Tempting the King (Witchling Academy Book 2) Read online

  I felt Niall’s intense gaze on me. This wasn’t the time for genocide, but that would happen if this asshole didn’t take his slimy eyes off Belle. When the warden turned and proffered her the book to read from, I could feel Belle’s palpable fear and revulsion. Something about that book bothered her on a soul-deep level, and every instinct in my body screamed for me to help, defend, protect my fated mate. Instead, she decided to protect herself.

  I heard the spells she cast, her voice sounding in my mind with the strength of our connection. A moment later, she burst forward, still visible to me, but clearly not to her hapless captors, as she pushed through them from the center of some kind of bubble, forcing them to bounce off and away from her.

  I turned and lifted my hands to execute a portal, but the cat screeched, waving frantically.

  “We run! We run. You are Seline. Seline run,” Celia screamed, at a pitch I suspected I could hear only because of the guise I had adopted. Fair enough. I didn’t care how we left this place, as long as Belle was with us.

  I pulled her to me, lifting her off her feet and gritting my teeth at the magic of her ward. She practically sparked and boiled over with power, but I was the High King of the Fae and she was my witch, even if she was no longer obligated to me by contract. Her magic was no proof against me.

  Right?

  There was no time to test how far that truth would hold. We turned, and Niall’s delighted shout told me all I needed to know. We would have to fight our way out.

  Fortunately, Niall and I were both in the mood.

  With the satisfying roar of the Seline cats we presented as, we made short work of the lizard horde, who literally tripped over their own tails trying to contain us. I got the feeling they had gotten used to not having to enforce their will, lazy in the fear of those they subordinated. A lesson to carry with me, and I thanked them for it with snarls and curses as I cut through their ranks. In only a few minutes, we were outside again. The chaos inside the building had not drawn much attention, but as we burst out into the courtyard, more guards rounded the corner.

  “Now?” Niall demanded, but the hellcat Celia shook her head.

  “We run!” she insisted.

  She shifted into her cat guise, and Niall shocked me by shifting quickly with her, becoming a giant feline, lithe and powerful.

  I swung around to Belle who stared at me, clearly surprised.

  “You guys can do that?” she demanded, and that was all I needed. In a heartbeat, I shifted, dropping a shoulder for her to clamber up on me. Instead, she lifted a hand, and in her place was a Seline cat as sleek and beautiful as anything I’d ever seen.

  “It worked,” she practically chortled. “And I did it myself! I’m stronger—so much stronger. This is so cool!” Her storm-gray eyes danced with delight as Niall roared in our minds.

  “Run!”

  We ran. Celia took the lead to begin with, but Niall kept pace with her, and when she encountered a barrier that I could not as quickly discern, he was right there. The cat screamed, her fur practically standing on end from the force of some powerful shock. Niall also swayed abruptly to the side, sharply rebuffed, and thrust Celia back with a powerful push of his shoulder.

  Celia flashed back into her human guise, twitching in pain, and I could now see the network of magic that had stopped her. My gaze slid along the barrier with fury. This was how the keepers of the Riven District forced their people to stay? Not with natural barriers or walls, but with fields of fire and shocks to the system? What foul magic had created such boundaries?

  “Aiden!” Belle shouted. I swung my head to realize she’d already crossed the barrier. I nosed my way into the force field, feeling the pressure, but I could break through too.

  Niall, also no longer in cat form, dragged a stumbling Celia forward. He snarled in annoyance as his shoulder grazed the force field, then stopped, breathing heavily. He could probably push through on his own, but it would cost him.

  “Go,” Celia screeched with hysteria, trying to pull away from Niall. I’d never seen anyone do hysteria quite as well as she could. “They’ll be coming. I can hide. Go.”

  “No,” Niall and I shouted at the same time. Belle flashed back into human form and bounded back across the plane, shuddering only slightly, then she was at Celia’s side.

  She turned and waved at me impatiently. “You need to be in your strongest form if we’re going to carry them through.”

