Max
Late morning light fell through a row of clerestory windows. Four mats covered the center of the room in a wide rectangle. Along the walls, weapons hung in careful arrangement: daggers, swords, staves, chains, and sharp things I had no names for.
Frost told me this was the heirs’ private training space, then left me to wait for Caspian.
I walked the length of the wall. With Coldiron pulsing against my wrist, eager to do my bidding, I had no need of any other weapon.
Exclusive, Coldiron chirped happily.
Drakken was supposed to take up my training, as he’d promised, but he was still at Greyhold, holding the eastern border while the garrisons made their way in.
There was no estimated return. His absence had taken up residence in my chest, a dull, inconvenient ache that I didn’t want and couldn’t evict.
For the life of me, I didn’t understand the pull. He’d called me a warlock and designed a Sorting specifically to weed me out. And here I was, craving his presence. I must be wired wrong.
And it wasn’t only Drakken. I wanted all four of them, as if they had imprinted on me. A fish with four hooks set in its mouth, being hauled in four directions at once.
That’s a disturbing image, the demon said.
I felt Caspian before I heard him, a warm sweep of kinetic energy down the corridor, and then he came through the door on roller blades that rumbled like low thunder. Wine-red hair. Bright green eyes.
The heaviness in my chest lifted. The shifter prince always had that effect.
The easy smile said everything would be all right, that the sun would be brighter tomorrow, and you believed it, right up until you saw him fight.
Brutal, efficient, a torpedo with a heartbeat.
The carefree warmth and the apex violence lived in the same body. Wolf and man sharing the same skin.
He grinned. “Max.”
“Your Highness.”
“Caspian,” he insisted.
“Nice skate shoes, Caspian.”
He glanced down at himself, the broad shoulders, the T-shirt stretched across his chest, the whole presentation of a man who knew exactly how good he looked, then back at me. “Seriously, the skates? Not the face? Not the body?”
“You’ve got enough women drooling over those already.”
“True.” He grinned, wearing his own effect a little too well. But I wasn’t about to swoon over him like everyone else. I might be insanely attracted to him, but I was no one’s conquest.
“I only want one woman to appreciate me,” he purred, and my stupid heart skipped a beat.
I let my gaze drop back to his skates. First, it gave my pulse a moment to settle.
Second, I actually needed them. I was tired of depending on Frost to cart me around.
The major had better things to do, and even if I learned to drive, a first-year cadet wasn’t getting handed a military jeep.
Skates meant speed and independence on the compound.
“Heard you called me a ten, Max. I appreciate the honesty.”
What?
The magic class swam back in vivid detail.
Shit.
I’d said it to taunt Delia and her little circle. Not only had Aelindor overheard, but Caspian had gotten wind of it too.
Kill me already.
“It was a big misunderstanding,” I murmured.
“There’s no misunderstanding.” He rolled to a stop at the mat’s edge. “I know I’m a ten. Told Drakken as much. Suggested he start at a three and work his way up.”
A laugh tore out of me before I could stop it—the picture of Drakken’s face at being handed a three was priceless.
“Caspian, any chance you could lend me a pair of skates?”
His green eyes sparked at the way his name rolled off my tongue.
“Sit,” he said.
I lowered myself to the mat’s edge. Caspian dropped down beside me with animal ease and lifted my foot into his hand.
Heat climbed the back of my neck. “What are you doing?”
“Checking your size, woman.”
“You could just look at my shoes.”
“Then I wouldn’t have a reason to hold your ankle.” His thumb traced the line of bone above my heel, shameless.
“Sorry to disappoint,” I drawled. “I’m not the delicate-ankle type. And while we’re at it—sorry about my weight, my smell, and the sustained inconvenience of hauling me across the Scorched Wastes.”
He went still and blinked.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “It was Nikolai, wasn’t it? Always trying to smear my name and undo my good deeds. The man’s a cynic to the bone.”
“Three or more people witness something, it leaks,” I said. “That’s just how information works and rumor spreads.”
He stared at me. “Huh. That’s actually profound.
” Then he winced. “Look, the dense bones thing—that was Nikolai’s fault.
He brings out the worst in me, and you know it.
” He flashed a smile that should’ve been illegal.
“But unlike that vampire, I’m a man who owns his mistakes.
