Dragon Bound (Elder Races #1)(104)

Yes, well, let’s not talk about that. She looked at the sleek black boots near her head. They belonged to legs that went up farther than she could focus just yet. “Can I have some water?”

“Sure, why not.”

He threw cold water in her face. She was too depleted to react much other than gasp. “Alrighty,” she said after a moment. “Can I have some water to drink now, please, Your Highness?”

He laughed again. “Not boring and not dumb. That’s so much better than your boyfriend, who both bored me and was dumb. To be honest, I don’t know what you saw in him.”

“Ex. Ex-boyfriend,” she said. “I swear to God, I’m never going to live that down.”

Finally it felt like her limbs would function. She pushed herself to a sitting position. She was in a very large room that had a medieval feel. There was a large stone fireplace and a nearby cluster of chairs, a long wooden table with benches, lit sconces that gave the scene a flickering illumination she found eerie, and a high-raftered ceiling.

There were also Fae guards at long metal-hatched windows. The two who had snatched her were stationed at large double doors.

Again she had no idea how long she had been unconscious, or where she was. She hoped the drugs hadn’t hurt the peanut. Her hand slipped to her abdomen. She gave herself a surreptitious scan. She sighed in relief as she located the tiny bright life inside her. There you are. Looks like it’s just you and me, peanut. For now, anyway.

The Fae King squatted beside her. He handed her a goblet. She took a cautious sip. Cold, crisp, clear water. She sucked the contents down.

Then she looked up at Keith’s murderer. A few weeks ago she had not known there were so many people in the world to hate. Urien. The witch Adela. The two Dark Fae males at the door who had shot an innocent human without so much as a blink of an eye. Her revenge to-do list kept getting longer and longer.

The few Fae she had met had looks that ran from those who had a puckish quality, like Tricks, to those who had a strange stern beauty, like Urien. It was too bad he was such a monster. With his lean supple build, high cheekbones, white skin and raven black hair, he should have been one of nature’s miracles.

“This is one of my country retreats,” he told her, having noticed her curiosity. “No full Court in attendance, just me and my men. And now you, of course.” He gestured to the goblet. “More?”

“Yes, thank you.” She handed it to him and pushed to her feet as he refilled it from a silver pitcher sitting on the table. She drank that goblet down as well.

“Have as much as you like. The sedative can leave one with quite a thirst, or so I’m told,” said Urien. “I suspected you’d wake up thirsty since you had two doses back-to-back. Which rather surprised my men, since one dose should have been sufficient for the trip.”

“I’ve always had a high metabolism,” she said. She filled the goblet one last time and drained it. The hydration made all the difference in the world. Things stopped spinning at the edge of her vision and she felt stronger. “Local anesthesia at the dentist? Forget about it. It doesn’t take until they pump enough in me to numb an elephant.”

“I see.” The Fae King strolled to one of the high-backed chairs near the fireplace and sat. He gestured to the chair opposite him with a smile. “Please join me. We have a lot to talk about, you and I.”

The worst thing you could do with a predator was show your fear and run. She suspected dealing with the Fae King would be a similar experience. She took the chair he indicated, leaned back and crossed her legs.

Urien regarded her across steepled fingers; then he reached for the glass of wine on the table by his chair and took a sip. “What a surprise and a mystery you’ve been, Ms. Giovanni.”

“It wasn’t intentional,” she said. “Well, maybe the mystery part was, but that was supposed to go unsolved.”

He gave her a grin that didn’t reach his cold black eyes. “I knew I liked you the moment I got that penny. Now that made me chuckle.” His eyes sharpened. “There is something about you. . . .”

All these stupid old people. Had every last one of them met, heard of, gossiped about, or smelled her mom in the distance? Way to be inconspicuous. Thanks a lot, Mom.

She pinched her nose and sighed, “Yeah, I look like Greta Garbo. I get that a lot.”

“Really, and this Greta Garbo is who?”

She looked at him over her hand. “An old movie star.”

“I do not follow such newfangled human pastimes.” He dismissed the subject with a flick of his fingers. “This pissant nobody kept annoying my men, so when I heard about his preposterous claims about his girlfriend, I thought, Let’s throw a kind of finding charm out there and see what happens. You know, just to try out a prototype of a little something I’ve been cooking up in my spare time. Imagine my surprise when everything he claimed came true. Then imagine my surprise when he wouldn’t say a word about you.” He leaned forward. “Not after he was gelded, not after he was eviscerated, not after he was blinded. I didn’t think the boy had that kind of loyalty in him. I thought he would give you up in the first ten minutes.”

She covered her mouth, fighting hard to show no emotion. After a moment, she had enough control to say, “He couldn’t tell you anything. I made him take a binding oath.”