L ivia’s finger wistfully twisted a lock of my hair. She kept her cheek on my chest, her naked body curled around mine.
I couldn’t recall a time when I’d been so . . . calm. The constant simmer of rage against a man for slaughtering my father had always been there.
Fueled by others, anger and hate created the unwavering belief that the earth bender’s death would seal my father’s acceptance from wherever he was in the Otherworld. If I earned my father’s acceptance, I’d earn the people’s. I’d stop being seen as the broken heir, given a crown only because his capture got the true king killed.
“Erik,” she whispered.
“Hmm.” My arm tightened around her body on instinct, as if my skin realized there was a wider gap between us and that wouldn’t do.
“How do you know Stieg?”
I knew the questions would come. There wasn’t any sense avoiding it any longer. She was mine.
“Your warrior was a captive,” I said. “Taken during one of your fae wars and locked away with me. He protected me.”
“I didn’t know Stieg was captured.” Livia rose and propped her head with her fist. She didn’t look at me with anger at the truth. Nothing but a desire to know more lived in those eyes.
“I was young, so some memories are hazy,” I admitted. “But I remember him. I remember how he fought the guards when they came to carve into my heart. I trusted him after that.”
“Alek said my . . . my people rescued you. How?”
“I don’t know exactly, but the warrior always told me his people would come for us. They did. Stieg was injured, and I couldn’t walk well, so I remember a woman carried me out. She had hair that looked like blood to me.”
Livia drew in a sharp breath. “Queen Malin. She’s the mother of my friends, Jonas and Sander.”
I vaguely recalled Stieg addressing the woman as a queen, but most of it was a blur. “I saw your father. He looked ready to attack us, which I still don’t understand since your mother was there. She stopped him.” I narrowed my eyes. “I’ve never seen such violence in someone’s eyes. Has he ever hurt you?”
“No. He’d never.” A sad smile crossed her face. “Did you know my father survived a fate curse?”
I shook my head.
“A curse of bloodlust. One of the queens back home still calls him the Cursed King sometimes.”
Curses abounded in the Ever. Lady Narza knew how to cast them, and I had few doubts her power was what kept my father compliant to her demands. It was why my father made me my mother’s killer instead of him. Narza wouldn’t hesitate to destroy Thorvald, but the child her daughter loved? She stayed her hand.
“It might explain why my father was quick to call upon his axes if the urge was still in his blood,” she whispered.
The draw to bloodlust was no stranger to me. To be lost in a curse of blood and gore, I almost let a drop of shame fill my chest for harboring such hate against a man who’d aided in my rescue.
“I’ve tried to convince myself something he said wasn’t real.” I trained my gaze on the rafters overhead, unable to look at her. “When my father spewed his disdain for what had become of me, your father . . . stood for me.”
“What?”
Maybe I was a monster. For so long, I’d buried the small details beneath anger and the need to restore my own father’s brutality on the throne. “He said I’d shown more bravery than warriors for surviving torture, and they’d keep me if I was unwanted by my own people.”
“Then he meant it, Erik.” Her voice cracked. “My father does not deal in weak threats, not when it comes to littles.”
I scrubbed my hands down my face. “I know because he offered it again.” Shame was potent, sour, and hot on my tongue. “At the end of the great war. He told me after what I’d done for your uncle, I could have a place with your Night Folk.”
“He’s never mentioned that. Nor my uncles.”
“Because I made certain to become a threat to him.” I pulled myself up and leaned against the headboard. At once, Livia tucked against me and draped an arm around my waist. “I vowed to return and kill him. I healed your uncle to repay Stieg, but I told your father there would always be a debt between us for Thorvald.”
“I don’t understand why. There was a chance for peace.”
“My Uncle Harald had a poisonous tongue, love. Understand, I was truly convinced the only way to be a chosen king of the Ever was to gain favor from the previous king. I knew Thorvald cared nothing for me when he lived, so in his death was my only chance.
“Truth be told, if my father hadn’t died, I’m certain he would’ve killed me.” I scoffed bitterly. “Your question about another heir unnerved me for there was already some talk he had a bastard; his spare.”
“Do you think it’s true?”
“I have no doubt Thorvald wanted a different son, but if there was another heir, he’d have challenged me by now.” It wouldn’t make sense to wait. If a blood claim was to be made, it should’ve been made when I was weaker, younger, and less violent.
Livia traced a scar across my chest. “Did you want to stay? With my people, I mean.”
“For you.” I tilted her chin up. “You intrigued me. I knew you were the earth bender’s heir, and I wanted to be nearer . . . to you. But Harald was dead, our armies were weakened, and I couldn’t abandon the Ever. There were too many dependent on promises I’d made.”
We were silent for a long pause until she said, “Thank you for healing Aleksi. He is more brother than cousin to me. I am curious about Gavyn, though.”
“I’m going to need to kill him then.”
She snickered and pinched my ribs. “Not like that, you jealous fiend.
What is his ability?”
My jaw tightened. “Livia, if I tell you this, you cannot speak a word to anyone. Gavyn’s voice could get him executed by the house lords.”
Her eyes widened. “I swear, I won’t say a word.”
I hurriedly explained how he could alter his form, and why it was considered too risky of an ability. Why it made him a spy and potential assassin.
“Celine told me they owe you everything,” Livia said. “She . . . she told me she was born with siren blood.”
“Celine has a damn big mouth,” I grumbled. My fingers threaded through her hair. “But they were part of those who were dependent on my promises. Their father was the lord over the House of Bones. He committed several crimes against the crown. One being he kept Gavyn’s voice a secret, but after Gavyn was born, Thorvald commanded their father to kill his mate, a powerful siren.”
