Amid Clouds and Bones

by Ella Fields

“A dungeon is no place for a princess.” “I don’t want to be a princess anymore,” I said.

But if it meant escaping the Fae, then I would gladly surrender my title.

Confident, refined, and unflinchingly dedicated to her duty as the future queen of Nephryn, my older sister was everything I wasn’t. But it was something else that caused a seed of resentment to bloom. Princess Bernadette was human. Therefore, the favored heir.

“You’re not going anywhere today, Mildred,” she said. “You won’t wed the prince for a very long time.”

They said the Seelie prince was a monster. That although he wasn’t even full grown, he was known as Atakan the heartless.

I finally looked up at the tall boy who was not a boy but a faerie prince. My future husband. Atakan didn’t look at me.

He was born upon a full moon, and I’ve been unable to rid the audacity from him ever since.”

I would wager my entire rare rock collection that he didn’t want anything to do with this alliance. At least we had one thing in common.

“As do you,” he said. “Do all halflings smell like a mildewed corpse?” It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t merely picking on me but that he could scent the dungeon. A moment too long, for I spewed, “I’d rather smell like a corpse than act like one.” His rich laughter prickled my nape, and I froze in fear.

“Let me make myself crystal fucking clear, little thing.” My eyes widened at the ease with which he’d cussed. “Out of all the dangers awaiting you in my court, I’m the one you’ll need to be protected from.”

Bernadette couldn’t change anything. I had to marry the faerie who’d warned me that he was just as monstrous as rumors claimed.

Faeries did not care for propriety and maintaining one’s innocence for marriage.

I had no idea what the spell entailed, nor if such a thing was even possible, and I didn’t much care. I cared only about carving the prince’s pretty eyeballs from his obnoxiously evil head and stomping on them while he screamed.

Alas, I had a cold dish to serve.

My father still had lovers, but when we were alone, he always reminded me that my mother, a faerie he’d had under his employ for many years, had been his true love. Listening to him talk about her used to fill me with aching bliss, and I would ask him incessant questions about the female I would never know.

Revenge was a game the Fae refused to lose.

Our kingdom had aided the Seelie in their quest for safety against the Unseelie and their late king. Now, I would wed their heartless prince.

They wouldn’t break their oath. They couldn’t. Yet they could find a way to bend it, and it would be no fault of their own. Such as my untimely and unpreventable death.

“Love knows no bounds for mortals and has no end for faeries.”

“The atrocious things I would do just to see you do that.” Unless I ran, there was little else to do but play along. “Do what?” “Beg,” he said, the word a forceful blow that wiped all trace of humor from his features.

“Besides, I find myself poisoned by thoughts of ruining only one dreadful little creature.” “I am no longer so little.” “I can see that.” He glanced pointedly at my chest.

The only way to survive Atakan the heartless was to play this game of hunter versus prey—even if it drew blood.

“What I usually do is none of your concern, dreaded Mildred.” “No more little thing?” “Certainly not with tits that huge.” I gaped.

“Humans don’t seem to mind them,” I lied, unwilling to make him aware of my innocence. Atakan’s response was delayed. “They wouldn’t.” But the blow failed to strike as he’d intended. Maybe I’d imagined it—the delay, and the way his voice had roughened.

His presence was a flare of heat at my back, and his voice low and scathing. “Remove your hands, or I’ll remove them from your body and make you eat them.”

I wanted him enamored. I wanted the safety that would come with his obsession. I wanted the freedom to live without the constraints of fear and uncertainty. Most of all, I wanted the challenge of him.

“If you so much as think about playing with anyone but me, I will tie you to this bed with their entrails and paint you in their blood while I fuck you.”

“Yet you can play with whoever you like?” I laughed again. This time, without humor. “That is hardly fair.” “What isn’t fair is your existence,” Atakan seethed, his mouth leaving my forehead and moving closer to mine. “The way you make me crave and loathe you in equal measure.”

“No. Do you know what is disrespectful?” She blinked, then raised a daring and slender brow. “You.” I smiled brightly. “Sitting on my betrothed’s lap.”

“Unlike you, halfling, I am wanted here.” “But you’re not,” Atakan said, then promptly picked her up and dropped her into the seat beside him.

Countless times, I’d lain awake over the years, wondering what would happen to me if Atakan Ethermore died. When I’d dared to ask Bernie, she’d said to pray to every deity that he lived a long life. For the faeries of this court would find worse ways to use me—or simply get rid of me.

“Too many,” he grunted. “Next time you disobey me, perhaps I’ll toss you into the woods to play with them.” I smirked. “You said I wasn’t allowed to play with anyone else.” “And I meant it.” Pain edged the lethal whisper.

But only one answer would suffice. So I smiled while smoothing my hair back from my face. “Nothing I cannot fix myself.” His amusement died.

But it softened the longer he looked down at me, and disappeared entirely when he murmured, “Enough to make me miss the creature I loathe the most.”

“I want you. I want you as much as I loathe you—so much, it feels like I can’t breathe.” His parted lips dragged across my cheek, his whisper scathing near my ear. “Give me back my fucking breath.”

“So gloriously wet.” He hissed as he eased back in. “One might think you loathe me as much as I loathe you.” “I’ll wager I loathe you more,” I said, all breath.

This betrothal was nothing more than a game. Another war that would drag out over years. Potentially lifetimes. It wasn’t supposed to be a squabble that would reach a bloodied climax any time soon.

King Vane. The Unseelie king. My eyes closed. I was so perilously doomed.

I made to stand until he said, “Do not run. I will only frighten you more by hunting you.”

“I’m trying to determine whether you are the one.” “The one?” I asked. “The one we need.” “For what?”

“Long ago, an elder prophesied that a curse would befall these lands.” He looked back at me. “Many years dawdled by, and although tensions grew between kingdoms, her ramblings were almost forgotten.”

“Our enemy stole my father’s heart, so now we must steal our enemy’s.” There was a pause before he said, “Prince Atakan’s heart, to be precise.”

The Unseelie king cocked his head. A slow smile rendered his features less severe and more alluring. “You must fall in love with me.”

“Good food, good literature, good housing, and good sex…” He spread his hands. “I will give you everything a female wants. All you need to do is let me.”

“How did it feel, Princess?” “How did what feel, King?” “Taking the cock of a male who’d rather die than admit he cares for you.” With that, King Vane vanished—as if to punctuate that he could indeed get beyond the wards trapping his realm. He could take me back to Ethermore. And that he wouldn’t.

He exuded a primal energy that tugged at some mystical and deeply feminine part of me. I didn’t doubt he had the same effect on many females.

“Show you?” Incredulity sharpened my tone. When he merely nodded, I laughed. “I’m afraid I’m tired of teaching males how to treat me.”

Yet again, I was a means to an end for a king. This time, if Vane’s asinine plan proved successful, the cost wouldn’t only be my life. It would be my heart. Fortunately for most, heartbreak was a survivable curse. And if there was one skill I had, it was making sure I lived.

I was more aware than anyone of the prince’s feelings for me. Feelings which, over time, had softened due to my careful tactics. Not as much as I’d needed, but one day, they could have. All for nothing now.

“Stripes,” he scoffed. “An insult.” “She has black stripes in her fur.” “And you have the darkest green eyes I’ve ever seen, but I don’t call you seaweed.”