Page 79 of The Midnight King
The kiss is worth the anguish.
When she asks to see the secret vault in the library, I nearly panic. Thankfully my variant of the Wretched Sight allows me to perceive its location. I use a quick spell to open the vault, and I spend hours there with her, searching through volumes of human lore about Fae magic. Most of it is incorrect information, but there are a few helpful paragraphs, particularly about weapons that can slice through objects imbued with dark spellwork.
It’s during our research session that I realize how intelligent the girl really is. Not only does she read well, she accumulates the information quickly and analyzes it accurately. She makes a few comments aloud while she’s reading, and I observe that her brain instantly tucks away the most useful bits of information and discards the rest.
When the clock strikes midnight, I’ve never been so furious with the passage of time. And yet I’m pleased too, because eventhough our quiet research session is over, I still have one more opportunity to see her, this time as myself.
I portal to her house and pace the halls for half an hour, chafing at the delay. Finally I go outside and walk along the lane, intending to meet her. If her carriage and her glamoured clothing haven’t dissipated already, they will soon.
Moments later I see her, stark naked, running along the gravel drive through the freezing night. Her golden hair whips behind her and her breasts bounce as she races toward me. I have never seen anything so fiercely free and so heartbreakingly beautiful. I open my arms to her, but she only seizes my shoulder and marches me back inside, a scathing rebuke on her tongue.
Back in the house, I show the girl other glamoured forms I can take. Perhaps it’s a way for me to salve my conscience, nudging her toward the truth without actually saying it—yet she still she does not suspect that I’m the King. Why would she?
I take the game too far, though, when I assume her stepmother’s form. The girl’s fear is immediate and visceral, and my suspicion is confirmed. The stepmother is her captor, her abuser, the villainous influence in her life.
In her desperation to get away from the illusion of her stepmother, the girl injures herself. When I offer to come in her mouth and heal the wound, she lets me—even bares her body to my view so I’ll be able to climax more quickly. I tell myself it’s a step forward in our true relationship, the one that involves no masks or glamours.
When I return home, I sleep well.
I don’t sleep long, though, because she summons me again, this time with the pocket watch. She demands that I do her chores so she can rest. I tease her and feign reluctance, but truthfully I’m all too happy to assist. The huge mess she spoke of is a moment’s work for me, and when I return to the cellar where she sleeps, I’m greeted by the heavy, honeyed aroma of arousal.
She’s on the bed, with her hand between her legs. The moment I appear, she jerks her fingers out of her clothes, her cheeks turning a luscious red. Judging by how flustered she is, I must have been the subject of her fantasies.Me, not the King.
It gives me more satisfaction than I wantto admit.
5
I spend the day traveling between realms, keeping the King alive in the mortal realm while researching dark magic in Faerie. After questioning the stewards of the Royal Reliquary in my uncle’s palace and chatting with less savory characters in some of Torin’s favorite haunts, I accumulate a collection of items to ply against the anklet, including the Void-Star dagger, which I purloin from King Lirannon’s vault of forbidden weapons.
I try everything on the anklet that night, while the girl sits quietly with her foot on my thigh, watching the process. When none of it works, I lose my temper and annihilate everything. I’ve only been able to annihilate items twice before, and they were small, solitary objects. I’ve never destroyed multiple things at once. The intensity of both the emotion and the magic frightens me a little.
I’ve lost my heart already. I think perhaps I’m losing my mind as well.
Later I tell the girl what I’ve deduced about the anklet and its powers, and she tells me her name. Not Cinders, as the step-family calls her, but Celinda.
In return for her name, I giveher mine.
6
On the night of the third ball, we fuck again, this time in the greenhouse, and when Celinda shows me her dominant side, I drown deeper in my love for her.
Afterward I’m forced to join the party for a while, but I don’t stay long. Now that I’ve seen the conditions in which my darling lives, I feel compelled to remedy the situation as best I can, until I can resolve it entirely. So I procure items from both Faerie and from the attics of the King’s palace, and with those supplies and my own magic, I transform the cellar into a livable space.
I have one more gift in mind for Celinda, and to obtain it, I must approach my mother again.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Clara says when I appear in her studio. She dips her brush in water and swirls it around, her eyebrows raised reproachfully.
I wince. “Perhaps.”
“When you were tiny and you’d done something wrong, you would hide from me.” She presses the paintbrush against theside of the jar, draining the excess water. “Have you done something wrong, Killian?”
“Yes,” I admit. “But I’m fixing it.”
“I know apologies are countercultural for the Fae,” she says. “But your father has given them to me when they were owed, and I hope you’ll do the same for this person you’ve wronged, whoever they are.”
“I will.” I clear my throat. “May I—that is, do you have any gowns you no longer need? Any fine dresses you’re tired of? There’s someone who could use a dress—a more permanent one than I can conjure.”
My mother’s brown eyes glow with delighted interest, but to her credit, she doesn’t question me, even though I know she’s dying to. She only says, “Go to my closet upstairs. You can have any of the six gowns on the far right. I’ve worn them all to multiple palace occasions, and I probably won’t use them again.”