IN HINDSIGHT, THIS WHOLE THING could’ve gone a bit smoother.
Instead of securing forces through a politically advantageous marriage I have a bride-to-be who fainted at the first sight of me. A very worried Lysan royal family when they heard their only daughter was being taken to see one of my healers. Once they found out they were going to check-in on Myrkorvin’s queen-to-be they had turned incredulous.
None more so than Garren. The prick. Who I thought was going to try and strangle me the moment the guards brought us all into my private meeting quarters. I’d love to see him try. To get a chance to repay his cowardice. Future in-laws be damned.
Princess Elveena is currently occupying the next room over. There was so much that happened between her fainting and me being here with her family that I barely got a chance to process the fact that I was holding her in my arms. She’s a tiny thing. Lithe, with small curves and delicate features. She weighed absolutely nothing in my arms and I had to suppress a growl when the healers came and took her away.
Which is something I am choosing not to examine too closely. Or the fact that even the blue hue I had her mask enchanted to display so I could easily find her tonight was something I did not need. Pure instinct drew me to find the princess as she emerged outside of the castle.
Due to that, I am taking it as a sign from the free magic and the First Gods that my plan, though deceitful, was necessary and this is their way of blessing it. Or so I hope.
The king and queen of Lysan cut opposing figures. Queen Mirella’s face is so much like her daughter’s. But where Elveena is playful, Mirella is guarded. Her royal mask in place. As is Orvian’s. Their younger son Briar is sitting, fiddling with a loose string on his tunic. He has not said a word since they were informed that Elveena is to be my bride. To be honest, no one in the royal family has really said much.
Except for Garren, who sits simmering with rage in the corner. Even his mate seems unsure what to do. Going from leaning against the wall, to sitting, to standing. I know the silence is making them uncomfortable and truthfully, I should be the one to break it. Wylan had wanted to speak to me before I talked to the Lysan royals but I had been too preoccupied with making sure Elveena was okay.
He was always better at diplomacy than me and now I wish I had made time to hear him out.
“So what does this mean?” King Orvian speaks quietly. “For my daughter? For you? For our kingdoms?”
“The rules of the Night are simple,” I find myself saying. My voice sounds sharp even to my own ears. “Your daughter participated. She was chosen and the bargain was struck. She will be my wife and queen of Myrkorvin. The free magic has willed it.”
“Free magic?” Garren laughs without humor. “Or one of your foul tricks. This was obviously some sick ploy to get us here. Tell us what you want and hand us back my sister and we will be on our way.”
His gold eyes are hard. The face of a proud prince is now twisted into a sneer. Deep inside me, a growl is loosened. I bare my teeth at him and he rears back. I know he’s remembering that day. Of what I can do if I do not keep myself in check.
“Watch how you speak to me, prince. You do not give me orders.”
“Garren,” King Orvian says, “if you cannot speak to the king with respect you will be removed from these rooms. I will not have your outbursts harming your sister.”
“You are the one who insisted she attend, Father. You sent your precious Elvie here to be a lamb for the slaughter! So do not lecture me on keeping her safe when it is your fault we are in this position in the first place.”
“Garren,” Queen Mirella says, rising to her feet to stand beside her husband. Her voice is soft but there is no mistaking the warning in it. “Speak again and I will have you removed.”
Garren swallows and his mate leads him back to the chair she has vacated for the fifth time. I smirk at that, how quickly he is dismissed by his parents. How the power he has is only his if they allow it.
Not absolute like mine. That makes my smirk deepen as his face turns a disturbing shade of purple.
“King Arkain, I implore you king to king, to break this bargain between you and my daughter. If it is an alliance you want, you have it. But please do not keep her here, she is no more than a child. You know what keeping her here will—”
“You will forgive me, King Orvian, if your promise of alliance does not hold much sway with me. I remember the last dark elf king who thought you could be relied upon.” I cut a glare towards Garren, his blunt fingers digging into the dark wood of the chair. “The princess was chosen as my bride. It could’ve been anyone who participated, but the magic pushed me towards her. How are we to argue with what the gods decide?”
“And how are we to believe that you found my daughter purely through chance and not through deceit?” Mirella asks. I laugh and shake my head. She is astute.
“Are you calling me a liar, queen?”
“I am only trying to see if the male my only daughter is about to be forced to marry is an honest one. As any good mother would.”
Forced. That makes my face tighten. That is how they view me. How they’ve always viewed us. Monsters who steal maidens in the night like the orcs to the east. A beast that will debase their precious daughter. Despite what they think, I’m not that kind of monster.
