Hands seemed to be everywhere all at once, traveling over my hips, arms, palms, and even brushing my thighs and ass. Hard groins were pressed upon me as they held and then spun me between them.
My lungs tightened, dizziness paralyzing.
Firelight and fiddles and drums melded into a storm of song that jumbled my thoughts and unsteadied my feet. But the males didn’t let me fall. They wouldn’t, which was the only reason I refrained from screaming for help. Instead, I played along until a gap opened between them.
I darted through it, the world tilting so much that I almost fell.
A hand caught my upper arm right before my outstretched palms met the grass, then pulled until the disgruntled barking of the males I’d escaped faded.
My back was pushed to a rough surface, my hands reaching behind me and feeling the bark of a tree. Panic receded, even though I could barely see the ice garlands blurring with the darkness. I’d made it to the tree line, away from the crush of groping hands and warm bodies.
Then a cloaked male’s scent infiltrated. A hurried whisper entered my ear.
The hands holding me up released me.
I stumbled, quickly leaning back against the tree to catch my breath—absorbing the words that had been pressed to my ear by the stranger I hadn’t seen.
If you wish to go home, find a way to the city florist on Ashen Street.
I shook my head, my vision still blurry as I held the tree and rounded it. I searched for the group of cruel faeries I’d left, attempting to guess which one had whispered to me while knowing whoever it was hadn’t been with them.
My eyes found Florian’s furious gaze instead.
Even with the distance between us, I could see the anger tightening his features—that stiffened his entire frame.
He stood below the podium. Alone.
Guards approached me, Fellan thankfully not among them.
I swallowed and looked back to the dancing bodies, but the males who’d been toying with me were nowhere to be seen.
I didn’t wait to be caught like a nuisance pet who’d wandered too far. I met the guards halfway. Seeming shocked as I passed them, they then trailed me back to Florian.
As soon as I neared, the king captured my hands, and we materialized to my rooms in the manor.
I wasn’t given time to recover from the journey.
Florian released me and strode to the door.
Disorientated again from materializing, I gripped the bedpost to stay steady on my feet. “You’re angry,” I foolishly croaked, feeling as though I had to say something before he left.
He laughed, the sound cold and hostile. “Angry doesn’t even begin to cover it, Princess.”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“I’ve never felt more murderous in my entire fucking existence.”
Oh.
Shit.
Guilt and jealousy tangled, causing my mouth to open again when every instinct screamed in warning that it would be safer not to speak at all. “I saw you,” I whispered. “With her.”
He stilled, but only momentarily. He opened the door and entered the hall.
“Florian, wait.” I followed. “Please, I want to talk to you.”
He turned back, effectively backing me into my bed chamber as the fury roiling from him drenched me in a light sweat.
My very flesh trembled. There was nothing I knew within his gaze, within his features and his prowled steps.
Before me loomed a stranger—a male with hatred where his soul once lived. It bled through his eyes, the air growing so cold, I feared it would snow indoors.
He was no longer Florian.
He was now a ruthless king capable of reducing another kingdom to rubble, stone by stone at a time.
“Bad pets do not get what they want.” My next breath sat in my throat when he wrapped his hand around it. My pulse punched at his fingers as he growled to my mouth, “Leave these rooms without my permission, and you’ll earn yourself a lesson on what regret truly means.”
His eyes bored into mine, swirling with a darkness that rendered them almost black. After a moment that brought tears to my eyes, I was released.
The door slammed, snow flurries melting upon the floor.
Sleep refused to take me away from the fear and uncertainty that had me pacing my bedchamber into the early morning hours.
And when it finally did, Florian still hadn’t returned to his rooms.
I woke with the first touch of dawn creeping into the ice-covered windows and a pounding ache within my skull and limbs. There would be no king willing to soothe it for me, so I crawled from where I’d fallen asleep at the end of the bed and drew a bath.
I donned my preferred robe, without a reason to dress even if I had the energy to, and wondered if breakfast would be delivered.
I combed my wet hair while Snow whined to be let out.
The door wasn’t locked. I still hesitated to open it, worried I’d be met with Florian’s wrath for merely letting the wolf cub find a way outside.
Snow scratched at the wood. I gave in and let her out, hoping someone would do the same when she reached an exit to the manor downstairs.
The aches had morphed into something reminiscent of a fever. I’d never had one. Fae did not fall victim to sickness as humans did. But I’d tended to Rolina when she’d been bedridden with them so often that I knew the signs.
I drank the remaining water in the carafe within the bathing room, my hands shaking as I leaned upon the stone wash basin. My eyes were murky, my cheeks too pronounced and tinged with a flush that would not recede when I touched them.
I stared at the ginormous bathing tub beside me, tempted to climb back into the water I’d yet to drain.
A knock sounded.
I left the bathing room as the door to my rooms opened.
Olin, grim-faced, said in a tone that made me clutch at my robe, “The king desires your presence in the downstairs drawing room.” He scowled when I didn’t move. “Immediately.”
I swallowed and nodded.
Atop the stairs, I turned when Olin said quietly from behind me, “Do not test him. I’ve only seen him like this once before.” His eyes seemed absent, and I knew he was remembering whatever had happened then. “This time is different. He’s…” He shook his head and exhaled heavily. “Be very careful.”
Although alarming, it was possibly the nicest the steward had ever been to me. I nodded again, grateful for the warning and for the indication that he did not wish to see me murdered.
Even as a bone-deep instinct reassured me that Florian wouldn’t hurt me.
At least, not in the ways Rolina had.
That didn’t stop my heart from rattling in my chest as I made my way down the stairs to the drawing room. It stopped beating when I entered the open doors to find three faeries tied by their wrists to a wooden beam in the ceiling.
Their swollen and bloody faces made them nearly unrecognizable. Though that wasn’t what horrified me so completely.
Ice encased them all. From their toes to their mouths, it appeared to cocoon them.
Regardless, I still knew who they were.
The overwhelming scent of their fear matched that of the males who’d tormented and touched me profusely at the Frost Festival.
Dread heavied my slow-to-return heartbeat.
Florian sat in the armchair by the snow-piled window.
At first glance, he was the definition of composure.
But he was without a shirt, his knuckles bloodied and cut. The foot resting over his knee bounced. His elbow dug into the leather armrest. His thumb slid over his lower lip, blue eyes fixed on the prey he’d hunted.