Free Claimed by the Elven King: Part Three by Cristina Rayne Page B

to
think.”
    “Even so, I don’t want to embarrass myself,” I insisted as we moved as
three slowly towards the door, Rinwen a silent shadow at our backs.
    I felt the tension in my shoulders start to relax as I listened to my
friends chat about a mishap involving spilled water on the floor and a ladle
Rinwen had just witnessed in the kitchen that had even me giggling half-hardily
after a while. One minefield evaded, but with a sense of bone-deep weariness, I
knew better than to think the next one would have such a good outcome.
    After all, my life had always been filled with half-empty glasses.

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    By the time the sky started to darken, I
was once again a ball of nerves despite my friends’ best efforts to keep me
relaxed and laughing all day. Although my nausea had thankfully subsided to a
much more manageable level, it was still very much present, a bomb with a
tripwire nestled in the pit of my stomach just waiting for me to make the wrong
move. As such, I was glad to hand over hair duty to Lariel and Rinwen for once,
not even protesting when they wanted to pin my hair back in an elaborate style
they said was currently popular within the court in preparation for my evening
with Sethian.
    I was holding my hand mirror up, staring at
my reflection in a bit of fascination as the two women twisted and folded
sections of my hair elegantly around several silver hairpins, when Sethian
abruptly appeared in the mirror behind us like some kind of ghost. I was so
startled that I dropped the mirror, the sound of it hitting the floor preternaturally
loud even over the girls’ chatter.
    My stomach heaved unpleasantly as I turned
sharply to look over Lariel’s shoulder, half-expecting to see nothing but air,
but there the elven king stood in what was probably his full royal regalia of a
delicate, almost insubstantial silver crown that seemed composed of little more
than light and layered, silver and navy-blue robes that made him look twice as
wide. He met my gaze with a slight smile of amusement, the bastard—like he
hadn’t even been gone for a whole freaking month !
    “Visitors usually come through the front
door,” I found myself saying almost sternly as I tried to calm my suddenly
racing heart without letting any of my distress show on my face. I was
dangerously close to tripping the wire, and damned if I was going to lose the
game now after everything I had already been through that day.
    No, not a game , I thought in
something like despair as I was struck once again by his
too-unbelievable-to-be-real beauty just as powerfully as I had been on that first
night.
    This was the rest of my life.
    If anything, Sethian’s smile widened at my
words. “It seems I caught everyone unawares,” he said, nodding to both Lariel
and Rinwen, who in turn, bowed deeply and stepped away from me in order to fade
into the background. “I thought perhaps we could take a short walk through the
garden before dinner.”
    My heart clenched. Not for the first time,
I wondered if Sethian could really read my mind. It was either that, or I was
so hopelessly transparent that I might as well have been shouting out my
deepest thoughts to him every time I looked at him. Either way, it didn’t bode
well for me making it through the rest of the day with my humongous secret
intact. In fact, it could very well be the reason why he had suggested the walk
in the first place—giving me the chance to tell him away from gossiping ears.
    My thoughts briefly turned to the
conspicuously absent Saeria in sudden suspicion. She had left a bit earlier to,
in her words, “oversee” the dinner preparations. At the time, I hadn’t thought
much of it, figuring she was just trying to help me and my nerves out by making
sure at least the dinner part of the evening would go off without a hitch. One
less thing for the nervous Royal Wife to worry about. What if she had gone to
Sethian, instead, and told him, if not everyone’s suspicions about the