heavily against my bedpost, but with a flick of his fingers through the air, parchment from nowhere appears in his palm. My pulse quickens. It’s my note. The last one I left for him.
“How many wives have you had? What happened to them? Why do you need another one?” he reads aloud.
You will not like the answers.
I believe him. Dread pools like sludge in my stomach. Perhaps I don’t want to know how many wives he’s had. It’ll only make me feel more foolish for the notions I’ve entertained recently of him and his offer of marriage.
When he speaks, his voice is emotionless. “I have had one wife.”
I stare at him. Blink. Stare some more. “O-only one?”
“Are you disappointed?” he asks dryly. Is he smiling again? If he is, it’s a much colder smile than before.
“But everyone says you’ve come for a bride every hundred years . . . for hundreds of years. How could . . .?”
“I thought you didn’t believe the legends.”
I don’t bother answering that, and instead wait for him to continue.
He does continue, but not before torturing me with a few long, silent minutes. “I am called the Neverseen King because it is a title. While there has been a Neverseen King for a millennium now, I have been in possession of that title and responsibility for only the last hundred and ninety-nine years. The King before me often replenished his store of human brides. I, however, have taken only one bride. As much as I’ve tried to forgo taking a second, I can no longer avoid the necessity. Hence these competitions.”
“Why have a competition? Why not simply pick your favorite? It’s not as though we can resist your power. You could have forced any of us.”
“My first bride . . . came to me willingly.”
My eyes drift toward the portrait of the blonde, blue-eyed girl on the wall. His first wife—his only wife. He loved her. I gathered this much before, but somehow, it hits sharper now.
He tilts his head to see what I’m looking at.
He goes deathly still.
It’s been a long, long time since he’s seen her picture, hasn’t it? He had it hidden—shortly after her death, perhaps? How raw is this wound of his?
“How long has she been dead?” I ask.
“Ninety-nine years.”
I’m glad we sit so far apart. It helps me keep my emotions locked up tight so that we can have this necessary conversation. It makes this feel more transactional and impersonal, which is exactly what I want.
I don’t want to feel things right now. This is about gathering facts. Nothing else.
“If I’ve surmised correctly, based on the number of doors I’ve seen,” I say, breaking the silence, “you have some hundred or more portals in this palace. You can open and close them, but not without effort—and some break open by themselves. It’s your job, as the Neverseen King, to keep them contained.”
“And everyone thinks tariffs are the biggest problem Arbasa faces,” he says darkly.
“Something about how your magic works requires a human bride.”
“A human bride greatly reduces the strain of performing such magic, yes.”
“But you’ve forgone a bride these last ninety-nine years?”
“I have.”
“And you’ve struggled as a result?”
He shoots me a glare. “I think I’ve managed shockingly well, thank you very much.”
“Then you don’t need me?”
At that, he goes silent. My lips twist humorlessly.
“You’ve managed,” I continue. “But you’re reaching your limits, which is why you’ve begged me to be your bride.”
“There has been no begging,” he growls, clearly affronted.
“I beg to differ.”
He vanishes from the floor. The next instant, he towers over where I sit on the settee, his silhouette taking up almost my entire range of vision. I jerk backward, startled. His hands plant on the carved wood edges of the upholstery on either side of my shoulders as he leans over me. His warmth floods my awareness. My throat goes dry.
“Do you want me to beg, Nadira?”
His proximity brings flashbacks that I don’t want. I’m trying to keep my distance from him—not be reminded of what it was like to dance with him, to be held by him.
Would it be so horrible to be his wife? Now that I know he doesn’t wear through wives like a pair of shoes, the idea isn’t as repulsive to me as it ought to be.
His face is only a foot away, his gaze holding mine with the force of a windstorm. It’s hard to imagine that he was unconscious only a few minutes ago. Right now, he’s nothing but power and night, threaded with desperate intensity that makes me want things I have no business wanting.
Every drop is a stain on my soul.
We’re alike—him and I. More alike than I’d ever imagined. What would happen if we joined forces? The Neverseen King, and the assassin? Who would we be, together?
Kiss me, I want to whisper.
