Max #2
Caspian piled food onto three plates for me, clearing half the table doing it. The heirs were all big men. They needed as much as I did, if not more.
Aelindor raised an eyebrow, amused. Nikolai competed by pouring my drinks. Drakken rolled his eyes.
“What, dragon?” Caspian challenged.
“Isn’t that overkill?” Drakken said. “If the cadet eats all of that, she’ll bring it straight back up. If that’s the goal, well done.”
“Funny,” Caspian drawled, “I don’t remember asking for a nutrition lecture from the guy who eats raw meat for breakfast.”
Drakken ignored Caspian and answered my glare with a smirk.
He knew throwing me in the dungeon or making me run barefoot around the track wasn’t on the table anymore, so he’d settled for needling me instead. A jab here, a poke there.
I wasn’t giving him the satisfaction. I smoothed the scowl off my face, smiled at the others, and tried the soup.
Shit, it was good. The onion cooked down almost to sugar.
For one stupid second, my eyes stung.
Food had never been a pleasure in my life. It was fuel you fought for and swallowed fast before someone took it from you. This was something new, and my body didn’t know what to do with it.
The heirs watched me eat, satisfaction on their faces and something darker, hungrier, underneath it.
The chocolate sat on a small white plate near the candles, a single dark square. I couldn’t make myself stop looking.
“Do you want the chocolate now?” Nikolai asked, catching the direction of my eyes.
I nodded, a little shy, and smiled at him.
Nikolai slid the plate down the table to me. “All yours, beautiful.”
“I can cut it into five pieces,” I said, reaching for a knife.
“Just take it.” Drakken’s voice cut across the table, impatient. “I don’t even like chocolate.”
Fine. The asshole was also an idiot. Who didn’t like chocolate?
I picked it up. Smooth and cool against my fingers, dark enough to be almost black. I set it on my tongue.
It melted before I could even bite down, bitter and sweet at once, richer than anything I’d ever tasted, and for a moment the whole table disappeared.
Don’t moan. Don’t moan.
A moan escaped from the back of my throat anyway. Low, helpless. Halfway to something I had no business feeling at a dinner table.
Caspian’s nostrils flared. Every head at the table turned toward me, eyes gone bright and fixed, the air itself thickening with something that hadn’t been there a second ago.
Heat climbed up my neck and didn’t stop.
Aelindor’s gaze dropped to my mouth and stayed.
Nikolai went very still, the stillness of a predator that had just caught a scent.
Even Drakken’s jaw tightened, gold bleeding faintly into gray.
Oh shit. I was in so much trouble.
“There shall be chocolates for Max at every dinner,” Caspian announced.
“Our plan is working,” Aelindor said. “Both New Columbia and the Haven have accepted our invitations. Xander will be here in a few days.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. Hope and dread rose together, twined too tight to pull apart.
Xander, who collected people like rare things, who had my little sister locked away somewhere in his palace.
Soon that monster would be inside these walls, close enough that I’d be tempted to snap his neck.
“Xander won’t bring your sister,” Drakken said. “He’ll leave her in his stronghold, under heavy guard. Keep her as leverage. Make you go to him. Collect you.” He must have seen something in my eyes, because even as he loaded his plate, his attention stayed on me. “Don’t be a hopeful fool.”
“Watch it, Drakken,” Caspian growled.
“I don’t give a fuck.” Drakken’s sneer didn’t waver. “I don’t sugarcoat things, and I have no intention of starting now. Your precious cadet needs to learn to be realistic.”
My jaw tightened. I already knew Xander wasn’t a piece of cake.
But as Caspian said, Drakken didn’t need to be brutal about it.
Then again, what did I expect? He was always like this with me, and he’d never change for my sake.
For a second I let myself imagine a sweet, gentle Drakken, and I nearly laughed out loud at the image.
Then my stomach soured. Was he tender toward Delia in bed?
He was still fucking her, wasn’t he? She certainly kept gloating about it.
I turned my attention away from him. I’d gotten better at that lately, pretending he didn’t exist, which irked him more than anything else I could do.
I doubted anyone, especially a woman, had managed that before.
“I’m not a dreamer,” I said, my tone clipped. “Never was. But hope is the one thing I’ll always hold on to. Without it, what’s the point of getting up in the morning?”
Drakken opened his mouth, ready to push it further, but Aelindor cut in before the family dinner could turn into a debacle.
“We’re counting on Xander not bringing Missy,” Aelindor said. “The plan stays the same. We move on his territory while he’s here, and we keep him occupied as long as we can.”
