CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
LIE TO ME
I shake out my sjaal to lie on, wrap myself in my cloak, and reach for the one blanket we’ve been given. I pause, hand poised over the thin wool, with a hesitant look at Kaidren.
He’s already smirking at me. “I suppose you think you’re getting that whole thing?”
“You’re the one who claims to be a man of honor.”
He chuckles. “As you’re well aware, I was lying. Besides, it’s large enough for both of us.” He lifts an eyebrow in challenge. “Unless you think you’ll struggle to keep your hands to yourself?”
My eyes narrow. “My self-control’s just fine, thank you.
” Chin tipped up, I curl up on my sjaal next to the dying embers in the fireplace, back turned to Kaidren.
He lies down behind me. He drapes the blanket first over me, then settles it around himself.
We don’t touch. There’s less than half a pace separating us, but it might as well be a canyon.
I’m painfully aware of every lick of distance that divides us.
For several heartbeats, we listen to each other breathe.
Neither of us speaks, but the night is far from quiet.
A snowstorm has started, and Aja’s house is being battered from all sides.
Wind and snow lash the windowpanes and sneak through the cracks in the walls.
The house shudders, and the space is filled with a sharp, high-pitched whine.
Kaidren and I each shiver three times in the span of a few minutes, and neither of us is any closer to falling asleep.
“Damn this.” Kaidren’s gruff voice cuts through the sounds of the night. His arms curl around me, yanking me back to rest against him.
I don’t fight it. It’s cold, and his body heat is a comfort I can’t deny. My head is tucked into the hollow beneath his chin, and his arms are banded securely around me.
With his heartbeat pounding in my ear, I allow myself a moment of honesty: I like this. Not just because it’s cold, and not just because he’s warm.
Kaidren Vale is vicious when he wants to be. But he’s also thoughtful and caring. He looks at me as if I’m worthy of notice. He smells of pine trees and fire. And being near him kindles a kind of magic within me that’s new and exciting.
He makes me nervous. Makes me feel as though the world is tilting and I’m sliding into the unknown. Wrapped up with him like this, I almost wonder if it would be worth it to let go, to lean into this feeling of powerlessness. But I can’t—nothing scares me more than what I can’t control.
I clear my throat. “You kissed me.”
Kaidren hums in my ear. “Is this your way of telling me your lips are cold and you’d like me to warm them?” His breath on the back of my neck combined with his teasing tone makes me shiver.
I scoff to disguise my body’s reaction to him. “It’s my way of saying we need to be clear. I don’t want things to be confused between us.”
“Confused how?”
“This—what we’re doing now—is to keep warm. Nothing more.”
Kaidren doesn’t speak for so long, I think he’s silently accepted my assertion and is drifting off to sleep. Then, he gently rolls me over to face him. Embers from the hearth cast an orange glow over the sharp features of his face. “It could mean something. It could mean everything.”
My heart leaps at the suggestion. My mind is less sure how to react.
“I meant what I said before,” he says. “I can’t get you out of my head. So, I’ve stopped trying. Even after everything, I don’t regret kissing you.”
My throat feels as if it’s coated in a fine layer of dust. “Kaidren—”
He interrupts me, and I’m glad, because I don’t know how I was planning on finishing that sentence.
“I know you’re aikkari, I know you’re the Shadow Queen, I know about your mother.
You know that I poisoned my father. We have all the ammunition we need to be each other’s ruin.
But I don’t want that. I just want you.”
This house is dim from the storm, but Kaidren is bright, and his face is beautiful. His eyes watch me with a hungry intensity that scares me almost as much as it excites me.
I’d be lying if I said I’m not tempted.
Good thing I’m an excellent liar.
I ignore the way my starheaded heart pangs in protest and shake my head. “You and me . . . we’re a bad idea.”
“Why?” His hand dips beneath my sjaal and glides along my waist until it rests on the bare skin of my back. “You kissed me back.”
The heat of his skin against mine after spending so long avoiding his touch makes it impossible to think. “I—” My brain is already mush. It stops working altogether when he dips his head, pressing his lips to the side of my neck.
I shudder. The rest of my sentence becomes as scattered as sunshine in the mountains.