I would not hurt her. I am more curious about the princess than anything. A feeling that I will be shelving for now while I deal with her family.
“Your daughter will be safe here. As she will be mine and the citizens of Myrkorvin will have no choice but to respect her. The creatures have no choice but to fear her or risk my wrath.”
Mine. The word clangs through me and settles the being that lives inside me. Elveena will be mine.
“What is it that you want?” King Orvian snaps. Finally, showing those claws my father always said he was the best at keeping hidden. “Whatever you want you can have it. Just please do not keep my daughter here. Whatever game this is, whatever trick you have orchestrated. End it. She’s not meant for a place like this. You know it, I know it. She is young and you will damn her to a loveless union for the rest of her days.”
Mirella snaps her head towards her husband, shock written on her face. Even the second son looks up at his father in disbelief. My smile at King Orvian is all teeth.
“You brought your daughter here. If anyone is to blame for her fucking eternity of unhappiness it is you.”
King Orvian’s royal mask slips and I come face to face with an enraged male. He goes to grab the sword at his hip and I jump to my feet. It has been too long since I have fought a worthy opponent. There are a few tense moments, as the two of us kings decide if this is how we want our legacies to play out. King Orvian a dead king and me a king-killer.
But before they can write stories about our impending fight, the heavy wooden door to the chambers are pushed open. Elveena is awake.
Her mother gasps and rushes to her side. Orvian removes his hand from his sword and follows swiftly after his wife.
“Elvie, you should be resting. It is too soon for you to be walking around,” Mirella says, feeling all over her daughter’s head. Now that her tiara was removed and her braids taken out the full expanse of her silver hair floats around her. Curling slightly away from her face, she looks pale but her rosy color is slowly returning.
For some reason that makes me happy to see.
Garren rises from his chair and makes for his sister. Elveena cuts him a look as he approaches.
“I’ve had enough of this. Arkain just tried to murder Father, we are not staying here. Elveena, let’s go.” I let loose another growl as he attempts to wrap a hand around her upper arm.
At the same time Elveena turns, missing his outstretched hand and pinning him with a glare of her own. She is a fierce little thing. That alone is enough to make my lips lift and into a smile and pride warms my chest.
“No one is going to kill anyone,” Elveena says. Her voice is soft, gently caressing my ears. “I would like to speak to King Arkain alone.”
My name, my real name out of her mouth is enough to make my knees buckle. I’ll be thinking about the way it sounded out of her mouth when I am stroking my cock later, remembering her scent and imagining her saying my name as she’s coming.
Over and over again. Arkain, Arkain, Arkain…
I’m so lost in my thoughts that I almost don’t realize what she has said. Alone, she wants to be alone with me. Elveena’s silver eyes are boring into her father’s, almost as if silent words are passing between them. Garren looks ready to argue but King Orvian nods.
“We will give them the room.” One by one they file out. Before long it is just me and Elveena in this chamber. She is still looking at the door her family just exited. Her thin shoulders begin to shake and my heart twists thinking that she is crying.
I move to comfort her, but what can I say? I was never good for comforting in the first place. In this instance I am the reason for her tears, what can I apologize for? Tricking you? Keeping you? Winning your hand in marriage through a couple of well-placed lies?
I guess all of those would be good things to apologize for.
I almost do it too, but then she turns to me. She is not crying at all but laughing. And she cannot stop. Her shoulders continue to shake as she throws her head back and lets out the most beautiful laugh I’ve ever heard. She looks me in my eyes and I am at a loss at what to do.
Do I join in? Do I ask her what’s so funny? Do I call in the healer to see if maybe her fainting had done some internal damage to her head?
Elveena lifts a delicate hand to her face and wipes away a few stray tears that have leaked from her eyes before collapsing into one of the chairs next to the table. With her long legs straight out in front of her, the sides of her dress open, revealing her bare feet to her upper thighs.
I have to look away and try not to think about her thighs again. Lest she see or scent my hardening cock. She has turned me into no better than the unblooded warrior I used to be.
“I have to say,” she says, “I’ve gotten myself into sticky situations before. But this one.” She lets out a breath and laughs again. “This one has got to be the worst.”
“A sticky situation is a nice way of putting this, I suppose.” I want to slap myself. I was never very good at talking to females but of all the things I could say, that is the first sentence I chose to say to her. I should be reassuring her. Telling her that I will be kind to her and find a way to make her happy.
But I cannot say that. The simple fact is that she may spend the rest of her life miserable in order to secure the alliance I need to keep my kingdom safe.
As if she can read my thoughts, she turns those silver eyes on me again.
“Why me?”
