Free Prince by Blood and Bone: A Fantasy Romance of the Black Court (Tales of the Black Court) by Jessica Aspen

her.
    And that wasn’t the worst part.
    The worst thing was she was almost starting to like him.
    “Just wait, here.” he said. “I’ll be right back. Hold this.”
    She took the candelabra and he plucked a single lit candle from the fixture and took it with him through the door. She waited. The air was as cold as usual in the warren. Beezel made sure her fire was lit and her room stayed warm, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to the chill, and she missed the hot New Mexican sun.
    The door opened and she crossed through into the light.
    On the other side of the door, an enormous room stretched out. The ceiling was filled with glittering candle chandeliers and lit torches on the walls flickered their reflections on mirrors. There were mirrors everywhere and they bounced back sparkle after sparkle of glimmering light.
    Kian waited for her, multiple Kians reflected into the distance. “Do you like it?” The desire to please that was innate in the question made her smile.
    “It’s amazing.” The opulence took her breath away. Between the largest gilt edged mirrors she’d ever seen, outside of pictures of Versailles, the walls were made of pink marble and the floor was a mica-flecked pale grey. “The gnomes built this?”
    “The Galentian Gnomes are very fond of dancing and parties.”
    “I can’t imagine Beezel dancing.”
    “He’s a different kind of gnome, and no, cave gnomes don’t like music. I don’t think they have the ears for it.”
    His arm reached out from under his cloak and for a moment, she thought he meant to offer his hand to her. But as his claws extended out, the sharp talons gleaming in the light, he yanked them back under the billowing fabric.
    “After you,” he said, his voice strained.
    Strangely disappointed, she followed him to the blanket set up in the middle of the room and the delectable feast set out on a silver tray. She sank down and stared around the room. “I’m not sure if I should eat or just marvel.”
    He laughed. The sound was full, and masculine, and the first genuinely amused laugh she thought she’d heard from him. It rippled along her skin like a warm tropical wave.
    She was startled into looking at him.
    Somehow, every time she saw his malformed shape, it was a surprise. She continued to think she’d see a man, and instead, it was Kian’s huge, awkward, cloaked shape sinking down onto the blanket across from her.
    Her palms were slick and she was trembling. He was a beast and the enemy. And for a moment, at the sound of his laughter, she’d had the insane desire to pull his cloak back from his face, and kiss him.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
     
     
    Haddon, Secretary to the Queen of the Black Court, leaned on the empty consort’s throne carved from one of two huge living trees soaring up to the clear, blue afternoon sky. He surveyed the chaos of the throne room, watching impassively as a common cave gnome cowered on the grass at the base of the dais. A few of the courtiers, who had been brave enough to creep back after the queen’s earlier explosions of the day, eased away, escaping through gaps in the rose-studded hedge enclosing the court. Haddon had no doubt that the queen had lost her audience to safer distractions. Dalliances behind closed doors, tea parties in one of the many other courts, or hunts through Underhill. The Black Court would be mostly silent for the remainder of the afternoon. The grassy swards, empty. The smaller ante-chamber beyond the huge twenty-foot tall doors, deserted.
    The queen would not be pleased. She liked an audience. But Haddon was pleased. His plan of discrediting the queen was working. With the prince imprisoned, and the queen so close to insane, soon it would be easy for him to take his place and become regent.
    “What do you mean you cannot say? I asked you a question, gnome,” the queen demanded. She was in a rare mood this afternoon, her temper barely controlled.