“You what?” His free hand tilts my head, baring more of my neck to him. He kisses the hollow at my throat, leaving me buzzing to the tips of my toes. My eyes slip closed, chest heaving from the effort of holding myself back.
One hand sears my back, the other tucks an errant kinky curl behind my ear as his nose glides up the column of my neck. “What were you going to say?” His breath tickles my ear. “You don’t want me? Go ahead. Lie to me. I dare you.”
My eyes flutter open. His lips hover just above mine, a tantalizing gasp away.
I pride myself on being a very good liar. But as I trip and fall headfirst into the depths of his eyes—dark and wild and treacherous—I stop lying. To myself and to him.
I seize his face between my icy hands and kiss him.
Ophera is freezing; Virdei is colder still. For seven years, I’ve kept my heart frozen solid. As I drag Kaidren’s lips to mine, I’m set alight.
Flames consume me—where our lips meet, where his body melts into me, in my soul—and I can’t get enough.
Kaidren holds nothing back. He kisses me as if he’s starved.
His lips pry mine apart, and he sighs into my open mouth.
One hand cups the space where my neck curves into my jaw, the other draws lines up and down the slope of my spine.
He tilts his head, giving him a better angle to coax my tongue to intertwine with his.
I gasp at the newness of the sensation, and he swallows the sound.
Kaidren’s breaths become my own. My arms coil around his neck as we move together. I match each shift of his head, every swipe of his tongue, with my own.
I’m lightheaded when he pulls away. My mind spins too quickly to have a single coherent thought. Kaidren is smiling widely and unevenly and, after a beat, I realize I am too.
His lips graze my temple. “If that was honesty, consider me a liar reformed.”
I laugh. My cheeks are flushed and my hair is a mess, but with the way he’s looking at me, I don’t care.
His smile stretches wider, growing more lopsided. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh before.”
“That’s because you’re not funny.” I can’t stop grinning.
He chuckles. “I’m hilarious and charming.” He takes my wrist and kisses the golden ink of my tattoo. “And you are all of the above, not to mention beautiful.”
“You think I’m charming?”
“When you’re not making me miserable. So, I suppose that only applies when you’re not speaking.”
I laugh again, and that slightly imperfect smile threatens to split his face open.
“I can’t believe you don’t think I’m funny. When we get back, I’ll make you laugh every day.”
My happy grin fades with his sobering words. Kissing him was a hazy distraction, but this—the way he’s gazing tenderly at me, the idea that we have a future outside this firelit moment—isn’t reality. It’s just a moment in between.
Gently, I extricate my wrist from his hold and start to pull away.
Kaidren holds me still, smile replacing itself with a furrowed brow. “What’s wrong?”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
He jerks as though I’ve struck him. “You’re saying you don’t want this?”
“I’m not in the habit of wanting things I can’t have.”
“You can have me. I won’t even put up a fight.” He rolls us over, resting me beneath him and dropping his forehead to my own. “We’ll find my father’s killer and clear our names. When we return to Virdei, we’ll win the Tournament. Together.”
He thinks there are no longer any secrets between us.
He thinks that if he wins the Tournament, I’ll be content sitting at his side.
He’s wrong on both counts. I still have every intention of taking the throne for myself.
A plan that only works if the person I’m stealing it from is my trusting and malleable brother.
“Kaidren, I’m not going to help you win. ”
“Why not?”
I roll my eyes. “Why did you assume I would?”
“I thought you’d want to. I see the way Lucien treats you. You don’t owe him your loyalty.”
“So, instead I should give my loyalty to you? Because we kissed?”
Hurt flashes over his expression. He hides it quickly, but I feel guilty just the same. “I don’t want to return to Virdei as your enemy,” he says. “If you fight with me, we’ll win. And then we can have it all.”
He makes it all sound so simple. “If you win, we won’t have anything. You will. I’ll just be some girl dependent on your goodwill.”
“I won’t let that happen. You are clever and bold. Even if I didn’t want you as I do, I’d want a mind like yours on my side. But I do want you. In all things. A conspirator in schemes and a partner in everything else.”
“You want me for now, but eventually, I’ll lose your interest. Affection fades, and truth changes. The things you mean today with imagined power will change if that power becomes realized.”
