Taming the King (Witchling Academy Book 3) Read online

  The king glanced my way. “It will come back again in the morning. It always does, but I can no longer bear to see it disappear.”

  Instead, he turned toward the wall, which I realized now held a door. It shimmered beneath the refracted sun that snuck into this small corner of the cave opening. As the light struck it, it gleamed with hope, promise…and despair.

  “Through those doors lies the path back to the Fae realm,” he said, and once again, my heart quaked with fear of what damage I might do to Aiden, what darkness I might bring out of this hole.

  “I told you I don’t want to go back to the Fae realm,” I blurted. “I already escaped once from there. That’s enough.”

  “It’s a pity we can’t always get what we want, isn’t it?” The king sneered. “Your fear is well placed, Witch Hogan. You have been told the king might kill you or banish you to save his people, but Aiden, the fool, has done neither. Instead, he’s fallen in love with you—yet here you’ve gone and given him reason to doubt his very heart.”

  “I have not,” I lashed out, my mind crowding with protests. Lena, Aiden’s cousin, had warned me Aiden would kill me to save his people, but King Lyric was right—Aiden hadn’t. He’d let me go instead. Not banishing, but…releasing me. And he’d destroyed the contract that had tied me to the Fae realm.

  But now, as I looked at the Fomorian king, a new and terrible vision rose up before my eyes. I saw death and loss—and Aiden, bloody and broken, crumpled at this creature’s feet.

  The image shifted, and it was the Fomorian king who was defeated.

  It twisted again, and I alone lay dead, while the two kings raged and tore at each other, as if unaware I’d fallen.

  I shook my head, desperately trying to clear my mind. What could I believe anymore? What should I believe?

  There was one thing I knew for sure. “I don’t serve you,” I informed King Lyric. “I’ll never serve you.”

  His laugh was little more than a harsh bark of derision. “Keep telling yourself that, but here’s something you should know. A distracted king is a dead one. So go and be a good little bride of the Fomorian king, Belle Hogan, and finish what you’ve begun.”

  He waved his hand at me almost casually, and the nearly forgotten pain from my bound wrists and ankles returned. Along with it, a flood of chaos assaulted my mind, exploding through my memories, shattering them into a thousand tiny bits. There was Aiden, then there was not, there was my tavern and Cassandra and the coven of the White Mountains, then there wasn’t, there was King Lyric—then there was nothing at all.

  The portal door swung open, and he shoved me through.

  6

  Aiden

  I’d stalked the length of Belle’s academy, daring anyone to speak to me as I waited for her return. No one was so foolish. The djinn watched from a distance, silent and respectful, looking like they would answer any of my questions should I ask them, but desperately hoping that I passed them by. I granted their wish. Unfortunately, Belle did not return to those halls or to the wide grassy lawn or the wooded shoreline around her great-grandmother’s retreat. I contemplated setting the place on fire, to raze every inch of the Hogan entrapment. But I didn’t dare to, which made me more furious.

  Cassandra had been clear. Duped or otherwise, Belle now had the cursed magic of the Fomorians upon her. She couldn’t be trusted, but she could still be used. Everything in my mind cried out against the brutality of that statement, but I had seen her bend beneath the king of the Fomorians with my own eyes.

  In that moment, she could not have known it was not me. I refused to believe it. But if she had been willing to submit to the king of the Fomorians, whether thinking he was me or not, what else had she given him? What had she taught him? How had she put my people in danger?

  I had built up a full head of steam by the time I returned to the castle. Lena was there, hovering inside the doorway, her stricken face pale and drawn with worry. She lifted a hand to me in silent support, then withdrew it gracefully at my glare.

  “Has there been any sign of her?” I demanded. There was no question who I was referring to, and Lena shook her head. The expression in her large, luminous eyes stopped short of pity, but reflected compassion and resolve.

  “No,” she said softly. “It would make sense that you would find her in your throne room, though—the private one, if I might be so bold.”

