Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (62)

Nearing the king, I reached for some of it and rubbed the granules between my fingers.

Snow barreled across the drive, shaking wet from her coat. Thankfully, before she reached my side. I was given a look that told me she wasn’t pleased to have been left behind.

I crouched down to swipe some dirt from her cheeks and murmured an apology.

Florian’s question was low. “How much did Aura tell you?”

“More than you ever will.” Taking in his unmoved expression as I straightened, I relented. “It was nothing you need to be grumpy about.”

As I walked around him to take the stairs inside, Snow running ahead as if fearing I would leave her again, I couldn’t keep from thinking about the small yet precious doses of information Aura had given me.

Hellebore’s king hadn’t always been this way—seemingly without a soul, or perhaps just a heart.

Florian snatched my wrist. “Grumpy?”

I stopped and eyed his large hand, then I made the mistake of meeting those fatal blues. “You’re exceptionally talented at being in a bad mood.”

His mouth twitched. “One could say I have every reason to be after being thoroughly teased, then left to milk my own cock.”

Just the thought of the act ignited my blood and flared my eyes. At a loss for words, I appeased the need inside me by staring as his features slowly lost their fierce edge, and the smirk in his eyes tempted his lips to curl.

His fingers crawled up my arm. I shivered, hoping he didn’t notice when he tugged me close and skimmed a knuckle over my too-warm cheek. “This fucking maddens me.”

“What does?”

“The feelings you wear all over your face,” he said, and tightly. “The arousal that colors your cheeks and glosses such dark eyes.”

I wasn’t sure how to do this anymore. Not now that I couldn’t fall into his touch and naively hope for more. Not now that I knew he didn’t want a wife.

He wanted a pawn.

When his fingers brushed my jaw, my eyes fluttered, and I looked up at him with too much hope for someone who’d already been made a fool by daring to rely on hope for survival. “Will I ever be free, Florian?”

His thick brows lowered.

As the riders and wagons began to fill the drive, I stepped closer and laid my hand over the black leather covering his chest. “Will you ever let me go?”

The wind whistled and threw my hair around my cheeks, Florian’s expression and jaw granite and his touch falling away. “Never, butterfly.”

I’d known what he would say. Perhaps that was why it didn’t hurt to hear it leave his luscious, lying mouth.

I nodded once, resolve building brick by brick inside me.

There weren’t many things I’d had the chance to excel at, but I was an expert at one thing.

Biding my time.

The king groaned a curse as I backed away to the steps, his nostrils flaring. Those depthless blue eyes lightened as they drifted down my body to settle upon my lower stomach. Loathing the way it quaked in response and how my thighs longed to squeeze together, I turned and strode up the steps.

“Tullia,” Florian called.

It was the name that made me stop, but I didn’t turn back as his alarmingly brittle order burrowed beneath my skin. “Do not leave the manor.”

A tear threatened to spill from my eye.

I had no unearthly idea what was wrong with me. It wasn’t as if I didn’t already know I was a captive—the enemy’s spawn—but his order to stay trapped indoors after I’d just reminded him of my lifelong dream for freedom was another small cut to the chest.

Zayla followed me from the foyer as I kept my head down and hurried for the false safety of my rooms.





Florian did not return to his rooms that night.

The following morning, over a breakfast I couldn’t stomach eating, Kreed informed me he was gone. He wouldn’t tell me where, and I didn’t ask. He did tell me that the manor staff and many of Hellebore’s warriors were busy with preparations for the looming Frost Festival.

But I had no desire to make the most out of the quiet grounds.

As per the king’s request, I stayed indoors and kept to my rooms. Not simply because he’d requested it, but because I was growing too uncomfortable to be anywhere else.

Night arrived with no return of the king. Days of increasing torture followed, and with them, no sign of Florian. After sleeping until midmorning on the third, I woke with a hunger I feared would be fleeting.

I tightened my robe to take Snow downstairs. Zayla had seemingly decided I was not in any state to attempt escape, for she was nowhere to be seen.

My bleary eyes snapped wide open when I caught his scent. It was fresh. We slowed on the steps as a voice I hadn’t heard for days looped around my body and tugged.

“I do not want her there,” Florian said from deep down below.

The door to his study must have been open.

Another voice followed. Fume, I noted, as we reached the landing before the last flight of stairs. “It’s part of the plan, Flor.”

Silence.

My hunger immediately abated.

Then Fume saying low, “Word spreads.”

“Then let that be enough.”

“But we both know it isn’t. Let it be seen and wholly believed. Molkan will hear of it before dawn can touch the sky.”