“Okay, but why?”
“I’m busy on an important project,” she replies, her breath quickening.
“Anything I can do to help?”
Her lips quirk. “This is something Grandma must do on her own.”
Every time she talks about herself in the third person, it means she’s up to something and she doesn’t want anyone to know.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Grandma needs a little break.” She bustles toward me, rocks forward on the balls of her feet, and kisses me on the cheek. “Toodle-pip, dear.”
Before I can press my point, she’s halfway down the hallway and flinging the door open as though she’s just remembered leaving the stove on.
I don’t even bother to chase after her. It’s bad enough that she’s suggesting taking away my magic. I don’t need to add to her concerns by running out barefoot and in a flimsy nightshirt.
“There’s no way I could be an animancer.” I walk to the dresser and pull open the underwear drawer, only to find it empty.
When I check the laundry basket, all my dirty knickers are gone.
“Shit.”
I turn in a circle, taking in my pristine bedroom. Every time Grandma fixed the Boogie Man’s vandalism, she’d left everything in its usual place. I return to the dresser, pull out the drawers, and find all my other items exactly where I’d left them the night before.
“Animancer my ass,” I mutter under my breath. “What kind of animal steals its own underwear? It’s time to prove to Grandma once and for all that this is the work of the Boogie Man.”
ChapterTwo
HENRY
It’s taken days to replenish my magic. Days of slumbering in my accursed form until I recovered. But the time I’ve spent away from Alienor has felt like an eternity. Each visit to her bedside brings me closer to breaking through the enchantment keeping us apart.
After destroying the magic that protects Alienor, I will kill her.
No.
I’ll fuck her first, then I’ll tear out her treacherous heart.
My hands curl into my throne’s tarnished armrests, and my cock stirs at the prospect of running Alienor through with my claws.
Only one thing has kept me sane these past eight centuries: the promise of revenge. Revenge against the wife who made me fall in love. Revenge against the woman who turned my children into enemies. Revenge against the usurper of my kingdom.
Plaster crumbles down from the broken ceiling, adding to the debris strewn across what was once the throne room’s marble floor. Since the servants perished, no one has kept the palace from ruin, and now every day is a battle against the elements.
The magic keeping me alive doesn’t care for my surroundings. The courtiers I didn’t kill have either left through death, desertion, or desiccation.
I am not just a king in exile.
I am completely and utterly alone.
I lean against the backrests, swallowing back centuries of bitterness. Alienor is half the age she was when I last saw her, with a face and body even more beautiful than her first. She looked peaceful, happy, almost innocent, but I won’t be swayed by her delectable disguise.
My jaw tightens, and my wings unfurl. The power beneath my veins bubbles, coloring my black markings a vivid shade of red.
Did she think she could hide from me forever?
Did she think the passage of time would make me forget?