Author: Audrey Grey
Category: Fantasy
Go to read content：https://readnovelfree.com/p/26858_12
“Being able to give you a piece of your stolen history is totally worth the risk.”
I turn the picture over in my hand, my mind reeling.
Summer, meet your parents and dead self.
My little pep talk falls flat. The people inside—my real parents—feel like strangers. My mother, the Fae Summer Queen, wears a sumptuous green and gold brocade gown, her red hair teased into a thick net that’s pulled up in a spiderweb of green ribbons and pinned with gold-and-black butterflies. The Summer King, my father and also the man who killed me, sits proudly in a matching green and gold jacket.
And the girl that sits on a throne between them, wearing the crown of ivy, poppies, and bellflowers—
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I flip the picture facedown, unable to bear looking at it anymore. “Thanks. Really.”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, the opposite. It’s the best birthday gift anyone’s ever given me. It’s just . . . a lot to take in.”
Another pause. The tension between us grows. I stare at the ice prince, the Fae male I’m tied to by soulmagic and fate’s terrible sense of humor, and wonder if there’s a way to bridge our differences.
No matter how my body responds to him, my mind still warns that he—and the world he represents—is dangerous.
Is it possible to love someone you can’t be with? To want them in every possible way, knowing giving in to that desire could destroy you completely?
I catch Asher gesturing something to Valerian, but the prince’s expression is unreadable as he ignores the dragon shifter, his focus never wavering from me.
His normally silver-blue irises are like mercury in the bright sun, and they regard me for what feels like an eternity, shaded by a thick blue fan of eyelashes.
Finally, he reaches out. I freeze as I feel his hands slide over my hips, his fingertips pressing deep into my flesh. Reminding me of when he touched me once before.
Slowly, as if letting our bodies get used to each other, he pulls me to him.
3
Titania save me, I want to devour Valerian whole. His scent—juniper and balsam and cedar—his devilishly bowed lips, that intoxicating familiarity I’ve never felt with anyone else . . . all of it threatens to undo me.
“Summer,” he breathes, hardly daring to move as he stares into my eyes, “I know you asked for time, and I’m giving it to you. But tell me you won’t fight our bond forever. As long as I know there’s hope, I can deal with the agony of not being able to have you. To claim you the way every cell in my body demands.”
I bristle at that word, claim, even as my traitorous body begs for it. To be claimed, possessed, devoured whole. I want to sink into him. To inhale him like he’s a Bath & Body Works store during clearance. I want to kiss him until my lips are numb with cold and my belly smolders with heat and I can no longer remember my name.
Bad, Summer. Bad!
Biting the inside of my lip, I stand my ground. “You talk like I’m something to be possessed and used up, but that’s not love.”
A wry smile plays over his lips. “Love?”
For the Evermore, who live for thousands of years, love is antiquated. A naive emotion that fades quickly and serves very little purpose, except perhaps to trick and entrap.
I square my chin and look him in the eye. “Yes, love. You may not like it, but a part of me is mortal, and we expect the whole shebang. The sappy courting, the over-priced chocolates and roses, the Hallmark cards where you underline words like love and forever, the milestone like the first fight over who ate the last ice cream sandwich or forgot to throw the wet clothes into the dryer and now they’re all mildewed and . . .”
Why am I even trying? This is the part he will never understand. The boring, mundane parts of a relationship we humans need.
He blinks, a divot appearing between his eyebrows. “I don’t understand half of what you’re saying, but you and I did have something like that once.”
Right. The girl inside the picture. The Fae Evermore whose parents I don’t remember, whose life I can’t recall, whose emotions are a mystery to me.
“You say that, but I don’t even know what you like. What’s your favorite type of music? Your favorite food? Favorite color? Do you prefer briefs or boxers or—”
“Pretty sure you know that one,” he adds, a dark grin spreading across his handsome face and reminding me why my favorite nickname for him is ILB.
When I go to protest, he adds, “I like you, Summer. What does it matter about colors or food or anything else?”