My stomach churned. His words confirmed.
His thumb stroked the curled strands.
While I’d been recklessly desperate for mere scraps of information, he’d known exactly who I was all along.
A princess.
“My parents.” It was all I could manage to say, to think.
“Who rules Baneberry, Tullia?” He dropped my hair and tilted his head, awaiting a response I didn’t want to give. “Surely, you know that much from your beloved books.”
One didn’t need books to know the names of Folkyn monarchs, but the barb stung all the same.
Baneberry was ruled by a king. And only a king.
The name was barely a sound. “King Molkan.”
Whoever my mother was, perhaps she was not a part of Baneberry’s court. I asked anyway, ignoring all he’d done in yet another moment of desperation. “My mother?”
“Queen Corina is long dead, butterfly.” The words were flat, emotionless.
My eyes closed. “How long?”
Iced fingers caressed my cheek. “Shortly after your birth.”
I flinched. Not only from his touch and what he’d said, but because I was trapped. I couldn’t move. The iron bars warned in warmth behind me, and he was too close to escape unscathed.
Trepidation made the words a whisper. “Why am I here, Florian?”
“You know why, Tullia.”
A name. My name.
After all these years of wondering if I would never have one, I now knew what it was. I knew, yet part of me wished I didn’t. It was another weapon in this calculated king’s arsenal. Hatred bubbled, erasing the sickness tightening my innards into knots and squeezing my heart in a vise.
Though I couldn’t decide who I hated more—the king or myself.
I’d walked right into this spiderweb, willingly and so perilously desperate. I’d handed him my every desire without once digging deep enough to discover why he would want to know them. Without pushing harder for answers as to why he wanted me.
For it had sat there since my arrival in this ice-cold realm, a bone-deep knowing that something wasn’t right. That things were not as they seemed.
His fingertip reached my lips.
I pushed it away and opened my eyes to glare up at him. They were damp, but I refused to let a single tear fall. “Why am I here, Florian?” I didn’t need to know. I needed him to say it.
He feigned a pout. “No more majesty?”
“Why am I here, Florian?” I nearly growled.
He sighed as though answering the redundant question was beneath him. “You are here because your father owes me and my kingdom a debt he can never repay.”
“He killed your sister,” I guessed, and accurately, judging by the way his jaw hardened and he stepped back. “He killed Lilitha, so you plan to kill me.”
“And yet…” His mouth curved. “You breathe, butterfly.”
If he didn’t intend to kill me, then Frensroth was right. He was using me.
“You’re using me as a weapon in this game of fair play.” I swallowed thickly, loathing the hurt I couldn’t keep from my voice. “I wished only to know who my family was, and now you are using me against them?”
His brow arched. “Your father stole everything from us, Tullia. Everything. He did so without hesitation and without remorse. Then he had the gall to hide you when your mother died, believing I would harm a babe.”
Absorbing that, I said nothing. Couldn’t have if I’d tried.
He licked his teeth behind closed lips. “I will destroy him by any means possible, but I would never do that. That he thought I would…” He let those words hang there. “Well, that tells you all you need to know about this precious father you’ve always wished for.”
With that, Florian turned for the stairs. His dark coat kicked up wisps of snow behind him.
I didn’t follow. I looked back at the cell containing a dead faerie. Questions and unease kept my feet stuck.
Frensroth had come for me. He’d said others had as well.
Which meant despite whatever my murderous betrothed had said, the Baneberry king cared. Enough to want me away from the male intent on ruining him.
Florian waited at the tree line, in quiet conversation with two of his warriors.
I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t stay, but I also couldn’t leave. I’d made a blood vow, and I was bound to it unless we both agreed to break it.
Florian would not release me. I was the blade that would make his enemy bleed even more. I wasn’t going anywhere.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t try.
I ignored him when he called for me. Seconds later, I felt him advancing at my back. I broke into a run, tripping through the snow in my haste to get away—from him and the image of Frensroth’s battered face as the winter king’s dagger had sunk so easily into his chest.
Florian’s calm threat stalked me. “Run, Princess. Waste your time and harden my cock some more.”
Florian didn’t knock.
He entered my rooms as soon as the sun had set. He eyed the coins I’d been fishing out from beneath the bed. “You won’t get far with those, butterfly.”
I’d spent hours trying to devise a plan of escape. I would rather live in the middle lands than be used as a pawn in his sickening game of vengeance. Of course, he would easily find me. The only way I would evade his plans for me was to reach Baneberry.
I couldn’t materialize over such a great distance without risk of the energy rifts tearing me apart. But that didn’t matter. I’d foolishly found my way to Folkyn. Somehow, I would find a way to the realm of Baneberry.
I left the coins and rose from the floor. “What do you want?”
“So many things.” He closed the door and leaned back against it with his hands in his pockets, and that quiet snick was a bolt of thunder that caused my heart to jump. “Right now, I’ll settle for hearing what you’re concocting in that whimsical mind of yours.”
“If you believe I’d dare share any part of me with you again, you’re as delusional as you are cold.”
He blinked but otherwise remained aloof with a dash of curiosity as he watched me wring my hands in my robe. “You’re afraid of me.”
I hated that he could scent as much, and the slight tremble within my voice. “You’ve just murdered someone, and you…” It felt bizarre to think, let alone say. “You’ve been attacking my kingdom.”
“Your kingdom?” He tilted his head. “How sweet.”
I ignored that, and how ridiculous it was to call Baneberry as such. Though it was indeed the stunning truth. “You intend to kill him,” I said, and he knew I spoke of the male who’d sired me. “Before I even lay eyes on him.”
He smirked. “Only after I’m done picking at every piece of his flesh, so you never know.” He lifted his shoulder. “You just might catch a glimpse.”
My heart sank.
The attacks he’d been ordering. The red wax upon the maps in his study. The wagons he kept receiving…
Me. He would destroy me.
“And that involves marrying the heir he went to great lengths to hide from you?” His silence was answer enough. He fully intended to humiliate us both, and it was working. “You’re repulsive.”