Page 84 of The Midnight King

She kisses me wildly, fervently, painfully. It’s a tormented kiss, a wordless goodbye.

What would the King say in this moment? What concern would he share with her if this ruse were real? What threads remain left untied between them that he would want to secure?

“Your friend,” I murmur against her mouth. “The one for whom you were searching the Faerie spellbooks…”

“Never mind that right now.” She kisses me again, more tenderly this time. Her tongue travels the inside of my mouth—and then I feel her hesitate a moment before cautiously tracing the shape of my teeth and tongue. Something in the tension of her body alarms me.

I’m glamoured to look and feel like the King, but is it possible that I don’t feel like himinside? Could her tongue recognize the true shape of mine, or the taste of my mouth?

I pull away, ending the kiss abruptly. “Goodbye,” I tell her, and I leave the room.

The second I’m in the hallway, I portal back to the King’s chamber. When the servants knock several minutes later, I let them in and submit to their ministrations as they prepare me for a ball I cannot avoid, where I’ll see Celinda again. Like a fucking idiot, I promised to dance with her. I shouldn’t fulfill that promise, but it’s too thrilling a temptation to resist.

My life at the moment feels like a bit of flotsam from a broken ship, a piece of wreckage circling round and round the lethal center of a whirlpool. Though I know the inevitable end, I can’t seem to break free from the sucking force of the current. I have no defense against the desire to be with Celinda, to savor her scent, to feel the responsive tremor of her body within my grasp.

I am the King and the King is me. She wants us both, but she craves him more freely and openly, and I’m addicted to her desire.

So I dance with her at the ball, drinking in her sweet scent, trying to memorize the feel of her waist beneath my palm, the sensation of her fingers laced with mine. I want to treasure these memories until the end of my existence.

“You were right,” she says lightly as we dance. “The shoes are quite comfortable.”

I reply automatically, with a smile. “I told you they would be.”

The moment the words leave my mouth, I realize my mistake.

Shit.

Gods-fuck.

Her eyes are wide with triumphant horror, with enraged betrayal.

In my own soul, two vastly different emotions clash together. Guilty sorrow, because I know the wrong I’ve done—and a sense of relief, because the deception is finally over. My wickedness has been exposed, for better or worse. I am revealed and undone before her, and all I can do now is try, with my heart and my body, to make amends.

9

“She is furious,” I tell Torin. “She has every right to be, and I owe it to her to respect her wishes and stay away. But I won’t leave her entirely. I can’t, not when she needs me. Not when the climax of all this is so close at hand.”

“What are you going to do?” Torin eyes me, sipping his wine. He looks paler than ever, and there’s a hectic light in his blue eyes. When I arrived in his suite today, I pressed him to tell me what’s wrong, but he refused. Instead he demanded to know the latest chapter in my tale.

Perhaps, if I confide in him fully, he’ll open up to me. So I tell him my whole plan, including the part where I will almost surely die from wearing the anklet.

“The fuck, Killian?” he exclaims. “I can’t let you go through with this. What would your parents do without you? God-stars, what wouldIdo? You’re not only my cousin, motherfucker—you’re my best friend. Are you doing this out of some ridiculous sense of misplaced guilt?”

“It’s not misplaced,” I retort. “Torin, I deserve this. Think about what I did—how I deceived her. The only way I can atonefor that is by giving her everything I have. I’ve thought about this, trust me, and it’s the only way I can save her. I’mgladto do it.”

“I’ll tell Finias,” Torin says through clenched teeth. “Or I’ll tell my father. They’ll stop you.”

“They can’t,” I tell him, more quietly. “None of you can walk between the realms like I can. In the blink of an eye, I can be beyond anyone’s reach.”

“A fucking unfair advantage, if you ask me,” he growls.

“Maybe. But in this case, it enables me to sacrifice myself for the woman I love.”

“Love.” His lip curls in a sneer.

“Yes,love. I love her, I adore her. I would kill for her, and since I can’t do that, I’ll die for her instead.”

“And you’re telling me this, why? To cause me pain?”