Page 524 of Flirting with Darkness

“That’s why you tried to flee the Fae kingdom. And made some wonderful new friends in the process,” he filled in.

“Were they going to kill my parents?”

“For a start.” he said. “If Fae chaos and bloodshed had been confined to that vile pair, I might’ve walked them through the portal myself.”

“Why? Because Tor told you…” I trailed off, thinking hard. I’d never seen Tor and the prince in the same place at the same time. Tor had said he never could rulelike this…“Tor. Put me down.”

He stopped, startled enough that I managed to slip out of his grip. I faced him with clarity crystalizing, although he stared down at me as if he were shocked.

“Why do you say such a thing?” he said. “I’m not ugly like Tor…”

“No,” I said, increasingly sure of myself. “But you’re wearing a glamour.”

I reached up to cup his cheek, though I could barely reach.

“Tor is a monster,” he said, and it wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. It was a Fae way to say things.

“He’s my monster,” I chided.

The prince leaned down and kissed me, and I kissed him back, hard and wild.

Then I pulled away and said, “Tell me everything.”

His lips curled on one side, his face resolving into Tor’s face. “That would take a while. But I need you to know I never wanted to lie to you. I was cursed once as a child, then again by my own father—because he wanted to protect me, because he didn’t believe you could love me. And so, he cursed me so I wouldn’t tell you anything, and the curse could only be broken if you truly saw me.”

“Why were you cursed as a child?”

“I was an infant, a casualty of the conflict between low and high Fae. They wanted us to understand how they suffer.”

“You come to me wearing a glamour when you were young,” I filled in, thinking of how strange his face had looked. “It didn’t fit quite right.”

He nodded. “I was so young, I couldn’t hold it on my own, so I needed my father’s magic, which weakened as I went further from his side.”

“But now…”

“Now every day I wear the prince’s glamor, I lose a little more of my own magic and of my own face. The two, it seems, are linked. But my father insists that won’t matter once I take a bride and take the throne. I’ll inherit all his magic, so mine is… not much of a sacrifice.” He said the words breezily, but his eyes had gone stony, and my heart ached for him. “We’re racing time, I suppose. Don’t think he’s evil. He’s merely…Fae.”

“You came back to my world to get me.”

“Always.”

“I would come for you too, if I knew,” I said. “Now that I know…”

He nodded. “I’ve always known that. Which is why I would only marry a mortal woman… one who bound herself to me and my kingdom long ago.”

The two of us stared at each other, then he leaned in and kissed me again.

“Time for another game, my love,” he whispered in my ear. “Run.”

I ran from him, feeling a jubilant surge of joy. I felt playful, like I had as a child, and for a second, I saw him as a boy running across the grass with his blurred face, saw myself with my stringy brown hair flying and a jarringly big smile plastered across my thin face. The scene rocked me. I’d needed him to save me when I was a kid, just like I had now.

I didn’t realize I’d frozen until he said, “Bethany?”

I turned to face him. He’d gone from playful to concerned, and he crossed to me in a few quick strides.

My first impulse was to pretend that it was nothing. But I forced the words from my lips anyway, no matter how much anxiety churned in my stomach. “When the Fae grabbed me, I felt like I was a child again. Powerless.”

He nodded. “But you are not powerless. You saw me. You saved me from my curse.”

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