Page 88 of The Fae Kings' Bargain

“Forgive me, Your Majesties,” Feref called. “But High King Toren requested I wake him an hour before his meeting with the leader of the mages.”

Mehl groaned against the side of her breast, and Toren muttered a curse into the blankets. Though equally disgruntled to be awake, she couldn’t help but smile at the picture he made. At some point, Toren had slid to his stomach, his arm still flung over her waist. His hair tangled around his head and down the strong lines of his back. The delicious, lickable lines of his back.

Another knock. “Your Majesties?”

“A moment, Feref,” Toren growled. “Make that several moments.”

The chamberlain hesitated. “I will return in ten minutes,” he finally called through the door.

Toren turned his head toward her and Mehl until she could make out one disgruntled eye. “Rest time is over, I suppose.”

“Idon’t have a meeting,” Mehl grumbled.

“True.” A wicked smile crossed Toren’s lips, but Ria’s gaze was drawn to the smooth flexing of his muscles as his hold tightened on her waist. “However, there is much to do for all of us. I announced that Ria’s formal presentation and celebration of the breeding contract would occur in two weeks, but now there are more complications to consider.”

That ended her distraction like nothing else could. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

Mehl lifted himself to his elbow and smoothed a finger across her furrowed brow. “Our linking was like a marriage, love.”

Oh, no. This was not heading where the sick feeling in her gut suggested. “So?”

Toren’s hand slid up her side to her breast. “So we need to make arrangements to make you our queen.”

Ria squeezed her eyes closed at the unfairness of it all. For truly, she hadn’t had a long enough nap to plan a murder.

Chapter40

Fledgling

If the pinched line of Ria’s lips or the sharp rise and fall of her breast beneath Toren’s hand hadn’t warned him of her anger, the echo of her thoughts along their link certainly did. But why? He could see comprehension dawning on Mehl’s face, but Toren still couldn’t grasp where he’d gone wrong. Why did she grow annoyed at his every attempt to exalt her?

With a resigned sigh, he slid his hand away from her breast and boosted himself up to sit cross-legged at her side. “Go ahead. Shout at me if you wish.”

Mehl shot him a warning look, but he ignored it. The confused line forming between Ria’s brows held far more interest, for hers was the reaction that mattered in this situation. He and Mehl had asked to join with her—she had agreed. Why would the mention of a formal marriage offend or confuse her? Toren needed to know if she’d misunderstood. He had to know what bothered her so.

Had she decided that their new link wasn’t worthwhile after all?

Ria worried a strand of her hair between her fingers, picking absently at one of the tangles their lovemaking had caused. “Well, now I can’t shout. Not with you looking at me like that.”

He lifted a brow. “Like what?”

“Like you’re expecting betrayal,” Ria answered at once. “I don’t understand it. I wasn’t happy about becoming a duchess, so I’m not sure why you thought I’d be happy to be a queen.”

Tenderness softened Mehl’s face as he peered down at Ria. Clearly, he understood the problem better than Toren did. “Ria,” Mehl said gently. “Youareour queen now. What mere ceremony could compare to our link? Yet others cannot see our joining, so a ceremony is customary.”

“In two weeks?” Her lips twisted as she glanced at Toren. “And don’t try to claim you won’t declare it should be done in place of my presentation, regardless of the short span of time for us to prepare.”

He hadn’t thought he could grin, but his mouth disagreed. “You aren’t wrong.”

“Well, stop.” A fierceness lit her expression, a deeper strength than he’d previously seen. Even after everything. “For my entire life, I’ve been told what I should do or be. How to use my magic, which commissions to work on, which designs to reshape. My life was ordered to my father’s whim, and to question that order was to feel the bite of pain. Now, you’re telling me who I’ll be once again.”

Horror at the comparison wiped away any hint of amusement—particularly since her words rang with uncomfortable truth. “I would never—”

“Physically hurt me. I know.” Ria gripped his forearm in a gentle hold. “But Toren, you have to give me time and space to choosesomething. A few days ago, I was the tailor’s daughter. Do you honestly expect me to sit on the dais as a queen only a handful of days later?”

His heart insisted it be so. He wanted her as included as Mehl so that she never felt a lack. But with their link bolstering her words with mental images, portraits of her fears, the full picture finally solidified. Shame heated his skin and churned in his stomach. She was precious enough to marry, but he’d treated her like any one of his courtiers, ordering her about at his whim. And if hedidget his way, she would be the one to suffer for it.

“I’m sorry, Ria,” he murmured, bending to kiss her brow. “You’re right. I’ve been High King for so long that sometimes I forget how to be a mere man.”

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