But then my gaze strays away from his, to the portrait of his dead wife on the wall. Finding my voice with difficulty, I say, “You can stand now, it seems. An achievement.”
The sound that emerges from his throat is more growl than anything. He pushes off the back of the settee, marches to the chair opposite me, drags it out to fit his long legs, and drops into it. He stacks his boots on my table, sliding further down into the chair as he links his fingers behind his head. “Ask the rest of your questions. We don’t have all night.”
The cavalier sultan has returned.
“How did she die?”
He doesn’t react. He has pulled away from me emotionally, hasn’t he? This is the Neverseen King I saw in my dreams, the one that spun his crown on his finger and sent it hurling through the air. The one that slouches on his throne.
“Every hundred years, there is a celebration among the fae in their various worlds. Lulythinar, or as it translates to your tongue, Moonshore. This celebration creates a surge of magic, as it were, which makes the night of Lulythinar a rather . . .” He trails off.
“Too many portals broke open at once,” I interpret. “You were overwhelmed.”
“Most human wives don’t survive the night.”
Hence the legend. Numbness creeps over my body as I sink back against the settee. “Ninety-nine years. Lulythinar is almost here, isn’t it? You need a bride to stand with you then. To die at Lulythinar.”
The weight of his gaze pins me in place.
“The competitions,” he says, “aren’t because I love bloodshed. They serve two purposes. First, I need to know what my wife can handle, what her strengths and weaknesses are, and I must be certain the wife I choose can bear this burden with me. Second, I need her to know it too. That she can do this with me.”
“But you said human wives don’t survive the night.”
His teeth flash, belying his devil-may-care pose. “I said most human wives. Do you think it’s a wonder why I brought the city’s most notorious assassin here, Mourner?” He sits up abruptly, planting his boots on the ground and leaning forward, elbows propped up on his knees and fingers steepled beneath his chin. “I have been forthright with you, but I will speak even plainer. Before you stepped foot in my House, I wanted you to be my bride. Not Eshe. Not Safya. Not anyone else. I wanted you. But if you fight me at every turn, you’re of no use to me. I’d be better off marrying someone like Gaya. Because what I need—more than I need skills with a blade or cunning—is someone I can trust.”
The air is stolen from my lungs. My body should be collapsing from exhaustion, but instead it hums with a heady thrill. He wants me—he has wanted me this entire time.
“When?” I ask softly.
“When, what?”
“When did you decide you wanted me as your bride?”
My whole world narrows to his next words, to the sound of his voice as each syllable hits me like a blow.
“I wanted you, Mourner, from the moment I heard there was an assassin in the city leaving apology notes.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. Something in my chest cracks open. I try to clamp it shut again, but part of me doesn’t want it shut. Part of me wants to be ravaged by the pain of hope.
He saw me when I was a girl not yet sixteen, forced to do that which I loathed. He saw me during those lonely years of fighting, of killing, of failing to escape Jabir.
He sees me now.
And he hasn’t run away. He has stayed here, with me. Despite who I am, despite my own wretched powerlessness, despite the blood on my hands, and the scourges of guilt weighing my soul down.
I look away before I say something stupid, swallowing heavily against the lump in my throat. He remains silent, studying me.
What would we be if we weren’t the Neverseen King and the Mourner? What if we were just two people? A man and a woman? What would happen then?
It’s ridiculous to entertain such notions. He is the Neverseen King. I am the Mourner. That cannot be changed. We are what we are.
We are two broken people who will only hurt each other if we get too close.
I find my voice with difficulty. “The rest of the questions?”
Paper rustles in the darkness. He reads from my note and then answers. “Why are there portals in this palace? It is because my House functions as the Bridge. The Bridge between worlds. It is not the only Bridge, as there are crossings between worlds throughout Faerieland and even some more in the human world. However, there are none like this one in scale and concentration. Some worlds can only be accessed through the Bridge, and it’s by far the largest concentration of doors.”
“It must be fought over, then,” I say, glad for the distraction from my traitorous heart.
“It is, indeed. The High King of the Fae retains control over it through me, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other fae, other peoples, and other . . . things that desire control.”
“Was Goken someone who wanted control?”
