CHAPTER TWENTY #3
I exhaled when it didn’t work, drops speckling the floor beneath me. Beads of red, drip, drip, drip, from where my fangs had pierced my lip.
I tried to rise, but the demand, the vicious pull, dragged me deeper. Until my body nearly collapsed from the strain.
A hand wrapped my arm, large, calloused, lifting with an unforgiving steadiness.
The smoke rolled in first, then his breath, his mouth skimming the shell of my ear. “You better hide behind that mask of yours quickly.”
Ronan.
Power slid through me, unfurling in every space I couldn’t hold steady.
“Sooner would be better, Viper.”
I didn’t move; I couldn’t. Not with the way his fingers found the back of my head, pressing until my cheek collided with his shoulder. His body caged mine, shielding me from the dozens of eyes around us.
“I can’t. It’s my head,” I managed, forcing myself upright. “Let me go so I can mend it.”
It felt like it was going to explode at any given second. The pain shot from my skull to my spine to even the soles of my feet.
“Just breathe,” he said. Not gentle, nor commanding.
And before I could let the words settle, or take a damn breath, his smoke got there first, slipping beneath my skin, chasing away the pain, the ache. Forcing the other magic out, the agony vanishing with it.
Stunned, I blinked, staring up at him where his grin curved, insufferable. “What are you, you overgrown lizard, part witch?”
Yet for the first time in hours, my mind was perfectly clear.
Canines slid long when his smile deepened, biting into the corners of his lip. Blood smeared against my own as I wiped them with the back of my hand.
“Someone here is out to get you,” he stated. “That was pain magic. And not mine.”
I shivered. In the middle of a ball?
“Well, that’s convenient.” My eyes narrowed. “You’re sure it wasn’t your not-so-inconspicuous fog?”
His hand found mine, pulling me back into the flow of the dance, spinning me to the pulse of the strings. “If not for my fog,” he said, low and edged, “you would be writhing in the infirmary.” His thumb brushed my lower back. “Or dead.”
I breathed out a laugh, swatting his hand away. “Oh look, my savior. Try not to choke on the glory. Or do,” I muttered. “I’d love to watch.”
The scar fading into his upper lip curled, just barely, when he forced back a smile.
Bastard.
Mina’s eye caught me then, and I flicked two fingers in the air toward her. Champagne, and the damn strongest she had.
Maybe he thought he had me cornered here, smug in the crowd, so sure I couldn’t strike. And maybe he was right. But if I couldn’t kill him tonight, I could still at least play.
Black nails curved into his shoulder, the other hand locking around his arm. Gods, his muscles were stone sewn beneath sun-browned skin. My grip loosened, stroking down the curve of his bicep.
Unintentionally, or maybe entirely on purpose.
Duke and Callum were built like champions, sculpted by the Gods for good behavior. Ronan felt like he was built for war. Perhaps even the embodiment of a God himself.
His scent dragged—spice, salt, fire. All taking over me at once.
I breathed it in too deeply, frantic, like my body wanted more than my mind could manage. Closer I leaned, my nose nearly brushing where his shirt hung open, a gold chain glimmering against his chest before reason jolted back into me.
A throat cleared nearby and my eyes snapped open. The ballroom moved on around us, partners spinning, music spilling. We had stopped moving.
I straightened, scrunching my nose. “You,” my tongue clicked against my teeth, “smell weird.”
His brow arched just as Mina slid between us, pressing flutes into our hands. He didn’t look at her, didn’t look away from me. “Weird?”
“Yes.” I lifted my glass, bubbles rising. “Like burnt spice. It’s off-putting.”
“Off-putting,” he echoed, stare dragging over my mouth, my cheek, my throat. “And yet you tried to breathe it in like salvation.”
The music swelled to something darker and elegant, the kind of melody meant to disguise danger as grace as the crowd dissolved around us.
With an unexpected gentleness my fingers caught the chain, running along its curve until they snagged on a kink. It looked as if it had broken and then been melted back together, almost seamlessly.
“You’re enjoying this,” I said to him, dropping it back against his chest.
“Wouldn’t you,” he caught my hand before it fell, his lips skimming over the top of it, “if the most dangerous thing in the room let you hold her?”
My lips twitched as I ripped my arm away. “Careful. You might start to believe your own charm.”
He leaned closer, breath skating the shell of my ear. “Charm?” A low chuckle as he pushed a curl behind my ear, eyes catching on the gold daith piercing. “No. Purely survival.”
Whatever heat and hate lived between us snarled, and I tilted the flute to my lips, letting the champagne run a slow path down my throat. The glass in his hand sat untouched, the stem a fragile twig between his fingers.
Lazily, I gestured toward his drink. “None for you?”
He exhaled, long, suffering, like the entire realm, or maybe just me, had already drained him dry. “I thought we’d reached common ground,” he murmured, glancing at his flute. “That’s not playing fair.”
Tendrils bled from his boots, crawling, brushing against my ankles. I stepped back, it shoved me forward, back into his radius.
That insufferable smoke would be the first thing I poisoned.
I stifled a laugh, tilting my glass higher. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The smoke circled his glass rim, testing, tasting. Then recoiled from the recognition of the poison.
His eyes snapped up, green gone lethal dark. “You naughty girl.”
My knees wavered at the remark, just enough for him to notice.
Luckily, he didn’t press as he let his power swallow the glass, dragon heat burning it away in silence. Any trace of poison now depleted as the flute shattered to mist.
Smoke hovered around my throat, my cheek, then deeper around my ear until I shivered, dipping with the bow of my throat.
Ronan moved slowly, not saying another word as he melted back into the crowd, leaving the ghost of fire in his wake, and the certainty of one thing—
That the game had only just begun.
Only when I was certain that I could no longer feel any trace of him, I exhaled, tilting my glass against my lips.
The flute was drained in a gulp, eyes searching for Mina in the mass.
I needed a lot more wine.