Briar
I SAUNTERED INTO THE OFFICE IN A SHEER GOSSAMER GOWN, wearing nothing beneath the translucent fabric apart from a thigh belt and a scabbard.
Maez sat atop a stool in the corner, sharpening her dagger.
I knew blade sharpening was something she could easily do with magic, but I guessed the methodical action was more out of habit than necessity.
Shick, shick, shick . . . The sharpening stopped when she lifted her gaze and saw what I was wearing.
“I want you to bring me someone,” I demanded, placing my hands on my hips.
“Bring you someone?” she repeated, confused.
I pointedly pulled open the high slit of my dress and stuck my leg out, more prominently displaying the belt holding a single knife against my bare thigh. “Someone deserving of my knife. I need to practice.”
“You temptress.” Maez’s eyes filled with green sparks, her magic delighting in my request. “Whatever tricks do you have up your sleeve?”
“I don’t want your magic depleted, darling,” I crooned, speaking directly to Maez’s power. Lust clouded her gaze at my tone. “Bring me someone to replenish you with. Let me feed your power.”
Wicked gratification filled her face as a smug expression crossed mine. I wanted her to see how well I knew her, all of her, how well I embraced that darkness, too.
“So you want to play, Briar?”
I licked my canine tooth, knowing how much I was turning her on. “I do.”
Maez stood, stretching her neck side to side, before sheathing her sharpened dagger. She wandered to her desk and perched, gripping the edges tightly. “Then let’s play.”
With a crack of green lightning, a tall, stout man appeared in the space between us. He landed on his feet, hands wide, knees bent as if catching himself from falling.
I sniffed the air, assessing my prey. “A Wolf. Ice judging by the blond hair and the frost still clinging to his boots,” I announced to Maez.
The man looked between us, dumbfounded, clearly wondering if this was real or a nightmare.
My eyes dropped to the weapons on his belt.
“A soldier.” I scented the ale seeping off him.
“And a drunkard. Possibly a defector.” My playful gaze slid to Maez. “Was he a bad man?”
She cocked her head. “Does it matter?”
Before I could reply, recognition sparked in his eyes and then a moment later in mine.
“You,” he said, brows pinching. “You—you’re the Princess. You’re supposed to be dead. Nero said—”
“You’re one of the soldiers who took me from Taigos,” I recalled, remembering his thick blond beard and ruddy cheeks, the same stale breath as in the carriage I was tied up and brought to Nero’s castle in. “You delivered me to Highwick.”
“He fled to the mountains after Ingrid’s death,” Maez said mildly. “Now he serves no throne, only the bottom of every barrel of ale. Too cowardly to fight in the Taigosi civil war, hmm? Care to apologize to my mate?”
“Let me handle him.” My voice was colored the shade of death.
Maez’s smile stretched wider. Oh how she loved when I played her games. Oh how I would have her playing mine all night long once I finished off this man.
The Taigosi drunkard was either too stupid or too arrogant to be fearful. “You can’t fault a soldier for following orders,” he said, looking between us.
I reached for the blade on my thigh. “I think you’ll find I can do whatever I like.”
The man’s gaze dropped to my bare skin, trailing up to my breasts visible beneath my dress. I laughed with vicious glee as he took me in, and his leering gaze grew wary.
“You know,” I hedged. “I always thought of my body as a weapon.” Confusion crossed his face, but he continued to stare, drinking in my nakedness. “I thought I was meant to use it to persuade, to suggest, to seduce. But better yet, I can use it to distract.”
The blade had left my hand before his eyes ever lifted from my breasts, too hypnotized to dodge my strike.
My knife embedded in the meat of his thigh, and he bellowed out a curse.
Ripping the knife from his flesh, he threw it to the side.
He balled his hands into fists instead of wisely attempting to stop the loss of blood.
Clearly, he’d already lost his senses to the ale.
“You fucking bitch,” he seethed.
I shot Maez a look, showing the man I wasn’t afraid to take my eyes off him. “I love it when they call me that.”
“Indeed,” she replied with a laugh.
On swaying feet, he charged me. I ducked and weaved out of the reach of his lumbering arms. He pawed at my shoulder, but my oiled skin slipped from his grip, and I laughed.
Too cavalier.