Revealing these truths of my father made me hate him more and hate for him a little less. “Thorvald had his son slaughter his mate, after all, he wanted the other lords to show the same devotion to the Ever.
“The difference was Gavyn’s father loved his mother. He hid her away, but never severed their bond. After Thorvald’s death, my uncle discovered the mate was not only alive, but had borne a second child for the House of Bones. A siren daughter.”
“Harald executed the mate and cut out Celine’s song.” I let out a long breath. “My uncle planned to force Gavyn’s father to finish his daughter’s torture, but I ordered something different. I was a young king, but still king.”
“You intervened for Celine’s life?”
“Harald never allowed me friends, even took Tait from me. Believe it or not, we were once close like you and your cousin. Gavyn was as close to a friend as I had because he could slip in and out of the palace grounds with his ability. We got to know each other as heirs with secrets. I knew what it was like to have a mother taken away, and I didn’t want him to lose his father and sister, so I told my uncle I wanted Celine as practice for my poison.”
She pressed a kiss over my heart and hooked a leg over my hips.
“I hid Celine among the servants. Harald never noticed them. After the war, I kept her on my ship and showed her how I call to the sea. Her siren blood helped develop a new, unique voice for the tides. We gave her a new name, and no one knows she’s Gavyn’s sister. Gavyn made me promise to
keep her identity hidden, or she could be used against him, or lose her life if anyone who believes as Harald and Thorvald discovers her bloodline.”
Livia sighed. “I still think it’s ridiculous how folk believe that loving anyone beyond themselves is a weakness.”
I studied the soft shape of her face. Livia was my weakness. Use her against me, and I would unravel. Yet in some ways she was my ultimate strength. The notion of her being harmed again drew out the fiercest desire to fight and kill in her damn name.
I didn’t start wars for Gavyn or Celine or their father. Even if I knew, deep down, I cared for them a great deal. But for Livia, I’d burn the kingdom and start any war if it meant she was safe.
“What happened to their father?” she asked.
“Harald tortured him,” I said. “Planned to do it for days, but after the first night, somehow he disappeared from his cell. No one found him again.”
“Gavyn?”
I shrugged, avoiding her gaze again. “He likely had something to do with it.”
She didn’t press for more and was quiet for a few moments.
Livia stole my breath when she maneuvered over my body, straddling my hips. Her eyes burned. “You, Erik Bloodsinger, are the kind of darkness I would follow across the skies and seas.”
My head cracked against the headboard when Livia reached between us and took hold of my cock.
“Woman . . .” I gripped the bed linens as she stroked and circled her thumb over the sensitive tip.
Livia aligned my length with her dripping center and gave me a vicious grin. “Say you’re mine. Say it.”
My breath slid out in a short rasp when she slid over me, root to tip. I held her waist like a ballast against the rage of a storm on the sea.
“I’m yours.” I buried my face against the slope of her neck. “Gods, I’m yours.”
 |
I left Livia asleep in my bed. Sewell, Celine, and Larsson were added to the defenses at the door. The Ever Crew wouldn’t betray me. They’d die if they did. Blood ties made it so should they go against their crew. Deeper, almost, than the ties to the houses of their voice. Gavyn’s crew would be the same, even the poor bastards who sailed beneath Lord Joron and Lord Hesh.
When I entered the dining hall, Aleksi was hunched over a bowl of syrupy gruel and honey. Tait was silent and somber, keeping watch on him against the back wall.
I pulled out a chair and sat.
Aleksi narrowed his gaze. “What are you doing with my cousin?” I chuckled. “You don’t want to know.”
His jaw pulsed as he stirred the honey deeper into his bowl. “She willing?”
“I’m no rapist.” I slumped in the chair and kicked out my legs. “I’m assuming you’ve been told the importance your cousin has for the Ever.”
“Your man there explained about your dying lands, yes. He told me Livia’s fury has been healing it. He also told me you believe she’s somehow bonded to your title as king, which I find ridiculous.”
“I don’t care.” I didn’t. The unwitting bond forged between us meant nothing to me. It was not what fueled my actions, or rushed my heart when it came to Livia Ferus. She owned me by her own doing. She could be powerless, and after the way she kissed me, fought for me, after watching her body ride me until I could not think straight, I’d go to the hells and back for the woman.
“You should care. My uncle will never let you keep her.” “Not his choice.”
“Oh? Is it hers?” Aleksi lifted his brow. “You’d let her go home if she truly wanted?”
I looked down. In a way, I still held her hostage. I wanted her for myself, but could she ever be entirely mine if she felt forced to be here?
I pushed the thought aside and fixed a glare on her cousin. “I came here to clarify that those marks you saw on her skin weren’t from me. Your cousin fought like a true warrior when assassins came for me, intending to steal her magic for their own purposes.”
His eyes darkened with fury. “Those assassins are dead, right?”
I smirked, catching a bite of his sparse meal. “There’s that hidden savagery in the so-called peaceful earth fae. One of them is dead, killed by her own hand. Two others are rotting in my cells. Given the lengths you went to save her, I figured you might want to assist me in questioning them. I need to find out who sent them, and after that, if you wish, you can help me decide their fate.”
I knew little about the boy I saw clinging to his fathers after a war ended. But what I saw now was a man with hidden viciousness under his skin of honor.
The corner of his mouth curved. “It’d be a pleasure, Bloodsinger.”