I shrug. She does not need to know the lengths to which I went to orchestrate this evening. “It is the will of free magic. I bestowed my favor on you and you accepted it. Quite simple.”
“I accepted under false pretenses.” I smile at her, but I do not think it is a pleasant one because she raises a pale brow at me.
“You should’ve known better than to trust anyone on Myrkorvin soil. Dark elves are tricksters. Or did your parents leave you so woefully ignorant of our kind?”
She scoffs at that and crosses her arms. Which does not help me or my hardening cock as the action makes her breasts pillow up, her nipples seeming dangerously close to the neckline of her dress.
“I know more about your kind than you think. And don’t insult me.” she huffs. “You expect me to believe that out of all the people here tonight, the free magic made you select a bride and it just happened to be the princess of your enemy kingdom? You expect me to believe you didn’t know exactly who I was, even with the glamour on?”
She is smart, my little elf. “The gods work in mysterious ways.”
“Fuck you,” she snaps and rolls her eyes. A laugh escapes me. A true laugh. The sound is rusty, as I could not pinpoint the last time something truly amused me. Not like she does.
“If you aren’t going to admit to knowing who I was even with the spell, then can you at least tell me why you pretended to be Ari?” She’s waiting for my answer but I will not give it. That particular trick is something I’m not ready to share with her just yet. Or maybe ever.
“You’re not ready for that answer yet. But I’ll give you a bit of the truth. I did know it was you tonight, there was no version of this evening where you would’ve left without becoming my bride.”
“Charming.”
“I try.”
“So, again I have to ask, why me? My father would’ve given you an alliance should you ask for one. You’ve cut my people off from the ancestral lands. You’re more powerful than we are, so why go to all this trouble? It could not have been just to secure me as a bride.” She smiles sweetly at me but it does not reach her eyes. “I know my beauty is proclaimed across the lands but I am humble enough to know it is not enough to orchestrate a ruse involving two kingdoms that have been separated for centuries.”
Again she is right, but I cannot tell her the truth yet.
“You do not give yourself enough credit, Princess Elveena. Males and men would kill each other to claim you, of that I have no doubt.” She rolls her eyes at me again but I do note the color staining her cheeks.
That is when it strikes me that not once has she recoiled from me. Her parents had done a good job of masking it. Garren, less so, even I am not ignorant to the changes in me since I last saw him. The war changed us all and I am no exception. She should be disgusted by me.
But that is not what lingers in her eyes. There is curiosity there but no fear. I thank the gods for this small miracle.
“Call me Elvie. No one calls me Elveena unless it is one of my tutors after I fall asleep during their lectures.”
“Elvie.” I nod, her name tasting sweeter than any honeyed wine.
“Where do we go from here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I go back to Lysan until you are ready to wed? Then once we are wed, do I remain here? Do I go back home?”
Panic shoots through me. Perhaps she is not repulsed by me, but she is already thinking of leaving. Possessiveness takes root in my chest. My father’s old words ring in my ear. To let something go is to lose it forever.
I know what I have to do even if she hates me for it.
“Come here, Elvie.” With a bunched brow, she rises gracefully from the chair and comes to stand in front of me. Once again, I marvel at our differences. How much larger I am than her. I’ll have to remember to be careful with her. I hold out my hand and she places her warm palm against it.
Her naked skin against mine is almost enough to have me coming in my pants like a youngling. Somehow I manage to hold it together. Her honeyed scent tickles my nose, as my clawed fingers push into her silky hair. The blossom I put in there earlier has stayed vibrant.
Holding it in my hand, I will my power into it. Whereas hers was light and crisp like spring breeze, mine is dark and cold like a winter’s night. The bloom glows quietly before changing into a thin black band. Elvie gasps as we watch it slither down our joined palms and wraps itself like a viper around one of her delicate wrists.
“This is our bargain, Elvie. By the will of the free magic and the First Gods. Forged during the Night of a Hundred Faces, this union was struck. You will remain on Myrkorvin soil from this day until your last day.”
She eyes me warily but what’s done is done.
I would give anything to be able to keep touching her, but after what I did tonight and what I’ve just done…I don’t deserve the pleasure I feel holding her warm palm in mine. Letting her hand go, I have to tear my eyes away from her wary gaze. I have earned that distrust in her eyes; I have earned worse than it.
Elvie takes a step back from me and holds her wrist, looking down at the band. The contrast against her pale skin seems blasphemous. It serves a purpose and in time so will she. It is best she understands that now.
“Should you try and leave Myrkorvin for any reason this bracelet will bring you straight back to me.” She stares up at me, wide-eyed. “You will not be going back to Lysan. Ever.”
