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A surprised laugh escaped me. “You’d readily turn on your partner?”
He scoffed. “There was never a partnership. Only a bargain. One which she broke by not telling me the full truth of who and what you are.” Donn laid a hand over his chest. “I am a male who is merely trying to restore balance, to take back what was stolen from me. That’s all.”
I studied him. “What are you exactly?”
He smiled, and I decided I liked his smile. Even with his cold beauty, his smile warmed me.
“Can you not feel me through your veins, Moira? Have you not felt something similar before?” He stepped closer and took my hands. “I felt your death,” he whispered. “I felt the moment you passed into the mist and the banshee who led you out of the darkness. You have seen the veil, the nothingness and peace death can bring.”
He put his mouth close to my ear and brought me against his body. His skin was warm and packed with a deceptive amount of lean muscle. “I am the nothingness who will give you all the peace you desire. I am the mist you can rest inside when your soul grows weary. I see the pain inside you, the hurt and grief and terror when you look upon your mother’s visage. The emptiness your heart feels when you go to sleep at night. Come with me, Moira. Take my hand, and I will lead you to everlasting peace in my arms. We will rule our lands as benevolent leaders. I will grant your every wish. You will want for nothing. Become my queen, and you will have tranquility for the rest of your days.”
A large part of me was so weary and exhausted inside that I wanted to lean in closer to Donn and allow him to whisk me away to a world of white and gray. There would be no expectations or demands of me, other than as a queen. Could queens ever make mistakes when their kings worshipped the ground they walked upon?
“You just met me,” I whispered, reason beginning to surface inside my addled brain. He offered me everything I ever wanted. Peace and quiet. The absence of pain.
He made a terribly convincing argument.
“I have waited an immortal lifetime for you,” he whispered against my hair. Donn’s hand slid around my waist, the other tangling in my hair. He tilted my chin up and claimed my lips in a searing kiss.
My knees buckled. Donn’s arms tightened around me, leisurely exploring my mouth while my world fell apart around me.
How did an ice king have such a hot mouth? Dear gods. Was I insane?
His fingers tightened in my hair, a delicious pain spreading down my spine. I gasped as Donn pulled me closer, molding our bodies together.
Shit. Shit. Fuck. What in the hell was I doing?
A sharp yelp of pain registered through the haze of pleasure. I tore my mouth away and stepped back, staring at Donn, who was staring at me with wide eyes.
A trill of horrified laughter bubbled up. I’d gone to kill my mother and made out with a god.
Totally normal.
Soren yelped again. I jerked in shock, shaking myself out of my kiss-addled haze.
Donn held a hand up. “Do not answer now. I will find you, Moira. Wherever you are.”
He disappeared in a gray mist. I spun to see my mother and Soren circling each other.
The Lord had shifted back to human. Meaning he was fighting my mother in the nude.
Yes. Today had turned out to be completely normal.
I lurched toward them, fully prepared to rip my mother’s head off, only for a silver light to appear around my mother’s body, turning into ropes of glowing power holding her securely. Her lips pulled from her teeth in a grimace of effort before her eyes widened.
A second later, she fell over into a dead faint.
“A gift,” Donn’s voice whispered through the air. “For my future bride.”
Soren’s snarl of rage shattered my shock.
I bent over, put my hands on my knees, and began to laugh.
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
“You didn’t kill her?” Evie mused.
