“Says the male who was just on his ass,” I bit back. I lowered my axe, returning it to the notch on my belt. My control had snapped so quickly, I did not even recall drawing it. Instincts were one thing. Loss of control was another. Who had I become, that the mere threat of injury—an injury she could surely have healed from—had rendered the control I’d fought hundreds of years to master utterly useless? What was it about this female that unhinged every carefully moored tether of control?
“Not for long. Never for long.” Barkke chuckled, retracting his hand and running it through his overlong hair. A few shades lighter than mine, it was just as long. He’d let his beard grow out, thicker than ever. But other than that, he looked the same as he always had. And he elicited the same feelings in me. Mostly annoyance, but buried deep within me, there was a grain of affection.
Not that I planned on showing it to him. I scowled. He just smiled broader. Ass.
“Come to claim your prize?” he said, nodding to the center of the ring.
She was not feigning any sort of indifference. She watched our exchange closely, the blazing blue fire in her eyes only slightly dimmed.
“I am not a prize to be won,” she snapped. As she spoke, she reached her arms overhead, sliding the twin rapiers into their sheaths across her back with practiced ease. “Nor did either of you do any winning.”
I felt the tick in my jaw, clenching my teeth together to still it. “He had you. I only intervened—”
“I know why you intervened,” she said sharply. “I had him, and I had you.”
Her eyes were still glowing. I knew that if there’d been a mirror to hand, I’d have seen black fire in mine as well.
“Spar with me.”
Barkke had melted back, leaving Veyka and I staring each other down in the center of the training courtyard with two dozen terrestrials looking on. There was nothing to be gained by sparring. We valued strength above all else. If the High King and Queen dueled, one of us would beat the other, and that would leave the other diminished in the eyes of their subjects. But I didn’t take it back.
Something inside of me wanted to tangle with her. Not just sexually, though my cock was tight at the mere thought. But I wanted to test myself against her, to see if my body would move in complement to hers. I suspected that it might.
Her chin cut a sharp, straight horizontal line through the brisk air. “No.”
I stepped closer—compelled, again. My beast, the mating bond, the lust that was burning in my cock, it did not matter which of them was in charge. They were all in agreement as I lifted one eyebrow. “Afraid?”
Veyka threw back her head and laughed, planting her hands on her generous hips. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“You could try,” I growled.
“I would succeed.” Her voice slid over me like a lover’s touch. The sultry whisper, for me alone, slid past every defense I had. Her eyes flared—she knew. She fucking knew how easily she was able to get inside of me, to appeal to my beast and my baser instincts.
“Prove it.”
Her tumultuous eyes flashed once more, then shuttered. There was the cool, calculated façade I’d expected from theQueen of the Elemental Fae. She lifted her chin a fraction of an inch, determination set in every line of her pale, angular face. “Not here.”
“Not here,” I repeated, under my breath.
Because she got to choose. She understood the stakes, better than I ever hoped to. The last few months of my life were completely blank. Yule had just passed. But my last memory was of a war camp on the eastern edge of Wolf Bay. Months and months ago. Now, King Arthur was dead, I was mated and High King, and there was more. I could feel it in my mother’s gaze, in Veyka’s careful aloofness. There was more at stake here than I could puzzle out, and I knew nothing.
I was so fucking angry.
I drew my battle axe. “Here. Now.”
I did not care if it was a mistake. I did not care if it was politically infantile. I wanted to make her suffer the way I was suffering. I wanted to make everyone suffer. I tensed my muscles, ready to spring forward—
She disappeared.
Gone.
My axe did not even have a chance to fall before I felt her, my senses filling with primrose and plum a second before she reappeared at my side.
She grabbed my arm. The beast inside of me howled his approval at the contact, the blood in my veins rushing at such speed I could hear it in my ears. My entire being narrowed to that point of contact, everything else melting away. Not quite pain, but something close to agony. Memories swirled through my vision. A barren valley, a half-remembered male face. Pain. Such unbearable pain…
I forced my eyes open, unwilling to lose myself to the pain again.
But there was nothing to see but the swirling black void.