“Goken liked toys. In his mind, humans made the best toys. There are many fae like him. If allowed through the Bridge into my House, they would love to go rogue in the human world. There are laws to prevent this, however, and no one is allowed through the Bridge without my censor.”
“Unless they break out.”
“Or someone breaks them in.”
My mind flashes back to the heads the Neverseen King had carried with him when he rescued me from Goken. My stomach pitches like it wants to be sick, but I ignore it. “Dabria and Fathuna . . .?”
“Were plotting behind my back, yes,” growls the Neverseen King. “I intend to find out who with. They opened a portal and allowed in several fae, actually. That was why I took their heads.”
He’s threatened me before, of treating me like those who betray him should I do the same. Apparently it’s true what he said: he doesn’t apologize for those he kills. He has yet to speak a word of remorse over these deaths.
“Will you take my head without hesitation?” I ask. “If I don’t prove myself trustworthy?”
His unseen gaze arrests me with sudden force. “Do you intend to betray me, Nadira?”
Kolb and Jabir want me to. Which is probably why I say, “No.”
“Good.”
“But if I did, you’d kill me like the rest.”
“I would have to kill you, yes. I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t hesitate, however.”
I smile. “You would hesitate to kill me? How sweet of you.”
“I am known for my sweetness,” he says irritably. For one who enjoys doling out sarcasm, he sure doesn’t seem to like it when I’m sarcastic back.
“It is good to know where we stand,” I say. “That you will not hurt me unless I take a misstep.”
Something in the air between us turns sharp, wrathful. “Do you think I take pleasure in death? Do you think I relish taking lives?”
“At least you take them of your own free will,” I shoot back.
“Do I?” he demands, leaning forward. “How is being forced by circumstance any different from—”
“It’s different because you have a choice.”
“And what choice would that be?”
“To not kill! To erase their memories like the others, and give them back to their previous lives.”
“And leave them for whoever conspired with them to find them and use them again? To give them an opportunity to betray me once more? To allow them to continue orchestrating the downfall of everything I’ve sacrificed to protect?”
“It may not be preferred, but it’s still your own choice.”
“I killed them, because if I hadn’t I’d have put the Bridge at risk, and if the Bridge falls, do you know what will happen? The gates to all the worlds will be open, and it will be a war of such devastation that no one has ever before seen or will ever see again.”
“What an unselfish soul you have, to devote yourself to preventing disaster.” I hurl the angry words at him, wanting to hurt him. Wanting him to hurt me and show me that I should leave this place and never look back. “I don’t think you care what happens to the Bridge. Why would you?”
“It’s my duty!”
“But why? Why do you care a whit about your duty when it has only brought suffering to you? Why didn’t you leave after your wife’s death?”
“You think I have a choice in this? To leave my post here would be treason against the High King.”
I shoot to my feet and stalk over to him. He remains seated, though there’s no denying the power simmering beneath the surface, his muscles coiled to spring. For once, I look down on him, and I savor it. “You stay, not because you care about being a traitor, but because if you leave your wife’s death will be in vain.”
The rage that boils between us vanishes so completely, it’s like the air has just been sucked from the room. He stares up at me, stunned into silence. I’m right, then. Has he even realized this himself?
“You act like I’m the only one with problems between us,” I growl, then fling a finger toward the painting on the wall. “But she has been dead for almost a hundred years, and you still aren’t over her. Then you get frustrated that I am not ready to marry you.”
His voice is deathly quiet. “I told you I am not seeking a true wife. I need an alliance.”
I match the tone of my voice to his, coming closer to him like he’s so often done to me. “Then tell me: were your words to me when we danced—were they a lie?”
He twists his neck to the side, breaking our gaze. He doesn’t answer.
“Not a lie then.” Which means that there is part of him—a part of him he wishes to bury—that cares about me. A part of him that finds me . . . lovely.
“I’m sorry I offended you,” he says abruptly.
I freeze. Cold washes over me. “What do you mean?”
He brings his gaze back to mine, until our faces are much too close. “When I asked if you thought I relished death and killing. You hated being forced to kill, and what was done to you was horrible. Please do not take my statements about my situation to be any comparison to yours.”
