Queen of Blood and Vengeance (Secrets of the Faerie Crown #4)

32. Veyka

32

VEYKA

“Your son?”

The door clicked shut behind us. I could still hear Morgause bristling— how dare she banish the Dyad from our own chamber —as Lyrena and Barkke dragged her none-too-gently down the stairs.

Hopefully, she’d fall and break her neck. It would probably not be enough to kill her, but I could see to that later.

“You have a son?” I asked again, staring at my silent mate.

Arran blinked at me, his onyx eyes more dazed than I’d ever seen them.

Fucking great.

They locked on me. I didn’t know.

I knew that. I could feel his shock, even more visceral than my own. A male who’d scorned love, connection, and emotion. Earned the title of Brutal Prince. Now saddled with a mate and offspring. And that offspring’s terrible mother.

It was a good thing I had not eaten, because even the few sips of wine I’d drank threatened to reappear.

Fuck that. I grabbed the flagon that Mordred— Arran’s son! — had left behind and drained it. I already felt ill; I couldn’t make it much worse.

Arran did not move from the center of the room. Tall, slanting glass windows surrounded us on all sides. I could see the latches where they would open to accommodate Orcadion’s winged beast form. Outside, clouds obscured any view of the surrounding landscape. On a clear day, I had no doubt that the Dyad could see all the way to the army camp on the other side of Wolf Bay.

We’d come to Cayltay for an army, only to gain a thus far unspecified Knight of the Round Table. And a son. Arran had gained son.

I threw myself down onto the throne that Morgause had vacated. Arran’s eyes stayed with me, but they were unseeing. Distant.

“How long?”

Arran’s beast growled low in his throat. “Thirty or forty years. I think.”

I pressed my palm to my forehead, exhaling a laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Your son is older than I am.”

“Morgause left Cayltay after…” After he ended things between them, whatever that had been. “I have not seen her in decades. The last I knew of her, she was languishing on her mother’s estate on the eastern border of Annwyn.”

Raising her son and waiting for the perfect moment to use him to her advantage.

Arran’s shock was ebbing, but I could not disentangle the maelstrom of emotions that followed. The mating bond between us was not logical, it was visceral. Strong emotions, tortured thoughts, intense, glowing love. They moved along that golden thread unpredictably.

But I did not need the connection to recognize what my husband felt. I read that in his eyes, in the frozen lines of his body. In the mask he only allowed to slip because it was me that sat before him.

He was in pain.

I extended my hand. “Come here, my love.”

Part entreaty. Part command. Arran came to me.

He sank onto the throne at my side. He did not speak, but he also did not release my hand.

I stared at where his dark bronze skin contrasted with the pale white of my own. I’d never considered what our children might look like. It had always seemed like a luxury beyond reach.

I raked my teeth over my bottom lip. “I never asked you whether you even wanted children.”

Arran stared at our joined hands as well, as transfixed as I was.

“It is our duty to produce an elemental heir,” he said, syllables scraping across his throat.

I snorted. “When have I ever been concerned with duty?” Arran did not laugh. I squeezed his hand. “Aside from duty. What do you want?”

Arran’s fingers tightened around mine. He lifted our joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to every single one of my white knuckles. Then he pressed his mouth to the back of my hand, dragging his tongue in claiming circles over my skin.

A shiver of need slinked through me.

The desire to let Arran fuck me right there on Morgause’s not-a-throne spread through my veins.

But my mate needed something else from me first.

Arran exhaled over our hands, warming me right down to the fingertips.

“I want everything with you, Veyka. Wailing babies, willful adolescents. I want to fuck you in every position discovered and create a few of our own. Taste every food on your tongue. When we are ancient and gray and bent, I want to leave this world wrapped in your arms. I want a thousand years.”

“And a thousand more,” I whispered back.

I wanted all of it and more. But that future was not ours to want. Not with the succubus looming and the grail a distant hope.

“I do not begrudge you your son,” I said quietly. It needed to be said. I was not angry at Arran for having a life before me.

I was plenty angry at Morgause for ambushing us with Mordred’s existence.

I watched my words sink into Arran. They were the truth. If I was destined to die, then I was glad he had the opportunity to be a father. The pain in his eyes, the questioning… he wondered if he was fit for the role. What darkness he might have passed on. The curse of his unmatched power. The specter of fatherhood brought every painful thought he’d had about himself right to the fore.

It began to overwhelm him. The rush of conflicting emotions, the questions, threatened to crush him to dust.

This I could help with. I could distract him.

I dropped our joined hands to my thigh and let my legs fall open in unmistakable invitation.

Arran’s beast rumbled in appreciation. “Your jealousy is showing.”

Even as he said it, he was dropping to his knees.

“I am not jealous,” I insisted, lifting my leg very accommodatingly and hooking it over the arm of the throne. “I am reminding your former lover of her actual status.”

Arran huffed a laugh against the inside of my knee. I wore a layered wool skirt, slit to my hips to make for easier movement. To compensate for the cold, I’d donned thick stockings pulled up to mid-thigh, well above my boots.

He caught the top of one stocking with his thumb, dragging it down my thigh, digging his nail into the soft flesh as he went. He slid his tongue over the line of subtle pain. Up from the corner of my knee to the apex of my thighs, where my pussy pulsed with need.

“Veyka,” Arran growled from between my legs, his hot breath torturing my clit. “You seem to have misplaced your undergarments.”

His face was too busy to see my wicked smile, so I gave him a wicked laugh instead. “We were short on fuel last night. I burned them.”

A hum of approval vibrated against my pussy lips. “Burn them all,” he said. Then he dragged his tongue up the seam of my cunt.

Neither of us was thinking about Morgause or her son anymore.