  That stopped me, and I shot her curious look. “I never use that one.”

  She nodded. “I know that, and you know that, but you are the king, and she is only a human in the end. I thought…”

  I turned away from her, stalking off. It was a good idea, which was why ten minutes later, I was in the room where I had last seen my father, blessedly alone. The private throne room had been intended for meting out sensitive assignments and secret deals in my father’s time and my grandfather’s before him. It was where I had been given my orders for the front, because it was one of the few places where my father trusted he would not be betrayed.

  I had not spent my life in fear of deceit, yet I had been deceived. Perhaps my father had had the right of it all along.

  I was still glowering at the throne when the portal opened beside me. It wasn’t a subtle push, either, but the sound of a wrecking ball crashing against stones, a boom that had me spinning around in sudden fury. Nothing came through the blank panel at first, a spew of inky darkness roiling in its depths. And then I heard Belle’s scream of defiance—quiet at first, barely audible, then growing with equal parts panic and pain.

  “No,” she shouted. “No!”

  Then she hurtled through the open space, arms flailing, so fast I almost didn’t reach her in time to break her fall. Touching Belle was a renewed knife to the gut, and the shock of it had me thrusting her away, setting her on her feet as she spun around.

  She knew instantly where she was, and the thought clearly didn’t please her.

  “No,” she said again, her hands going out, not in subjugation, but as if to ward me off.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” she said before I could speak. “You let me go. I know you did, before—you did. You totally did. You need to let me go again. I can’t lead you into war, I won’t. But I don’t know how to stop it, and I can’t be here with you. I—I can’t!”

  Her voice was traumatized with pain, her body practically vibrating with so much pent-up grief and horror that it shook me to my core. Was this some trick or lie? How would I ever be able to trust her again with what she had seen, with what she had done?

  “Why were you there?” I demanded. The anger in my voice seemed, finally, to ground her. She straightened, squaring her shoulders, and when she met my gaze, her face was filled with less panic and more resolve.

  “You have to send me away, King Aiden,” she said firmly. “It’s the only way.”

  “The only way for what?” I snapped back. I couldn’t stand the pain in her eyes, the hollow, haunted horror that to me said more than anything that she had betrayed me and she knew it. “Why should I believe anything you say? Why were you with the king of the Fomorians, and how were you in that plane at all?”

  Her face flashed with pain before she schooled her features into compliance. “You’re right, you shouldn’t believe me. You can’t believe me. I was with the king of your enemies, and I no longer even know what I’m saying.”

  She spoke slowly, distinctly, and her voice shook with…what? Her attempt to control it? Her desire to deceive me?

  Either way, she continued. “His domain is filled with shadows and lies, and he’s trying to get at you any way he can. That includes me, okay? Me. And I did something bad by even being there. Like, seriously fucked-up bad, and as a result, I need to get the hell out of your castle or wherever this is. You know enough magic, right? You know enough to keep your people safe? You’ll be okay, so I can go?”

  The whipsaw of her shifting emotions made me dizzy, and anger built again. Anger at her, anger at myself for not keeping her safe, anger at t
he bastard king who’d dared to touch her.

  “What did he do to you?” I demanded, but she turned away from me. She turned away. Fury rolled through me.

  “I don’t know,” she shouted at the wall, her voice ringing with pain. “I don’t remember some of it—only bits and pieces—and… You saw it, right? He was such a dick—that much I remember—so of course you saw it. There’d be no point otherwise. That means you know more than I do.” She took a step, then winced, glancing down as if surprised by her own feet.

  My own gaze cleared enough for me to understand what I was looking at, and I saw it all in a flash. Belle’s wrists were scraped raw and bruised, her skin caked with dried blood. Before she could stop me, I strode forward, dropping to one knee to pull up the hem of her pants. I jostled her, and she swayed with a choked whimper of pain. I stood and lifted her off her feet.

