The Feral King's Assassin Bride

Episode4

AELIRA

The evening meal was set. I had visited the Kitchen, having told what meal will be going to the High King and offered to supervise it till it was ready to be served. I was his woman. Of course I wuld want to ensure his meal was prepared properly.

And while their backs were turned, I slipped the Veinrot Elixir into his soup.

It would make his body rot slowly from inside. By morning, he'd be unrecognizable. The satisfaction of it sat warm in my chest all the way to the dining room.

The dinning room, I had expected something larger, something that matched the weight of a king's table — polished and full of people performing importance. This was just a room with a low fire and eight seats, half of them empty.

He was already seated when I arrived.

He looked up when I entered, and then returned to the document he was reading. At the table. During the evening meal.

I took the seat that had been placed for me — to his right, closer than I would have chosen and reached for the water and told myself that the slight shift in his posture when I sat down was something I had imagined.

The maids came and served the meals like they had been waiting for me. I kept my face perfectly still when his food reached him. The soup. Right there in front of him.

It all going to end now. Even if i was caught later, cost me everything, I'd died happily that i killed him.

Then Emrys faced me. "You're not eating," he said.

I looked at my plate to confirm this. "I am." I said.

"You've been moving food around your plate for three minutes, Aeli—" He said, still reading. "You need to eat." He did not look up or even glanced at his food which was starting to irritate me in a specific way.

"Have you been watching me?"

"I notice things. So eat and don't make me repeat myself." His eyes forcefully tear away from the papers to me.

"You should eat too." I told him. "I will not eat until you do, My king." I forced a smile.

He finally glanced at the food and then back to me.

"I will eat when I want to. I do not have an appetite now." He returned to his papers.

I sighed with an anger i did not care if he noticed and slowly moved the papers from his table and handed it over t0 one of the guards behind us.

If my plan was to succeed tonight I could not afford to waste time gently suggesting he eat the meal I had poisoned for him.

And for the life of me, it didn't shock me as much as it should have, I was always bold and unbothered when it comes to him.

I grabbed a spoon. And sat carefully on his lap.

He leaned back and watched me with—amusement. His eye color flickering between him and his beast in that way it did when the boundary between them was thinner than usual. His warmth reached me even through the layers of my dress.

I almost decided against this but I needed it to be quick. My lips grazed his ear, "You need to eat so you can have the strength to fight me, My Emrys."

I could feel his body twitch for a heartbeat. I didn't wait for him to respond, i took a spoonful of soup and took it close to his mouth and nudge him to open.

If he knew i was up to something, he didn't want to show it and that made me more angry and curious.

"Did you poison this meal, Aelira?" He said, low and quiet just for me.

The way he said my name like it was something sweet.

Focus, Aelira.

My smile widened. He caught on. "II told you I would bring you down by my hands. And here, in my hands, is a poison to make you rot from the inside." I tilted my head slightly. "Are you angry? Good. Let's die together. But i kill you first."

I felt like a maniac saying it.

Across the table one of the council members, a high ranked male who had been very careful not to look at either of us, suddenly found something extremely interesting to examine in his cup.

Then Emrys pulled me further into him — his hand finding its way through the layers of my dress without hesitation, without any concern for the remaining council members. Who were, I noticed, already leaving. Quietly and quickly.

His hand moved from my knee to my thigh. His claws extended, precisely where he had drawn blood the night before.

He pressed deeper. I hissed.

"Aelira," he said. "You want to be the death of me."

"I would be glad to arrange that, My King."

"Then tell me why I should take this poison from you." His voice dropped lower. "Even if I have tried to welcome death myself and was never granted the opportunity, I need you to tell me why I should die by your hands specifically."

I shifted to look directly at him. Into those gold eyes.

"You already know why," I said. "You killed my sister. You erased the Draveth name from the records of Eirenmoor. You ruined me." The words came out quieter than I intended. "She was the only family I had left after my parents. The only person I had left. You took her and then erased the evidence that she ever existed."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he smiled; dark, small.

"Is that all?"

My eyes narrowed. "What else should there be?"

"I think," he said carefully, "that you do not know what you are talking about. But I will not explain myself to you. Not tonight." He looked at me and for just a moment something moved behind his eyes that was not cold at all. "You are bold enough to come to me. Bold enough to tell me your plans to my face. I think the lady called fate had a reason for sending you here whether you believe in her or not."

"I was not sent by fate," I said flatly. "I came for Morwyn."

"And yet here you are," he said. "On my lap. Feeding me soup."

I pushed the spoon to his lips before I could think of a response.

His claws pressed one final time, drawing more blood then withdrew. He raised his fingers between us and looked at them. My blood on his claws.

Then he licked them.

My breath went shallow. His eyes lifted to mine over his fingers and held there, steady, burning gold, his head tilting back against the chair that was built like a throne.

"You have been tormenting me since you were..." He paused. Like the end of that sentence was something he had decided not to give me.

Then he opened his mouth and took the soup from the spoon.

He took the bowl. Drank all of it before I could fully register that he was doing it.

Then he looked at me. Blank. The colour draining from his face in a way that was almost too fast, like something had reached in and pulled it out.

"You are now the death of me, Aelira," he said quietly. "I hope you find peace."

My chest did something I did not examine.

Mission accomplished. I had done it. For Morwyn. For Draveth.

Kael arrived sliding into a seat at the far end of the table, unbothered about his lateness. He looked at me. Then at Emrys. His fork stilled.

"Are you alright, King Emrys?"

Emrys's eyes were still on me. "I am fine." He pulled me gently from his lap and stood. Nearly staggered but caught himself. "I will be in my chambers."

He walked out. Slowly and unevenly.

It was working.

He had drunk my poison. Willingly. And it was working.

This was not how I had imagined it. But somehow that made it more devastating in the best way.

.

That night I dreamed of Morwyn. Her voice in the Draveth home, the particular way she laughed at things she found genuinely funny, the way she used to sit across from me and looked at me like i was something worth looking at.

I woke at the third hour before dawn with the dream already fading and something in my chest that I pressed down firmly.

I lay in the dark.

In the chamber adjacent to mine, through the heavy connecting door, I could hear nothing. No sound. No movement.

But I knew he was there.

His beast was there. I could feel it.

He should be rotting from the inside now.