Chapter 30: The History of The Fae
The next sunny day arrived quickly, and he left while it was still twilight, so she pretended to be asleep as she didn’t want to encounter him or behold that evil smirk on his face.
Her cheeks were flushed pink as they tidied the library, dusting the books and sorting the shelves. But it wasn’t the labor that warmed her skin. It was his words—those raw, wicked, forbidden words that had slithered into her mind, lodging themselves deep. The weight of them, the sheer audacity of them, struck her like a fever.
She could almost taste his lips, feel the slide of his tongue, the searing heat of his bare body against hers. The thought made her inwardly shriek. He had planted something dark in her mind, a hellish flower she had no business tending to—yet here she was, watering it with reckless abandon, succumbing to its beauty.
She wanted him. Oh good Gods, she wanted him. And that was the most awful part of it all, it wasn’t just desire, it wasn’t just longing. She wanted her husband. The man who had scoffed at love, stripped it and simply dismissed it as if it were nothing more than a child’s folly.
When this marriage ended, she knew she would suffer. If this was why people called him a devil, she could not refute it. She had been drawn to him from the moment their eyes met in that sanctuary—just before the bite, he made her heart slip away for him, long before her heart betrayed her by stirring at the mere thought of him.
She loathed how defenseless she had become. On one side, her power swelled, pressing against the dam she had built to contain it. On the other, the storm of her emotions raged, threatening to set her ablaze from within. And today, despite the exhaustion pulling at her limbs, she felt lightheaded, intoxicated, as though she had downed an entire barrel of strong ale. Nausea churned in her stomach, but she couldn’t tell if it was from fatigue or something far more dangerous.
She handed a stack of dusted books to Gloria, who hesitated, shifting awkwardly as if debating whether to speak.
"Go on, ask your question, Gloria. I haven’t lost my mind. At least not yet," Ren said abruptly, making the maid flinch.
Gloria’s voice wavered. "Did you ask Healer Rigo for Al-Gathiran Kin?" Her gaze flicked to the left, uneasy.