Nadia #3
That time, the smile almost won. I slid down from him before it could. The chamber tilted slightly when my feet hit the rug just enough for Enzo’s hand to settle at my waist like he’d been waiting for an excuse.
I let it stay there for one second. One. Then I stepped away and began collecting clothing from the wreckage we had made of the floor.
There was blood on his coat. Blood on my hand. Blood smeared across his mouth and my shoulder. The mark from his bite throbbed hot beneath my shirt when I pulled it on, and I welcomed the ache because it was easier than thinking about the words I had just thrown into the room.
I'm falling for you.
Gods. Terrible, disgusting, and entirely accurate.
I shoved my arms through my coat with unnecessary violence. Enzo dressed more carefully, but he didn’t waste time. The line across his ribs had closed to a pale mark under the smear of my blood. It would fade, eventually.
Mine would linger.
I didn't know which thought pleased me more.
When he reached for his belt, I stepped in and fastened it myself. He froze.
I didn’t look up. “Just because I love you doesn’t mean I’m not still pissed off at you,” I said.
“I assumed.”
“Good.”
I finished the buckle, checked the knife at his hip, then stepped back and checked my own. The motion steadied me. Blade at thigh. Blade in boot. Wire. Picks. Coat seams. Everything where it belonged.
When I looked up, he was watching me. Not with heat now. Or not only that.
There was something else in his gaze, something that settled beneath my skin and made my chest feel too small for everything it suddenly held.
I hated him a little for that, too.
“Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
His expression sharpened.
I rolled my eyes. “For the dungeon, yes. For whatever catastrophic emotional nonsense this is, absolutely not.”
His mouth curved.
“Don't,” I warned.
The curve vanished. Mostly.
By the time we reached the lower hall, the bond had shifted into something cleaner. Operational.
I hadn't worked beside anyone like this in a century. That should have felt like a loss. It didn't. It felt like a second blade in my hand.
We moved through the keep without speaking. Servants bowed and vanished. Guards straightened before Enzo and didn't quite know where to put their eyes when they saw me beside him.
Good. Let them learn.
The dungeon stairs waited at the end of the lower passage, narrow and old, cut into the bones of the keep. Blue ward-fire burned in the sconces below, cold enough to make the stone look wet.
Enzo started down first. I followed at his side anyway.
The air grew colder with every step. By the fifth, the keep above us felt distant. By the tenth, the world had narrowed to stone, ward-light, and the man beside me becoming prince again by degrees.
I watched focus settle behind his eyes, the kind that let him keep moving, even when the wound was still open.
At the bottom of the stairs, the cell block door stood barred in iron and old magic. I lifted my hand toward it.
“Nadia,” a voice said behind us and I froze. Not because I didn’t know the voice, but because I did.
Slowly, we turned.
Augustin Veyne stood motionless at the foot of the stairs.
The Vampire King wore travel leathers dusted gray from the road, his coat stained at the hem. He appeared as if he’d ridden through the night and several others for good measure just to reach his son.
His eyes moved from me to Enzo, then back again. They lingered for one breath too long on the bite at my shoulder, half-hidden beneath my collar, and the blood I hadn’t managed to clean from the side of my hand.
Then his gaze dropped to his son’s fingers laced with mine.
Understanding moved through his expression.
The king who'd hired me decades ago had finally put the pieces together: his eldest son’s mate was the same knife he'd been sending into dark rooms since before Enzo knew my name.
His expression gentled, and for a moment, the king's eyes softened with something achingly close to paternal affection.
I dipped my chin. “Hey, Augustin.”
Beside me, Enzo went very still.
For a fraction of a second, genuine surprise flickered across his face before he smoothed it away.
He'd never heard me call his father that.
Which was funny, considering I was starting to suspect I knew the man better than he did.
Wait until I told Enzo his father didn't even mind when I put my boots on his desk.
He'd probably have an aneurysm. Luckily, that wouldn't kill him.
Augustin’s mouth almost moved. It might have been amusement. Might have been exhaustion. Might have been the last surviving scrap of etiquette choosing death.
“Lorenzo,” he said.
“Father.”
The word landed cold. No embrace. No offered hand. No courtly welcome. No performance. No warmth at all. Only the three of us at the bottom of a dungeon stairway while Aldric waited behind an iron door and the province bled above us.
Augustin looked at that door.
“Before you speak with him,” he began, and the bond between Enzo and me went still. “There is something you both need to know.”