So, forgive me? Just say you already have. ”
I doubted any woman alive could stay mad at him, whatever he said or did.
“I don’t hold it against you, Your Highness. You hauled me five miles through a wasteland. I owe you one.”
His grin widened. “You know I’d do anything for you, Max.” He glanced down at my foot. “Same size as me. I like a tall woman with feet to match.”
I kept my face carefully blank, just to mess with him. The shifter prince was genuinely fun to be around—that careless lightness. “You really know how to flatter a woman. Large feet. Truly romantic.”
“Okay, that came out wrong.” He laughed. “But with you, Max, I don’t have to mince words. There’s an honesty between us.”
“Is there?” I teased, a smile tugging at my lips.
He stared at that smile like he wouldn’t mind drowning in it, like he’d do anything to keep it there. Maybe I should smile more often.
“Tell me something, Max.” He’d settled in beside me, his arm slung around my shoulders, like we were old pals sharing a drink, and now he wanted all my secrets. “Were your parents tall too?”
I’d never had a conversation like this with anyone. And as he asked, I realized I couldn’t clearly remember what my parents had looked like. Their faces had blurred, the color of their eyes faded out. A wave of grief caught me off guard.
“I’m forgetting them,” I said. “I still remember their teachings. But everything else…it’s going.”
Caspian took my hand. “Time is a motherfucker. It erodes everything.” His voice had lost its lightness. “I can’t see my parents’ faces clearly anymore either. Except—” He stopped, unable to finish.
I knew the White Witch had executed his parents. The same woman had murdered Drakken’s and Nikolai’s as well.
That was what talking about family in the Rupture got you. Everyone had lost someone.
I wasn’t going to let him sink into the past, down a hole he might not climb out of. Not today.
“My da was average height. My ma was tiny,” I said, dragging him back to the present. “So it’s not the genes. I hit a growth spurt at nine and couldn’t stop it. Shot up like a weed.”
The past flew out of me like it had been waiting for the right air. Caspian was super easy to talk to. Nearly impossible to keep a guard up around. The prince could probably make the dead confide in him.
“By eleven I was taller than everyone in the mine.”
I could still feel those years in my muscle memory—the hunger of eating the same ration as everyone else while my body demanded twice as much.
I wasn’t about to tell him how I’d had to bind my chest as it filled out year by year.
Caspian’s eyes wandered more than the other heirs’; that heated gaze of his kept dropping to my mouth or my boobs.
Probably the animal in him. It wasn’t that the looking offended me—it was that it made me flush and my blood run hot, and when it became too much, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Especially since his nose was so keen. Shifters could smell arousal.
“Tell me about Missy.” His thumb brushed across my cheek, tender, and my breath hitched. I fought not to lean into it. “Why’d you call your sister ‘little viper’? She bites?”
My eyes went misty, stinging.
“She was my little spy. The best,” I said.
“Sweetest smile you’ve ever seen, hiding the most vicious intentions toward the guards and overseers.
They had her running errands. She had quick feet and a quicker mind.
Never forgot a direction, never garbled one.
She’d been gathering intel for me for a year.
Never once got caught.” I paused. “Missy isn’t my blood.
Her mother died in childbirth, and after her father’s accident in the shafts, she came to live with me. I’ve loved her more than blood.”
“We’ll get her back,” Caspian said. The easy warmth was gone, replaced by the weight of a man who didn’t break promises. “Every resource. Every power we’ve got.”
I nodded, blinking hard to fight back tears.
Caspian’s hand shot out, and I was flat on my back on the mat before my brain could register the movement.
“What—”
I shoved at his shoulder. He laughed, repositioning, one hand catching my wrist, his weight settling over me with the casual ease of a man who’d done this a thousand times.
One moment grief and gravity; the next, all mischief. He was doing it on purpose, the same thing I’d done for him a minute ago, dragging him up out of the dark.
“Training’s started,” he said, smiling down at me.
“Always expect the unexpected, Max. In a real fight, nobody announces it. No warning, no courtesy. You act or you lose.” He shifted his weight.
“Today’s lesson: once you’re on the ground, you’re still not done.
This works for you because of your size.
A smaller woman should do everything in her power to stay off the ground—once she’s pinned, she doesn’t get up.
But you’re built like me. Like the Spartans.
We’ve got the reach and the density. Use them. Get on top of me.”