“A mistake?” I whispered.
“Things have changed.” His voice hardened now. “I don’t want things to be uncomfortable between us. We need to work together. You need to put this behind us. I already have.”
The hole in my chest cracked my heart as I stumbled back from him. I knew it shouldn’t matter. I was just acknowledging that I had feelings for him—how deep those feelings ran, I didn’t know—but there was a hole opening up in my chest.
There was no denying he meant what he said. I heard it in his voice. I saw it in his face, and I had no idea how I’d misread things with him so badly. How I could’ve been so damn foolish to think there was more to what was between us.
Humiliation festered to life, settling into my bones and spreading like a fever, flushing my skin.
Caden—no, he wasn’t Caden to me anymore. He was just the Prince, and he must’ve sensed the sharp, bitter swirl of emotions churning through me, because he stepped toward me.
“Brighton—”
“I get it.” I cut him off as I stepped to the side. “Message received.”
“I’m—”
“Don’t apologize. God, please don’t apologize. That’s….” When his face began to blur I knew I needed to get out of this room. I would not lose it in front of him. I would not cry over what could have been when there was apparently nothing in the first place. “You said… you said you wouldn’t hurt me. You lied.”
He drew back as if I’d hit him.
“I need to go,” I said.
And I did.
Ivy and Ren would’ve been here by now, waiting for us in the main common area, and I just… I just needed to get the hell out of this room.
Giving him a wide berth, I skirted around the chairs and made a beeline for the door. I made it and I made it out into the empty hallway knowing that the Prince could’ve stopped me at any moment.
But he hadn’t.
He’d chosen not to.
Acknowledging that hollowed out my chest, and I walked to the common area in a daze, focused only on breathing around the burn in my throat.
Hands shaking, I kept them fisted tight as I picked up my pace, reaching the main hall. There were fae everywhere. They spilled out from the common area, their eyes wide and the hum of excitement charged the room.
I had no idea what was going on as I scanned the unfamiliar faces. There was a shock of red hair toward the back. Ivy. She and Ren were here, which meant that was probably where Tink was. Concentrating only on getting to them, I didn’t notice the first fae to drop to their knee before me.
But then they went down in a wave, one after the other, dropping to their knees and bowing deeply, placing their right hands on the floor. All of them went down until I could see Ivy standing near the entrance to the common room and beside her was Ren. Both looked surprised as I felt.
Neither of them looked as shocked as Prince Fabian, though, which was saying something because both Ren and Ivy looked about as confused as I felt.
Prince Fabian’s long blond hair was pulled back, revealing just how pale his face was as his lips moved wordlessly.
Then he dropped to his right knee and placed his right hand onto the floor.
“What the hell?” I whispered, turning around slowly, knowing they weren’t bowing for me, because duh.
Things are different now.
I saw him in the hall I’d just hurried out of, the edges of his blond hair brushing those wide shoulders and those odd amber eyes were not on the fae who were bowing to him but on me.
“Oh my God,” I whispered as Tink’s words from the night the Prince was wounded came back to me in a rush. If he dies, then Fabian becomes King and he… he can’t be King.
Did that mean…?
He closed his eyes and a reddish-yellow glow appeared, just like it had before, as if there was a halo of light behind him. There was no flaming sword this time when the glow receded.
Instead there was a burnt gold crown atop his head.
Caden was no longer the Prince.
He was the King.
The King
Acknowledgments from the Author
Thank you to Liz Berry, Jillian Stein, MJ Rose, Kim Guidroz, Chelle Olson, and the wonderful powerhouse team behind 1001 Dark Nights. Thank you for allowing me to continue to be a part of the family.
And thank you, the reader, always and forever.
Chapter 1
“I don’t think this is wise,” Tink said for what had to be the hundredth time since he realized I was getting ready for a night out. “Like I think this is very poorly thought-out, if you ask me, Lite Bright.”
“I didn’t ask you, Tink.”
My uninvited roommate of sorts hovered outside my bathroom. Tink wasn’t human, but right now, he looked like any normal twenty-something guy. Well, if normal, twenty-something guys had natural, shockingly white hair and were beautiful in a way that almost seemed fragile.
This was his full-grown Tink size, something I was still—even after all this time—getting used to. I was more accustomed to pint-sized Tink with the translucent wings. After all, he was a brownie.
After the attack that had taken my mother’s life and should’ve ended mine, he’d basically moved in with me. He’d been here for the last two years, something Ivy’s husband pretended to be grateful for, but in reality, I knew he secretly missed the dude.
“You should ask me,” he replied. When I glanced over at him, I got a little distracted by the dazzle…emanating from the sequin tank top he wore. It was so shimmery that I wondered if he was using some of his magic.
Tink may be a goofball, but he was also one of the most powerful creatures in our realm.
Thank God there was only one of him.
“I am a wealth of amazing advice,” he continued. Dixon, the cat he’d named after a Walking Dead character that Tink called “the hottest redneck eva” slinked around Tink’s ankles. The cat was all gray except for his tail, which looked like it had been dipped in white paint.
I snorted. “When have you ever given me good advice?”
“When I told you two weeks ago not to eat the whole carton of beignets because you’d get sick and you did,” he shot back.
I winced, picking up my mascara. I had gotten sick, but I deserved that carton of sugary, fried goodness. That day…
I didn’t want to think about that day.
“And what about when you ordered that supreme pizza and ate almost all of it?” he said. “I told you that it would probably make you feel bad later.”
Nose wrinkling, I tried to remember what night he was talking about. There were a lot of Friday nights—pizza night in my household—that I ate an entire pie and felt terrible afterward.
“Or how about that time I told you that the seared ahi tuna looked a little gray for my liking? But, oh no, Brighton knows better.” He reached down, scratching Dixon between the ears. “You ate it all, and then I spent the night cleaning up your puke.”
Ew.
I hadn’t eaten seared ahi tuna since then.
“And let us never forget when you ate the whole bag of—”
“Why do all your examples involve me pigging out?”