The gold cuffs on the tips of his pointed ears flashed as he turned and started to strip off his jacket and shirt. He was somehow bigger without the clothes to hide how muscular he was underneath. Lean and broad shouldered, he radiated strength.
Blood had soaked through his clothes, staining his pearl white skin with red smears.
Elise was horrified and couldn't look away from him washing his face and chest. She thought about the train heading to London and the towns in between them that he could have raided with his army.
Fionn's words came back to her, I can't wait to see what the prince has planned for you. Ice filled her belly.
Would he torture me with those long knives? Would he rape me? Elise shut her eyes, having to look away as fear clogged her throat.
Footsteps came closer, and a long finger poked her shoulder. "I know you are awake, human. I can smell your fear."
Elise opened her eyes and scooted away from him, her back hitting against the pole. The prince crouched down in front of her and studied her like a bug. Up close, his antlers were about as long as her arm, their pronged black tips still smeared in gold paint. Elise could suddenly taste his spicy honey and spring blood again and tried not to swallow.
"What's your name?" he asked, his voice deep and lilting.
"E-Elise," she said and then remembered the stories about never giving the fae your real name. "Fuck, no, it's not," she tried to blunder on, but it was too late. The prince's brow lifted a little.
"Elise," he repeated slowly like he was savoring the taste of it in his mouth. A knife appeared in his hand, and she flinched, turning her face away. Cold metal brushed against her hands, and the binds slid away. Elise clutched her freed hands to her chest, rubbing feeling back into them.
"Thanks," she mumbled, figuring being polite might stop him from cutting pieces off her.
The prince's head tilted a little, staring at Elise's dirty face and hair. He looked like he was trying to figure something out. She wasn't dumb enough to meet his gaze for long. Elise tried to look away, but he took her face and tipped it up. He was close enough that she could now smell his scent of fir trees and sweet smoke, alluring and dangerous at once.
Elise stared at his mouth, not daring to raise her eyes higher, and she caught a glimpse of his fangs as he repeated, "Elise." He let go of her face with a growl of frustration and pulled one of her hands away from her chest. Elise tried to stop him, but his grip held her like a vice.
"Be still," he commanded, and she froze as he ran his blade along her palm.
It was so sharp, Elise didn't realize she had been cut until blood started to well up. The prince tugged her bloody palm to him and lowered his soft mouth to it. Too shocked to move, Elise watched as he drank her blood, his scarlet eyes flaring with gold.
His warm tongue lapped at her skin, and goosebumps skittered down her arms. With one gentle scrape of fangs against her, he let her hand go. Elise held it close, the cut closing over like magic.
What. The. Fuck.
"Unusual," he murmured. His eyes shifted back to scarlet again as he licked his bottom lip. Reaching over, he twirled a lock of Elise's hair around his finger and let the dark curl spring back up.
Fae arriving outside of his tent made him snap out of his intense concentration and stand quickly. He pulled a scarlet shirt from a chest, sliding his arms into it, before crisscrossing the panels around himself and fastening them. He snapped his fingers, and golden cuffs appeared on Elise's wrists. Magic curled around them and runes danced on the gold before fading into black markings.
"Don't try to run, Elise," he warned and tapped the golden band around his own wrist. "I'll know." The prince took a black crystal the size of her hand from the chest and opened the door of his tent.
The roar of the crowd of fae outside was deafening as they made a path for him. Elise crept to the door, too scared to step out of it, but too curious not to look. The prince crouched down and buried the crystal in the churned-up turf. Golden light illuminated his face like some kind of fucked up pagan god, magic exploding out of him.
The crowd was shouting again, but Elise could barely hear them. She was struck dumb at the sight of his magic - real, terrifyingly powerful magic.
The earth shuddered, and the black crystal began to shoot up out of the ground like the trunks of demonic trees. The crystal was alive as it took form and grew higher, twisting and molding together into a castle. The prince turned, flashing a fanged smile while his magic continued to feed the crystal and the land. The fae were going wild, shaking spears, hitting drums, and drinking from horns. They let out war cries and screams for their prince as his power washed over them.
The golden wave of magic hit Elise, and she swayed. It burned through her, making her skin hot and blood rush to her head. Elise backed away from the doors as the heady power knocked her down. Her human body couldn't handle the potency of it, of him. His feral golden face was the last thing she saw before blacking out.
4
The human was unconscious again by the time Kian returned to his tent before dawn. Exhausted from the amount of power that had been riding him for days, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
Arawan knows I deserve it.
He, Kian the Blood Prince, had managed the impossible and brought his people from where they had been banished to Faerie and through the stone circle back to Albion. Fifteen hundred years of imprisonment were finally over.
The humans had built the stone circle as a warning that it was a gateway to Faerie, one they didn't know how to open or close. Now it was Kian's, his castle growing beside it, forever to be a part of this land that was taken from them. He had no intention of showing mercy to any of the humans, and yet, on his first night of war, he had taken one captive.
"Why you?" Kian murmured softly, staring at Elise on the ground. On the steel contraption he had found her in, she was the only one who saw him. No human should have been able to. Not only that, but the spell he had worked on them had no effect on her either.
Kian's own damn curiosity had made him stop Fionn from killing her, but maybe he shouldn't have. Kian had taught the fae that humans were worse than beasts and should be treated as such, but he hadn't been able to crush this bug. It was worse than embarrassing. He crouched down, trying to find an answer to what about her had him so thoroughly puzzled.
Sleep had taken the fear from her face, and with some horror, Kian realized that she was beautiful. She was the opposite of the fae females, softly curved and clearly no warrior. Her long hair was a messy tumble of looping dark curls that were silky soft to the touch.
When her eyes were open, they were big and blue, and as soft as the rest of her. Her full lips were open a little, and Kian had drunk enough mead that he didn't stop himself from running a thumb over them. She sighed in her sleep, her lips closing over him. Something about it made his long-dead desire flare to life. Kian pulled his hand away with a hiss, hating the sudden emotion.
"I should kill you," he said, hand going to his dagger and incisors lengthening. The thought of drinking the human dry made his desire flare hotter, and Kian rocked back from her.
Usually, the curse only made him hunger for blood on the full moon, which brought him right back to what the fuck was different about her.