Page 60 of The Ruthless Fae King
She turned to look at me in the doorway with a soft expression, and I couldn’t help but feel that my friend Raife had struck gold with her. She’d just rode on a dragon’s back at a moment’s notice to save Madelynn after the way I treated her and her husband the last time I saw them.
“Thank you,” I said.
She smiled and gave me a slight bow, which was gracious of her considering she was a queen herself.
A few moments later my head maid arrived. She took the dirty dress from the floor and tossed it out before setting up a chair in the corner to read.
The hours passed. Raife came and went, checking on her and telling me everything looked good. My lead guard gave me news on the warfront. The Nightfall queen had been quiet since I’d stopped the storm. We both agreed she was probably using the moment to regroup and bolster her defenses. I just didn’t care right now.
The stress of the last twenty-four hours weighed on me. It had been a ruthless nonstop war with my own people to get Madelynn back. Not to mention this attack from Zaphira at my border. I was exhausted. And so I gave in to the pull of sleep with my face on the blanket beside Madelynn’s stomach. I never cared much for belief in the Maker. After losing my mother and then being constantly abused by my father, I couldn’t fathom a Maker that would allow that. But my last thought before I fell asleep was a prayer to the Maker that he would let Madelynn live and make her my wife forever.
FIFTEEN
Madelynn
Awareness pulled at my mind and my eyelids snapped open. I took in the ceiling above me in confusion and then everything came flooding back. Lucien killed Marcelle, then I was shot. I was flying on the dragon king and then it got so cold… I passed out.
Lucien.
I realized then that a heavy, slightly cold hand was laced with mine. I gazed down into the sleeping face of the winter king.
I smiled at the peaceful look he carried, something he rarely did. Peering around the room, I noticed a slumped figure in the chair in the corner. One of Lucien’s maids. She must be a chaperone. I found it sweet that he was still trying to protect my reputation even after everything that happened with Marcelle.
I wiggled a little to adjust myself and Lucien’s head shot up into the air as he looked at me wide-eyed.
“You’re alive,” he breathed.
I smiled, reaching out to touch the worried lines around his eyes. “I am, thanks to you.”
If he hadn’t frozen my wound, I’d have bled out right there in Summer Court.
Lucien didn’t move, he just stared at me in shock as if he didn’t believe this moment was real.
Without wasting a second more, I leaned forward and pulled his lips to mine. I no longer cared about propriety or purity. I wanted Lucien’s lips on mine as many times a day as possible. He whimpered into my mouth as we hungrily tasted each other. Yesterday, I was pretty sure I was going to die, so I wasn’t going to waste another moment of my life not living it to the fullest.
He pulled back abruptly, shaking his head and looking stricken. “Wait, Madelynn, you don’t understand. Raife couldn’t save you, not fully. His wife had to do a special procedure.”
“Procedure?” I cocked my head to the side and he leaned his forehead against mine.
“You lost too much blood… so they gave you mine.”
His confession horrified me.Blood?“Gave me yours?” I asked, confused.
Lucien cleared his throat. “They placed my blood inside of you.”
They put his bloodinsideof me? I shivered at the thought. It sounded like dark sorcery, which I was wholly against. But I was happy to hear I hadn’t ingested it.
“Lucien, how? Necromancy?” Only the vile monsters that lived in Necromere did blood magic, or so I’d heard. They kept to themselves. I hadn’t heard of or seen someone from there my entire life.
“It was a human contraption. Not dark magic. I made sure,” he tried to reassure me, but I was still panicked at the thought.
Lucien’s blood was insidemybody?
It was in this moment that I looked down to see what I was wearing. When I noticed my dress had changed, my eyes bugged.
“Queen Kailani changed you. I didn’t see anything,” he assured me. Would it even matter anymore? I’d nearly died. Lucien seeing me naked before marriage was the least of my concerns.
“Are you okay?” I asked him, checking his body for signs of injury.
