“Oh?” He did step back then. Aside from Donia and Beira, no one took that sort of tone with him. He might be a bound king, but he was still a king.
“Yeah.” She shoved him with both hands. “You need me to get your juice back from the Winter Queen, right?”
“I do,” he agreed, dragging the words out slowly.
“So if something happens to me, you’re out of luck? Is that about right?” Her chin tilted up.
“It is.”
“If you think threats are going to make me cooperate, you’re a fool. It won’t.” She nodded once, as if she were reaffirming her words. “I won’t let you use me as an excuse to hurt anyone I love. Got it?”
“I do,” he said after clearing his throat.
She walked away then, setting a fast pace.
The guards sped up to keep up with her furious stride, as did he.
After a few tense moments, he asked, “So, what do you, ah, propose? You are the Summer Queen.”
“I am,” she said softly. “I believe that, but the thing is—you need me far more than I need you.”
“So what do you want?” he asked cautiously. He had never met a mortal—or fey, for that matter—so far outside his expectations.
She looked wistful for a moment. “Freedom. Not to even know faeries exist. To be mortal. But none of that is a choice.”
He wanted to reach out to her, but he didn’t. She was as unapproachable as when he’d first met her—not out of fear, but out of determination. “Tell me what you want that I can give you. I need you to rule alongside me, Aislinn.”
r /> She bit her lip again and then—so softly it was almost a whisper—she said, “I can do that. It’s not what I want, but I don’t see how I can turn away if it really is what I am.”
“You’re saying yes?” He gaped at her.
She stopped walking and caught his gaze—the fierce look back on her features. “But I will not live with you or be with you.”
“You’ll still need a room at the loft.” He didn’t say “when trouble arises,” but there’d be time to address that later. Royalty could be murdered: his mother had proven that. “There will be times that meetings may run late or—”
“My own room. Not with you.”
He nodded. He could afford to be patient.
“I will not stop going to school either,” she added.
“We could arrange tutors—” he began.
“No. School, then college.” She sounded determined, fierce.
“College. We shall find one that suits you then.” He nodded. He might not like her insistence on independence—when he had first begun to search for her, women were more docile—but clinging to the mortal world wasn’t unreasonable in her circumstances. It might even benefit their court.
She rewarded him with an almost friendly smile then, looking deceptively cooperative. “I can do this if it’s a job, you know?”
“A job?” he repeated.
“A job.” She had a strange tone in her voice then, like she was musing on it as she said it.
He didn’t say anything to fill in the silence that hung at the end of her words. A job? His consort viewed their union as a job?
“I don’t know you. You don’t know me.” She gave him another strangely intimidating look. “I can work with you, but that’s all I can be. I’m with Seth. That isn’t going to change.”
“So you’re asking to keep the mortal?” He tried to keep his voice even, but it hurt. He knew she was implying it earlier, but to say it made it seem so much more real. His queen—his destined partner—was planning to be with another, with a mortal, not him.