Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Three

In hindsight, perhaps that was why I'd taken to stealing from fae; a determination to do something more proficiently than the man who had sired me. The mighty king in his castle being upstaged by nothing but a hybrid bastard.

He might never know what I did, what I achieved. Not after that night and he seemed to blame me for the loss of his precious pilfered trinket, the deaths of so many of his people. But I would know. And I would know that I was better than him.

Although, the current situation perhaps suggested that was fallacy.

As the shadows cleared from my eyes, I saw the Vodreylian's eyes scouring my face with a smirk, still getting joy from my pain all these years later. "You have grown up."

But not him. He hadn't changed a bit. Save perhaps an even stronger beauty. My eleven-year-old maturity might not have been able to comprehend what that primal urge was, but I was almost eighteen now and I fully understood what it was. What he was bringing out in me. What my more adult maturity had felt about him just now as I relived seeing him for the first time.

And he'd been witness to all of it, I was sure.

"Six years will do that to a human," I snapped.

He grinned widely. "But you are not just a human."

I glared harder. "Mongrel, wasn't it?"

Heat flashed in his eyes, like a summer night. "So broken and yet..." He licked his lip, such a familiar gesture from that night. "...full of so much...passion." He said it like it was dirty, in the best possible way. He might not have had those thoughts about me six years ago, but the way he looked at me now, that was sexual.

"Just get it over with," I growled. If I was lucky, I'd enjoy it.

He chuckled softly as he took another step towards me. His finger alighted under my chin, and something burst in me at the contact. Hot. Bright. But also, oh so dark. Wonderfully dark. My eyes found his and the slight hesitation in his joyous mirth made me wonder if he'd felt it, too.

"I will take my time with you," he purred and my whole body felt it. "Oh, to break you open. To crush you until there is nothing left. To watch that light finally leave your eyes and know that. I. Did. That."

I scoffed, clinging to defiance until my last. "How pathetic you are," I sneered, and his eyebrow cocked in amused question.

"Oh?"

"Humans, so breakable already. What a big, strong sidhe you must be to be able to break a human," I taunted him. "How terrified I am of your power, sir. Shall I beg you not to hurt me? Would that make you feel stronger? Better? Would that satisfy your fragile fae ego?"

He full on smiled as he looked me over. "Oh, I'm not going to hurt you, human," he said gently. "Not unless you ask me. Beg me. But I am going to play with you."

I swallowed hard, trying not to let my trepidation show on my face.

I wasn't a stranger to the pleasures of the flesh. If they could really be called pleasures. I might have been forced to live my life under constraints – constraints that would see this jaunt to Febren severely punished when, if, I ever made it back to Aclad – but I was a young woman with needs. Needs made all the more potent, so I was told, by the disgusting fae taint running through my veins.

I clung to that now, telling myself it wasn't my fault that I reacted to him the way I had. It was simply just another way the fae had fucked over humanity. Both their power of simple seduction over us and passing, to their descendants, what I was routinely told was an unhealthy appetite for carnal pleasures. A double whammy of lustfulness, as it were.