would go together, while Tarrin and Nevander would travel—or valen, I supposed—separately. This form of transport was more efficient, but it also prevented us from traveling to the Summer Court by ground—or learning its exact location.
The fae closest to me stepped forward, offering his hand. I hesitated, my every instinct recoiled at the gesture, at this strange being towering over me. The king put his hand in mine as he stepped up tothe landing. I squeezed it hard, allowing him to be my tether once more as I accepted the fae’s hand.
“Ready?” the fae asked once my hand was firmly in his.
The king looked at me, allowing me to decide when it was okay to leave. I gave a tight nod, knowing there would be no amount of time that would make meready.
The fae summoned his power around him, which looked faintly like heat waves wafting from the summer ground. I clenched my jaw, bracing myself as the power flowed and danced in a natural rhythm that seemed as much a part of him as the hand I held, and my own power deep within stirred in its presence. Then the air around us pushed in until, suddenly, the room ceased to exist.
One blink, we were in the palace, and the next, we were in a place wholly foreign.
The air was different. Warmer. Humid. It smelled of hot summer heat beginning to yield to the evening air. It was what I would have expected at the apex of summer back home, not on the solstice which was two months prior.
Taking in my surroundings, the male that had valenned us said, “May I?”
