Chapter 16: A Throne of Ruin: Chapter 16

The next morning, I finished the notes about the book for Nyfain. After the speech he made before (once again) storming from the room, I’d decided he’d get as many write-ups as he wanted. He’d get blowjobs every day. His words had been beautiful and heart-wrenching and , and his devotion had rung through the bond loud and clear. He honestly thought that the only way I would have a chance at happiness was to sign myself over to the demon king with the hopes of escape. It sounded ludicrous. The whole thing would obviously blow up in his face, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. Until then, I was going to brave his terrible moods and bang the living shit out of him.

Letter in hand and new trousers and blouse hugging my curves, I trekked down to the library. On the way, staff members loitered in the halls or on the landings. They turned to me as I passed, bowing, curtsying, and smiling. Jessab, the cook, stood at the bottom of the stairs and shook his fist with a smile.

“Thatta girl, eh? Give ’em what they got coming to ’em.”

“What in the goddess’s bustier are you lot doing?” Hadriel said to the loitering staff as he walked up, wearing a jacket covered in sequined flowers and a newly trimmed mustache. His bright pink velvet slippers didn’t match any part of the hideous jacket. “Don’t you have work to do? Leave Miss Finley alone.”

“Oh, look who’s a big man now suddenly, eh?” Jessab said, patting his stomach. “Go fall out a window, why don’t ya.”

“Hilarious, you backwater dish jockey.” Hadriel glared at him. “Go suck a wheel spoke.”

“You’ll have to get your dick out of it first.” Jessab turned slowly.

“Back to Miss Finley, then?” I smirked at Hadriel, heading to the library.

“Only to keep the status quo. Don’t worry, love. I haven’t suddenly gotten good at my job.”

The smile dripped off my face. “Yet they still went after you.”

“That’s because I was alone. Those types find the outliers. There aren’t many of those left in the castle. Now you see why.”

I shook my head as we walked down the hall. Doors stood open, and soft noises issued forth as people got started with their hobbies for the day.

“I can’t stand by and watch stuff like that happen,” I said. “It’s not in me.”

“The master said that in the beginning, too. The thing is…if you kill them all, the demon king just sends more. Worse ones, too. We lost a lot of people in the beginning because of people fighting back. If you have to kill, do it in secret.”

I stopped at the library door and put up a finger. “Stay here.”

“Why?”

Because I had the book and the annotations for Nyfain, and I intended to leave them in his mother’s secret book room. But I could tell no one about that room, so I settled for, “Because Nyfain gave me a secret, and I intend on keeping it.”

“How could you do that to me? You can’t just dangle something like that in front of me and not tell me the secret! I love secrets!”

“I doubt it is a secret you’d care about.”

“What a shitty hint. I need more than that!”

I rolled my eyes and hurried into the library, slowing as I passed the lounger. Nyfain’s smell permeated the area. I sat down, pulling the blanket up around me. I longed to just grab a book and lie there until he wandered in. Then maybe we could make love in our reading nook before curling up together and talking about books. What a dream come true that would be!

After a deep breath, I folded the blanket and got up. Maybe we’d be able to do it one day, after everything slowed down. Dare to dream.

I found a folded-up piece of parchment on the little table in the corner of the secret book room, right where I’d intended to put my book and letter. My name was written in Nyfain’s beautiful scrawl, and I snatched it up and opened it immediately.

will I leaned against the edge of a bookcase and read it again, smiling. Fuck, he was charming in his letters. If only the two sides of him could be united at all times—the charming prince and the brooding, possessive alpha who raged over my wellbeing. I would never be able to say no. I’d just fall onto my back, spread my legs, and say, “Have at me.”

Though, in fairness, I wasn’t all that far from that now…

Taking a deep breath, I folded up his note and slid it into my pocket. I replaced it with the letter I’d written and the notes with the book before roaming the room for a moment, reading titles.

Before I’d been taken to the castle the first time, I wanted to read about hate sex and hardcore fucking. Now, though…

I picked out what looked like a love story. I needed a sweet, happy ending. I needed to believe they were possible.

“Staring is rude, Cathrin,” Hadriel called out as I emerged from the library.

“Your ugliness is eternal, Hadriel,” a middle-aged woman shouted back as she slipped through an open door down the way.

“That didn’t seem to bother you the other night, when you all but begged me to fuck your face— She’s gone. I’m talking to myself.” He lifted his eyebrows as I appeared beside him. “All set?” He glanced down at the book. “Ah. Okay, let’s run up and put that away, check out the garden, and then get you a dance lesson. The master asked me to arrange it the other day. He is thawing a little, and it’s really helping my stomach.”

