KING OF ME (THE KING TRILOGY Book 3) Page 9

  “Don’t you mean that everyone who isn’t you is lowly?”

  “I am the king.”

  “Well, this lowly Seer is your fiancée.”

  “Hagne is my betrothed.” He frowned at me. “You are mad. I suspected as much, but now you have confirmed it.”

  I’d been impressed so far by how well Hagne’s little tattoo translated everything, but I wondered how it would do with what I had to say next.

  “I’m not crazy. I am the only one capable of preventing an utterly hellish situation—”

  “Prove it. Prove that you are not mad and that I should believe any words coming from your mouth.”

  Crap. I had no cell phone, laptop, or Internet to show him the place I came from, and anything I said would sound like insane tales of an insane person. I had only one thing, and it was a huge risk.

  I showed him my “K” tattoo. “You put this on me. It allows you to feel me, my presence, and”—Hell, I am so going to regret this—“control me.”

  He laughed. “Control you?”

  I nodded. “You place your palm over it, and I’ll do anything you say.”

  He burst out laughing, and it was a deep, hearty laugh. “Well, woman—”

  “Mia,” I corrected.

  “Mia,” he said condescendingly, “if you speak the truth, I can see why such a device might be necessary. You are like a wild animal, frothing at the mouth, seeking to sink its teeth into anything that moves.”

  I growled.

  “You see?” he said smugly.

  “Very funny.”

  “Show me,” he commanded.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “I’d have to take off the bracelet.”

  “And this signifies…?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know, actually.”

  “You obviously have some sort of assumption that has sparked your concern.”

  I had to show strength. I had to speak with conviction. Otherwise, he’d blow me off, and this would all be for nothing. “This is a bracelet from your collection of powerful relics. It supposedly prevents your mark from working, and…I believe it’s what brought me here.”

  He leaned in and stared deeply into my eyes. “Exactly why are you here?”

  “Don’t change subjects. You wanted to know why I can’t demonstrate how your tattoo works. That’s the reason.”

  He stepped back and folded his arms over his sculpted bare chest. “Remove the bracelet, or I will hold you down and remove it myself.”

  I had to think this through. If I took the thing off, there were two outcomes I feared: getting snapped back to the horrific situation I’d come from, or that removing the cuff would allow King, the future one, to come and find me.

  Mia, if he had the ability to travel back in time, don’t you think he would have done it by now? He would’ve undone his curse and changed his fate on his own.

  All right. So perhaps I only had one thing to fear: going back. But not trying my damnedest wasn’t an option. This could be my only shot to make everything right again.

  “I’ll remove the bracelet on one condition,” I said.

  His mouth formed a snide grin. “You mean to negotiate with me?”

  “Give me your word you won’t command me to do anything sexual.” King’s one saving grace: he was a man of his word. Except when something goes horribly wrong with the man’s curse and he turns into an evil bastard who should be destroyed.

  But that was not this man. He was the kernel of goodness inside the demon. That said, he was still King.

  He laughed. “What you must think of me.”

  “I know you better than anyone, King.” I stared him down. “You’re fierce, calculating, and determined.”

  His smile melted away. “You forgot impatient.”

  “I was getting to that. Do you agree or not?”

  He stared, not amused by my flippantness, but then gave me a nod.

  “All right. Here goes.” I slipped the bracelet off and held it in my palm, bracing for the worst. The moment I realized that nothing happened, I released a breath. “I’m still here.”

  “Obviously,” King said.

  I slid the cuff onto my right wrist for safekeeping and then held out my left arm. “Okay.”

  He placed his hand over my tattoo. “How will I know you are not simply pretending?”

  “Ask me to do something you know I can’t fake. How about putting me to sleep? You can give me a poke with that pin.” My eyes flashed to a small circular broach stuck to the front of his wrap-skirt thing.

  His lips formed a wolfish smile. “You wish me to poke you? I am more than willing to appease the wish; however, I assure you it is not a pin.”

  I frowned. “You gave me your word.”

  “So I did.” His eyes flickered for a moment over my shoulder toward the ocean. “Jump.”

  “What?”

  “I command you to jump.”

  Holy shit. I’d seen over that balcony, and it was a straight drop down to the rocky cliffs below.

  My feet began to move toward the stone bannister, my eyes tearing. “Don’t make me do this.”

  But King simply stood inches away, a cold, heartless expression on his face as he watched me climb onto the bannister, my back to the ocean.

  “My king! What is happening?” I heard a woman scream.

  I turned my head toward the sound of the voice, my heart and lungs pumping frantically, wanting to override the desire to jump to my death. In that moment, everything seemed to move in slow motion. King’s head swiveled away from me to see who’d called out. As I too looked, I felt my body falling back over the ledge. King’s head whipped towards the sound of my scream, his beautiful face filling with horror, realizing I’d gone over. He lunged his powerful body and caught my ankle. My body slammed hard into the wall below, knocking the wind right out of me.

  “By the gods of insanity, woman!” he roared.

  I was in shock, dangling precariously by one foot, my dress completely covering the upper half of my body while the rest of me, everything normally below the belt, blew in the wind. Tears of pain and horror streamed from my face.

