A tear squeezed out of the corner of my eye. I hated disappointing people. “I really am sorry.” I tried to look away, to look down at my feet, but she would not let me.

“And another lesson to learn. A queen, even should she be required to apologize, must never lower her gaze. Never again, Cicely Waters, will you lower your gaze to me, although I expect your obedience until the day you take the throne.” Without waiting for my reply, she dropped her hand, turned, and, without another word, swept back to the Barrow.

Left alone with Grieve, Fearless, and Check, I wasn’t sure what to say. They were all waiting for my word, and I realized that this would always be the way. Although Grieve would be my King, the queen of the realm held the reins of power. From now on, even when I was speechless, I would have to speak. Even when I was uncertain, I would have to make decisions. Because an entire realm would look to me for leadership. And that meant showing some measure of wisdom. I’d always felt responsible for keeping my mother and me alive, and now—when I thought I was free of that—I was responsible for an entire kingdom.

“I apologize to you, Fearless, and to you, Check. I put you in needless danger.” I gazed into their faces, as Lainule had told me, and smiled softly.

“We act upon your will, my Lady. As you order, so we shall obey. Whatever you need, we are there.” Check bowed, but I caught his gaze and his eyes were smiling.

Fearless merely bowed and murmured, “As you will, Lady Cicely.”

Grieve waved them back to their posts and held out his arm. I took it, resting my hands on his elbow, and we made our way back to the Barrow. I’d learned a valuable lesson, and I didn’t plan on forgetting it. The fates of others rested on my shoulders. It was time I wrestled my impulsive self under control. Because if I didn’t, my actions would eventually kill someone—and not just the enemy.

In that moment, as we walked under the fading summer night, I felt like I’d aged a lifetime.

Grieve led me to our bedchamber. The bed was a giant four-poster affair, but the mattress wasn’t from Macy’s, that was for sure. It was handmade, and perhaps the most comfortable bed I’d ever slept on. The quilt was thick, heavy, and hand-stitched. In varying shades of blue, purple, silver, white and black, the pattern formed a winter silhouette of the forest and stars.

As the lanterns softly illuminated the room, I turned to Grieve. “Are you angry at me?”

“Angry, my love? Why?” In the blink of an eye, he was naked. The full Fae were able to adapt their clothes from the energy in the air. I couldn’t do it, but I admired the ability.

“Because of what I did. I put the guards in danger.” I slowly unzipped my jeans and slid out of them, along with my panties. As I pulled off my turtleneck and unfastened my bra, Grieve raked my body with his gaze, his dark eyes soaking in the sight of me.

“You did what you will forever and always do—act on your own mind. I have accepted that about you, Cicely. You’re going to shake up the throne, and take the Winter to a place it’s never been before.”

With a laugh, he slid under the covers and reached for me.

I joined him, kneeling on the bed by his side. “Hasn’t Myst already done that? Somehow, I think the Court of Ice and Snow might appreciate someone in charge who isn’t quite so adventuresome as I am.”

“The Court of Ice and Snow has been dead since Myst murdered Tabera. I think the people of Winter just look forward to having someone sane in control.” He slid up to a sitting position and reached out to take my hand in his. “Enough about politics. Come here. I need you.”

And with that, I straddled his lap. Gazing into his face, I stroked the side of his cheek and brushed his hair back out of his face. A warmth began to steal through me, a heat sparking in my core.

Leaning in, I pressed my lips gently against his, at first only the lightest of pressures, but then my tongue stole between his lips, playing over his teeth, as love turned to lust and the sparks between my thighs blazed to life.

I ached for him, hungered for his touch, his passion, his kiss. All I could think about was how much I needed him inside me, how much I wanted to be at the mercy of his long, silken strokes. Moaning softly, I squirmed on his lap, the blanket between us an annoying impediment.

Grieve slid his hands around my waist, then cupped my butt, his fingers firm against my ass. He reached up with his left hand to brush his fingers against my breast, tracing light strokes across my nipple.