“Dare I ask how it is helping your stomach?”

“He’s less scary, and when I am less afraid, my bowels aren’t quite so watery.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah. Maybe don’t ask next time. That’s on you. Speaking of, we need to schedule you two a dinner. What kind of food do you like to eat?”

“Hello?” someone called as we neared the stairs.

Hadriel and I stopped, glancing at each other. The voice had sounded young, like a female child.

“Hello?” she called again.

Hadriel frowned and took the stairs to the first floor, stopping at the bottom step with his hand on the banister. I walked out a few more steps, looking toward the front entrance.

A girl of about fifteen stood in the open doorway, a slip of a thing with baggy, dirt-stained clothes hanging off her bony frame. Her stringy hair dripped beside her sweat-lined, flushed face. She rested her hand on the doorway. Her arm trembled, but her head was high and shoulders squared. She was clearly terrified out of her mind.

“What in the hell…” Hadriel said under his breath, starting forward. “Hello,” he offered cordially, closing the distance between them. I followed like a little duckling. “How can I help you today? To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“You sound like a man who got his voice out of a can,” I whispered. “Act natural.”

“I don’t know what natural is for a butler!” he said in an undertone. “I’m used to acting like a gobshite to stay alive!”

“I’m looking for the prince,” the girl said with a tremor in her voice. “It’s my momma. She needs some of the potion that the prince has been dropping off.”

“Oh, thank the goddess for her tricky ways. You’re up, doll.” Hadriel motioned me on.

I stepped forward, pulling the girl’s focus from Hadriel. “We don’t have any more ready just yet. I’ll be drying the leaves tonight and making more starter elixir just as soon as I have all the ingredients. Does your village not have any extra leaves or elixir to share?”

Grief lined her face and bowed her spine. She held her shoulders rigid against the desire to reduce down into the fetal position. I knew, because I’d been there myself, countless times.

“They didn’t have enough for us. They are treating the village leaders first. Please, we have two everlass plants. Just tell me how to make it. I can make it.”

“Don’t you have the recipe? It has been passed out to all the villages…”

A line formed between her brow. She clearly didn’t know what I was talking about.

“Things seem to work much differently in your village than elsewhere,” Hadriel murmured, his hand on my arm. “Most of the villages have a very distinct class system.”

And she was definitely not high class.

Anger burned through me.

“I made that elixir for everyone, not for snobby cunts who think they are better than their peers.” I put a finger up to the girl. “Wait there. I’ll be back in a moment. I will personally see to your momma, okay? If she is alive when I get there, she’ll be alive when I leave. I will make sure of it.” I about-faced. “Hadriel, wake Nyfain. He’ll be taking me to this girl’s momma—and explaining how this was allowed to happen.”

“Yes, my darling. I am loving that idea, truly.” Hadriel ran to catch up as I took the stairs two at a time. “Except remember that bowel thing? It would be really unfortunate if I shit myself. It’s an issue. How about, instead, I go and get some horses saddled up and ready to go. Wouldn’t that be a better idea?”

I blew out a breath. “Fine. Where is Nyfain’s room?”

“All this time, and you still don’t know? A travesty.” Hadriel walked me along the second floor and pointed down a hall. He gave me directions before hurrying away.

I jogged now. It must’ve taken great courage for that girl to venture through the Forbidden Wood, even in the day, and approach the castle of the beast. While she might have known the beast was the prince, she’d probably also known the castle wasn’t a place where poor waifs would be welcomed. I knew all of that from experience. Her mother must be on her deathbed. I knew what was like from experience as well.

Nyfain’s scent called to me, pulling me along. Intoxicating me. I wouldn’t have needed directions at this point. I took a left and two rights to a grand room with a wide double door beneath a great arch. Quite a difference from a one door, squat-ceilinged tower.

The door opened easily, and I wondered at him not locking it. Maybe, for all his blustering, he wasn’t pestered like the rest of us were. The things we learned…

The first room was similar to the queen’s, with private sitting and eating areas and wide glass doors leading out to a veranda. Through a door in the side, a great bed sprawled out on a little dais. I ignored the lavish furniture in the rest of the room and took the two steps to the royal bed, as it were. He lay in the middle on his stomach, his arms spread out wide and the covers pulled down around his hips. His muscular and inked back was on full display, the scars of his wings cutting down each side in horrible slashes.

“Hey.” I shook his shoulder, noticing a fresh flower on the little table by the window and his clothes set out near the dressing table. His door had been opened by a man’s maid, or whatever they called the prince’s servant, and that person had left it unlocked, clearly. “Hey!”

