I let out a laugh that bordered on a wheeze. “Ellie Payne? More fun than me? Please don’t torture me with such nonsense.”
I offered my hand, and she took it.
The Queen of Naenden was not a skilled dancer, but she seemed aware of it, because she allowed me to lead.
Which honestly was a bit of relief, after dancing with Valia Nightingale. She’d grown bored of me after the second dance. Or so she said.
She’d probably just gotten irritated with me staring at Ellie and the Naenden prince.
I couldn’t help whose feet I stepped on when I was distracted.
“I misjudged you,” said the queen, as innocently if that were an appropriate entry point into a new conversation.
It was my turn to quirk a brow. “Is that so?”
“Your reputation is rather colorful when it comes to women, yet you hold me as if your life depends on setting a chasm between us.”
Indeed. A baby cow would have had leg room in the gap I’d measured between my body and the Queen of Naenden’s.
“You kind of just say what you think, don’t you?” I said, my gaze immediately flicking to Ellie. I immediately regretted doing so, as I caught a glimpse of the Naenden prince dipping her, her long beautiful neck exposed as she tossed back her head in a delighted laugh.
My dinner soured in my stomach.
She shrugged. “After my accident, my father lost hope that I would ever wed, so he raised me like a ruffian.”
“You mean like a male,” I said.
She laughed. “Yes, like a male. I don’t think he had the energy to sand away the crude edges.”
“He probably secretly liked you how you were and was glad for an excuse not to.”
The Queen of Naenden beamed. “Yes, I imagine so. I’m fond of him myself.”
For the second time tonight, her harsh features seemed to melt away, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the beauty her husband beheld in her. There had been whispers that the human queen had enchanted her husband, bewitched him with that “stolen” magic of hers. I supposed everyone thought it unlikely, if not impossible, for a fae as powerful as the King of Naenden to love a human so disfigured.
Those people were wrong.
Well, mostly.
I had a sneaking suspicion the queen had enchanted her husband, just not in the way everyone else assumed.
She went quiet for a while, and I noted, “My reputation with women might precede me, but I would never dream of coming on to a married woman.”
“Hm,” she said. “And what about coming on to a single woman once you’re married?”
I almost choked.
She shrugged unapologetically. “You can blame my father for the question.”
Again, I glanced at Ellie, her smile like a beacon drawing me to her, yet like the sun in how it stung to watch her dancing with the Naenden prince. “I won’t be unfaithful to my wife. No matter what the papers may claim about me.”
A slight smile curved at the queen’s gnarled lips. “I’m glad to hear it.”
I cocked my head, examining the woman before me. She was younger, far younger, than I’d first realized, the scars aging her face. But if I focused on her features, the ones original to her, I realized she mustn’t have been more than two decades old.
She’d barely surpassed childhood, barely lived a life, yet she’d thrown it away to save her people.
Something stirred in me.
I wasn’t sure if it was guilt or admiration. Was there a word for the mingling of the two?
I was used to women wanting to dance with me, throwing themselves to get in line, married women even.
But this queen had not approached me for a dance, I now realized. Should have realized immediately.
“Why are you here, Your Majesty?”
“My brother-in-law needed to get out. He starts to miss people after a while,” she shot back.
I’d encountered Fin on enough occasions to know that wasn’t true. He could retreat to spend time with himself as easily as he could charm women.
“Why are you really here?”
“We were invited, were we not?” she asked, feigning outrage. “If Kiran only pretended to have gotten an invitation because he wanted to come dancing…”
I settled my most unamused smile over my face. The queen’s eye flickered.
“Naenden hardly ever makes an appearance at social gatherings of other nations.”
