If there was anything I’d learned while working with powerful men, it was that their arrogance often masked their incompetence. I smirked, imagining the mighty king “completely and utterly” incompetent in bed. Whether or not itwas true, didn’t matter. Just imagining him fumbling between the sheets, unable to find a woman’s clit cheered me up.
“I’m sure you’d be pretty useless to me too, despite your pretty dick,” I muttered softly under my breath.
I was sure he wouldn’t hear me, but he unexpectedly jerked his head my way. This time, he ran a long, measuring look down my frame, taking in my bare feet, soggy clothes, salt-spiked hair, and whatever was left of my makeup after that mad swim in the ocean.
Leaving Leslo behind, the king strolled my way, and I learned firsthand the unsettling effect of his undivided attention.
A swell of power rolled from him, compressing the air like the first wave of an explosion. It felt so real, I was forced to retreat a step. After yet another step, I came to my senses, willing my feet to stop and stand my ground.
“What do you know?” he mused, tilting his head to the side as if studying a curious insect. “This butterfly can speak.”
He stopped about a step away from me, fisting his hands at his sides. The reflection of the water in the pool cast an ever-changing pattern of light on his skin, bringing out that enthralling shimmer along the ridges of his muscles. From this close, he looked even more different, not just from Leslo and me, but even from the men who had brought us here.
The king’s entire body appeared to be coated in a thin layer of glass, flexible and translucent. Light bounced off it, bringing out a shimmer far more brilliant than even the pearlesque glow of his people. His hair was both colorless and of all colors at once as the strands shattered light into prismatic rainbows. His irises possessed the same quality too, looking like liquid diamonds with a million facets each.
“I’m not a butterfly,” I protested, finally finding my voice again. “I’m not some chattel you can just bargain away in a deal.You have no right to decide my fate without even asking me what I think about it all.”
The king arched an elegant eyebrow.
“Alright,” he said evenly. “Whatdoyou think about the deal thebrackis offering me? Would you like me to take his offer? Do you want to stay in my glass palace with me?”
His deep, lyrical voice rolled over me like an ocean swell—warm and lazy, but with a hidden danger likely lurking in its depths.
Breathing through apprehension tightening in my chest, I dragged my eyes up to his face, to those sharp as diamonds eyes framed by long, translucent eyelashes. The iridescent waves of his hair cascaded down his broad shoulders. The breeze, trapped between the palace’s glass walls, swayed his long tresses.
He was breathtakingly, unbelievably beautiful, like a mythical creature or a vision. But then, a corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk, giving his ethereal beauty a very human, cocky expression.
He was waiting for my reply. That didn’t mean he’d give any weight to it, but at least he seemed ready to hear me out.
“I don’t want to stay here,” I said loud and clear. “I was kidnapped, taken against my will. I demand to be released and provided with transportation back home. Um, no...” I contemplated for a moment, “To Los Angeles, please.”
Maybe the miracle could still happen, and I could make it in time for the hearing? Though the hearing, the airport, as well as all my life prior, somehow felt far away now, like a memory of a long vanished dream.
The smirk on the king’s face sharpened, gaining a lethal quality.
“How cute of you to think you can demand anything of me, little human,” he mused, toying with my misery.
“Prick,”I snapped, but only in my head for now, somehow finding the strength to remain diplomatic for the sake of my freedom.
“Leslo abducted me,” I insisted out loud. “As the ruler of this land, don’t you have laws that protect people’s fundamental right of freedom? He can’t own me.”
“And yet, he does,” the king said matter-of-factly. “He took you. You belong to him now. Fortunately, I don’t have the displeasure of interacting with Ghata’sbracksoften, but I know that if they take anything on the orders of their goddess, they don’t ever release it until they get what they want. You have less control over your life now than a small fish in shark-infested waters. I don’t know where or whatLos Angelesis, but I can assure you, you’ll never see it again. This is Nerifir, the land of fae. Our magic is often deadly to humans. Your kind doesn’t belong here. At least human life is short. Whatever thebrackdoes with you, you won’t live long to suffer.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice as if imparting a great secret to me, “You will not survive here.”
Maybe deep inside his handsome head, he genuinely believed he was helping me get a grasp on my new reality. But to me, every word felt like a slap in the face, demeaning and patronizing, and the calm indifference with which he described my bleak future and untimely death made it infinitely worse. He told me I’d suffer and die, yet he wouldn’t lift a finger to do anything about it.
A soft blow of breeze sent the fragrant, shimmering curtain of his luxurious hair across my face.
The anger inside me had finally boiled over. Defiance flamed through my chest. I shot my hand up, grabbing a handful of his silky, illustrious tresses and rotated my wrist, winding a coil of his hair around my arm.
He jerked his head back with a flash of pure panic in his eyes. It was brief, but I didn’t miss it. For a fraction of a moment, I managed to wipe that condescending indifference off his face and replace it with genuine fear.
Straining his neck to keep his head away from me, he froze in a wide stance with his arms spread aside, as if afraid I’d zap him if he touched me. Looking stunned by my action, he made no attempt to free his hair from my grip.
“You know nothing about me, you arrogant snob,” I hissed the insult into his royal face, savoring the sound of every syllable. “If you or that prick you callbrackthink you've got yourself a ‘cute little human’ for a pet to parade around on a leash, you both are sorely mistaken. I’ll fight each or both of you, I don’t give a shit when I’m cornered. I don’t care what you’ll do to me or how long it’ll take for me to escape you, but I will survive this. I’ll surviveyou. And I’ll find a way to return home. Mark. My. Words.” I punctuated each word with a firm tug on his hair.
After each tug, he moved a little further away from me, his hair slipping between my fingers like the finest silk. His eyes opened wider. His lips parted, drawing a long, full breath that expanded his broad chest. The skin on his high cheekbones appeared to glow especially brightly as his eyes sparked with life.
This was the most animated, unguarded expression I’d seen on him yet, brought forth by a raw emotion that he either forgot to hide or didn’t feel like hiding for once.
