C5

“Maybe. Maybe not. Has Prince Iason even given you a token or did you make that up? The token he gave you… can I see it?”

“Are you saying I’m a liar?”

“Then show it to me.” She sighs. “Hey, I’m curious. I’ve never had a love token bestowed on me. Humor me.”

“Not yet,” I mutter. “I’m sure that soon a handsome prince will see you and fall head over heels in love with you. Then he’ll give you his token and court you and make you his bride.”

“You can’t distract me like that, Selina.”

“It’s the truth,” I whisper, bowing my head.

“So where is the token?”

“Just go. Please?”

“Oh, cousin… I hope for your sake that you haven’t done anything stupid.”

“You mean more stupid than going to the haunted woods to pick flowers with Mina?” I say harshly. “Something like that?”

Her brows go up and her eyes abruptly fill with tears. “Not fair,” she whispers. “I didn’t know that would happen. Why am I trying to help you?”

Turning on her heel, lifting her long skirts, she runs out of my room.

Leaving me to feel like a villain.

The worst thing about this is that my cousin is right. What am I doing? Am I about to throw my future away? And for what? Nothing has changed. If anything, my encounters with the Fae King at the lake should be a lesson to me. The Fae are wily and devious, they’re beautiful and dangerous. My mistake was dealing with one of them in the first place. I should have told my grandfather the King of Kyrene about Adar, taken the royal guard to the woods to have him killed. That’s what we do with Fae.

That Adar was gone.

Focus, I tell myself.You’re here for the pendant. Don’t let the Fae’s wiles get to you again. You know that’s how they bespell people. Don’t fall for it.

So when he appears, slicing through the water, all blue and silver, all strange and beautiful, I’m prepared.

Or so I think. Seeing him is always a punch to my heart, a shake to my senses. Today is no different.

He stops waist-deep in the water, casually leaning against his favorite log, toying with the end of his braid with the other, smiling. “Back for more, huh?”

I roll my eyes. “You really like yourself, don’t you? I bet if you had a mirror, you’d spend your day admiring yourself.”

“Who says I don’t?” He winks. “After all, I live inside a mirror. All day I stop and look down at my reflection and tell myself, King Adar, you look damn fine today.”

“Adar…” I shouldn’t be laughing, but the image he paints is just so… not like him, somehow.

“It makes hunting for food easier,” he goes on. “The fish simply jump to me, unable to help themselves, enamored. The birds of the lake come into my arms, hoping for some loving, but get eaten instead.”

I’m laughing so hard tears leak from the corners of my eyes. “Stop…”

“That’s what happens to anyone who falls in love with me,” he finishes, his voice turning sharp.

I wipe at my eyes. “They get eaten?”

He drops the end of his braid and scowls at me. “Perhaps. Want me to eat you, little girl?”

“I’m not a girl,” I tell him, my cousin’s words returning to me, ringing annoyingly clear. “I’m a woman.”

“Hm.” He makes a show of taking me in from head to toe, and I lift my chin, letting him look. I’m not going to simper or swoon under his gaze.

“Iama woman,” I say, “and I have the curves to prove it.”

“Yeah.” I swear I can see his chest rising and falling faster now, and he swallows hard, the knot in his throat working.

“I’m here for my pendant,” I say. “No more tricks, Adar. No more games. I need it, and it’s mine. If you’re a good person, if you’re a King and have any honor at all, you’ll return it to me.”

He’s still gazing at my body. “I’m Fae. Who says I have any honor?”

“Don’t you?” I stop where the water laps at the shore, gazing at him where he’s oh-so-casually lounging against the log, a large blue tail fin lazily moving back and forth behind him. “Don’t you care what I think of you?”

“Of course not. I know what you think of me. That’s I’m a monster. That I’m amoral. That I set out to seduce you and eat out your heart.”

“Did you?”

“… maybe. Does that scare you?”

Yes, I’m scared. He’s so much larger than me, so much stronger. His looks confuse my mind, muddle my senses. The Fae are the predators, and we’re prey.

