Page 87 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“That was smart.”

“We are grateful that the mind is a capricious, wrinkly organ, darling.” She glanced at the glass I held. “I want a sip.”

Why was my hellcat being so polite today? “Have your sip,” I said, extending the glass forward.

She blinked for a moment, but then slowly made her way to me, and just when she reached close enough to get it, I lifted it above my head. “A sip,” I said, and she frowned at me like ice cold fury, her hand lowering. “I’ll give it to you. It’s what we agreed on.”

Slowly, I lowered down the glass and brought it to her mouth, tipping it up once her pretty lips rested on it.

She winced a little at the taste and I pulled back. “Don’t go all crazy drunk on me. It’s bedtime for you.”

Her eyes drifted down my chest before slowly sliding up to me, and the way her cheeks flushed made me regret that one sip. I didn’t want to get those eyes of hers when she was intoxicated—not unless she could look at me like that when wasn’t. “Shouldn't have let you drink. You might think I’m a pony as well as that poor lad Simon.”

Her mouth ticked just the slightest and she blinked slowly. “That’s not how I’d ride you, Your Majesty.” Profiting from my distraction, she took the glass and drank the rest of it in one swing.

Sweet hells. “You’re wicked cruel.”

She made one small, calculated step toward me, her fingers grazing my shirt. “Poor Night King. Are you suffering, my darling?”

I rested my forehead against hers and took a sharp breath, my eyes drawing shut at the scent of lily around her. “Stop it. I beg of you.”

“Tell me, I want to know.”

“I am.”

“Good,” she whispered over my lips, lifting her gentle fingers to my face and trailing them over my skin. “So good, husband. Aren’t you so good for me?”

Fuck. This torture…I wanted more of it.

With one last wicked smile, she blew me a kiss and then jumped on the bed. Not even a minute after she’d rested her head on the pillow, her soft snores filled the silence.

I went to her side and pulled the blanket over her body. “How can you sleep, my little beast, hm?”

Her response was a deep snore that almost shook the walls.

“Like that, huh?” I stood there chuckling to myself for the next hour till I’d decided that I’d tortured myself enough for the day.

After I’d done a last round check of Highwall, I headed to Taren to get Snow. Later today I had called for a meeting with every priest from every corner of Adriata. Few of them were old—very old. And Atlas had convinced me this morning that the Sidran priests might have been aware of the Octa Virga after he had found some sort of an old scroll with heavenly theories mentioning Aurora as a guardian in their archives. Snow had to be there as my queen. People had to familiarise themselves with her presence or excuse themselves from my court.

Fading was slightly easier now after the Magi healer had mended the flow of my magic that had fragmented from the beast’s magic essence lingering in my blood.

The wind howled around me, and the skies of Olympia seemed restless—moodier than usual. It was odd how the emotions of its people were reflected in the skies.

Caiden along with a team of soldiers made their way to the terrace, he rushed orders of all sorts to his men. When he took note of my presence, his face twisted. “Have you come to play king for us again?”

I flicked a bit of dust from my shoulder. “I don’t play, Caiden. I am king.”

A howl echoed through the mountains and then another. The sound bounced back around the space of the mountain ranges growing closer and closer to us.

“Is that a signal?”

“That is Tratha, a city in the southwest, calling for aid. The tribes echo the sound to us,” he explained, peeling off his gloves. Black ink swirled like vines around his hands—Crafter magic. Is that what he’d hid under there all this time?

A blast of lightning hit the skies twice, mimicking the signal howl, and my attention pulled heavenward.

“And that is Snow,” he said as she came into view, climbing the stairs to the roof two at a time, pulling her leathers on as she went. She ran across the terrace, and then with no warning, she leaped from its edge into a free fall. Halfway down, her body took the shape of a blinding bolt of electricity and then she was gone from sight in a flash.

A red spark flickered before Caiden and then a wide circle expanded from thin air. A portal. “Handy,” he said as his soldiers rushed into the portal one after the other. “When you need to go kill a general’s family without being seen.” With that, he disappeared inside it.