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The Fae Nobility Try and Guess What Crossbody Has Been Doing for Six Years

Vince

I tugged uncomfortably on my shirt collar as I followed Crossbody through the palace’s many wide, airy corridors.

I fucking hated wearing a suit.

But I hated seeing how nervous Crossbody was even more. I wished I could hold his hand to give him a bit of comfort—which was not something I had ever thought before, about anyone, ever—but I was still supposed to be ‘the butler.’

The ‘butler’ who had fucked his ‘employer’ multiple times over the course of yesterday afternoon and last night. Loudly.

That big, fancy four-poster bed really did creak a lot.

This trip had already been weird as fuck, even though nothing had really happened yet. Or maybe it was weird as fuck because nothing had happened yet. After we’d arrived yesterday, we’d been basically left completely alone, only interrupted by the staff who’d brought us the stuff we asked for.

The queen hadn’t come to see her son. The other two princes hadn’t come to see their brother for the first time in six years. It wasn’t like I wanted Crossbody to have to interact with them if he didn’t want to, but I’d started getting angry about their complete disregard for him. Especially his mother, who had forced him to come back here yet couldn’t even take two fucking minutes to come and greet him.

“It’s normal,” Crossbody had told me drowsily last night when we were in bed, having just finished fucking again. His head had been on my chest as my fingers sifted through his tangled golden hair. “We were never a remotely warm or loving family. It would have been odd if any of them had come to see me.”

“That’s messed up,” I’d muttered. “She forced you to come back here. She wants you here.”

“No, she just wanted to prove that she has complete control over me,” he’d corrected me, absently tracing patterns onto my chest with his fingertips. “None of it is about me as a person. It’s about a thing that she feels she has ownership of not doing exactly what she wants. So she had to correct it.”

“That’s messed up.” I’d seethed quietly.

Last night, after that conversation, I’d been rabidly eager to come face to face with the queen, to hopefully get a chance to give her a piece of my fucking mind, to try and embarrass her. But now, as I followed Crossbody down the corridor, nerves began to creep in as well.

I cracked my neck, shook out my hands and shoved every hint of nerves back down. Fuck that. She wasn’t any kind of queen to me. She was just a shitty parent to the person I was in… I cared about. A normal amount.

I would’ve done this for any of my… friends, right? Taken a week off work and colluded with a bunch of reptilian mobsters to travel to another dimension while pretending to be a butler with the aim of dismantling the hierarchy of an ancient fae lineage so my professional wrestling colleague didn’t have to move back there and become a king?

My throat closed up a little as I looked at Crossbody just ahead of me. The tense set to his shoulders, the way his big, beautiful wings were pulled in tight together with nerves, the waterfall of golden hair shifting over his neck. He was wearing those formal fae clothes again, the fitted tunic and pants and soft leather boots. They made him look otherworldly and magical in a way he never had before.

I, on the other hand, was starting to sweat in this fucking suit. I was tense, already irritated despite waking Crossbody up earlier with a blowjob, and I knew I was going to be the only ghoul in this entire fucking queendom. Nothing about this was going to be remotely enjoyable, and I couldn’t fucking wait until we were back in the human world and never had to come back here again.

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t have done this for just anybody.

“Do you know if they are on their way?” Crossbody asked me in a tight, hushed voice, fiddling almost compulsively with the cuffs of his tunic as we turned the corner and began to approach a set of huge, opulent double doors.

“I’m sure they are,” I murmured, not wanting to remind him that my phone was essentially a brick here, so I had no way of contacting Freddie.

There was no one around, so I briefly took Crossbody’s hand and kissed his knuckles. I heard his breath hitch, and then he was suddenly turning to face me, clutching both my hands in his.

“Vince.” He swallowed, mauve eyes flitting over my face. “If this doesn’t work… If I have to stay, I want to tell you—”

“You won’t.” Deciding I no longer gave a fuck who saw us, I leaned in and planted a firm kiss on his mouth. “You’re not staying here. No fucking way.”

You’re not leaving me.

He exhaled a shaky breath and nodded, still clutching my hands tight. I lifted them to kiss his knuckles again, before we both quickly stepped back and away from each other when the doors abruptly opened.

The staff member blinked at us, then clasped his hands together behind his back and lifted his chin.

“Ah. Prince Elvis. Queen Galantha had just instructed me to retrieve you.” His brow quirked in what almost looked like a warning. “I’m afraid you’re late.”

“My fault,” I jumped in, giving the guy a smirk. “Couldn’t get the prince dressed in time, I’m afraid. Kept getting distracted.”

The staff member’s lips twitched. He gave us a cool nod and turned to lead us into the room.