Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 758(@200wpm)___ 607(@250wpm)___ 505(@300wpm)
“I sleep with him?” He sounds shocked.
I can’t help the salacious grin that covers my face. “Sometimes there’s not a lot of sleeping going on.”
He stands suddenly, pacing the length of the blanket. “I am…unnatural?”
It takes everything I have to not roll my eyes. “That’s your brother talking. You are a Green Man. You are sex on two legs. You are love and commitment and joy, and why would that have boundaries beyond the ones of your own heart? I can blame my Devinshea for many things, but knowing and honoring his heart is not one of them.”
“Because he defied the crown for you? Because he gave into unnatural desires?” The question comes with a sneer that absolutely makes this man less attractive.
I lower my eyes because I’ve seen what I needed to see. He wanted Deinny but feared reprisal from his family. He wanted them all together but when he couldn’t have her, he allowed his guilt and grief to lead him to do monstrous things. “Forget I said anything, Your Majesty. Why are we speaking of this when we could speak of more pleasant things?”
He is quiet for a moment. “You are so like her. I suppose we’re speaking of it because I didn’t get to tell her. I didn’t get to say how much I wished I had scooped her up and left the plane. We could have gone anywhere. Deinny had a plan at one point. We were friends back then.”
I would bet they had danced around being more. “He had a plan?”
“He thought the three of us should take Lee and leave. He wanted to go to the Earth plane to find my human father. The one my mother tossed aside when she was done with him. Apparently he had some friends from the Earth plane, and they looked him up. He was wealthy, and Deinny believed he would have welcomed me. He thought we could be happy there. As friends, of course.”
Bullshit. If they hadn’t had some kind of physical interaction, I would be surprised. In this timeline’s Daniel, the connection between them made him want to risk everything for a chance at real happiness. However, this Devinshea was too mired in his own miserable devotion to royalty that he couldn’t. Or could he? “Is that why? Did your brother find out you were going to leave and he killed Zandra?”
“He couldn’t stand the shame I would bring on our name.”
“This is a very different sithein. Miria’s court in my world lived for gossip, but there wasn’t shame involved in having relationships. Your brother has slept with every pretty girl in the sithein, and he doesn’t care what their class is,” I point out.
“Declan might sleep with them, but he would never have thought to marry one. He might have fathered a bastard, but he wouldn’t have dared to publicly claim him. He would have given the mother money and went on his way. I wanted to claim Lee. For her sake. I suppose I didn’t want her child to be ashamed of me, but I didn’t get the chance.” He sits back down, and there’s an air of shame around him.
I can use that. I don’t mention that he had years to claim Lee but he hadn’t. I can point out how different he and his counterpart’s lives are. “Well, my Declan did have a child with a woman he considered unsuitable, and they are married to this day.”
Not happily, from what I can tell, but Declan does love his son, Sean.
“He married a commoner?” The question isn’t whispered with disdain. The king sounds shocked but almost envious. “And Mother didn’t disown him?”
I am going to be way nicer to Padric the next time I see him because he seems to have done Miria a world of good. It’s interesting to know how deeply the love and affection of the right person can change who we are and the choices we make. Terrifying but interesting. “No, she encouraged the marriage, though it wasn’t to a commoner. He married the Unseelie princess.”
“He married Chima? They hated each other here.” The king shakes his head. “I heard she died in childbirth. It was six months after our last meeting with the Unseelie. My brother and I both went as envoys. It was one of the worst times of my life.”
“Because you were caught by a group of Unseelie who raped you while your brother ran away?”
Dev’s eyes close. “I rather hoped that hadn’t happened to him. I’m surprised he would so readily accept a male in his bed.”
“Danny isn’t some random male. He’s Dev’s best friend, his partner. Yes, they sleep together and there’s a lot of passion between them, but there’s also the shared experience of loving me. It’s not always easy. I don’t know what I was like here, but I’m trouble where I come from. A whole lot of it.”