In the distance—in another realm entirely—I was conscious of the sound of footsteps. If Veyka noticed, she gave no sign.She’d gone to that feral place of pleasure that made me wish she’d been born a terrestrial just so I could see her beast form.
She screeched more fiercely than any hellcat, her claws so sharp in my scalp that I caught the tang of my own blood in the air. I tried to draw it out, determined to block out the world of responsibilities as long as possible. But my demanding queen was having none of it. She gripped the sides of my head, forcing my mouth over her clit and holding it there. Who was I to deny her?
I sucked her clit into my mouth, flexed my thumb inside of her, and it was all over. She came careening into her climax, pussy pulsing against my mouth and her insides gripping me with insistent demand.
Fuck, I needed to be inside of her.
But I’d barely stumbled to my feet, face still slick with her pleasure, when the door behind us swung open.
Lyrena stood in the doorway, eyes glazed over with residual lust from overhearing our fucking.
“If you’ve quite finished,” she managed, garbling the words. “The fighting has already begun.”
Veyka followed Lyrena out of the Dyad’s roost at the top of the Cloud Tower, the stairway slithering away below us like a serpent. The haze of lust cleared with every heavy step on unforgiving stone, leaving behind a new reality.
I have a son.
Mordred had not flinched when Morgause made her declaration. He’d known I was his father. I had grown up with the curse of my power, knowing that the specter of my birthhung heavy over my mother and my family. Mordred had lived his three or four decades alone with that curse.
Ancestors, I did not even know how old he was. A great fucking father I was going to be.
That was how inconsequential my interactions with Morgause had been. I could not even pinpoint between which war or conquest they had happened. My years as the Brutal Prince, my life before Veyka, it was a patchwork of death and blood and an occasional fuck to take the edge off of my physical needs.
Veyka had asked what I wanted and I’d given her the truth.
Before her, the concepts of love and family were more than foreign. They were abhorrent. A weakness. Another way I could be hurt and completely antithetical to the identity I’d chosen for myself as the Brutal Prince. But loving Veyka, choosing her, changed everything.
I’d expected her to rage. I had no doubt that she would punish Morgause for springing Mordred’s existence upon us. But with me she’d been… gentle. Loving. Perfect.
I had ripped the sheets from her bed and burned them because Parys had dared to even lay on them. That felt like a lifetime ago. I could not say that my reaction would have been any different now.
Veyka, Morgause, Parys… my mind tried to distract me from dealing with the feelings in my heart. I had a son.
Not with Veyka. Not a child. Grown. Whole. Perfect.
Perfect?I had not even exchanged a full sentence with the male. But I wanted to.
A year ago, if Morgause had sprung Mordred upon me, I would have walked away. Perhaps arranged for him to go to Eilean Gayl and spend time with my mother and father, if I was feeling particularly generous. But a year had changedeverything. I was High King. Husband. Mate. I knew how to love. And despite the inconvenience of it, I wanted to love my son.
Which was precisely why Morgause had chosen this moment to drop the knowledge of Mordred’s existence upon me—when she could use my son as a weapon.
34
VEYKA
I knew that in the terrestrial kingdom, the heir was determined through battle. Gwen had briefly described how she’d fought dozens of other females to the death to win the honor. Only to have it all taken away when Arthur was murdered.
I’d even heard the grumbling in Eilean Gayl about how Arran had circumvented the traditional process. Our engagement had been rushed to ensure the security of Annwyn, and only one male in the terrestrial kingdom merited no challenge.
But I knew nothing of the Pit.
The smell alone was enough to defeat many warriors. Thousands of years of blood and decaying bodies had sunk so deep into the stone that there was no washing it away. And it was right there in the center of Cayltay, where no one living within the fortress would be able to avoid it.
At least it was open to the sky above.
At the top, the roughly circular pit gaped about a hundred feet wide. Three levels descended concentrically, each smaller than the last. The final level was at least forty feet below the flat ground of the inner bailey.
The edges of the Pit were already lined with terrestrials.
