“I ... But I didn’t agree...” Under his twinkling eyes and dark smirk, my words fluster like my face burns hot. “I made no bargain,” I manage to choke out.
He pushes his fingers against my mouth, pressing against my teeth so hard that they start to ache.
In a dangerous whisper, he answers, “I need to make no bargain with you. You need one with me. Take the white powder, take the bargain.”
I have little choice. His absolute confidence rattles me and the ache in my front teeth is growing into a sharp pain that will stay with me for days.
Suppressing a shudder, I part my lips and let his finger dip into my mouth.
A salty bitterness explodes on my tongue. Instinct takes over and I hesitantly rest my hand on his wrist. He doesn’t strike me down for it.
Winding my tongue around his finger, I get every last grain of the powder.
Slowly, he slips his finger out of my mouth. His hand slides down to my chin, where it grips firmly, pushing out my lips.
Inching closer to me, the prince presses his fingers into points that has my mouth parting. He flicks his tongue over mine, as if to taste the powder.
I wince as he bites at my bottom lip and holds my gaze—a statement that doesn’t go unnoticed.
His eyes darken to the shade of the deep blue trees in the gardens, with the same specks of glittering silver. He gives me a long, dangerous look before he releases me abruptly and takes a step back.
With his retreat, he steals a heavy breath from me and I scramble off the desk.
He turns his back on me and strides around the desk. “Leave,” he commands, and I don't need telling twice.
I scramble out of the office.
8
It’s been two Quiets since the prince force-fed me the white powder. It’s been two Quiets since I have seen him, and also since the effects of the magical powder has ...restoredme.
In the moments after the threats in his office, much has changed within me. I feel better. More energised. I cough less. The pain in my chest has loosened to a whisper. No blood spills from my lips.
It’s as though I’ll never be sick again.
But of course, I know that hope to be a false one. He did say he would come to collect when the effects of the white powder faded. And he must know when that will come, because he left for the Court during the Warmth after he pinned me to the desk in his office, and he hasn’t yet returned.
Apparently—according to Terry, who gets her gossip from Archer, who is closest to the butler—Prince Daein is competing in a traditional hunt with the visiting litalves; a gesture to better build their political relations or something. I just hope it isn't the Wild Hunt, where they release humans into a dangerous wood, then hunt them down and slaughter them for nothing more than entertainment.
My face turns sour at the thought of the prince hunting my kind for sport and to ease the tensions between the dokkalves and litalves.
“Somethingisgoing on.” Terry’s matter-of-fact tone cuts through my mind.
I blink at her, taking a moment to come back to my surroundings.
Skimming her hands over the surface, she’s waist-deep in the lake, stripped down to her underdress. Soaked golden hair ropes down the side of her face, piled over her shoulder. She looks like some sort of water fae.
I’m tucked up on the shore, my legs brought to my chest and arms wrapped around them. I rest my chin on my knees.
“What?” I ask, her words only just sinking in.
“I was right,” she says firmly. “Something is going on between you two. You’ve been in a mope since he left for the Court, and—don’t think we all haven’t noticed,” she adds darkly, lowering her lashes on me, “but when was the last time you coughed in the kitchens with the draught, or hacked up blood in the corridors, or even had to sit down and rub your chest for a break?” She answers her own question before I can, “Not since he left.”
The sigh I let loose is long and ropey.
Lifting my chin from my knees, I cut a glance around the lake’s shore, then up to the twilight gardens that line the gleaming marble steps up to the castle’s rear doors. The closest person I see is the faint silhouette of an outdoor slave pruning the trees midway up the stairs. Too far away to hear us.
Still, I unravel my tucked up body before I slide my bottom down the grassy slope to the foamy rim of the lake’s water. Unlike the pink one, this lake offers no harm to my kind. We need it to source fresh drinking water for the castle, fill the washtubs and stir into the pond in the west wing.