I didn’t dare meet his gaze while I failed to blink at the sight of his blood and warred with that strange entity, but I felt it. His own hunger and curiosity pushed upon my skin like the bruising touch of his hands.
His bloodied finger was then pressed to the contract without hesitation.
Then again, there was no need for him to hesitate. This was his plan. This was why he wanted to meet with me in his pleasure house.
His hand rose, and as it fell to his side, I stepped forward and stared at the large fingerprint inked in blood above the black looping scrawl of his name.
The magnitude of what was happening settled like sharp rocks within my chest and stomach. I blinked heavily, my terrified heart all I could hear and the parchment all I could see.
A blood contract. Escapable only in death.
I’d already known as much. All marriages and contracts concerning the Fae were the same—eternally inescapable. Yet I stared down at the parchment spread atop the cabinet over rings of long-dried liquor, unmoving. Scarcely breathing.
There was no name beneath the awaiting space where I would leave my own fingerprint.
Knowing what had snagged and stolen my focus, Florian murmured, “You need not have a name. Your blood is all that is required.” His heat enveloped as he moved in behind me. He shifted my heavy hair to one shoulder to graze his lips against my ear. “Your blood is all that matters.”
A shiver rolled through me, and I felt him smile against my neck when he lowered his lips to it. My eyes nearly drifted closed, my shoulders loosening with a shaken breath. “Bite your finger, sweet creature, or”—another press of his lips, this time to my fluttering pulse—“I will gladly do it for you.”
Temptation couldn’t outweigh the song of trepidation screaming throughout my body.
“But…” This was real. This faerie king was truly asking me to promise myself to him in marriage. “When will we marry?”
“When I decide it’s time, of course.”
Of course.
Really, it wasn’t as if it mattered. This contract would bind me to him in the same way a marriage contract would.
I closed my eyes and attempted to call forth all the questions I’d planned to ask, but they were jumbled and useless, and I knew he’d have an answer to all. “Where will I live?”
“At Hellebore Manor with me. Your rooms have already been prepared.”
The instantaneous answer shocked. It also reeked of startling honesty. But it was to be expected—that I would not share rooms with Florian. He was a king, and I was but a tool to secure his kingdom.
A tool he liked to play with.
Though it was for the best, a smudge of disappointment still spread. Stupid, considering I wasn’t ready for such a thing. Certainly not with a male who drew breath from my lungs with one word, one look, and one barely-there touch.
The contract blurred crimson and black as I recalled the images I’d glimpsed of Hellebore Manor within books. Its dazzling dark expanse was covered entirely in crawling blood-red ivy, the picturesque grounds in glowing snow.
I tried to resist losing myself to the awe of getting to see it all, and I promptly failed when I thought of living there.
Butterflies flooded my stomach. I cleared my throat and shook my head a little. Now was not the time for daydreams. I had to keep my feet and heart planted firmly on the ground. “How will you help me find my family?”
Florian was silent for a long moment, but his heat still warmed my back. “Should you have any, then I will have my people begin the search for the answers you seek immediately.”
“And if I wish to seek those answers myself?”
He hummed. “I suppose you may, though you will be confined to my kingdom.”
Something told me he was already aware that if I had any family, they did not reside in Hellebore. That perhaps he’d already done some searching of his own. Though that didn’t mean I couldn’t at least discover where they might be and do what I could to reach them.
My eyes drifted over the ink upon the parchment. Unease and excitement tangled, making it hard to think. His drugging presence made it nearly impossible. “This is only escapable via death, Majesty.”
“Florian.”
I smirked. “Florian.”
He made a sound close to a purr, as though he enjoyed hearing his name cross my lips. “These things are often dramatic. You can break such a commitment if both parties agree to it.”
“And if I do wish to one day leave the marriage?”
His mouth skimmed my throat, silken and hypnotic. “You believe I will give you reason to want to leave me?”
“I do not know you very well.” A ginormous understatement.
“Do you need to?” he challenged to my ear. “Know that I will keep you content, and you will want for nothing, including those answers you seek.”
He stepped back, just far enough for me to stare at him over my shoulder. I couldn’t help but believe him. Or perhaps I was merely so desperate it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t.
He had me, and he knew it. All I was doing was wasting his time, and my own, with my struggle to surrender completely.
Florian didn’t gloat. He watched in warming silence as I read the contract three times over and slowly lifted my finger to my sharp canines. It took a moment to find the courage to bite hard enough to draw blood.
Still standing at my back, Florian’s soft chuckle was a welcome and sensual distraction.
My heart shook, but my hand was steady as I lowered my finger to the thick parchment. Though the puncture I’d made was small, it was enough.
I pressed my blood to the awaiting space next to his own.
Florian snatched my hand when it rose from the contract and brought it to his mouth. The gentle heat of his tongue, the sucking pull as his lips enclosed the digit, created a string of fire that unraveled straight to my core.
Eyes glinting knowingly, he released me. “Sweet indeed.”
I ducked my head and inspected my clean fingertip. “When will I accompany you to Folkyn?”
The king rolled the parchment, and it disappeared inside a flurry of snowflakes. I watched them fall to the wood floor in wonder, as he said, “Tonight.”
Florian gestured for me to enter the apartment first.
It seemed surreal that he was here. A king in this place in which I’d spent most of my life trapped. But when I’d insisted on needing to visit the apartment before we left, he’d refused to let me do so alone.
We’d walked in brisk silence down the street, and though his hands had been tucked within his pant pockets and he’d been looking straight ahead, I’d sensed he was alert. I suspected it had nothing to do with the grumbling sky. Rather, it had something to do with the gold-eyed male from the alleyway.
I hadn’t commented. I wasn’t sure I was capable of saying anything coherent during those minutes I’d spent stunned by what was unfolding.
I was leaving. I was finally going to Faerie.
Truthfully, there was nothing I wished to take from the apartment. But that wasn’t why I was here.
“I’ll be right back,” I muttered while Florian stood stone-still beside the kitchen and eyed it as though he were both equally fascinated and repulsed.
In my room, I retrieved and pocketed the gold coins. Then I reached for the pad of parchment beneath the bed and almost knocked over the inkpot on the windowsill in my haste. I snatched the quill from my nightstand drawer and sat on the floor as I wrote with a tremble in my hand.