Page 57 of Vicious Kings
"Relax," he says, and I realize I'm standing like I'm ready for a fight. "Your friend will be fine. Everen is harmless. Mostly. To omegas, at any rate."
"That's reassuring."
He laughs, offering his own arm. "Come. There are some people I'd like you to meet."
This is it. This is why I came. I slide my arm through his, trying not to notice how warm he is, how he smells like the forest after a good, hard rain.
He leads me through the crowd, up a staircase that's completely transparent. I have to focus on not looking down because heights and I have never been friends even when I'm not walking on daggers.
"Afraid of heights?" Tallon asks, and there's gentle teasing in his voice.
"Afraid of falling through invisible stairs," I correct, gripping his arm tighter when the steps seem to shift under my feet.
"They're perfectly safe." But he steadies me anyway, his hand covering mine on his arm. "Dragon glass from the Far Reaches. Stronger than steel and worth more than gold."
"Of course they are," I mutter. "Can't have regular stairs made out of wood like normal people."
His laugh is warm honey. "Where's the fun in that?"
The staircase spirals up to what can only be described as a VIP nest with circular seating that looks soft enough to sink into forever, arranged around a low table laden with food and drinks. The view from here is even more spectacular, giving aperfect vantage point of both the party below and the alien ocean beyond.
And there, lounging like panthers in their den, are the other two members of the Golden Triad.
I know Prince Corvinus immediately.
The portraits scattered throughout the kingdom don't do him justice. They can't capture the way he seems to exist in multiple dimensions at once, beautiful and terrible and absolutely fucking magnetic. White hair the hue and radiance of starlight, eyes the color of winter sky, and a face that could make angels weep. Full lips contrast against angular features too beautiful for this worldorthe one I just stepped out of.
He's everything the stories say and more, and I hate him with every fiber of my being.
The man next to him looks a few years older, with an energy that makes my skin buzz. Dark magic comes off his deep bronze skin like heatwaves in the summer. His long black hair is bone straight, framing a perfectly carved face with a straight nose and chiseled jaw, and his eyes are so dark the only light in them comes from within. His eyes have a sharp, dangerous spark that makes me feel as if he's looking through me, into all the secrets I'd rather keep hidden.
His energy has similarities to a shifter's, but just like with Everen and Tallon, his feels like…more. He's no common wolf or even a big cat, but I still couldn't guess the beast he shares his soul with if my life depended on it.
And before the night is over, it might.
"Gentlemen," Tallon announces, guiding me into the nested seating. "I'd like you to meet Billie Moreau."
Prince Corvinus looks up, those impossible blue eyes finding mine, and the world stops.
This is the man I'm destined to kill.
The man who murdered my mother and destroyed my life before it even truly began.
And he smells like fuckingstarlight.
Eighteen
BILLIE
What the hell does starlight even smell like?
Fuck if I know. And yet, as I stare at this man I've loathed for eight years, that's exactly what my brain registers his scent as.
Prince Corvinus tilts his head, studying me like I'm a butterfly on a pinboard. His winter-sky eyes hold a detached curiosity that makes me want to drive a knife through his Adam's apple.
"The omega hunter," he says in a voice like crushed velvet over broken glass. "How delightfully contradictory."
I force myself to curtsy, a pathetic, wobbly thing that would make Madame Loriyne weep in frustration. "Your Highness."
