“Frightening?” he guesses, revealing pointed canines.
That flash of teeth sends an electrical impulse barreling down my throat, which flares to a full-blown wildfire the moment it hits my belly. Yes, he’s frightening. Terrifying, even. And yet every second spent staring upward pries my mind apart a little wider. How have I spenttwenty-eight years in a world that contains creatures like this, and never realized?
Silence tightens between us. The goblin’s focus travels over the high collar of my dress, the buttons beneath my chin, the loose fall of my hair. After half a century, he drags his gaze back to mine. It lands like a blow, the reverberations rattling in my bones.
Run, my brain screams.
I almost do. Iwantto, so badly my legs quiver. But if I flee, this goblin will catch me, and I don’t trust him not to tear me apart with those wicked teeth.
“You’re…intimidating,” I squeeze out, then widen my feet in an attempt to convince them to stay in contact with the ground. “But you’re not so scary that I’m going to run.”
He crosses his arms, displaying biceps roughly the same diameter as my thighs. “No?”
“No.” Nerves boil in my stomach. “I mean, I’m standing here, aren’t I?”
His low chuckle roughens the air. Those eyes—goddess, are theyglowing?—take another detour downward, consuming every inch of me, from my head to my toes and back again. He doesn’t move, but something about his stillness crackles with energy, like he could burst into motion at any moment. Uncage all the strength coiled in those sculpted limbs and use it to force me into submission.
“Youarestanding here,” he says. “Impressive. Most humans can’t manage it.”
“Well, youdidjust make me promise not to run.”
“That doesn’t usually stop people.”
I frown. He holds my eyes without blinking, and goddess, the look on his face ishungry. Greedy enough to steal the pauses between my heartbeats and collapse my insides to a frenetic buzz.
I have to get away. Stop him from sizing me up like I’m his next meal. “Look,” I say. “I have somewhere to be, so how about I turn around and walk away now? I can do it slowly, if that helps.”
An avid light flickers in his eyes. “No. You’re not goinganywhere yet.”
My breath leaves me in a rush. “But…why not? What could you possibly want with me?”
His violet tongue swipes across his pointed teeth. “In this form? I don’t think you actually want to know, Princess. Your kind is so easily scandalized.”
A spark of annoyance flares. Scandalized? Why, because we humans have common decency, unlike the fae? Because our morals prevent us from accosting people in their own gardens?
“Either you can let me go,” I say, “or you can tell me what you want andthenlet me go.”
He considers. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But you won’t like it.”
“It doesn’t matter if I like it. I have to get to the throne room. Now. I’m already late.”
“All right.” He leans in, a flagrant violation of my personal space. His scent wafts into my nose—cold metal and oiled leather and something else, something I have no name for. “If you really care to know, Princess, deep down, in this frozen, blackened heart of mine, Idowant you to run. Because I want so badly to chase you. I want to follow that delicious smell of yours until I catch you, and then I want to pin you down and eat you up. I want to make youscream.”
A shudder rips through me, forceful enough to hurt. I can’t tell if he just threatened me with violence or…something else.
“What’s more,” he continues, his focus falling to my mouth, “if we were in the Wildwood, I would’ve done it. I would’ve snuck up on you and let you run. And when I caught you, I would’ve done what my nature demands. But lucky for you, we’re not in the Wildwood right now. We’re in Aethrolia, where me hunting you down would cause…problems.”
I stand frozen, barely able to formulate a thought, much less a coherent question. Somehow, after half a lifetime, my lips remember how to move. “Do you threaten to hunt down every human you meet?”
That earns me a dark, scorched chuckle. “No. Just you. Shadows take me, do you know how long I’ve waited to find a scent like yours? Years. Lifetimes.Centuries.”
Fear wraps cold fingers around my airway and squeezes.Isthis the fae king, then? The violet patterns swirling across his skin make it hardto tell, but the longer I look, the more I recognize the shine of his eyes, the brutal slash of his mouth. And if this is Amriel who’s singled me out, if he just caught my scent here the same way he did in the receiving hall, if something about it speaks to him…
Oh, goddess.
I shake my head, trying to banish the possibility. Surely this isn’t the fae king, but merely his Shadow, the one our cook spoke of all those times. I rake my gaze over him, searching for confirmation, but the covetousness in his expression—the way his nostrils flare as if dragging every last particle of my scent into his lungs—has me longing for a place to hide.
If only he would shift, show me some unfamiliar face thatdoesn’thold the power to steal me away from my home. “Let me see your other form,” I whisper. “Your fae one.”
