The next morning, I was awake and ready when Molkan arrived, better rested than the day prior but still haunted by blue eyes and careful and cruel lies.
“How are you finding the food?” the king asked once we’d reached the bottom of the sandstone steps.
This time, we didn’t veer right toward the gardens we’d traversed yesterday. Molkan strolled toward the western side of the palace. He waited when I paused at the sight before me. “I suggest leaving your shoes behind.”
I smiled and kicked off my slippers.
A pond, almost a dam, rich with algae and water lilies, stretched along the base of the western wall. Beside it was another terrace that met with the emerald grass, vines crawling up the pillars of the stone shelter.
Remembering he’d asked me a question, I stammered out, “The food is delicious, thank you.”
Molkan hummed, fingers curling at his back once more, and licked his teeth as if pondering his next words before he set them free. “We would have more in the way of meats, but our livestock has diminished, and now our poultry, too.”
Florian.
Though I didn’t need to ask who was responsible, I did say, “What has he been doing exactly?”
The wagons—of which I knew were likely just some of many that had been taken elsewhere—and the conversation I’d had with Kreed swam within my mind. My toes scrunched over the soft grass, but my blood chilled when Molkan spoke again.
“He has his warriors steal our livestock. They’re resold for a hefty sum in the middle lands, where meats are not as rich and bountiful. And if they cannot be stolen from us and used for his own gain, then they’re destroyed or poisoned.”
I wasn’t surprised. I’d known he’d been tormenting Baneberry.
Yet I found myself struggling to understand all of this in its entirety. “All because you loved his sister?”
“Love,” Molkan said, squinting toward the harsh glare of the sun. “A strong word, though sometimes not quite strong enough.” He lowered his gaze and scratched at his beard, then re-hooked his fingers at his back. “Lilitha was an obsession, an addiction I could not quit.”
“What happened next?” I couldn’t resist asking. “You said you tried to stay away but you knew she was your mate.”
“Well, I didn’t see her again for years. Of course,” he huffed, “when I did, she made sure it was when she was maturing—the heat upon her like an iron noose around my throat.”
I failed to suppress the rising memories of my own experience with the heat. Memories of molten lips, possessive hands, and the insatiable hunger within glowing eyes that stalked my dreams and imprinted upon my soul.
Those endless days and nights were a crushing weight within my limbs. A poison I’d forever carry in my heart. No matter how much I wanted to rip them from my memory and wake wishing they’d only ever been a dream.
Molkan, as if lost to memories himself, cleared his throat. “I couldn’t refuse Lilitha. She’d learned to materialize and appeared in my study, desperate and sick, and I just…” He blew out a rough breath. “We stayed in the cabin of one of my father’s prized and forgotten boats along the river, and it would be some days until we left. Then I made the mistake of materializing her home, thinking that would be it. That I could walk away for good.”
A lizard, blue and mottled violet in the sun, scuttled across the terrace to the rocky bank of the large pond. The spikes upon his tail changed from cream to gold when he reached the water and turned to flick his forked tongue our way.
“I told your mother I was away with unexpected business, and though she didn’t believe me and ignored me for weeks on end, she never did question me. But a month later, she finally ceased her silence with a stern request for a babe. A test,” he said. “One I was determined not to fail, for I’d already failed her too much.”
“A test?” I questioned.
“She wanted to know just how lost I was to this connection with Lilitha, and though I was lost beyond being found, I still adored Corina. I still wanted our lives to remain as they were. We were blessed, and I’d foolishly thought bringing another blessing into the world might keep me where I needed to be. Might keep me from continuously falling prey to temptation for what I could not have.”
There was a heavy pause.
“As you might already be aware, for those of us with royal blood, there is no such thing as termination of marriage. It risks upsetting the bloodlines, you see.”
It was impossible to keep my shock from showing, so I lowered my gaze to the grass. My cheeks heated with yet more shame and fury.
Another lie Florian had handfed me like food for the pet I had been. That should both parties agree, a marriage could be terminated. He’d known royals were forbidden to leave a marriage, no matter what, and he’d known I was too desperate to know any better.
A relief, then—that he’d dragged his feet on the matter.
We hadn’t married, and as Molkan walked in silence while nodding to some passing groundskeepers who kept their gazes from me, I had to wonder if Florian had ever truly planned to make me his wife.
My relief burst beneath more flames of hurt.
Once we were alone, not another soul to be seen or heard as we traveled the length of the towering palace, the king went on. “Corina was due for another contraceptive potion, so in answer, I told her not to take it.”
Alarm spiked sharp and sudden.
Not because I recalled Florian offering me a contraceptive potion he’d brought with one of many trays of food to his chambers during the heat.
But because that merciless creature had given me the choice.
Too early in the heat to care about why he’d presented it in such a way, I’d swallowed the brew without thought, desperate for Florian to tend to me again.
Molkan knocked me from my stomach-snatching confoundment.
“Six months later, you were swelling her stomach and feet. We felt the pregnancy had taken well enough, so we eagerly spread the news.” He gestured wide with one hand and nostalgic words. “Celebrations took place throughout the city in the days to follow, your mother and I watching it from the balcony of our rooms.” His hand returned behind his back. “But the bliss and hope and the feeling of finally making things right was short-lived.”
“Lilitha found out,” I guessed.
“She was always wild, untamable, Hellebore’s beloved yet reckless princess,” he mused quietly. “But never more than when she discovered Corina carried you. In the middle of the night, not three days after we’d set the news free, I woke to find her standing at the side of our bed, tears in her eyes as she gazed at my sleeping wife.” There was a slight croak to his voice. “At Corina’s growing stomach.”
Skies, I couldn’t imagine. Waking to find someone watching you sleep was concerning alone, but witnessing the evidence of betrayal from a mate you thought had been yours despite everything he had or hadn’t promised?
I willed the empathy morphing into a scaled beast unleashed by unbearable hurt to fade.
It didn’t.
It writhed within my chest as Molkan said, “I should have been the one to tell her, I know. I see that now, but back then…” He made a sound of flat humor. “I was only concerned about my pride and the marriage I had to keep. So I forced Lilitha from the room before Corina woke, thankful that the pregnancy kept her sleeping like the dead, and we fought for hours in these gardens while she paced and cried and failed to understand why I would betray her by impregnating my wife.”