Page 56 of The Fallen Fae King

There is just…something…in the air that makes me hesitate.

Uncomfortable, I glance around myself. “These pyramids…I can feel their magic…primal and ancient. It presses down on me. Bad things have happened here.”

Lanlin doesn’t deny it.

Instead, his expression becomes fragile. “Ruin and the Void Cult live in these pyramids. They are mysterious and don’t admit outsiders. I fear what they do in the dark cells beneath the pyramids more than the priestesses in the Scarlet Temples, who worship death and pleasure, training assassins and courtesans. I at least understood that. Ruin stole my twin from me. He hid Laz away in these pyramids, until he went missing.” He glances at Daire. “You have hidden secrets from me, but I hide ones from you.”

Daire’s eyes darken. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve always known that.”

Lanlin glances away. “Except, I haven’t willingly hidden them. I am under a Blood Oath.”

Daire’s gaze sharpens. “Then that changes things. I won’t blame you for something that you can’t control. You’re trapped. But think like a fae. What can you tell us? Look for a loophole.”

Suddenly, I whimper. My heat is hitting me in waves.

Being this close to a nest, my Omega instincts are screaming at me to dive into its softness and become closer to my Alpha.

Daire slips his arm around me, and I nuzzle against his neck. When his wings wrap around me, I moan at the sensation of both his wings and shadows stroking me.

“I can tell you,” Lanlin’s voice sounds far away, “that the Blood Moon is coming soon. Our myth is that the first Bloods were created out of shadows in the Void, born on the Blood Moon. The moon will slowly turn red after I have fed on blood from both of you because your blood will bleed into the moon. It will magically bind us, and while it does, I will weaken.”

“Aye, I know that part.”

“Do you know that in the past the Void Cult kept fae beneath these pyramids? They were obsessed with the taste of their blood…the idea that they truly were the original gods.”

“We are,” Daire grits out.

“Then my god,” Lanlin smirks around his elongated fangs, “get into this nest and start pleasuring our Queen.”

“I thought that you’d never ask.” Daire scoops me up, and I let out a delighted purr.

Daire throws me down next to Lanlin in the cascading dunes of cushions. They truly are made of my favorite materials in oranges and greens. Giving myself over to my Omega instincts, which are heightened during my heat, I claw and nuzzle at them, rolling around on the linen quilt and mountains of woolen blankets.

Blood-red linen hangs from a gilded circular cedar frame that is built around our nest.

The top of the nest is open to the sky, however, and I can’t wait to be claimed by my two Alphas underneath the stars.

Daire leaps onto the nest, bouncing up and down. “Soft. Wow, look at this: long cushions, star ones, and ones shaped like lotuses. And you’ve woven precious objects into the walls: beads like bats, dove feathers, and the Ankh symbol in⁠—”

“This is our journey.” Lanlin’s face is in shadow. “Our love. I have a final gift. It is fitting, right? Something of beauty to drive away the nightmares that I have spent my life painting.”

He turns, pulling out from underneath the pile of cushions a parchment. He shoves it at me like he thinks that I may reject it.

I stare down at the painting.

Surely that’s not me?

I used to gaze in wonder at the paintings that hung on the walls of the Moon Court, especially those of Prince Bard, who I had a crush on until he rejected our bond. Somehow, by immortalizing themselves in art and then framing themselves, the elite legitimized and immortalized their power.

It became impossible to refute.

It’s dangerous.

I didn’t understand then how power can both come and be abused in many forms, even art.

I do now.

Yet this painting isn’t like that.