  She pulled Celia close, whispering in her ear. Celia closed her large catlike eyes and mewled with fear, but together, they raced forward.

  Niall cocked an eye at me. “Are you going to hold my hand?” he quipped, but I could hear the hunters behind us. I threw my arm around his waist, ignoring his curse of surprise, then pushed forward.

  Both Celia and Niall roared in pain as they encountered the force field, but we got them through it, all of us sprawling into the woods on the other side, the forest much thicker than it had first seemed.

  “Don’t stop, please don’t stop,” Celia begged, practically sobbing, and we shifted once more, taking off through the trees as racing cats.

  I scanned behind us as we ran, but the city of lizards dropped almost immediately into darkness, as if the moon did not trace its normal trajectory across the sky, but sidestepped this part of the monster realm entirely, keeping the Riven District in perpetual darkness. What was this place, anyway?

  Something about that lizard warden bothered me on a visceral level, and not only because of the way he looked at Belle. He was not Fomorian, yet he’d held the same sense of wrongness that those slimy bastards had. Did descendants of the ancient Fomorian walk the monster realm? And if so, did they even know what they were?

  It was another few hours before we slowed, the forests of this section of the monster realm thick and heavy, with the creatures that inhabited it keeping far away from our frenzied trek. We probably were not the first to escape from the Riven District, and there no doubt were bands of scavengers lying in wait to take what they could of such survivors, but we faced no such opposition here. Possibly because of the magic Belle carried and my own Fae nature, possibly because the scavengers had learned over long history that anyone with the will to get out of the Riven District was not to be trifled with, even in a state of weakness. Desperation made heroes of us all.

  “Aiden.” Niall’s call was low, concerned, and I swung my gaze to the Seline cat, her sides blowing heavily, her steps less steady.

  “I know a place,” she muttered. “Someone told me about a place…”

  We let her continue, but gradually, we slowed as we came to a rocky outcropping that fell away into a wide lake. Celia stumbled, but I saw where she was heading, a shallow cave cut into the rock, overlooking the water. It was out of the elements, and warm. I grimaced. This Seline cat—or human, if that’s what she was—lived closer to the land than Niall or I, but we owed her a debt of thanks. We would sleep here this night.

  I turned to see Belle eyeing me, still in her cat form. It would make the climb easier, but I could still read her thoughts, and there was no missing the approval in her eyes, as if she had been able to follow my thought process and my decision and had deemed it worthy. Fool that I was, I savored the rush of pleasure that rolled through me.

  “Let’s go,” I said into everyone’s mind. We made the rest of the short trek quickly enough, Celia flopping in front of the mouth of the cave, too weary to shift back to her human form. Niall knelt beside her, checking her eyes, her paws. Belle also shifted, and for the first time, I noticed the char on her skin, the ashy stains on her long-sleeved shirt.

  “We need a fire,” she said. “But go easy on it, okay? Celia’s afraid of fire.”

  “You’re hurt,” I said, and stepped toward her.

  She shook her head. “Mainly tired.” That was a fair statement. There was no hiding the shadows under her eyes.

  “I’ve got the fire,” Niall said from behind us. “If you could conjure up something to carry it in, ma
ybe get us some water?”

  Belle didn’t object when I took her hand, and when she swayed, she also didn’t object when I lifted her into my arms, at least not at first. She smelled of smoke and sweat, the combination almost intoxicating, and I tightened my hold on her. When we reached the opening to the cave, however, she wiggled against me as if to regain her feet.

  “Let me do this,” I murmured. “For once in your life, my witch, let someone take care of you.”

  9

  Belle

  I couldn’t seem to make my feet work correctly, at least not if I wasn’t holding on to Aiden. I had suddenly become so tired, I thought I might pass straight out. Hoping to avoid that, I let him carry me to the water. When he knelt and returned me to the ground, he slipped my feet out of their battered sneakers. The gesture nearly brought tears to my eyes, though I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand anything right now.

  “Where the hell are we?” I mumbled, which only earned me a dry chuckle.