And yet I take another step toward him, my bottines splashing into the lake.

“Selina,” he whispers, pushing off the log, diving into the water and surfacing right in front of me, lifting his powerful torso up with his hands. When I stumble back a step, he pulls himself toward me. “Wait.”

But I take another step back. “My pendant, or there will be no more kissing. You’ll remain cursed to the end of your days.”

“You’re cruel.”

“No,you are. My pendant. Where do you keep it?”

“If I tell you, you’ll leave.”

“I’ll leave anyway.” I take another step back. “Where is it?”

He drags himself up the bank and hisses, one of his arms collapsing from under him so that he lies on his side on the shiny pebbles and the mud.

His tail is a gaping wound from side to side. The water around him has the red tinge of blood. His face is pale.

“Adar,” I whisper, my chest suddenly tight. “What happened? That doesn’t look like it should, does it?”

“How would you know how it should look?” he rasps. The spots of red on his cheekbones look like fever.

“This isn’t working the way you’d hoped.”

“Maybe not.” He grimaces as he drags himself a little higher up the bank and stops.

“Tell me about the curse. What caused it. How you ended up here.”

“It’s a long story.”

My throat is dry. “Are you dying?”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing with curses. They aren’t logical and they don’t always work in the way you expect.”

“Same goes for cures, I’m guessing?”

He shrugs, and despite everything my gaze is drawn to the dark crescent of his lashes against his flushed cheekbones, the wry line of his mouth, the blue tendrils of hair clinging to his strong neck, the powerful muscles in his arms and chest.

And the terrible wound in his tail.

“Give me the pendant,” I whisper, “and I will kiss you. I want you to get away from here. I want to cure you.”

“You don’t even know why I am cursed,” he breathes.

“What does it matter? You’re paying the price. Also… you’re right. I want you to kiss me.”

His eyes narrow on me. “Really?”

“I…” The heat in my cheeks is not feigned as I remember his kisses. “I’ve been thinking about you. I can’t seem to stop.”

“You’re telling the truth,” he whispers, his voice a little choked.

“I am. And you were right. This prince who gave me the token… I’m not sure I’d like to spend my life with him. So I need the token so that I can return it to him.”

“Selina…”

“Where is it?” I step closer to him, close enough to touch. His braid is trailing in the mud and I want to lift it, rescue it. I want to brush a strand of hair from his too-bright eyes, do something to erase the lines of pain around that generous mouth. “Where is the pendant?”

He’s watching me, a question in his eyes that I hope I’ve answered already. He mutters something under his breath, something that sounds like a curse judging from the vehemence in his tone, and I think he’s going to refuse, string me along some more. Maybe forever.

But he reaches up, behind his head, under that old-fashioned braid that reminds me of warriors of old in paintings and statues scattered around the palace of Kyrene. He tugs, and when he lifts his hand and opens it, on his palm rests the pendant.

The arrow-pierced heart gleams dully, a little muddy.

My breath stutters out of my chest.

At last.

There is a light in his eyes, a light I refuse to read, a light that looks like trust and hope and a little defiance as he offers me the pendant.

Grabbing it, I step away. “So long, Adar.”

A crease appears between his brows. “What? Wait. What about that kiss?”

I step further back, passing the pendant chain over my head, letting the silver disk hand against my collarbone. “I lied. I’m human, remember? We lie.”

“Selina.” He reaches for me but I move further back. Why haven’t I run away yet? It’s so hard to walk away. Harder than I thought.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

His eyes are wide. “You’re not really leaving. It’s a ruse.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I thought you were going to help me.”

“You’re not the only one who can play games.”

“I wasn’t playing,” he says, so low I barely make out the words.

“Sure you weren’t,” I mutter and I step further and further up, stepping onto dry ground.

“Selina!” With a roar, he throws himself at me, hands slamming into the mud, fingers digging into the soil as he drags himself further up the bank to reach me.