The hurt expression he tried to disguise is back. “Not everyone is like the Honorate. People don’t always change their minds or hearts so flippantly. Some people are loyal.”
“People like us are loyal only to themselves. I’d stab you in the back to get ahead, and even if you won’t admit it, so would you.
But it doesn’t matter either way. Even if you could promise me forever, I wouldn’t want it.
I’ll never be happy as your shadow. I’ve been Luc’s for years, and I’m tired. ”
“I’m nothing like Lucien.”
“I told you I dreamed of being the most powerful person in the room,” I say. “Second would never be enough for me.”
“You mean I would never be enough for you.”
My throat burns, but I refuse to cry. “Don’t pretend you’re any better. You can compete for a throne. I can’t. You think if our roles were reversed, you’d settle for second?”
He doesn’t answer—because he knows I’m right. His shoulders slump. “What would you have me do?”
“Nothing. When we return, you’ll do what’s best for you, and I’ll do what’s best for me.”
His eyes skirt over my face, looking for any fissures, any way to change my mind. With a resigned sigh, he twists us so he’s on his back and my head rests on his chest, ear to his heart. “I’m going to win.”
“You’re going to try,” I say with a teasing grin, turning my head to look up at him.
His eyes are sad, but a corner of his mouth tips up wryly. “I believe I still owe you one true thing. What do you want to know?”
I don’t even have to think about what to ask. “Why do you want to be Praeceptor? The truth this time.”
He nods, as if he expected this question.
“When my mom died, my world ended. It felt like I died with her. But my father . . . his life stayed exactly the same. I hated him for it. Not just because her death was his fault, but because he didn’t even care.
I wanted to do the same. Destroy something he loved, then force him to wake up every day knowing he was as worthless as he made us feel. ”
“You want to be Praeceptor to make him angry?”
“I wanted to force him to watch me win a position he could never hold. I wanted him to see the bastard son he hated more powerful than he ever was.” Kaidren leans closer to my ear, as though whispering a secret. “You know what my first act as Praeceptor will be?”
“What?”
“Dismantling the Honorate.” Kaidren’s laugh is devoid of humor.
“He cared so damn much about honor and legacy, but there’s not a shred of honor among any of them.
I wanted to watch as he saw his own name unmake a system he loved.
I’d hoped he’d live to see it, but it doesn’t matter.
He believed in the stars and hell, and I believe that when I’m Praeceptor, he’ll writhe in the afterlife, just as he deserves.
When I join him down there, I’ll have the final laugh. ”
A saner person might find his admission unsettling, but I burrow deeper into his chest, unable to hide a grin.
“That didn’t scare you off?”
“I don’t scare easily. You want to take over the world for revenge? I can’t think of a better motive.”
He laughs.
Before, when he described his plans as Praeceptor, when he spoke of improving the Honorate to improve Virdei, it was always a lie. Because he has no intentions of making the Honorate better. He means to destroy it completely.
“What are your plans for this new Virdei?” I ask.
“Everything I promised. But I won’t use the Honorate to do it.”
For a few beats, we say nothing.
“Tell me something,” says Kaidren quietly. “Not as part of an exchange. Not because you owe me anything. Just tell me something true about you.”
I think about it. “My favorite food is goat stew. And I really like honey cakes.”
“I didn’t imagine you as someone who likes sweets.”
“Why?” I tease. “Because I’m a conniving bitch?”
He laughs so hard he presses his face into my hair to muffle the sound. “Tell me something else.”
“You were my first kiss.”
His face lights up. “And your second.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling.
“More,” he says demandingly.
“Now you’re just being greedy.”
He grins but doesn’t say anything. Just waits expectantly for me to answer him.
I turn over my thoughts, trying to come up with something he might like to know. As I watch him, and he watches me, I realize there’s only one thing I need him to hear before everything between us changes once again. “Whatever happens when we get back, I don’t hate you.”
His happiness dims with the bleak reminder that none of this is real. Just a moment in between. “I don’t hate you either.”
Neither of us says it, but we both know there’s more: I don’t hate you. But if that’s what it takes to win, I’ll fight you as if I do.