  “I’m counting on Niall to know that. I haven’t done a good job keeping up with the monster realm—or any of the realms adjacent to my own. My myopia could have proven far more dangerous than it did, but it’s one of many things we need to change when all is said and done.”

  He reached for my shirt, and I edged away from him, feeling unaccountably shy—which was sort of ridiculous. We’d had sex, for heaven’s sake. Contract or no contract anymore, we’d bonded as Fae king and witch, even if we hadn’t been married in front of the whole Fae court.

  But still…

  “Um, if you don’t mind…” I began, blushing.

  To my surprise, he didn’t. Or at least he didn’t seem to. He turned away from me and began taking off his own clothes instead. This didn’t necessarily help my situation, since all I could do was stare at him as he pulled off his coat and tunic. In mere seconds, he was utterly naked, no longer remotely attempting his Seline male guise. Now he was full on hot Fae overlord, from the tips of his long, luxuriously tousled hair to the edges of his perfectly formed toes. I averted my gaze as he glanced back to me, then peeked again as he headed for the water.

  If he knew I was looking at him, he made no comment, so I openly stared again as he strode without hesitation into the water, his muscles rippling across his back and along his thighs. For a big guy, he moved with easy grace, and my gaze dipped and rose over the planes of his shoulders, skimming down his waist, lingering on his ass. The harsh, jagged scars that had somehow managed to permanently mark the High King of the Fae stood out in sharp relief, a mosaic of biting, slashing, ripping memories in his otherwise flawless skin, but he remained the most perfect male specimen I had ever seen. I didn’t know if that was the glamour talking or simply how he was built, but at this point, I didn’t care. I could never see any man the same way after witnessing the awesome that was the king of the Fae.

  I rolled my eyes at my own heart-palpitating reaction, but I still couldn’t help myself. Of course Aiden was the most perfect male I had ever seen. We didn’t have anything like him in Boston—in the world, arguably. He was a Fae. It was a thing.

  I waited until Aiden was waist-deep, then shrugged the rest of the way out of my sweaty clothes and carried them to the edge of the lake. I dunked the clothes and swirled them in the cool water, then quickly spread them out to dry. Then I eyed the crystal blue lake with trepidation.

  “I assume this is safe to get into, right? There’s no human-brain-eating amoeba or ick-filled slime I need to worry about?”

  He turned toward me, and I realized I was still naked, so I splashed awkwardly into the water before he had a chance to answer, my full-body blush cooled only slightly by the sudden shock of entering the lake. But Aiden’s reply was calm and measured.

  “The monster realm isn’t the human realm,” he assured me. “There is no decay as in your world, at least outside the Riven District. The water may not be safe for humans to drink—it is in the Fae realm, but here, I am not so sure. Something else to ask Niall. For now…” He gestured, and the water rippled out from him. “It’s safe to bathe in, even to drink, so long as you’re with me.”

  I nodded. At this point, I had no choice. I was already shoulder-deep in the stuff, and if it was going to kill me, I was strangely numb to the idea. But the truth was, I felt safe with Aiden. Even in this world that wasn’t his own.

  A sudden thought struck me. “How strong are you in the human realm? Can you purify the water there, and, like, make contaminated water safe for human consumption?”

  He shrugged, then surprised me again. “Of course. The ancient rule of the Fae over your world remains in place. We left your plane at the direction of your kind, acknowledged and accepted the terms of our withdrawal. But that doesn’t change our dominion over nature. Admittedly, we haven’t tested that dominance against the inventions you have wrought in the meantime. The machines of power and destruction you have created. Though, against pure weapons, we maintain dominion. Fae magic could stop a bullet easily enough. No matter how many or how fast came at us, a direct assault would never work.”

  I frowned. “Even if the bullets were made of silver or iron?”

  “We can handle silver well enough, though iron would slow us down,” he acknowledged. “But our tolerance has grown. Of course, so has the ingenuity of humans. Something we should test, to be sure.”

