A Queen of Ruin (Deliciously Dark Fairytales 4)

I frowned at him. “Why would he think we’d poison her if we were the ones who saved her?”

He huffed. “You’re very green, sweetheart. Very pure of heart. Someone would do that to gain favor with the king. He might’ve seen it as me showing your worth. The facts were stacked against us.”

“How so?”

“You sat in a seat intended for me. Neither of us touched our wine. Your actions can be explained away, but mine can’t. He wouldn’t understand my decision to abstain because you are pregnant. It’s not a normal custom. You offered Calia your wine. She was affected, and you then saved the day with a remedy that just happened to be pre-made and worked quickly. A couple of those things—okay. But to an outside observer, it would appear too convenient. I didn’t want us implicated in any way, so I made a show of it. I showed him my genuine fear turned aggression, something he’d understand.” He rubbed his face as Urien stripped his pants. “It was genuine, make no mistake. My fear that you could’ve been poisoned was real, just directed at the wrong person. I went overboard.”

“Will you be needing clothes tonight, sire?” Urien asked Nyfain when all his clothes had been removed.

“Just a night slip, Urien. Thank you.” Nyfain donned the slip and crossed the room to sit in a large, overstuffed chair by the darkened window. “I didn’t temper my rage. I scared him.”

I let my own slip fall over my head and down my body before I joined him. He held out his hands, and I sat on his lap, tucking myself into his embrace and leaning my head against his shoulder.

“I can’t really say boo, can I? I played catch with your…” I gritted my teeth. I still couldn’t go there. I wondered if I’d ever be able to.

“About that.” He chuckled softly. “I’m surprised you didn’t kill her.”

“It wasn’t a killable offense. She was just pissed and hurt and insecure. If she’d touched you, however…”

“No, I mean, most dragons don’t have soft mouths. They can’t control their bite reflex well enough to hold a creature between their teeth without killing them.”

I leaned back and looked into his beautiful golden eyes. “You can.”

“I’m rare.”

“And what? You think I’m average?’

He laughed and hugged me closer again. “No, but you are new to flight and your dragon and training. I didn’t think you had that kind of control yet.”

“My dragon probably doesn’t, normally—”

Oh ye of little faith, my dragon scoffed.

“But we couldn’t kill her, and my dragon was hellbent on…going crazy.”

“Good training exercise, then.” He shook his head. “In fairness, it must be strange for Eris. One day she had a certain life, and the next day she had a bunch of stuff that didn’t belong to her and no memory of why it was there. She gets her memory back after all this time has passed, then I show up again with someone new. A mate. A pregnant, beautiful mate, whom I made my queen.”

“Yeah, that does suck. Except she had sixteen years to find someone else. It’s not like she was mourning you or missing anything. It was basically the same as her life right before she met you. She had all that time, but she didn’t do anything else with it.”

“And that is why I don’t feel sorry for her.” He rubbed my back, and Leala and Urien tidied up. “Knowing what my life was about to be…” He let his head thunk back onto the chair cushion. “What a huge mistake I was about to make. It was a mistake of convenience, but… Goddess help me, imagine never feeling this kind of love ever in our lives, Finley. Imagine never knowing someone you cared about more than yourself. Someone who got you in a way you didn’t think anyone could.”

“I know,” I whispered, snuggling closer.

“The question is, if it wasn’t Eris who put the poison in our drinks, who was it? Who in this kingdom has motive to kill us? The king seemed truly baffled.”

“You know the answer, right?”

“It seems likely that Dolion has someone in this kingdom working for him, yes. Without any proof, though, we need to watch ourselves.” He slowly tensed, and unease bled through the bond. “What if you had been drinking? What if the poison had been in your soup? Or your fish, or if it had appeared later in one of the other courses?”

“Then Hannon and Arleth would’ve had to handle the situation.”

“Hannon needed direction. He administered the antidote, he didn’t prepare it.”

“Your mother could have.”

“Mom didn’t spend months studying poisons. She wouldn’t have known what to make up and how much to administer.”

“Which is why I would’ve walked her through it.”

“Damn it, Finley.” His arm tensed around me, crushing me to him. “You handled that whole situation from beginning to end. You were still barking orders after Calia had gone out. You figured out what to do and had to make adjustments when things didn’t work out perfectly with the crowded everlass. There was precious little time to get it right. Without you, Calia would’ve died. If it had been you poisoned—”