Those words straightened my spine, a rebuttal forming and failing. I closed my mouth because she was right.
The glint in her eyes still irked.
My stomach then soured, and I clutched a hand over it.
Queen Aura noticed and hummed. She studied Snow when the cub sat at my feet and licked her breakfast from her lips, warning when I made to leave, “I wouldn’t go up there for a while if I were you.”
I frowned and lowered back to the stool.
Kreed groaned. “You refused him again?” His question would have concerned if it weren’t for the fact that Queen Aura was mated and married.
Noting my confusion, Aura laughed. “War, darling. Florian seeks some of our military to sufficiently squash your father.” The queen snatched a strawberry from the bowl Kreed set upon the countertop. Holding it to her crimson mouth, she said flippantly, “But he doesn’t need us, of course.”
“Then why does he seek your assistance?” I couldn’t resist asking.
Aura chewed, licking the fruit from her teeth as she watched me. “Because he is obsessive in his pursuits. There will be no gaps in his armor and not a crumb of opportunity for defeat.” Her green eyes roamed over my fluffy robe before she snatched another strawberry. “Though perhaps that is changing.”
Kreed cleared his throat and shot Aura a look I couldn’t decipher.
She sighed in a way that said he was spoiling her fun. Her gaze twinkled at me. “Another time.”
I watched her leave the same way she’d arrived.
Kreed waited until she was well and truly gone before whispering, “Aura enjoys knowing everyone’s business, Princess.” He shook his head. “But that is all. She never gets involved in anything.”
So that was why she was here when she had no intention of aiding Florian.
I pulled my breakfast back to me, hungry again. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
The look he gave me in return before he left the kitchen was some type of warning. But as my head began to pound, I lost the ability to care about the games of the Fae.
Apparently, Aura had meant it when she’d said we would talk another time.
My wolf cub bounded through the sludge and snow while I tried to shake the foggy residue my midmorning nap had left behind.
I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, but after returning to my rooms to bathe and dress, I’d lain upon the bed to pet Snow, then woke to a gentle tapping upon the door.
Zayla had followed us outside, but after a look from Aura, she remained on the drive with an unmistakable grimace of displeasure. Guilt niggled at me, for she was surely going to earn a scolding from her king for not following my every move.
Sensing what was on my mind as I glanced back down the path behind us, Aura mused, “Does he think you’ll fall through his fingers if he doesn’t have someone watch you breathe?”
I laughed, shocked by it, and said thickly, “He doesn’t trust that I won’t try to get what I want.”
“And what is that?”
The sun broke through the clouds overhead.
Ice clung to the snow-swept stones beneath our feet. Frost shimmered among the ivy crawling over the fortress we walked alongside, thorns glinting like diamonds. The chill of this kingdom was almost unbearable, but its beauty and magic were undeniable.
My captor’s cold realm was everything I’d dreamed of one day experiencing, and I couldn’t say that I wasn’t excited to glimpse this estate once it was touched by autumn—the only other season to visit Hellebore.
All the while, I hoped I was long gone before it arrived, memories of wandering these grounds swept away with the melting snow.
“A way home,” I finally said.
Aura slowed as we rounded the rear of the manor, dark crimson and blue roses within white-glazed hedges all that remained in the gardens. “You made a bargain with a king,” she assumed correctly. “Believing that it would take you there?”
I didn’t need to answer that, but she was a queen, so I nodded. “I should have known it was too good to be true.”
“Desperation,” she murmured as if to herself. “And fate.” Before I could ask her what she’d meant by that, she surprised me by saying, “Florian wasn’t always this way, you know. Calculated and cold to his core.”
“Is that why you entertain him?”
She smiled, the touch of her fingers upon a thorny branch in the hedge causing the frost to instantly melt. “Yes and no. After hearing the rumors of what he’s been up to, I simply wanted to see it and meet you for myself.”
It should have shamed me to think of anyone in Folkyn learning what a fool I’d been.
Instead, I couldn’t ignore the curiosity—the overwhelming desire to know more about this king who’d touched me like I was rare treasure while making plans to trap me. “Dare I ask what he was like?”
“Insatiable.” She noted my immediate scowl and laughed. “In every way a faerie prince should be, darling.” Exuberance filled her velvet voice. “He was reckless and wild, both unbearably cruel and sweet, and rarely without a substance to abuse.”
“Substance?”
“Oh, he partook in every delight available, of course. Bodies, liquor, mushroom melts, toadstool dust…” The queen waved a hand. “My wife and I used to adore hosting him, even if we’d need to send him to the stables by the end of his stay. We cannot indulge the way we once did.” Nostalgia tinted every word. “He was beloved and feared then, too, but in a way that was so very different to the stern loyalty and terror bestowed upon him now.”
“Then his sister died,” I said quietly.
“His father, too,” Aura said, then nothing more for a minute as we walked on.
Snow roamed toward the trees beyond the paddocks. We passed an archway dusted with icy darkness that led to the courtyard in the middle of the manor, and I watched my breath plume before me, lost in thought.
Lost to imagining all Florian had once been.
“He raised that female,” she whispered, throaty as though she might cry. “Florian might have been a typical ghastly and mischievous prince, but there was a wildness to Lilitha from the moment she was born. Florian lost his mother to the difficult birth, and Mercury and I have always wondered if perhaps his way of grieving her was to be the parent Lilitha never had.”
I frowned. “But their father was still here?”
“He was here but also not,” Aura said. “Hammond lost his mate, half of his soul, and he could seldom look at his daughter without being reminded of her.”
“But she was his daughter.”
A sharp look was cast my way. “And we are not human, my darling.”
I swallowed and nodded. “So Lilitha rebelled because she lacked the nurturing love of parents?”
Aura laughed, the liquid velvet calming some of the tension that hadn’t left my body in days. “Again, we are not human. Princess Lilitha would have been such a way, even if her mother had lived,” she claimed. “I know it, and so does Florian.” A light scoff. “Despite what excuses he would constantly make for the wildling.”
Ahead, a curved row of small buildings came into view.
Arryn or Thistle—I couldn’t be sure who, due to the distance—exited one and hurried through the snow toward the manor. As we drew closer, I noted the buildings were cottages for the staff. Smoke climbed from the stone chimneys toward the treetops beyond them, the other twin following moments later.