AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Louder,” he ordered, picking up the pace to my rising cries. “Tell me what you desire. Beg for it.”
“I want— Oh, Alisdair, I want—"
The choices my mother had to make. The pain she went through. The father I never got to know. Our lives were ruined before our very births—
I moved down, fixing on a faint, half-moon scar on his chest.
—all because a thousand years ago, a selfish, power-hungry bastard ripped his heart out, and now... my mother didn’t sing anymore.
“—to drive the next strike through your real heart.” My smirk mirrored his own— Or it did. His triumphant grin melted away. “I want to know why men such as yourself are so easy. Sosimple.” My laugh was loud and harsh. “You truly believe all it takes to control a woman is a flaccid cock and a few fake orgasms.”
My foot came up and kicked his shoulder. Alisdair smoothly ducked the strike, pulling out of me in the process. “Let that be a lesson to you, King of Blood and Pain. You cannot use sex to get what you want from me.” I threw my skirts down, straightening in my seat. “This bird won’t sing for you.”
“Hmm.” Alisdair reclaimed his space. In a blink he was dressed. Truly, within the space of a blink, his clothes vanished from the floor and reappeared whole and new on his body. “You are a mystery, Princess. One I intend to unwrap.”
I heated under the obvious double meaning. “You have the length of this carriage ride to do so. Good luck.”
He didn’t rise to the challenge, or if he did, he didn’t see fit to tell me. We lapsed into a heavy silence; the air charged with the memory of what happened between us. Yes, Alisdair Shadowsoul was the handsomest of men, and he knew exactly what to do with the face and body the All Mother gave him—but I wasn’t a fucking little bird.
No man would ever put me in a cage.
We lapsed into an uneasy silence. More so uneasy for me since Shadowsoul fell asleep half an hour in.
He is no concern of mine. What I need to do is figure out how I can get back to Meli, Mama, and my faywens, and explain to them that we need to track down the crown princess of Lyrica and force her to give my body back.
That was the only path available to me, because getting Alisdair Shadowsoul to give his heart to me—the real me—and speak my name was the impossible nonsense of a curse that didn’t want to be broken.
How was he to speak a name I couldn’t tell him while living in a kingdom of people who didn’t know it? Your first name is givenby your parents, but your second is given by your fame, acclaim, or reputation. The name Shadowsoul was given to him by the world. It was obviously not a second name he would’ve chosen.
As for me, I have done and achieved nothing in my true life. I did not yet have a second name for him to speak, and as for my first, the name given on my day of my birth—my parents saw fit to choose an old, ancient fae name that fell out of favor centuries ago.
It was not a name that was guessed, stumbled upon, brought up in casual conversation, or heard on the wind while walking through the market square. He was never going to speak my true name, and that was just the practical reason why the curse couldn’t be broken the way it was intended.
The harsh and brutal reason was I couldn’t win the heart of a man who didn’t have one.
No, my only choice is to go home, protect my family from Kirwan, and then together Mama, Meli, and I can find a way to track Emiana down and get my body back.
I nodded to myself—satisfied.Don’t worry, faywens. I’m coming home.
My forehead pressed to the window, watching the endless, unchanging landscape. Something appeared in the distance, tightening my brow.
Dark, ominous clouds rolled over the horizon, blotting out the sun, and we rode directly toward them.
Shadows and gloom bled inside, making the solitary corner of the carriage, and the man reclined in it, all but disappear except for his too-bright eyes.
The endless sea of white began to break up, giving way to an overgrown barrier of wood and death that stretched as far as I could see.
A forest.
Tangled, knotted, weeping trees pushed and grew over the other, allowing no entrance to fae or animal. The carriage jarred—throwing me roughly to the side when we forged through anyway, slipping through the trees on a path I couldn’t see.
“What is this?” I squinted through the branches but there was nothing to see. The scant view of the sky granted through the bare branches revealed nothing but black clouds. “Is this a shortcut to Lyrica?”
No reply came from his side of the carriage. My throat tightened—anxiety rising.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. “You said you were taking me back. Is this the way to Lyrica or not?”
Noise came from him then—a deep and clear laugh.