  I heard the voices of several other men and a flurry of gods-related exclamations.

  “Help me get her back up,” King commanded.

  Another set of hands gripped my ankle and heaved my body back over the bannister to the terrace.

  With my dress now falling into place around my nether regions, I leaned forward to catch my breath.

  “What is happening, my king?” I heard Hagne’s voice ask.

  “She slipped,” King said. “She is fine now. Go back and enjoy your meal.”

  The crowd of guests and guards exchanged hesitant glances and returned to the dining hall.

  “Jesus Christ,” I panted and then stood. Immediately my feet began moving again to climb the railing. “Dammit! Tell me to stop!”

  With panic-stricken eyes, King quickly grabbed hold of my arm and flung me over his broad shoulder. “Cursed crazy woman.”

  As we strode off back toward his chamber, he grumbled antiquated profanities, again targeted at the gods. I had to admit, hearing him make references to deities of fire, war, death, and destruction was almost comical. Almost.

  When we reached his quarters overlooking the ocean, the room glowed softly with dozens of oil lamps. Murals coated the walls with scenes depicting warriors gripping spears and animals being sacrificed.

  He flung me down on his bed—also a raised cement platform with a fluffy mat and pillows. I sat up and held back an epic tongue lashing. I wanted to throttle him. I could’ve died.

  He hovered over me, fuming.

  “What?” I growled.

  He suddenly crouched down in front of me and grabbed my “K” tattoo. “Do not ever think to do that again,” he commanded.

  I snapped my arm back. “Thank you. So now you believe me?” I stood, placing us belly to belly. “After you nearly kille
d me!”

  “I did not believe you would jump.”

  “Well.” I poked his chest. “Now ya know!”

  He took a sharp angry breath that caused his nostrils to flare. “Now you will tell me why you are here.”

  I was about to snarl and scream, but he surprised me by grabbing my wrist and repeating his question.

  I glowered at him for a moment before my mouth began to move. “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  “A person is not granted such a power,” he pointed to my cuff, “without having a divine purpose.”

  Oh God. This is so weird.

  “Tell me what you want from me.” The muscles in his square, bristly jaw pulsed with tension.

  “I don’t want anything.” I snapped my arm away. “I-I…” I sat back down. “Jesus.” I sighed. This was going to break the man’s heart.

  “What is Jesus?” he asked.

  I glanced at him. “He’s a who, not a what, and never mind; it’s a long story.”

  “I command you to cease these riddles and tell me what you are hiding. You say that you know me, that you are my woman—my betrothed many, many days into the future. Am I old? Am I dying?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m”—going to sound crazy—“from three thousand or so years ahead.” I didn’t know what calendar they followed in these times, so I did some quick math. “About a million days.”

  “I don’t know this million.”

  I scratched my head. “Well, say you have one revolution of the sun, winter, spring, summer, and fall.”

  He stared.

  “Okay,” I said. “Cold weather followed by planting, growing, harvest?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. That’s one cycle. One year. If you had ten of those,” I held up my fingers to show ten, “that would be a decade. If you had ten decades,” I flashed my fingers ten times, “a century. If you had ten of those, that would be a millennium. So try three millennium.”

  He frowned. I think he got the picture. “This is impossible. People do not live that long.”

  I nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Get to the point, woman.”

  Mia. Why is it so hard for him to call me “Mia”?

  I took a deep breath. “Sit.” I patted the bed next to me. Hesitantly, he did as I asked.

  His big body next to mine made me feel like a fly sitting next to a Venus flytrap. I could be gobbled up at any moment.

  “Hagne doesn’t love you,” I said.

  His straight black brows pulled together. “Of course she does not.”

  “Then why are you marrying her?”

  “Her lineage is powerful and her family is feared and well respected by our commoners. Our union will ensure peace for many generations to come.”

  Okay. That was good. He didn’t expect love from her. On the other hand, I clearly remembered Hagne’s journal. King had it translated and made me read it so I’d understand how he’d become cursed and why he did the things he did. I admit, his story had made me see him in a different light. I understood his pain. But he’d written his thoughts in that journal (I supposed he wanted the last word), and I sensed he’d cared for her at one point. Therefore, I could leave no doubt in his mind about Hagne. She was a psycho, backstabbing bitch. He had to believe it.

  “But she does love your brother, Callias,” I said.

  “This is impossible.”

  “No, it’s not. She loves him, and sometime after your wedding, she turns him against you. He challenges you publically to a fight and you kill him.”

  King stood. “You lie.”

  I held up my wrist. “Ask me if I’m lying.”

  He glanced at my tattoo. He got the point, and a wounded look appeared in his hypnotic blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Really, really sorry. But maybe that’s why I’m here; to change your fate.”

  “What happens to me?”

  “Hagne happens to you,” I replied.

  “I become aware of her betrayal?”

  I nodded. “She’s pregnant with Callias’s baby—I think—so you spare her at first, but not her family. After she loses the baby, you kill her, too, but not before she curses you to walk the earth for eternity.”

