Frost Fae (Dark Fae Kings #2) - Meg Xuemei X Page 0,23

troll also leaked that they were thinning the human herd with Pestilence, a magical plague.”

Rydstrom let out a ragged breath, shadows coiling in his hard eyes. “One of the bombs in my club today carried the plague. All the human girls in Claws, Fangs, and Fiends were infected. They are under quarantine now. My mages are trying to come up with a cure.”

My heart pounded painfully and went out for the club girls. Then cold dread crept further, clogging my chest like chunks of ice. If Pestilence spread, humans wouldn’t know what hit them until it was too late. Millions would die.

This was going to happen. This was happening. My breath shortened at the looming horror and my blood turned glacier-cold. On top of my apprehension, guilt slammed into me. I’d been the catalyst. If I hadn’t opened the Veil, none of this would have happened.

I thought I had only the bounty to worry about, but now I faced a bigger, more ominous conspiracy that could destroy my world, with my siblings along with it.

“We must stop them!” I cried.

“We will,” Rydstrom promised, and the other kings nodded.

“What can I do to help the girls from the club?” I asked in a shivering and determined voice. “I want to visit them tomorrow.”

“Absolutely not,” the kings uttered at the same time.

Just as I thought they were getting better, their annoyingly overprotective and overbearing streaks rushed back.

I glared at them. “Must I kick you in the head again to remind you that I’m my own woman?”

“We can’t risk it before we have a cure for the plague,” Rowan said, his voice icy and steely.

“Rowan is right this time,” Rydstrom said in his rich, deep voice. “If you can’t follow the rules, I’ll have to ban you from coming to the club.”

“We have a magical contract,” I said, my jaw clenched. “You can’t ban or fire me.”

Rydstrom arched an eyebrow. “The one you signed with a fake signature and wrong birth date?”

He knew about that?

“I won’t just sit on my hands,” I said, feeling a bit guilty. I’d lied to Rydstrom a lot. “I have young siblings. I won’t let harm come to them.”

“We’ll protect them the same as we protect you,” Baron said, his warm hand on my shoulder. “Let us worry about the plague. You focus on training harder and preparing for your Turning.”

My throat parched. The kings wanted me to harvest all my potential powers during the ritual of the Turning. My parents used to have high expectations of me, and now the kings did too.

No pressure.

“If Brigantia is behind this chain of events,” Rydstrom said, a crimson speck flashing by his sapphire eyes, “she’s holding almost all the cards at the moment. One of us will need to get closer to her as the inside man.”

“Why don’t you take the role?” Baron sneered. “No one’s stopping you. She’s tried to fuck you for over a century.”

Possessive fury ignited in me, and I was about to lash out at Baron for saying that, or better yet, I would rip out the bitch queen’s throat for trying to sink her claws into my man.

I blinked at my savage aggression. Rydstrom wasn’t my man. Not exactly. None of the kings were mine, and I had told them just that. So why did I have such primal, feral possessiveness toward all of them whenever the situation arose?

I bit my inner cheek to keep myself on my seat.

“She holds one of mine as hostage,” Rydstrom said, his face and voice suddenly devoid of any emotion.

My heart lurched. Adele, the astral image of the high Fae lady, had once mentioned that the Dawn Queen kept Rydstrom’s beloved captive. Did Rydstrom have a woman already but couldn’t unite with her? I was afraid of asking, for I knew I wouldn’t like the answer.

How did that leave us then, if he had a lover, even though he couldn’t be with her at the moment?

I swallowed the bile in my throat and took the coward’s way out by staying uncharacteristically quiet while I studied the kings, a riot of emotions churning in my stomach like a turbulent sea. With human boys, everything was easy and simple. With these smoldering-hot and dangerous Fae kings, I might just lose my head one day.

“She can blackmail me however she wants. But not in a million years will I fuck her,” Rydstrom said, his pronouncement brushing over my ears. I felt stars and light returning to my eyes until I heard: “So