  “Your ankles were bound. Your arms were bound. Why?” I demanded as she strained away from me as if she had the strength to break my hold and escape my arms.

  “To put on a show,” she bit out, her voice rising with hysteria. “But I don’t know what all that show was supposed to be. I really don’t. I only know I’ll somehow force you to start a war. And that I’ve betrayed you.”

  I shook her, and her eyes flew wide. I stared into them and saw only pain and confusion—and deep, abiding fear. How was it a witch who could see the future could no longer remember her immediate past?

  “You have to let me go, King Aiden,” she moaned, and then I realized something more. It wasn’t just a few pieces of the immediate past that the king of the Fomorians had wiped away.

  “You don’t remember me either?” I asked, struck to my bones as she paled. “You know you’ll bring me danger. You know I’m the king of the Fae. But you don’t know me? Or what we shared?”

  “I—everything is confused. I only know that I betrayed you,” she whispered again. “I don’t know what I’ve betrayed. But whatever I did, you need to let me go—you have to. It’s the only way I can protect you. You have to let me go!”

  “So you keep saying.” I dipped my head closer to her, and there was no denying her reaction to that. Fear, yes. Doubt. Shame, but a general shame for a crime she did not remember committing.

  I tried a different tack. “How were you injured, Belle?”

  “Trying to…” She began, then frowned. “Trying to get away—”

  She broke off with a violent shudder, as if pain lanced through her body. Ice settled in my veins. She’d remember eventually, I suspected. In the meantime, the Fomorian king had sent my bride back to me, broken and bleeding, as a trap. Belle remembered enough to know she was being used as a tool to start a war, but she didn’t know me—didn’t know what we’d shared, or that I would move heaven and earth to save her and to make her whole again. If all that was true, then this Fomorian king was perhaps a little too smart for his own good. Because he would get his war, all right. And I would get what I most wanted too.

  “Please,” Belle said, drawing my attention back to her as she lifted trembling fingers. All I could see was the dark bruising and blood marring her slender wrists. “I know I’m dangerous to you, King Aiden. I have to leave you.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible,” I informed her. “Instead, tonight you become my queen.”

  7

  Belle

  Panic seized me. “No. No, you’re not listening to me. I have to leave.”

  The beautiful Fae king’s face darkened. I remembered him—sort of—but only as a hazy image. A brutal male appearing in my bar, ordering me into service. I knew—hoped— the remaining details would fill in soon enough, but I couldn’t run the risk of war descending on this king before I knew enough to help him.

  But the Fae king continued on relentlessly. “And I’m telling you that the time for you running is over. You willingly entered the underworld realm of the Fomorians—”

  I blinked. “I did?”

  “You did. There you were bound by its infernal king.”

  I jerked with a sudden, horrible memory. Lyric. The name ripped across my mind—a tall, silvery blond male with glittering teal-green eyes. The image filled my brain, my throat, my mouth, the word so desperate to break free, I almost gagged on it.

  “After that, nothing that happened in that hellhole is your fault,” Aiden concluded. “You were trapped by him, injured by him, assaulted by him. You are not leading me into war, Belle. I am more than happy to fight all on my own.”

  “But that’s not right,” I said, shaking my head, trying to make sense of it. Another brutal spike of pain pounded into my temples, and I shuddered with a swirling wave of nausea. “I mean, what you’re saying makes perfect sense but there’s something you’re missing. Something important.”

  I lifted my hands to either side of my head, willing my brain to work again. What was I so worried about? Why was I so panicked? This king had already planned to defend his realm against the attack from the Fomorians. I mean, of course he had. He’d likely been doing it for years now, because hello, enemies. What made this different?

  The answer wouldn’t come, and the gorgeous, blue-eyed, dark-haired king stood as immovable as a rock in front of me, his gaze sharpening at my obvious distress.

