Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(113)

The Shadow King might have just rescued me from the The Shadow King might have just rescued me from the winter court, but the old saying about frying pans and fire was how my life tended to go, so I wasn’t about to drop my guard. Or be hugged by a strange fae. I took a step toward Falin and the king stopped, frowning. The look he shot Falin was more than just unfriendly.

“I don’t welcome the Winter Queen’s bloodied hands into my court. You should go, boy,” he said.

I shrugged. “Point us to the exit.”

The king faltered, his handsome features showing true shock for a moment before he recovered. “But you’ve only just returned home, my dearest niece.”





Chapter 32


Home? And perhaps an even bigger question—“Niece?”

The Shadow King smiled, and while there seemed to be genuine affection in the expression, there was no softness.

His handsomeness had a deadly edge to it so that even when he was relaxed, there was an alertness to his movements, the possibility of violence. “Actual y, my great-grandniece, but such distinctions are tiresome. Kin is kin.”

I blinked at him and let PC slide to the ground. An uncle?

The world seemed a little more out of focus than the moment before, even more unreal. I have an uncle? Wel , a great-granduncle. I’d never known any of my extended family. My mother had died when I was young and my father refused to discuss the subject. Now I had an uncle. And he’s the king of a Faerie court.

“My father . . . ?”

The king shook his head and took both of my hands in his. “He is, at times, a dear friend of mine, but not kin and not of my court. No, it was your lovely mother, a darling of a feykin, who was of my blood.”

My knees went weak, and suddenly the king’s hands weren’t grasping my hands but supporting me as I sagged toward the ground. If the world had blurred at the idea that the king was my uncle, the revelation that my mother was feykin turned it upside down completely. I shook my head, the idea battling with everything I knew and understood to be true.

“Maybe we should take a walk and get some air,” the king said.

king said.

“That might be good,” I mumbled, and even to me my words sounded far away, as if I were hearing them from the other side of a long tunnel.

The king helped me to my feet. He wrapped one arm around my waist to help steady me and held my hand in his so that my arm stretched across the front of his dark chest armor in a pose like some sort of shock-induced promenade. As he steered me toward the door I noted how much softer the armor was than it looked, and that it had been heated by his body. It was that almost blistering heat as wel as Falin’s voice cal ing my name that snapped me out of my stupor.

I yanked my hand back from the king’s and spun out of his arm, nearly tripping on my ful skirt. As I moved, I caught sight of the hands that had held me and I stopped, as if stuck between one step and the next. Like mine, his palms were coated in blood, but the blood on the Shadow King’s hands looked thicker, darker, and fresher than the blood on mine. I shot a glance at my glamour-created gloves. They were spotless, despite his having touched them.

He must have seen me staring, because he glanced at his hands and shrugged. “The blood of my enemies and the enemies of my court. Unlike some, I don’t hide it away.” He shot a meaningful glance at Falin.

Okay then . . .

I grabbed the front of my enormous skirt and lifted it high enough that I could move freely. Then I bustled back to where Falin stood. He’d picked up PC at some point—for which I was extremely grateful; I didn’t want to know what lurked in the thick shadows hugging every corner of the room. And with al the flying buttresses and recessed arches there were lots of corners. Whispers, thousands of them, seemed to crawl from the shadows, though I saw nothing in them. I’d rather avoid them.

I smiled my thanks to Falin for helping bring me back to my senses and then turned toward the king. “Sir—”

my senses and then turned toward the king. “Sir—”

“You may cal me uncle.”

Uh, no. I couldn’t. “Do you have another name?”

“The King of Shadows. The King of Secrets. The king of al things hidden in the dark.”

Yeah, al of those titles fit the king, and his court. Wel , actual y, of his court I’d seen only the planebender so far, but secrets, shadows, and things hidden in the dark were apt descriptions of this room. Not real y the name I was looking for, though.

“Do you have a shorter name?”

He laughed, and then gave me a smal bow from the waist. “King Nandin, at your service.” He smiled as he straightened, and it was a good, friendly smile that morphed an almost too handsome face into something softer. “I was saddened when your parents decided to leave Faerie, and more so to learn how cruel y the mortal world treated my poor grandniece. Disease, what a waste.”

He shook his head.

Even nineteen years later, mention of my mother’s death sent a cold chil through my veins. The pang of loss never real y fades, but eventual y you just forget to feel it unless something happens to remind you. Tonight it washed through me with a sharper edge than it had in years. Would you have told me what you were, what I am, if you’d lived? I had no idea, and no way to ask. Her shade couldn’t be raised.

“But look at you, my dear,” Nandin continued, unaware of my dark thoughts. He circled me as if I were some unusual dol on display. In the dress the Winter Queen had made, I did feel like a dol , but I stil didn’t like the scrutiny, though I had to admit that at least some part of me was pleased that this long-lost uncle looked at me with approval. His warm smile was kind as he took my hand again. “I’d have never imagined that my grandniece’s daughter would have blooded true. And a planeweaver at that. I am truly thril ed you have returned to my court.”