I leaned over and pushed his shoulder, inhaling his balmy scent and feeling my heart flutter.

He groaned and turned his head, a golden eye peeling open and noticing me.

“Hmm. Dreams do come true.” He turned and grabbed me in a rush of movement, pulling me into the bed and pinning me beneath him. His lips captured mine before he licked along my bottom lip, trying to coax me to open for him. His hardness pushed against my apex, thick and delicious. He dragged it down before sliding it back up, rubbing me in a way that did not fit the moment.

“Hey!” I slapped his face.

“Hmm. Is that how you’d like it this morning, princess? Rough?” His kiss bruised my lips now, and his hips pumped aggressively. I’d forgotten that little issue with dragons—getting smacked around was foreplay to them.

“Stop, Nyfain!” I pushed at his shoulders.

He kissed me again, pushing my hands up above my head. “What?” he mumbled, trailing kisses beside my jaw and down my neck. “Why are you clothed, baby girl?”

Heat pounded in my core. His rubbing was making me delirious. His familiar and erotic scent was threatening to drag me under.

“Stop!” I said again, and this time I put power behind it. My animal rolled inside of me, shoving her own force through the bond, the equivalent of claws digging in. For once, she was on my side when it came to resisting him.

Nyfain pulled back, blinking his bleary eyes. He focused on my face for a moment before rolling to the side and sitting up.

“I apologize,” he said.

I crawled off the bed. “Someone from the village showed up just now, begging me to help her mother. I’m going. You’re coming, too.”

“What?” He pushed off the bed and straightened, a fresh slash trailing down his thigh. I hadn’t noticed it when I saw him last.

“Do you need—”

“No,” he cut me off, crossing to the clothes that had been laid out for him. “I attended to it myself last night. It’s nothing. What is this about a girl?”

I waited by the door and quickly relayed our encounter. He stepped into his jeans and then shook his head.

“The villages have their own way of doing things at this point. It is how things have evolved—or maybe volved—throughout the curse. The throne used to delegate to the nobles, and they would work with the governing bodies of each village. Most of those groups were killed or have died from the sickness throughout the years, however. Not to mention I was shut out from the villages for a long time, and they clearly grew to like not having a ruler. I don’t have the resources to properly govern them all anymore. Or the military might to subdue them when they refuse my rule. I can only assert my influence through broad strokes, and lately, that has often turned into a fight. Basically, they’ll distribute the elixir to her family when they have enough.”

I widened my stance, white-hot rage rising within me. I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of his comments, and of the villages leaving the poor to die, something sure to impact the whole kingdom, but instead I just snapped my mouth shut again.

I smirked without humor. “You don’t need military might when people are dying. You need a cure and brass lady balls. Luckily, I have both. Let your people die if you want. I will not. Try to stop me, and our battle won’t be sexual.”

I slammed the door shut behind me. A staff member in the hallway jumped and backed up to the wall. I walked by with a trail of power behind me.

“Finley, stop,” Nyfain called.

At the stairs, I jogged down. He caught up at the bottom and grabbed my arm, whipping me around. I let out a thrum of power, blasting into him. His hand ripped away and he staggered backward, his eyes widening. My animal stretched within me, just getting started.

she said, and I could feel her grin.

Or maybe I was the one who was grinning.

“Fuck with me when I’m trying to help people, Nyfain,” I snarled. “I dare you.”

He stopped dead, staring at me with a flat expression, surprise clear in the bond. This was probably unusual for some reason, but I didn’t stop to find out why. The blast of power had worked. I’d roll with it.

“Come on… What’s your name?” I asked the girl as I strutted toward the door.

“Dabnye.” Her eyes were as wide as Nyfain’s as she looked at him standing where I’d left him.

“Tell me your mother’s symptoms.”

With a last look at Nyfain, she turned and hurried after me.

As we crossed the grounds to the stables, I listened to her description of a sickness we all knew very well. Her mother was on the very edge, but she hadn’t been there for too long, it sounded like. Of course not—she hadn’t had the elixir to prolong the inevitable. She certainly didn’t have the crowded elixir to pull her back from death.

Hadriel and Gyril waited with four horses, two that looked older and a little rough around the edges, a small one that was likely a pony (that one was hopefully for me; I was no horse master), and a great big black stallion with crazy eyes that was obviously Nyfain’s.

“Nyfain isn’t coming,” I said as I neared. “Why the fourth?”