I hadn’t known the exact plan the heirs had already mapped out.
“Whatever the plan is, sir,” I said, digging in, “I’m going.”
“You are.” Aelindor smiled, something dancing in his winter-blue eyes, as if my bulldog-look amused him. “Along with a team of seven. You’ll review the list, and you can veto anyone on it.”
The respect in that landed somewhere deep, and I understood then, with sudden clarity, that it was part of why the Fae heir had my heart.
He wasn’t locking me in a tower for my own protection.
He let me stand on the front line, treated me like a warrior.
Like one of them. Even though I wasn’t their equal. Not yet.
“Thank you,” I said, and hope rose on top of the dread at the thought of seeing my sister again, of bringing her home.
“Marco and Frost volunteered,” Aelindor said, and I nodded.
I’d made two extra Coldiron armguards, one for each of them. Marco had cradled his like a precious newborn when Coldiron chirped Hello, handsome vampire inside his head. That was the bond, struck and accepted.
Frost had bowed his head and said, “Thank you for the honor, Cadet Max.”
Aelindor sipped his wine. Caspian drank beer, mostly. Nikolai favored whiskey. I hadn’t figured out Drakken—he never settled on one poison long enough to claim it.
“Marco and Frost make sense,” Nikolai said. Marco commanded under House Sagittarius, Nikolai’s house. “Excellent fighters, and they’ve both been training her.”
“We’ve added two more Spartans. Corporal Enna and Corporal Jace,” Aelindor continued. “I believe you’ve met them.”
Enna was the olive-skinned Spartan, who’d tried to get me to drink more booze at the campfire.
There weren’t many women on the Spartan team, and she’d earned her place twice over.
Jace was the one who’d ribbed me about being some ice giant’s offspring, until I asked if he hailed from my shorter cousin clan. He’d called me cousin ever since.
“Seven is small enough to move unseen and strong enough to finish the job,” Aelindor drawled.
“I’d go with you if I could. But it’s logical for me to be here when Xander arrives.
Anything else would raise suspicion.” He said the Collector’s name like it tasted of venom. “Still. Two heirs will accompany you.”
My eyes darted between Caspian, Drakken, and Nikolai. Which two? Did I even get a say?
“You choose, Max,” he said. “We’re calling the mission Operation Nightingale. Caspian, Drakken, and Nikolai will each make their case, and then you pick two to lead the team with you.”
“I’ll go, and I’ll lead. That’s not even a question.” Drakken said it like a man certain the room would simply fall in line behind him. “I’m the best strategist here. Best in the field too. Full stop.”
And just like that, the three of them were off, each building his case to me.
“Nikolai might look like a good choice at first glance,” Drakken went on, going straight for his rival’s throat. “But he’s not the man for this. He’s a diplomat down to the bone. Smooth. Charming. Honey-tongued.”
Nikolai shook his head in disgust. “I’m choosing to pretend you didn’t just say that.”
“It’s a compliment,” Drakken said. “You’re the best option to stay at the base and back Aelindor through the Tri-Crown Accord, the first Summit in the history of the Zodiac Covenant. That’s the most important job right now, and who else could handle it better?”
“Cute, dragon.” Nikolai snorted. “You forgot to mention I’m also the best spymaster the Covenant has.”
“Think you’re better than Lady Vaelith now, do we, vamp?
” Caspian narrowed his eyes. “Give it a century, you might be nipping at her heels. There’s hope for you yet.
” He held up a finger. “And why do we even need a spy on a rescue? What are you going to do, give us a guided tour of Xander’s palace? ”
Drakken laughed, and he and Caspian traded a smirk. The alliance formed in a blink, the two of them ready to gang up and knock Nikolai out of the running.
“What, are you two going to share a hot tub in Xander’s lair?” Nikolai shot back.
While they went at it, I put my head down and ate, glad that no one was paying attention to me. I could clear a plate fast, a habit from the mine, where rations vanished if you blinked.
“Slow down, Max.” Aelindor leaned in, his mouth close to the curve of my ear, his breath warm against my skin. The scent of pine and winter filled my senses. “There’ll always be plenty for you.”
My breath caught. He drew back, the corner of his mouth lifting, pleased with whatever he’d found in my face, and settled into the high back of his chair.
Drakken watched the whole exchange.
“Two of my agents are already in position inside the Haven,” Nikolai said. “They’ll get us into Xander’s palace through a back channel. Holt flies in tonight with more intel.”
Captain Holt was Caspian’s by house, but the tracker network ran through Nikolai too.