Gasping, I dropped my head back, exposing my throat—the most vulnerable thing I could do around one of the Vampiric Fae. But Grieve kept control. He squeezed my breast, then pinched the nipple so hard I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. The pain awakened my passion. Letting go, he leaned forward and tongued my breast, curling around the nipple as he sucked softly.

His erection pressed against the cover, and as I shifted, he pushed the comforter back to expose himself, hard and rigid beneath me. I squirmed, trying to aim so that he would slide inside me, but he took hold of my wrists and rolled me over, forcing me back on the bed as he knelt between my legs.

I let out a sharp cry as he kneed my legs apart. Grieve and I were not gentle together. Our passion filled both need and fury.

“Don’t move,” he said, hoarsely. And I obeyed, arms over my head against the pillows.

He backed up enough to fasten his mouth over my clit, and his tongue began to dance, rasping along the ripples and folds of my cunt. I grew slick and wet.

I wanted to hold his head, but when Grieve said, “Obey,” I had learned to listen. “Please, may I move my arms?”

He looked up at me, his eyes sparkling in the dim light, and nodded.

I clutched his platinum hair as it fell between my fingers, the long strands like silk in my hands. Grieve moaned, his breath tickling me even as I came, sharp and quick, hard like ice. I was still pulsing from the rush as he slid up between my legs, but now it was my turn and I pushed him back, rising as he sprawled on his back. He was firm and erect, and the hungry look on his face made me want to tease him, to drive him to that point where there was no more question, where he had to take me down.

Leaning forward, my hair draping over my shoulders, I lowered myself to rest my mouth on the head of his cock. Slowly, one teasing inch after another, I slid down the length, letting its girth force my lips apart as I took him into my mouth.

Grieve let out a gasp as I stroked him with my tongue. He tasted like salted caramel and I closed my lips around him, increasing the suction as I took him in long strokes. He reached for my hair, sweeping it out of the way. I looked up at him, wanting him to see my lips fastened around his girth, and his eyes grew wide and luminous. Knowing he was watching sent me spiraling into another orgasm, and I let out a choked moan, lightly scraping my teeth along the ridges of his cock.

Grieve grunted, deep and throaty, then leaned forward, slid his hands beneath my arms, and dragged me up to face him. He cupped my chin in his hands, saying nothing, but then, slowly, the mood changed, became darker.

I knelt on the bed, resting back on my knees, as his gaze fastened on my face. His dark eyes were unblinking and he began to breathe harder. In the dim light, his razor teeth—needle sharp—gleamed. Never shifting his gaze from my face, he raised my wrist, staring at me through those heavily lidded eyes. I caught my breath as he lowered his lips to my skin, brushing his teeth along the inside of my wrist, just avoiding the artery. A thin red line welted up as he broke through the skin. He slowly licked the blood off, one long stroke after another as more of my life welled up through the wound.

The venom of his bite rushed through me like a white-hot flame of hunger. While I was now immune to the charm it cast, the feel of him feeding on me sent me reeling, and I came hard and quick yet again, letting out a sharp cry as Grieve smiled triumphantly.

And then he stopped and brought his lips to my own, and I tasted my own blood on his tongue as he quietly laid me back and finally slid inside me, filling me full with his cock, stretching me wide and making me ache with hunger. He began to move, slowly at first, then driving into me with long, steady strokes. The world seemed to hang in stasis. Time stopped as he fucked me.

I drifted, rising higher with each thrust, and then, suddenly, we were flying, together. All I could feel was his skin, his hunger, the pulse of his breath matching the beating of my heart as I gave him everything, losing myself as I fell into the dark stars of his eyes.

Grieve stiffened, moaning softly, and then, slowly, came to rest with his head on my breast. “I am your King,” he whispered. “And you…you are my Queen.”

I couldn’t say a word, I was so exhausted and so satiated, but he snuggled me under the covers as I slipped into his embrace, resting on his outstretched arm.

“Sleep, my love. Tomorrow, we have so much to do.”

And—too tired and relaxed for words—I kissed his lips, and fell into a deep, undreaming slumber.

I managed to wake up before my lady’s maid showed up. Having a stranger insist on helping me dress made me uncomfortable, but it was just another aspect to being a queen that I was going to have to compromise on. I slipped out from beneath the quilt, taking care not to wake Grieve as I did so. I needed a little time by myself, and as long as I stayed within the realm of Summer, I should be safe.

