Page 14 of How to Marry a Winged King

“I did think of it, but the Lovers are not out tonight,” he admitted.

“Good to know even a king has his limits.”

I counted the Blue Sister’s tiny moons, none of which could be seen unaided. “Unromantic or not, this is incredible,” I murmured, awed. It felt like magic, even more so because it wasn’t magic at all—just a few simple bits of glass, metal, and wood, bringing the heavens closer.

The image slipped out of focus half a minute later, and Tāwhiri showed me how to adjust the telescope to follow the Blue Sister’s path. His fingers brushed mine, sending a swirl of butterflies through me. Our gazes met, and his eyes heated.

Remember the illusion.

I didn’t want to remember it. I wanted this romantic midnight picnic and the beautiful man looking at me with dark-fire eyes to be real. I wanted to be the sort of woman who got courted like this for reasons that had nothing to do with politics or pragmatism. Even though I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t and never would be.

But I let myself pretend, for a little while. What could it hurt, after all? We talked, of everything and yet nothing that truly mattered. I grew more intensely aware of him as the night deepened. The rustle of feathers. The warmth of his body, so close. The sleek profile of his antlers and the starlight glittering in his hair.

But I couldn’t pretend forever, so eventually I swallowed and raised the topic that perched on the tower between us like an invisible lion-drake.

“Say I did agree to marry you. How would that work?” I faced him head-on.

“We would pledge our troth before the Golden Wood—”

“No. After that. A human queen on the throne? The twelve houses outraged?”

“The court will have to accept my choice. You will be queen, and they will not be able to change it. Do you really care whether they are outraged? They will survive the feeling, I’m sure.” He said this with the easy confidence of someone who has never lacked power. It was terribly tempting to be persuaded by it, even though I thought he was being dangerously optimistic about his court’s reaction.

I pressed on. “And what about children? Would you want them? Half-human children, inheriting the Golden Wood?” Heat flushed my cheeks, but I kept my shoulders straight. These weren’t idle questions. Better this mad bargain fall apart now if they couldn’t be answered.

Tāwhiri spread his wings. “I am not pure sidhe, my lady. My mother was a bird-woman, and I can name a dozen other fae races in my family tree. There’s even some human in the mix already. I have always attributed the strength of my house’s bloodline to that diversity.”

I hadn’t known that Tāwhiri had a human ancestor. Did Lord Bloodthorn know? Though I supposed he’d always been willing to overlook ‘undesirable’ traits for the sake of royalty.

It was a reassuring answer, but it also completely avoided the thing that had prompted me to ask in the first place. Children required certain prerequisite activities.

“So, you’d want children, then? With me.”

The heat returned to his gaze. “I … Yes. One day. Is that something you would want?” His voice sounded huskier than normal.

I took off the mask because I couldn’t bear this anymore. It lay starkly white against the stone. I leaned down and removed my glass slippers one by one, setting them carefully on the stone with matching clinks.

“You should kiss me,” I said without looking up.

There was a shocked silence from the other half of the tower.

“You can talk about it in this bloodless manner all you like, but marriage isn’t just a balanced list of advantages and disadvantages. Children don’t spring fully formed out of the ground, you know.” I spoke to my feet, babbling a bit, but determined to make my point now I’d gotten up the courage to start. “We have to have some degree of physical compatibility. I know I’m not much to look at, but if you can’t bear to touch me without some pure-blood sidhe illusion, then better to know that now, before—”

Cool fingers beneath my chin, tilting my face up.

“My own illusions don’t work on me,” he said, and kissed me.

I don’t have words for how it was, that first time. Word and thought had been knocked clean out of me, as if language itself had ceased to have meaning.

I’d read about kisses and listened avidly to Acantha’s salacious gossip on the subject. Speculated interestedly late at night in the privacy of my attic. None of that had prepared me for the raw physicality or the way my body would react, suddenly a stranger to me. A wild, sensual stranger.

He tasted of nixie wine, his tongue leading a dance far more intimate than the one from the ballroom earlier. My hands dug into the lapels of his coat, pulling him closer. The heat of him blazed against me, and I wondered what his bare skin would feel like beneath all the layers of clothing and was simultaneously shocked at myself for wondering such a thing. My thoughts ran fever-hot, unable to form into anything longer or more complicated than more, closer, yes.

His arms wrapped around me, and then his wings, filling the space with the spice-scent of feathers. The movement startled me enough to pull back. I stared at him, breathless and thrumming, as dazed as a punch-drunk kererū.

My only comfort was that Tāwhiri seemed just as affected, even though I suspected he’d kissed a great many more people than I. His eyes were a bit wild, his long hair messy where I’d buried my hands in it. The newly rebellious bit of myself that seemed to hold all kinds of previously unknown ambitions and desires said, smugly: good.

We drank each other in under the starlight. My lips felt swollen.