Now it’s my turn to be stunned.
I stumble back a step, my fight and fury gone like a candle blown out. He catches my hand before I go too far, his fingers warm on mine, and that simple touch makes a sense of vulnerability wash over me.
“Let us not argue,” he says softly, gently.
“What are we to do then, if not argue?” I reply, and my voice is equally quiet, but there’s no hiding the hardness behind it.
“Do you want more answers?”
“At this rate, it’ll take all night.”
He chuckles. Then he gives my hand a tug—a request to come closer. Do I want to come closer? This constant warring in my soul is exhausting. I don’t have the desire to pull away, but neither do I want to risk coming closer.
I stay where I am.
I don’t let go of his hand.
I fight the urge to twine my fingers with his, to take comfort in his solid strength. Which is ridiculous, because only a moment ago he threatened to kill me.
He takes my hand, turns it over, and to my shock, begins tracing with his finger the lines of calluses on my palms. My whole body goes stiff.
“You asked why you are not safe with me,” he says quietly. “You are not safe as my wife because of Lulythinar. That is what I meant. Aside from that, nothing will harm you.”
My words are breathless. “Unless I betray you.”
His finger halts its movement. “You keep saying that. Perhaps I ought to ask you again: do you intend to betray me?”
“No.”
“But . . .?” he asks, reading the uncertainty in my voice. His attention lifts from my hand.
“Someone has asked me to.”
“Ah.” He releases me. “So you have no plans to betray me. But you are keeping the option open. That is why you keep asking.”
I walk around the table and sit back down on the settee, putting distance between us once again. “I won’t betray you so long as I don’t have a good reason to.”
“Right. Because you have no true loyalty to me.” He gives a wry smirk.
“Ought I?”
“Of course not. It would be foolish. And you, darling Nadira, are not foolish.”
We sit in silence, staring at each other. I’m not sure what he sees. I see nothing but the shape of him, the outline of his tall, broad form. It strikes me as odd how well we’ve come to read each other in a few short days, despite him being mostly invisible, and me being . . . me.
What if, despite everything, I don’t want to be afraid of him anymore? What if I don’t want to do the smart thing and keep my distance? What if I want to be unraveled like a spool of thread—if I want that which will destroy me?
“Maybe I’m more foolish than you realize,” I whisper. The fact that I even say the words proves that they’re true.
The Neverseen King leans forward, his eyes flashing so brightly I catch a glimpse of them in the darkness. “Then marry me, Nadira.”
Marry me.
Reason wars with desire, desperation with reservation, hope with fear.
“If I marry you, you’ll let Eshe go.” Once I say the words, their absurdity hits me. Eshe has been free to leave this entire time.
He only says, “Yes.”
My hands clench the arm of the settee until my knuckles shine white in the glow of the moon. “Will you . . .” The words halt in my throat. I force them out. “Will you come closer?”
A wave of powerful emotion ripples out from him, something that is too tangled to discern. It hits me nonetheless, pinning me in place as I stare at the dark figure across from me.
He stands slowly, rising from his chair and unfolding to his massive height. My chin tilts up, dragged by the weight of his eyes upon me. My mouth goes horribly dry, my pulse thundering like a hundred horses loosened through the desert at midnight. He takes three steps toward me, skirting the table, until he’s two feet from my knees.
“How close?” His voice has dropped in pitch, all but a rumbling in the shadows.
I swallow, barely able to maintain his gaze. He can sense my heartbeat—he cannot be oblivious to the effect he has on me. “Closer.”
He hesitates.
It doesn’t surprise me. He is as determined to protect himself as I am. But if I am to even consider pledging myself to him, if I am to risk it all for him, then I need the same from him. I need him to stop withholding himself from me.
I need him to care about me.
Because right now, I’m playing a deadly game with far too many odds stacked against me. I cannot be expendable. I cannot be a tool. If we are to marry, I need him for my husband as he needs me for his wife.
“Closer,” I say again.
At last, he takes another step, then the final one, until he towers over where I sit, staring down at me. The air pounds between us, like the beat of wings. He is so still, so solemn. So determined.
