Although I have been thoroughly dismissed, I find myself asking, “Where is that?”
Sunlight gleams off her straight, white teeth when she flashes a saucy smile. “Anywhere you’re not.”
She turns away from me, and a pair of cerulean wings appear through the slits in her jerkin, the feathers at the top darker than the ones at the bottom.
My heart sinks.
Actually, it doesn’t sink. It leaps right out of my chest and flops onto the ground.
Instead of flying away, she twists back around, and my hopeful heart gives a happy thump where it lays between us.
“By the way.” Her gaze drops to the ground, her grin widening as if she can see my heart splayed out like a sacrifice just for her. “You have Pegasus shite on your boot.”
I do not have?—
Shit.
Well, isn’t this fucking brilliant? There is, indeed, Pegasus shite on the toe of my left boot. Why do they insist on letting those foul beasts walk where we do?
By the time I glance back up, the woman has taken to the sky, her wings carrying her toward the western horizon.
As I watch her fly farther and farther away, a strange emptiness spreads through my chest. My sacrificial heart is no longer on the ground; it has been stolen by a woman with cerulean hair, golden eyes, and a bag of lemons.
Doesn’t she know that a man cannot survive without his heart?
I suppose I have no choice but to track her down and ask for it back.
One
ALLETTE
NOW
We were never meantfor happily-ever-after.
I knew that from the moment this doomed relationship began.
I fell in love with him anyway.
The object of my affections lounges next to me on the lumpy mattress. Golden tendrils of candlelight dance through a gap in the threadbare velvet drapes that keep the outside world at bay, casting ethereal patterns on his bare, bronzed torso. My gaze strays to his sharp, angular features. His straight nose. Dark, slashing brows. The fan of his thick lashes.
It’s not fair that one person is so bloody attractive.
When Senan catches me ogling, he laces our fingers together and brushes a kiss across my knuckles. “You will be safe tonight, won’t you?”
Not this again. That is the fourth time today he has made the same remark. “You needn’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” I should be the one fretting. Instead of accompanying me through theportal to celebrate Samhain in the human realm, my prince will be going somewhere far more dangerous.
“As your prince, it’s my duty to worry about the welfare of all my subjects.”
He did not just say that. The cheek. “Is that so?” When he nods, I fight the urge to give him a good thump on the arm. “You’re saying I shouldn’t feel special?”
“Not in the least. I barely even remember your name.” His brow furrows, and his quicksilver eyes narrow as they sweep toward the swell of my breasts concealed by the thin sheet. “What was it again? Anita? Arwen? Arabelle?”
Arabelle? Seriously? I give his flat nipple a hard pinch. “Very funny,Simon.”
He knocks my hand away and rolls, pinning me to the bed with his lithe body. “Simon, eh?” His nose grazes the line of my jaw, sending a shiver of desire racing down my spine. I feel him begin to harden where his hips trap mine, which is impressive considering we’ve already made love twice.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is that not your name?”