  “What do you need to do to prepare?” he asked me, and my thoughts rabbited away from the issue of war to a far more pressing concern, at least in my immediate future. In my mind’s eye, I saw this stunningly impressive Fae dressed in white and gold, standing in the heart of a ballroom filled with Fae nobility. But in real time, I saw another Fae female stepping into the small chamber directly behind the king, and pain exploded in my brain.

  “Ah!” I gasped, and now I clamped my hands to my temples. The sudden weight of the invisible emerald crown and heavy steel shackles once more pressed into my forehead, my wrists. Everything came back to me in a flash. Well, a lot of it anyway. Aiden—by the goddess, beautiful Aiden—standing in front of me, furious and splendid and in so much danger, I wanted to puke right there on the gleaming marble floors. Danger I had brought him. He’d let me go, freed me from the contract once and for all, but he’d still kept looking for me after I got yanked into the Fomorian underworld and met…Lyric.

  Lyric. What the hell had he shown me? What had he said?

  Think!

  “Lena!” I blurted, making Aiden scowl at me as I finally recognized the Fae female behind him. Lena’s name flashed into my mind, along with all her warnings—warnings that shouldn’t matter anymore. Aiden had let me go. He hadn’t killed or banished me, but he’d let me go. Only—now I was back, and he was talking about making me his queen, and something really bad had happened. Surely that meant Lena’s warnings were still in play…right?

  “My king,” she murmured deferentially, inclining her head to Aiden as her eyes shot daggers at me. “I see you’ve found your witch again.”

  Another ice pick of pain shot across my temples, and I winced. Lena obviously wasn’t a big fan of the whole royal marriage idea, but I couldn’t say I blamed her. “You can’t seriously want to make me your queen,” I insisted. “What does that even mean to a Fae, anyway? It can’t be the same as what it means to a human.”

  He smiled, but his expression grew more dangerous as he studied me with far more interest than a Fae king should, considering I was bringing war to his doorstep. “I don’t know. It is, at its heart, another form of marriage. What does it mean to a human to be married?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. In truth, I didn’t really know. My grandmother had been married, and my great-grandmother before her, but my mother had never bothered with it. I was twenty-five years old, even if at times I felt like I was fifty. But wedding bells were the furthest thing from my mind, given the work I had to do in the bar in helping the outcast witches and monsters who found their way to me.

  “Well, um, to most humans,” I began carefully, trying to ignore the fact that Lena was right here with us, practically vibrat
ing with an emotion I couldn’t quite figure out, but which was not good, “marriage is a lifetime commitment. A human lifetime, that is. You all live longer, so—I don’t know how it works here. I mean, a whole lot of humans get married and then decide later it was a mistake, but most of the time when people get married, they don’t think it’s going to be. They think it’s going to be forever.”

  Aiden nodded briskly. “Then it is not so different from the full royal marriage rites among the Fae. Granted, the restrictions put on the royal family elevating a consort to a queen are a bit more arcane, but you’re a witch. I doubt you will find them difficult to manage.”

  He turned to Lena. “You can prepare her?”

  “Of course, King Aiden,” Lena assured him smoothly, her smile bright and accommodating. She didn’t look at me. “It will be a celebration the realm will long remember.”

  I blew out a long breath, trying not to betray my mounting freak-out. “But how can me becoming, um, queen help your cause? Because that kind of seems like a lot.”

  Aiden’s lips thinned into a hard smile. “You seem determined to believe there is a larger reason for my desire that we be royally wed, so I’ll give it to you. You entered the realm of the Fomorian king, who clearly knew your worth to me, and he assaulted you and caused you grievous harm. You are the Hogan witch, a symbol of the high Fae’s power. If I take you to be my queen, not just my consort, then it looks like your entry into the domain of our avowed enemy was part of the Fae’s long-term strategy to gather intel against the Fomorian. He loses face in the battle before he begins, while the Fae will be wrapped in triumphant glory. A distracted king is a dead king.”