  He spread his hands and arms in the water, as if he was treading it. I stopped short and his brows arched. “Come deeper. The lake is fed by a hot spring. You will like it, I think.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t swim,” I sheepishly admitted as he tilted his head in clear surprise. “I never learned as a little girl, and as much as my family enjoyed the water, we never went in it, if that makes sense, at least not enough to learn to swim. It’s no big deal. It’s just not something…um, what are you doing?”

  My teeth had started to chatter as Aiden moved toward me. At some point, he’d dropped beneath the water, because his hair was slicked back, and droplets glistened on his brow. His eyes were bright, challenging.

  “You let me rescue you from a den of lizards. Do you think I’d let you drown here?” he asked, his tone so reasonable, I barked a laugh.

  “Well, no, but—”

  “In the short period of time that you were in service to the high Fae, is there anything about us that would indicate we would willingly give up something we hold precious?”

  His tone had turned strangely intimate, and I frowned again, more deeply this time. “Hold precious” was such an old phrase, one you simply didn’t hear much in Boston—or anywhere else, I suspected, in the human realm. Precious implied there was only one of something, that it was beyond rare. Was that how Aiden thought of me?

  As I was grappling with his word choice, Aiden somehow managed to get all the way up to me, and I yelped as he reached out beneath the surface of the water and took my hand in his.

  “You think too much,” he challenged. “I completely lost you there, didn’t I?”

  “Careful,” I warned unnecessarily as he tugged me deeper into the water. Of course his reasoning was sound. If he wanted to kill me, there would have been far easier ways to get it done, and even if he’d let me go, there was still—

  “The contract!” I blurted, splashing as I stiffened in Aiden’s grasp. I had forgotten all about it, what with the battle, the fire in my tavern, the chaos of the Riven District. Even speaking about it now seemed foolish, irrelevant in this moment, but I pushed on resolutely. “I saw the Hogan witch contract in the castle of the mountain king. I’m sure I did.”

  “And I’ve released you from its terms.”

  Even as he said the words—words that I’d said to myself already a dozen times over—they jangled harshly in my ears. As if just saying the thing didn’t really make it so.

  “You did…” I agreed. “And—I mean, that’s it, right? We’re all done now with that?”

  He opened his mouth to speak again, then shut it, then tried again.
“I’m the High King of the high Fae. Anything I say is law.” He sounded a little unsure of that, however, and I grimaced.

  “You could still find me, though,” I muttered. “All the way in the monster realm, you could still find me. What if…what if there’s more we have to do to break the contract? Like maybe set the thing on fire or something?”

  Aiden snorted, but shrugged. “If there is, then we will do it. And it should be…” He broke off as if struggling to find the right words. Finally, he sighed. “We’ll reclaim it. We’ll return to the castle—soon.”

  With that, he tugged me deeper. My feet by now had left the lake floor, but I rationalized that he was far taller than I was, and surely he could touch bottom.

  A second later, I wasn’t so sure. Aiden seemed to float alongside me in the water, as comfortable as an otter. Then, of course, it hit me.

  “You’re the ocean king,” I murmured. “You’re totally at home in the water, aren’t you?”

  He smiled, the expression transforming his face into such incandescent beauty, I could only stare as he continued. “There is water in every corner of the Fae world. I’m not even sure there is a necessity to teach a Fae how to swim, any more than there is to teach a human how to run or jump. When the body is ready, the ability is there. But you can’t think about it too much, yes? You have to relax and let the water do the work you think should be all yours.”

  “I—ah, right,” I replied awkwardly, forcing myself to focus on his words and not his sky-blue eyes, his dark fall of hair floating around him, his chiseled jaw. “I’m not all that great at relaxing. There wasn’t much time for that growing up, not given the work we did.”

  Aiden didn’t respond at first, but drew me around in a slow circle, and I felt what he meant about the center of the lake. It was warmer than the fringes, warm enough that I felt some of the tension ease out of me.

  “Okay, okay. You’re right,” I admitted with a smile. “This does feel amazing.”