  He stared coldly ahead at the wall, his broad, bare shoulders perfectly square like a proud soldier taking a beating.

  “And this is when you meet me, a cursed man?” he asked.

  “Yes. But…”

  “But what?” he snapped.

  “You’re not a man.”

  “What am I?”

  “You’re a ghost, a spirit.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Neither do I. But you have the ability to make yourself real. You talk and walk and eat and drink, but you’re dead.”

  He nodded. “And I was not the one to send you here?”

  I shook my head. “No. I was running from you. You were going to”—I couldn’t say the real words aloud. I just couldn’t—“hurt me.”

  He looked like he’d just been punched in the gut. “And my people? What becomes of them?”

  “No one knows for sure,” I said quietly. “They disappear.”

  He stared at the floor for a moment, scratching his thick black whiskers.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked.

  “I must think on what you have said—it does not seem believable nor possible.” He turned toward the door.

  “So you don’t believe me?”

  “I do not know.” He was almost out the door and then stopped. “You said I behave cruelly towards you. Do you despise me, then?”

  I wasn’t expecting him to ask that question, but I answered honestly. “Yes. It’s why I attacked you a few days ago.”

  “Then why tell me any of this?”

  “Hagne is the one who creates the monster. And her decision destroys a lot of people. Including someone very important to me.”

  “I see.” He turned away.

  “But I think—I know—that you’re still in there somewhere, inside that monster, trying to get out.” Otherwise, why would he have saved my mother? Or attempted to save Justin at one point? There had to be someone good living inside.

  Without another word, King disappeared into the night. I hoped he might return in a few hours and declare that he believed me and had a solution. Because I sure as hell didn’t see one. Not one without any pain and suffering, anyway. If one sat down and moved the pieces around the chessboard, the outcome didn’t look so drastically different from the original version of this story. King could preemptively incarcerate Hagne, or even kill her, but this might incite a civil war if her family was in fact powerful and respected among the working class. Another option might be to let her run away with Callias, but that might undermine his position if the people saw him as weak.

  I simply didn’t see any good solutions aside from warning Callias, which I intended to do at the first chance.

  I lay back and closed my eyes, hoping that when I woke, I might see a clean way out of this.

  CHAPTER NINE

  At sunrise, I was woken by a very insistent Mela, who shook me by the shoulders. “You are late, mistress. You must rise and get to the temple immediately.”

  I groaned and rubbed my face. “What does King want?” I asked, assuming that he’d summoned me.

  “Today is the ceremony of the harvest.”

  I cracked one eye open. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is.”

  Mela had her dark eyes outlined with thick black charcoal, making them appear exaggeratedly large. “The non-slave women must make an offering of grain, fruit, and wine to the gods so they will bless our crops in the next planting season.”

  “Oh. Sounds lovely,” I mumbled and rolled over. My body felt like it had been through a blender. Twice.

  “You are a Seer and must be there. It will anger the gods if you are not.”

  Ai-yai-yai. I was pretty sure that boat had already sailed. Case in poi
nt, my crazy, fucked-up life.

  “The gods hate me,” I grumbled. “I should stay here out of sight.”

  “Please, mistress, you cannot shame the king like this. You are his guest and a Seer. If you do not attend, it will cause a horrible uproar.”

  “If it was so important, why didn’t he mention it last night?” I muttered.

  “I’m sure our king was quite…occupied with other thoughts.”

  Oh hell. I sighed. Yes, I understood that Mela meant “occupied” in the sexual sense. I had, after all, woken up in the king’s bed. Nevertheless, her comment wasn’t so far off. King’s mind had been engaged with some very, very troubling news.

  “Please, mistress,” she begged.

  Oh…dammit. The poor man already had enough on his plate, and I didn’t need to be the cause of any more heartburn.

  I sat up. “Fine. I’ll go, but someone will have to tell me what to do.”

  Relief twinkled in her big brown eyes. “Of course. I will tell you everything you need to know, but first you must dress.”

  She held up an odd-looking orange dress. The only way to describe it was chestless—like the neckline was intended to be a belly line.

  “I think someone forgot to sew in the front,” I said.

  She looked at it. “No. This is what the women must wear to the ceremony.”

  “But…”

  “The bosom is the symbol of fertility and life. It is blasphemous to offer a gift to the gods with your chest covered.”

  My head sagged in disbelief. This absolutely had to be some male-contrived bull-crap designed specifically for getting a free peek at all the women’s boobs.

  “I’ll come to the ceremony,” I said, “but I’m not going topless.”

  Fear washed over her face. “Please, mistress. You must. Or I will be punished. It is my responsibility to have you appropriately dressed.”

  She couldn’t be serious. “Don’t you mean undressed?”

  The young woman looked like she was about to faint from a nervous attack.

  I tilted my head. “All this fuss because I refuse to show my breasts to a bunch of horny men?”

  “I do not know this word ‘horny,’ but your body is a gift from the gods. There is no shame in showing it to anyone. And this is the way we have performed the ceremony for generations.” She pointed to a large painted vase standing in the corner, depicting several topless women holding wine jugs.