Hadriel tilted his head at me, a look of alarm on his face. “What do you mean he’s not coming? Then why is he marching across the grounds like he plans on killing someone! It’s not me, is it? You wouldn’t save me from demons last night just so the master can kill me today? That’s not the sort of joke friends play on each other, Finley!”

Nyfain eyed the girl when he neared, glancing at her clothes and finally her shoes, worn through in patches.

“What village, girl?” he asked.

“Great bedside manner, dickface,” I muttered.

“Orchard Blossom,” she responded, her voice subdued and her face tilted downward.

“Don’t let him scare you. He’s actually warm and gushy inside,” I said, eyeing the horses. “No saddles?”

“We don’t use them. Don’t need them,” Nyfain said, looking at me closely. “Can you ride bareback?” He ran his palm along his stallion’s neck, then down to its shoulder.

“I guess we’ll see…”

“She’ll go with me.” Nyfain jumped up gracefully and threw a leg over the back of his horse. He reached down for me.

“Right, but…” I eyed the options again. “Your horse isn’t going to want to handle two of us.”

“He’s more than capable. He’s had to carry me with a wounded dragon double your weight.”

Apparently the horses here didn’t age any more than the humans did.

Hadriel hopped up onto the next largest horse like he’d been doing it all his life.

“I have never ridden,” Dabnye said quietly.

“No problem, little darling. You can ride with Uncle Hadriel, the best horse whisperer in the kingdom.” He walked his horse forward a bit and put out his hand.

She took it shyly, and he swung her up behind him.

“Hold on tight and don’t fall off the back,” he told her, walking the horse forward a bit more. “We’re not quite sure just how good of a healer Finley really is.”

“She made that look really easy,” I muttered, taking Nyfain’s hand.

“It is.” He pulled me around, and I swung my leg over.

My weight was going too fast, though, and I slid off the other side. I hit the ground on my side and rolled away quickly, lest the stallion decide he wanted to step on me.

“Maybe it isn’t,” he added.

I hopped up and dusted myself off before trying again. This time I managed to stop myself while still on the horse’s back, clutching Nyfain’s robust body and hugging him tight. He put his hand over mine for a moment, apparently to make sure I was on, before kicking the horse’s sides and clucking his tongue. We quickly sped up to a trot, heading toward the Forbidden Wood.

“What made you decide to come with us?” I asked as I twisted to look at the others behind us. Hadriel held the bridle with two hands and sat with a straight back, looking like he’d been born to ride. Being a butler was a waste of his efforts. Dabnye held her skinny little arms around his waist, tighter than they probably needed to be. I knew how she felt. Riding bareback and behind someone was a little daunting.

“A few reasons. I didn’t want you to barrel into the village, knocking heads, and cause problems until you got your way. I also didn’t want you to accidentally kill anyone. I definitely didn’t want you to reveal that you have the power to unsuppress their animals. It’s been happening a lot lately. Last night when you were in Hadriel’s room, I could feel your power pumping out into the hall. Everyone there stood around in wonder, gripping their chests, reconnecting with their animals. I’m not the only one who’s noticed you.” He sighed. “But I’m tired, and sticking my nose in the villages’ business will be incredibly unpleasant, so I might’ve made excuses for why I didn’t need to bother. In the end…I followed my dick.”

“You want to fuck on a horse.”

“Yes. I certainly won’t need to rescue you from a pit. You’ve shown that you are more than capable of getting out of a pickle. Unless you have a sword, obviously.”

“Damn sword. It’s really pretty, too. It would look good hanging down my side.”

“It was my mother’s.”

We ducked as the horse trotted under low-hanging branches.

I didn’t know what to say. In the end, all I could get out was “Why?”

“Because I knew it would look good hanging down your side.”

I leaned my cheek against his back. “I don’t know what to say. I mean, there is the obvious: I’m not worthy. That just rolls off the tip of my tongue. And then there is the fact that I’m not trustworthy with it. I’ve dropped my pocketknife, I’ve dropped my dagger—I might lose it! And then, you know, we barely get along. I’m not the right sort…”

“Finley, you are exactly the person she would wish to have it. It’s not that we don’t get along, it’s that you call me on my shit. You always push back. She would’ve wanted that for me. It keeps me grounded.”

I blew out a breath, my cheek still pressed to his back. I moved my hands so that they were gripping right above his pecs, more of a hug than a precaution against falling.

“Well, I guess I’m going to have to get good at using the sword now.”

“Obviously. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

He slowed the horse to a walk as we neared some rocky terrain. I ran my hands across his muscular chest and down his bumpy stomach. How lucky was I that I got to touch his stellar body? That I got to feel it moving against me in the height of passion?