I whisper, the sound nearly swallowed up in the depths of night, “Kiss me.”
Shock throbs like a wound as the Neverseen King stumbles back a step. “No,” he growls. “I won’t kiss you.”
My hand darts out, catches hold of a muscular forearm as he turns to abandon me. “Wait!”
He stops, his head tilted down and away from me, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. He could throw off my hold or vanish into nothing, yet he stays. I reach with my other hand, wrapping it around his wrist—disguising my checking of his pulse with the tightening of my fingers. His blood thunders through his veins.
“Stop that,” he growls, flicking his wrist to dislodge my hold.
So perhaps I didn’t hide it well enough.
“If you want to know if my heart quickens at your nearness, simply ask. It’s not as though I can lie to you.”
I don’t ask. I already know the answer. If I wasn’t sitting, it might have made my knees buckle. As it is, my hands tremble on his arm.
“I’ve told you I find you beautiful,” he continues, a harsh and ragged edge to the words. “I’ve told you that I want you to be my wife—that I’ve wanted it for some time. Surely you know by now that I am . . . fond of you. What more do you want from me?”
My grip on him tightens until I’m almost clinging to him, my vision blurring with sudden tears as my chest constricts painfully. Giving in to impulse, I lean forward and rest my forehead against the side of his elbow. He flinches in response while I draw in a deep breath of his scent. It soothes something deep inside me. Calms me enough that I can rifle through my mind for a cohesive answer.
I want all of you, I long to say. All, or none.
What I say, however, is, “I want you to kiss me.”
His hand clenches into a fist, the cords of his muscles tightening in my hold. “I won’t kiss you, Nadira.”
His words are like twin knives through my heart. I press my face deeper into him, as if that will hide me from the sting of them. It doesn’t work.
He is so determined to not care about me. Even though we are two lost souls adrift on an open sea, alone and forgotten, he doesn’t want to care about me.
I take one more deep breath. “Then will you embrace me?”
A sound emerges from him—like a strangled version of something between a moan and a growl. Then he wrenches free of my grip, turns toward me abruptly. He falls to his knees, snatching hold of my wrist, and pulls me off the settee—
And into his arms.
My eyes fly wide, my body going taut with surprise as he crushes me to his chest. Then I melt into him, burying my face in his neck. He squeezes me tighter, almost desperately. He is everything that is warm, solid, and safe in this world. I can hardly breathe, but for once, I am happy to drown.
Maybe I would die for him. Maybe I would be glad for it, if only he would always hold me like this. My skirts flare across the floor, glittering with light from nowhere. His collar is wet with my tears as I wrap my arms around my sultan, wanting this moment never, ever, ever to end.
With each passing moment, the tension leaks from my body. Muscles I didn’t know were tense unfurl, relaxing until I’m barely holding onto him. He shifts.
“Don’t let me go,” I whimper.
His arms tighten. “I won’t. I’m just . . . readjusting.”
He slides into a sitting position, and scoots so he can lean against the settee, keeping me against his chest. I shift too, sitting on the floor, drawing my knees to my chest, and curling against him with his legs on either side of me. He lets out a deep breath, letting his head fall back against the upholstery as one hand winds itself around the ends of my hair.
“I don’t want to leave you,” he whispers.
“Then don’t. Please.”
He tilts his head forward, his exhales stirring the top of my hair. “I’ll stay longer.”
“If you try to leave, I’ll stab you.”
He gives a low chuckle, and there’s not even a hint of wryness to it. It makes me smile against his collar. He swallows, opens his mouth, as if he intends to speak. Then he shuts his mouth and snuggles me closer to him.
Though it’s been ages since I could fall asleep at a decent hour, the sound of his heartbeat against my ear lulls me into dreariness. My wet eyelids are suddenly heavy. So, so heavy.
“Are you working magic on me?” I mumble.
There’s a quiet snort as his heart skips a beat. It sounds like he’s smiling. “No. What spell do you think I’m working?”
“One to make me tired.”
“You are doing that on your own, I’m afraid, little assassin.”
Those are the last words I hear before I fall into dreams of strong arms holding me above rising floodwaters, keeping me to a solid chest in a fracturing world.