He moved faster than I expected, and before I could decide my next attack, he backhanded me across the face. My cheek stung, my vision blurring at the periphery as I dropped and grabbed for my discarded knife.
With a sickening crack, the man cried out, the hand that had struck me now twisted at a nauseating angle. I glared at the flicker of magic. Maez was like a mother Wolf maiming a deer for her pups to practice the hunt. But I was no pup.
“Let me handle this myself!” I barked and Maez held up her hands, a smile still stretching from ear to ear.
“Sorry, love,” she said mildly. “He’s your kill.”
“I . . .” the man searched the air around him, panic rising. “I can’t shift.”
“Another little spell of mine,” Maez added with a shrug. “I much prefer to watch you fight in this form.”
Focusing more on my approach, I charged at the man again.
He squared off on me and took another swing that I darted under, raking my blade across his side.
It took a surprising amount of effort to pierce through his clothes.
I learned more with each movement, how hard each blow needed to be to inflict damage.
There could be no timidity. I sliced him again, cutting a little deeper.
“That’s my girl!” Maez cheered. “Use his size against him, the oaf. He is a bull, and you are a snake, Briar. Strike fast.”
With that encouragement, I repeated the action, attacking from the side of his injured hand, using more force to stab him between the ribs.
His cry of pain was belabored and watery, the sound telling me I’d pierced a lung. The mountain of a man held a hand to his side as blood wept between his fingers. A glazed confusion slowed his responses.
When I attempted the same tack a third time, though, he’d learned my approach. He grabbed for my throat, his hand too slick with his own blood to grab hold, but his leg stuck out and tripped me, sending me colliding cheek first into the wall.
“Gah!” A tooth cracked, piercing my tongue. My mouth filled with the coppery tang of blood.
“Bring him down, love,” Maez whooped, clapping her hands.
I groaned, spitting blood and tooth shard onto the floor as I lifted my knife again. I felt Maez’s magic swirling around us. A buzzing pall hung in the air. A power begging me to reach out and toy with it, use it. My resolve grew, my hands clenched, until I was filled with the same burning fire.
The man’s chest rattled with the exertion of a deep breath, but still he glared hatefully back.
Fear me, I silently demanded as I ran at him head-on.
To my great satisfaction, his eyes widened in fear as I skidded across the wet stones. He lifted his good arm to clock me, and I crouched, impaling my knife in his groin—deep.
He howled out in pain, blood spraying faster than I’d ever seen before, coating the room in a scarlet mist. Dropping, his kneecaps cracked against the stone.
I didn’t wait. I punched him, hearing the satisfying crunch as his nose broke.
He fell like a stone, eyes rolling back as his life finally drained away.
I toed his lifeless body with my bare foot. Towering over him in victory, I smiled. I was no longer a pawn in a world ruled by men. Between Maez and I, we were now moving all the pieces on the board.
Maez slowly clapped. “Impeccable, darling.”
I stooped to the body on the ground, freeing my knife with a wet splat, and wiping it across my dress. Painting myself in blood, I sheathed my blade. Maez’s eyes tracked each movement—a carefully choreographed dance just for her, reeling her in.
I held her gaze as I lifted a dripping finger and licked the blood clean.
With that action, Maez moved, storming across the room and pinning me against the wall.
“I am going to be the one to lick every inch of blood off you,” she growled, eyes hooded with lust.
I pursed my bloodied lips, taunting her. “I’ll allow it.”
“You are magnificent.” She took a step back to take me in, her hand skimming down my dress and cupping my breast before sliding down my curves. “As if the Goddess carved you out of moonlight to be perfectly mine.”
I lifted a hand to trail Maez’s sharp jawline and down the column of her neck to wrap my fingers around her throat. I leaned in and kissed her, relishing the sharp pain of my injured lip. She released a rumbling sound, trying to kiss me deeper, but I pulled back, teasing her.
“This is who the Goddess wanted for me,” I said, flicking my tongue across her bottom lip and pulling away again before she could kiss me.
“Just as you are now. Vicious. Bloodthirsty. Mine.” My hand constricted around her throat in warning as her lips parted with desire.
“Now fuck me until nothing exists except you and I.”
Her eyes flashed the most beautiful emerald as she grinned. “As my mate wishes.”