I kept my eyes squeezed closed and curled tighter into myself. My stomach cramping worsened with the emptiness I refused to ask him to fill.
“Roll over,” Florian ordered, and when I ignored him, he leaned down and said to my ear, “Roll the fuck over, sweet creature.”
I bit the inside of my cheek as the storm of heat and his harsh demand spread through my body in the form of a blistering caress.
I gave in and did as he said, but I wouldn’t meet his eyes. I stared up at the canopy of netting coating my bed and nearly moaned from just the slight touch of his fingertips at my stomach. He opened my robe, and I knew it was over.
I was going to let him assist me, and skies, I couldn’t even care to loathe myself for it.
His fingers brushed across my stomach. It contracted in response, expectation and exhilaration unfurling. The anticipation faded when he merely continued to stroke my skin.
“Do you ever eat, Majesty?”
“Florian,” he corrected, but with none of his usual annoyance. “And did you not watch me eat when I took you to dinner?”
The memory of that night, of how confused and disappointed I’d been, returned. “I didn’t watch you,” is all I chose to say to that. “You never eat here.”
“I do. Earlier than you in the mornings, and other meals when I get time.”
“Where?”
The demand earned me a huffed noise that was almost a laugh. “Do you wish to poison me with something harsher than sea salt?”
“It would be fair play,” I said, though the quiet words lacked conviction.
He chuckled, the deep sound brief but beautiful. From my lower stomach to my ribs, his cool fingers traveled and soothed.
“You’ve made your touch cold,” I rasped and finally looked up at him.
His jaw was clenched, his gaze upon my exposed skin and breasts. “Too cold?”
“Perfect.” My eyes closed at the sight of his throat dipping, the impulse to rise and lick his skin painful to fight. “When will this end, Florian?”
“When you decide it does.”
I hadn’t been solely referring to the torture my body endured in the name of full maturity. He was aware of that, but he said nothing else.
I then realized even if I pleaded for him to help me now, he couldn’t. Not with the Frost Festival taking place at sundown. But I also knew he wouldn’t refuse me, and the thought of ruining his grand plans to display me to his people made my desire to surrender and have him fix me nearly impossible to resist.
Yet the unbearable heat receded with every swipe of his fingertips over my skin. All too soon, exhaustion cloaked as if I hadn’t slept in eons.
“You must think me extremely stupid,” I whispered.
“For what reason?” Florian asked as though there were many.
My fingers curled, and I longed to reject his much-needed touch. I didn’t. I couldn’t. He was a poison I needed, his frost-tipped fingers a balm loosening every tense muscle.
Then he murmured, “I think you’re young and desperate and without options.”
I scoffed. “So, essentially, yes.”
His next breathy huff washed my annoyance away. That is, until he said, “I also think you want me to feel guilty for taking advantage of that.” He skimmed his fingers beneath the curves of my breasts. I shivered. “Even if I were capable of feeling remorse, butterfly, I would not.”
The alarming admission was not malicious. He was being honest with me.
For once.
“Well, I’m no longer desperate,” I said, the ire in my tone faint as sleep beckoned. “So kindly find someone else to tend to me throughout this heat.”
His fingers stilled, his words a caustic rumble. “If I believed you wanted someone else…” His stroking resumed, moving to my lower back when I curled onto my side. “Then I would make you watch as I took my time ending their existence.”
Chills erupted over my skin, the threat reaching the marrow of my bones.
“But you do not truly want me,” I said, hating that I’d let such vulnerability be known. “You only want to use me to further humiliate my father.”
Florian was silent for so long, I was falling into the warm depths of sleep when he whispered, “I can want both, butterfly.” He traced the indent of my spine. “And I will have what I want.”
Florian was gone when I woke to a knock on the door.
Zayla entered, eyeing me with amusement as I pushed hair from my face and sat up on the bed. “We leave on the hour.”
It took a moment for sleep and the king’s visit to leave and make room for remembering what lay ahead. “The festival.”
Zayla nodded. “Delen will arrive any minute to prepare you.”
With that, she closed the door, and I hurried into the bathing room to freshen up, feeling better than I had since I’d arrived in Folkyn.
It would seem the king’s power and hands were good for more than wringing blood from his enemies. I still struggled to feel gratitude when I was about to be put on display as a show of his strength.
Delen was waiting outside when I emerged from the bathing room in my robe.
I was given only a nod when I greeted him. He entered silently with a moon-colored gown in hand that he draped over the chair in the corner of the room.
A pair of heeled slippers were carefully set by the door. He then stepped into the hall, and I assumed I would be readying myself, of which I would prefer, but he quickly returned with a small trunk.
His gray tunic was fringed in blue, matching the paint on his eyelids. I marveled at the glittering hue and the light rouge over his rock-hewn cheeks while he unlocked his trunk and opened several wooden compartments.
I moved closer to peek at the kaleidoscope of rouges and eye paints, but the look he shot me over his muscular shoulder made me retreat. “I’m only curious,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
His shoulders dropped, and he shifted to the side.
I smiled, knowing it was permission to inspect but to keep out of his way.
His skin was a light bronze, and his hair as white as my own. “You do not hail from Hellebore,” I said after some silent minutes.
He didn’t answer me.
He plucked the chair from the bureau and gestured for me to take a seat without saying a word. I watched as he placed a selection of colors upon the inside of his arm, and then as he picked two small brushes from a pocket in the lid of the trunk.
Delen was almost done applying the cool and sticky paint to my eyes when his lips parted, and I saw it. His silence was not because he too despised my presence here in this court, but because he couldn’t speak.
Horror swept through me with steel wings that scored at my innards.
Gently, I clasped his smooth chin.
His shoulders and jaw stiffened. Narrowed gold-brown eyes met mine, his brows low with confusion.
“I just need to know one thing.” My heart thundered at the thought. “Did Florian take your tongue?”
Delen blinked, staring at me as if unsure he should answer. After a moment, he shook his head. But the way his gaze hardened on mine caused my stomach to sink.
Rather than voice my suspicion, I released him and looked down at my fingers.
He was from Baneberry.
My gaze remained unseeing upon my hands as my fears and doubts and desires blended into an unsettling storm.