Chapter 29 #2
“You are exceptionally petite.” His perpetual amusement with me made it feel like I was a joke where only he knew the punchline. There was something about the way he smirked that was fond, knowing, and murder-worthy all at once.
“Ander calls me by my name,” I said, with casual savagery.
His jaw flexed with irritation. “All right, Cara. Can I teach you to stay alive now, or did you want to scold me some more?”
Gods, did I love it when I broke his untouchable facade in even the slightest way. “Teach me.”
Fieran touched his shoulder, and his sword appeared at his back in a glow of gold. The long scabbard he wore at his hip blinked back into existence too, and there were two more scabbards strapped to his thighs. Throwing knives, hidden until now, lined the bracers on his forearms.
He looked, I had to admit, fearsome and maybe a touch awe-inspiring.
“Do you carry all that because you don’t trust anyone, or because you just like to jingle when you walk?”
His mouth curved, faint and dangerous. “Try to take one off me. Start with the easy ones.”
There was no such thing as easy when he was watching me. His gold-rimmed eyes tracked every breath, every hesitation.
I lunged for the knife at his hip, but he caught my wrist. His fingers slid over my palm and twined our fingers together, pulling my hand up between us. A fragment of memory flared to life—had Fieran joined our hands together once before like this?—but then dissipated like smoke.
“Shout your moves ahead like that if you want to die,” he told me pleasantly. “The way you looked at that blade, you might as well have told me you were going for it.”
He didn’t release my hand. Instead, he stepped closer, his fingers trailing down my wrist until he guided my hand back to the dagger. His body brushed mine. He didn’t seem to notice, but every one of my nerves lit up like fireflies.
“Again,” he murmured.
I inhaled through my teeth and tried, this time shifting my weight before reaching. I managed to get the dagger halfway out of its sheath before he twisted, catching me against his chest, the weapon trapped between us.
“Better.” His breath stirred my hair. “But you hesitated.”
“I was distracted,” I shot back, glaring up at him.
His grin was slow and unbearably smug. “By what?”
“Your arrogance. Gods, if your ego were a weapon, you’d rule us all.”
He laughed, the sound unguarded, and traitorous warmth bloomed across my cheeks. He plucked the dagger from my hand as he released me and set it down. “One down.”
“How many do you have?”
“Enough to make this fun.”
I lunged. He sidestepped. The motion was effortless, like smoke rising. My hand closed on his forearm instead, and for a heartbeat, I was too aware of the heat of his skin and the corded muscle beneath it.
He pivoted, catching my arm and pinning it behind my back. “Faster, Cara.”
There was something about the way he said my name, soft and intimate, that made me wish for the return of irritating nicknames.
When he released me, I spun on him, breathless and annoyed and a little dizzy. We were going to be here all day, and being so close to him was maddening. “You have an unreasonable number of weapons.”
“Then take them.”
So I did. I reached for the strap at his thigh, unclipping the sheath there. My fingers brushed the inside of his leg, and I pretended I didn’t notice how his breath hitched. He moved to block me, our bodies whirling around each other, but I’d always been going for the throwing knife in his bracer.
“Mine,” I said, snatching it and tossing it aside.
His smile sharpened. “Starting to enjoy this?”
“No. Being near you at all is a necessary evil.”
“Mm. I see.” His steady golden gaze suggested he saw more than I wished. “Well, let me show you another trick.”
He swept my legs effortlessly from beneath me, and I was falling before I had time to respond. But he caught me, his solid arms closing around me, keeping me from falling. He took us both to the ground, careful, controlled, maybe even gentle.
His hand raced down my leg and caught the knife from my boot. He tossed it to one side, and it clattered on the stone.
I rolled up to my feet, putting distance between us.
“Good,” he told me. “You were quick. You’re still disarmed, but at least you’re on your feet.”
“You knew I was carrying a knife?”
“It’s my job to know. I’m glad you were, though you need something better than that little kitchen knife.
” He reached down and plucked a knife from his boot that I’d never seen; when he pulled it from its leather scabbard, it was narrow and deadly.
He pushed it back into the dark scabbard and tossed it to me.
I caught the sheathed knife clumsily. “You trust me to be armed around you?”
“I’d trust you with my life,” he said lightly, and I whistled at the lie.
“Well, that would be a mistake,” I promised him.
He stood waiting, letting his arms fall to his sides. “Show me that startling speed at which you learn again.”
I shouldn’t care about impressing him, but gods, that challenge sparked something inside me.
I lunged for one of his knives, my eyes tracking it before I moved. He reached for my wrist, drawing me against his hard chest.
Just as I’d expected. I looked up into his face, wide-eyed, my heart pounding. His lips and mine were as close together as they ever were, given how much taller he stood.
My gaze lingered on his lips, at the soft, sensual shape of them above that hard jaw. Fieran might have a tender side, and his mouth betrayed him.
So did the way his golden eyes softened as he closed the distance between us.
He’d bowed his head the way I’d hoped; I caught him with an arm looping his throat, clumsy and too hasty, but he was slow to push me away. Our lips brushed in a faint kiss just as my fingers wrapped the hilt of the dagger at his thigh; I pulled it out in one smooth move.
His arm wrapped my waist, taking us both down again, and I jolted as I found myself straddling his lap, my knees on the hard floor. But I’d acted with just as much impulse, and I gripped the knife to his throat. “Last one.”
Fieran’s golden eyes sparkled. “Marry me.”
I groaned and tossed the knife away, rolling away from him onto the floor to look up at the stars.
While I studied the stars, I could feel him studying me.
“Are those mortal stars too?” I pointed out the bright golden stars dotted amid the misty sparkle of the majority of the stars.
He rolled over onto his back. He didn’t seem to need me to point to understand what I was saying. “Yes.”
“What makes some of them brighter?”
“They have their magic.”
My gaze went to Lidi’s star and mine. Her star was dull, almost touching Tay’s tattered star. The sight of them both sent a stab of loss through me. All I wanted was to see them as two bright, perfect stars.
Meanwhile, my star seemed bright green today.
Was my star always changing?
“Fieran, do you know what I am?” I knew he wouldn’t answer honestly, but I hoped he’d give me something to unravel. “Why I’m a mortal marked for the dragons?”
“All I know is that you’re dangerous.” His smile was wide and winning and not one I’d ever return. He was lying. “And I hope the Fae Queen doesn’t notice that until it’s too late.”
He rolled to his feet with that damned shifter grace. It was just like Fieran to drop a line like that and abandon me to fret over it.
I scrambled to my feet. “There are rumors. That I’m dragon-marked—”
As always, he seemed unsurprised, as if he were always a few steps ahead. “Very well. I assumed that would be inescapable since you refuse to play servant. The queen will have so very many rumors to untangle.”
Those other rumors stung. “People think I’m your toy…or your lover…”
“Does it matter as long as their foolishness serves our purpose?” He seemed to find this conversation dull, rather than enraging as I did, and he turned to go. “Tomorrow. Same time.”