I missed being high up—missed opening the window and being on the second story. Hell, I missed even having windows to open. Shrugging into a cloak, and not much else, I quickly padded through the Barrow. Most of the people who were up were servants and tradesmen and whoever it was that kept the palace running smoothly. I had pulled my hood over my head so no one would pay much attention to me, and before long, I stood at the edge of the Barrow, staring out into the early hours of Summer.

Inhaling a long, slow, deep breath, I shook off the feeling of claustrophobia. I honestly didn’t like living underground and hoped to hell that the realm of Winter wouldn’t have the same makeup. I needed windows. I needed the ability to look out and see trees. I needed the open sky.

As I raced toward the tree line, I heard someone behind me and whirled around. There, a sheepish grin on his face, was Check.

Ducking my head, I gave him a rueful smile. “I promise, I wasn’t trying to leave the realm. I just need to…to…fly.”

He cocked his head, then somberly nodded. “I understand. At times my nature calls me to go running through the woods.”

“What are you? What do you shift into?” I hadn’t yet figured that out, but, being Cambyra, he would be a shifter, too.

He shrugged, breaking into a smile. “A fox, my lady. I am a fox-shifter. Which is why I camouflage so easily in the woods. It is my nature.” He glanced around. There was no one else near us. “You take your flight and I will stand guard by the tree. This is the tree that His Highness—your father—often comes to. I find it interesting that you should single it out.”

I gazed up at the oak. It was gnarled and ancient and had been struck by lightning several times but rose dizzyingly into the sky. I glanced back at Check, then slipped out of my robe, naked except for my pendant. As I swung up to the lowest branch of the oak, I tried to avoid bark burn. I crouched, getting my bearings as I gazed up at the network of branches and limbs above me.

Standing, I balanced with my hand against the trunk, and then, in what was becoming familiar and easier moves, stretched up on my toes, grasping the branch above me. I used my feet to walk myself up to where I could swing onto it and then repeated the move, working my way up the thick trunk until I stood some thirty feet from the ground. I inched out along the limb, wincing as stray splinters caught hold of my pubic hair, but nothing seriously injured me, and then—I was overlooking the ground, with space enough to shift as I went into free fall.

I leaned my head back, staring at the sky, knowing that outside these protected walls, the long winter waited for me. And then, sucking in a deep breath, I spread my arms and legs wide, captured my courage, and toppled forward, into free fall.

There’s something exhilarating about free fall, about watching the ground rush up to greet you. The rush of wind through the hair, the sudden plunge as you barrel toward the ground and then…and then…and then the shift…

My body began to morph, fingers to feathers, arms to wings, legs to taloned feet, shrinking in mass, transforming into a being so alien to myself and yet so familiar.

My Cambyra nature was that of a barred owl, and though I had yet to see myself in a mirror, at one point when we weren’t on the run from Myst, Rhiannon had taken a picture of me in owl form so I could see what I looked like. As I had held the photograph, staring at the image, it struck me so odd that the creature in the picture was me. And yet so utterly familiar, even after such a short time.

In the picture, I was poised on a branch, my wings outstretched. My talons curved over the limb. My wings and tail feathers were a study in shades of grayish brown, striped with white, and my head and body, a blending of the two colors, interspersed almost as if I were a tortie cat. My yellow beak was the only pop of color on my body.

Now, those wings were standing me in good stead. I’d had to train them when I first began to shift…or perhaps, adapt to using them would be a better way to phrase it.

With a satisfied sigh, I caught the updraft and—Ulean laughing in glee beside me—swept up, buoyed on the currents in her wake. I spiraled, turning, twisting, rising to the top of the tree where I could survey the pale dawn.

The air swept past me as I glided, my wings riding steadily on the breeze. A rumble in my stomach told me I was hungry, but I reined in my desire to hunt. Mice didn’t set well in my stomach, nor did rabbits, and as good as the warm blood and fur felt going down, it felt equally bad coming back up when I was back in my regular form.