Page 5 of Thief of Souls
I pluck a grape from a platter and stuff it in my mouth before he can even reply. Sweetness bursts across my tongue. I swear I almost have an orgasm. I need more.
“Is this even real?” It feels real beneath my fingers, the date sticky as I squeeze it. “This dream?”
“What makes you think it a dream?”
I laugh.Because my life is a nightmare, and this is a mirage.“You’re the Prince of Dreams. This is not the first time I’ve woken to find myself walking these halls.”
He pauses. “You never came. I’ve summoned you a half dozen times.”
Maybe they were fever dreams.
Keir leans back in his chair, one arm slung over the chair beside him as he watches me. “And it can be.”
“Be what?”
“Real.”
I pop the date into my mouth, and flavor bursts over my tongue. Gods, I barely chew it before I swallow it down. Maybe it’s not enough to fill my stomach, but I don’t care. With a flash of the knife, I slice a thin, crumbly wedge of cheese. “So you seduce you me with such pleasures first,” I murmur, “and then, I presume, comes the torture.”
His gaze drops to my fingers as I lift the cheese to my lips. “This is not seduction, Merisel. You will know if I ever decide to seduce you.”
“Then what is this?” The cheese melts on my tongue. I’m a little too quick to reach for another piece.
“Why would you think I intend to torture you?” There’s curiosity in his tone.
I pause, swallowing my mouthful and then licking the remnants from my thumb. That was a slip. He’s questioning it. “Why would you not? You own me.”
“Ah, yes.” There’s a quirk around his mouth. “Our bargain. I was a little angry with you when I made it. I thought I’d found a bride and here you were, using false pretenses to try and steal from me.”
This time, it’s my turn to arch a brow. “I never tried to capture your interest. If anything, quite the opposite.”
I can’t help hearing the words he spoke to me when he realized my deception: “I've never been more intrigued by you.”
I set the fork down. “What do you want? It isn’t to watch me eat. It isn’t to remind me of the past.”
“You dined with me once. Perhaps I wished to repeat the experience.”
“Now I see howyoudance around the truth.”
Keir laces his fingers together. A dangerous intensity springs to life in his eyes. “Rumor abounds that an ancient magic is reawakening. The world trembles with its presence, and every power-hungry lordling and prince in all the lands will be desperate to find it. I want to get my hands on it first.”
I pause, nibbling on the stuffed fig. This feels familiar and it’s a relief to finally get to the crux of the matter. “An ancient magic…?”
“The cauldron,” he replies. “The Goddess’s Cauldron.”
I drop the fig, and my fork ricochets off my plate. He cannot be serious. The cauldron was gifted to the fae by the goddess herself. When the dragon kings used the power of the cauldron in order to defeat a half-bred monstrosity, they were forced to surrender their magic to it and retreat from the world.
It left behind an enormously powerful magical relic created by a goddess, and filled with the power of ancient dragons.
And every fae in the land wanted it.
A wise old king at the time stole the cauldron and sailed out to a small island off the coast of the Court of Storms. He begged the Goddess of the Sea to take the cauldron and hide it, for fear that one would rise with the power to wield what should never be wielded.
The other courts hunted him but they were too late.
The sea rose in anger, driving their boats back to shore. By the time the storm died down, the island had vanished. The king and the cauldron with it.
No one has seen it since.
