Chapters (52)
His snicker crawls down my spine with dark intent. “A queen on her knees. How…appropriate.”
“Just go away,” I snap, hating the petulance in my tone but helpless to mask it. He makes me want to grind my teeth, especially since I can’t confront his rudeness with both feet planted firmly under me.
“Leave the sweet girl alone, Sebastian.”
I startle at the presence of another boy. He halts in front of me, having come in from the gardens, same as the boy he called Sebastian. Through the open door, a breeze carries in the music of songbirds and the sweet aroma of plumeria, and once again, I wish to escape outside into the humid heat.
“I don’t take orders from you,” my tormentor fires back with that same irritated attitude I detected a few minutes ago.
“Someday, you will.” The boy’s coppery hair gives away his parentage, as does the authority in his tone. He seems older than his rude friend with the aqua gaze that makes my body warm and tingly in strange ways.
I avert my attention to the rug, assuming the older boy is the son of the man talking to my uncle in the other room.
Someone of great importance.
A leader.
Of course, I’ve heard whispers about the island up north where a group of powerful men reign in a circular tower twelve stories above the ground floor. I don’t know the reason for their visit, but their presence scares me.
One by one, the sitting room fills with the opposite sex, ages ranging from early teens to adulthood. They surround me, eyes alight with curiosity.
“So this is her?” a dark-haired teenager asks.
“I expected her to be younger,” someone else says.
Laughter flits through the room, the deep gruff too mature to belong to a boy. “And I expected her to be older.” I catch the emerald gaze of the boy…man…who laughed at my age. He must be a decade older than me.
And now I’m fidgeting, twirling two tiny blond braids around my finger as I try not to squirm under their stares.
“By the time the queen turns eighteen,” the boy with the copper hair says, “the age difference won’t matter.” He closes the distance between us and covers my hand, putting a stop to my nervous braid-twirling. Returning my hands to my lap, I nibble my bottom lip as he pets the top of my head.
“What happens when I turn eighteen?”
He takes me by the chin, fingers warm and gentle. “Upon your eighteenth birthday, my queen, you’ll belong to us.”
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