"I would take it as a personal favor if you ignored that brutality and used your body as it's intended to be used around me," I ground out, uncaring that I was offering a debt to the fae crown prince. She'd beaten her son because she didn't like the look of his body, treated him with the same barbarism of mission schools beating Native American children for using their language or boarding schools beating the left hands of children bloody to force them to write with the right, instead.

His face shuttered, something raw and painful beneath that mask. "You want to grant me a favor so that I move like a monster."

"Given that I explicitly can't stand the sight of you as a 'normal fae,'" I said, doing the air quotes. "Yeah, that's exactly what I'm asking. Stop trying to move like everyone else around me and you can have a behavioral modification of equal magnitude from me."

"Attend court events with me," Dain said. "Come to the revels and sit with me in open court. Dine next to me at formal dinners and walk by my side when my presence is required at functions. Do these things and I will strive to unlearn the lessons of my childhood and the century since for you."

I held out my hand. It was a far cry from my plan of doing only what was necessary to make things work before I escaped, but I couldn't handle my rage at the violence of his mistreatment. He'd been a child. He might be a monster and a murderer now, but Dain had been innocent when his own mother had decided to treat him as monstrous instead of demanding the world accept him. She was the Queen. He could have grown up loved.

Dain put his hand in mine, watching my face.

I closed my fingers around his. "You have yourself a deal, Dain Sundamar."

10. Four Skulls

Chapter 10

Four Skulls

Dain got called away a couple more chapters into the novel, leaving to deal with some sort of military matter. I puttered around my room until dinnertime, which was delivered without aplomb. I didn't bother fretting about poison or rules about eating faery food. Dain had pretty thoroughly kidnapped me, and according to Susan my plea for help meant that he had every right to. I needed to survive for the next whatever amount of days, up to at least another three hundred and sixty-four days, and I sure as hell wasn't going to do it on an empty stomach.