“I read your letter,” I said as I continued moving my palms downward.

“Oh?”

“You’re very charming when you write letters. Very eloquent.” I wrapped one arm around his stomach and slid the other over his bulge. “Are you always hard?”

“Around you? It seems so. It’s incredibly distracting.”

I rubbed up that hard length, closing my eyes for a moment. “Thank you for explaining yourself. It helps to know why you freak out.”

“I never freak out. I, instead, express my concern. Without emotion, of course. Men are not emotional.”

“Ah, yes. Men love to sell the idea that they are not emotional, as if anger weren’t an emotion. But it’s not that you aren’t emotional, it is that you store that one emotion up until you explode with it. It’s ridiculous, really.”

“It must seem that way to someone who calmly waltzes into a three-against-one battle and proceeds to slice everyone up and throw one of them out the window.”

“Talked to Hadriel, did you?”

“Yes. I was speaking to him, very unemotionally, about you being in danger.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“Which is why he is not black and blue today.”

I shook my head, pulling my hand away lest he make a mess of himself. “Is it the curse that says you can only impregnate your true mate?” I asked, back to rubbing his chest.

His muscles flared under my palms and across his back. He didn’t answer.

“Magical gag, huh?” I murmured, though if that were the case, how could Hadriel have told me? Then again, Hadriel had almost died when he let too much slip, so maybe Nyfain was trying to stay on the cautious side. I didn’t blame him.

I tried to go a bit broader in questioning. “Do you know how to end the curse?”

His muscles flared again, and he adjusted his seating in discomfort. Clearly a yes. At least partially, I waged, if there was such a thing.

I rested my chin against the center of his back and rubbed up and to the outside of his shoulders, my mind working.

“If there’d been no curse, would you have been able to mate a person like me?” I asked, and regretted it when I felt his emotions through the bond. I knew what was coming.

“Likely not with my father’s blessing. You’re gifted enough that you would have been invited to eat at his table, maybe even join the court, but without a dowry or any connections, you’d have only been granted a lower noble to mate. My father was not one to flout custom for any reason, hence my current—the current situation.”

I wondered if true mates tended to also be of the same social class, then remembered that they had to be the same animal, and dragons here were all noble. Clearly in other kingdoms as well, since his mother wasn’t from here and she had still been a noble. Of course his father would want to bake that into the curse. He’d want to force his son into a “proper” alliance, as befitted the kingdom.

“Your true mate, then, would be a noble of good standing,” I said in a small voice, mostly to myself.

His muscles flared again, and he struggled to take in a breath. Alarm bled through the bond. His dragon yanked power from mine, pulling everything we had. Fire flooded me as my animal generated her own power to give to him.

“Nyfain?” I clutched his shoulders and tried to look around at him.

He sucked in a noisy breath and then coughed, pulling on the reins to stop the horse. He bent over and coughed again, palming his throat.

“Stop asking about the curse,” he growled. “I can’t answer. You’ll do the demon king’s work and kill me.”

“Sorry,” I said, remembering the flare of his body, his unspoken yes.

For a moment there, I’d half wondered if maybe, against all odds, I be his true mate. If this deep, damning need for him was indicative of something greater than lust and affection.

Then again, true mates were rare, and plenty of people loved their mates without that connection. My parents weren’t true mates, and they had been head over heels for each other. I needed to pull my head out of the clouds and hear what Nyfain was saying, actually what he kept telling me and let it sink in.

If the demon king came, I needed to barter for as many lives as I could, using the thing that I had always shrugged off, my beauty. I might not change the stars and keep the heart of my prince, but I could damn well keep this kingdom alive. Some of it, at least.

I blew out a breath and blinked away unshed tears. Time to strap on my iron tits and get the job done. It was the hardworking lower class that had built this kingdom, and it would be the hardworking lower class that would save it. I’d make sure of it.

“Everything okay?” Hadriel called forward as we got going.

I gave a thumbs-up and pretended not to feel my heart twisting. Pretended not to feel the hollow opening in my middle. This was the problem with all those stories about happily-ever-afters and dreamy men—reality seemed much bleaker when you realized you wouldn’t be playing a part in one of those stories. That they were called fantasies for a reason.

At least the orgasms were real for me, though. I’d take it.

“You good?” Nyfain asked, and I could feel the regret in the bond. The somberness of his tone.

“Perfectly. I just needed a little reality bitch slap, and now I am ready to go.”

He didn’t comment as we pushed past the tree line and into a village that blew my mind.