Someone hands me a canteen of cold water and I gulp it down while scanning our destination.
We’re not so much at the top of the mountain as we are at a rocky plateau near the top. There are dozens of tents already set up and servants darting about with food and wood.
“Your tents are ready,” a male announces from in front of a roaring bonfire. “Please retire at will.”
“Which one’s ours?” I ask Finn, trying to keep the exhaustion from my voice.
“Anxious to get him alone?” a strange male asks. His low chuckle makes me wish I could take the question back. It’s better, though, I suppose, that all these people believe Finn and I are madly in love.
Better that they don’t understand that my desire to find our tent has more to do with the muscles in my thighs trembling from that climb than it does with what will happen once we’re alone together.
“I promise to show you soon, but first you need to take a seat,” Finn says, taking my hand. The idea of sitting sounds so glorious that I happily allow him to lead me toward a seat beside the fire.
I barely have a chance to enjoy the heat of the flames before I realize that all the fae who marched up the hill with us are congregating behind Finn and smiling as they watch us.
Finn winks at me. “Don’t move,” he says.
As if I could. Now that I’m sitting, exhaustion weighs more heavily on my shoulders—in part from the exercise, but also undoubtedly from my inability to get back to sleep last night. No, now that I’m sitting, I may never rise from this spot again.
Finn takes a two large bowls from beneath the bench and turns to the fire, where he fills them with water from a black metal pot. He winks at me before sprinkling bits of dried flowers into one and adding droplets of oils to the other.
His movements are so precise, they could never be mistaken for anything but ritual, as much a part of this tradition as the flowers in my hair. The watching crowd grows as he works—my self-consciousness right along with it.
Finn returns to my bench, settling his bowls on the ground before kneeling between them. The water steams, and I can’t wait to sink my aching feet in it, but I wait, all too aware of the many eyes watching to see if I make a wrong move.
Finn reaches beneath my dress, and my breath catches. His hands wrap around my shin and slide up. The heat from his skin seeps through the leather of my boots. “It’s my honor to wash the feet of my future queen,” he says softly, his fingers beginning to unlace the boots beneath my skirt. “To show my reverence and to prove my subservience.”
My cheeks are on fire again. It seems so wrong to partake in these rituals when we’re not actually a couple, when I’m not on my way to the throne, but in the way of the throne accepting a new king.
More than that, his touch feels far too intimate. One big hand holds my leg behind my knee while the other removes my boots from one foot, then the other. It feels, embarrassingly, like a seduction, and if we weren’t being watched so closely, I’d surely ask him to stop.
Or maybe I’d encourage him to go on.
The fact that I don’t know for sure either way makes my cheeks burn hotter.
When Finn moves higher up my skirt, his calloused fingertips find the top of my stocking at the middle of my thigh. Eyes locked on mine, he hesitates there, trailing his finger right along the edge of the silk, as if he’s fascinated by the contrast between my skin and the thin fabric. I can’t breathe.
“What’s the problem, Finnian?” Juliana calls from her spot at the side of the gathered crowd. I must have been distracted by Finn to not notice her there. “Have you forgotten how to undress a female?”
My cheeks blaze with embarrassment at the reminder that we’re not alone, but Finn seems unfazed by her comment. Not even bothering to look her way, he flattens his palm on my leg and brushes my inner thigh with his thumb. “Are you okay?”
Okay? With his thumb stroking there? With his hands so far up my dress that he could— “I’m fine.” I’m a liar. Fine isn’t the right word. I’m burning. I’m aching. Half of me wishes we were alone, and the other half is grateful that we’re not.
He gently curls his fingers under the top of the silk and slowly rolls it down from just above my knee all the way off before going to the other leg. He doesn’t take as long on this side, but his fingers sweep far higher than necessary when searching for the top of the stocking.
When I shiver, he frowns. “The day will warm once the sun comes out,” he says, placing the second stocking neatly on top of the first. “But I promise there’s a hot bath waiting when we’re finished here.”