Page 105 of The Beast King's Bride

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ASH

The Fae approaching is white like his name, I realize—long white hair, long white robes hemmed with green and black borders, his face beardless and ageless as that of all Fae. The staff he’s holding looks like gnarled wood but it’s also white, white as snow.

His pale eyes rake over the king and me on the throne, his face expressionless as that of a porcelain doll.

“Your Majesty.” He stops a few feet away and hunches his shoulders forward in the barest of bows.

I stare at him and all I can think of is that the king doesn’t want to bond with me. My stomach hurts, twisted in a knot. It hurts to breathe. The ring on my middle finger burns. Talen’s arm around me, the sensation of his muscular thighs underneath me, seem to fade.

It shouldn’t feel like a blow. I haven’t even known him for long. Not even a moon, and to a creature as old as him, it must seem like a day, at best. Maybe this was too soon. Or maybe he never intended anything serious with me.

Saying you love someone surely means something.

But not necessarily marriage. So many girls found that out to their chagrin.

Calm down, I tell myself. Don’t jump to conclusions. Maybe he was caught by surprise. Maybe he doesn’t mean it like that. You have to talk to him before you let anger and bitterness overtake you.

So hard to keep a rein on emotions that want to run off like wild horses, dragging you behind them to destruction.

I can’t help but slide off him, though, resisting the grip of his hands, until he releases me and I stand beside him, my breathing uneven.

“White Sage,” Talen says, his gaze on me, his brows knitted over his eyes. “I bid you welcome.”

“King Talensar,” he says, straightening, “word of your curse and how you’re fighting it has reached us. We heard of the ball thrown in honor of the Empress and how she made you transform into a beast.”

“All this I’m sure you have known for a while,” Talen says, finally shifting his gaze from me to the old Fae, “and as for the ball, everyone knows I had no choice in the matter. Come to the point.”

“The Decay has been spreading in other kingdoms, too, spreading wide through the Night Courts. The Diamond, Emerald, Ruby, and Pearl Courts have been suffering under its weight—”

“As have we, but for a century you haven’t come to speak with me or give me news from the other Courts. So what has changed now?”

“You tell me, king. A bird told me that you have brought a human to help you lift the curse. Is it the one I behold?”

I curtsy before the king can reply. “I’m Ash, my lord.”

“Ash. The girl from the Empress’s riddle. It took you a long time to find her and even now you wonder if she is the right one.”

“She is the right one,” Talen says, “for me.”

The spark of warmth in my chest is too much, coming right on the heels of his rejection and the burning disappointment. I twist the ring on my finger, the way my heart twists.

“Right in the nip of time, too,” the sage goes on, unperturbed, “right when you—”

“You came here,” the king interrupts him—rather rudely if you ask me—“when the curse was placed on me and had nothing to offer then. Was there something you wanted to share with us this time?”

Then again, he is the king, something I sometimes forget when he treats me like his equal, when he wants me to sit on the throne next to his.

Why does he tear my heart apart like this? Does he take pleasure in doing so? Is he as cruel as the Fae of legend?

The sage watches us with eyes like a hawk’s—pale gold, flat and empty of feeling. “I came to tell you that you have to let things happen as the riddle requests, not to let your heart get in the way. There is a reason the riddle is phrased in a way that—”

“You know nothing about the riddle,” the king snaps, and even Jassin looks startled at the outburst. “You come offering unwanted advice. Go back to your mountain, old man.”

“Talen!” I whisper.

The old Fae doesn’t look angry, though. His gaze flickers from me to Talen and back. “It is as I thought,” he finally says. “You cannot stop the wheel of fate, king of the Sapphire Court.”

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