Chapter 10 #2
I hastily stuff it back inside my dress. I found it in my trunk along with all the other jewelry he’s had commissioned for me, but something made me put it on today. “I’m just keeping it safe for her.”
The amber heat in his eyes flares a myriad of colors. “Sometimes I don’t understand the relationship between the two of you.”
“That makes two of us,” I grumble, but he lets me tuck it away.
I hate the way he looks at me as if he sees right through me.
Grabbing a fistful of pretty pink skirts, I pace to the edge of the folly. “Malechus has to be our chief suspect. But what would he have done with her?”
“Dungeons?”
“I checked,” I admit. “It’s why I was late.”
“His rooms?”
“All feature glass windows,” I reply. “I wafted past them the second night and saw His Highness in bed with a blonde. He doesn’t have Soraya stashed beneath his bed.”
“She’s not dead,” he points out.
“Then why did he take her? What purpose does she serve?”
“Maybe she was discovered,” Keir points out, “and Malechus seeks to learn who sent her?”
Plausible. But again, there’s been no sign of her in any of the cellars I’ve found. All the usual places are devoid of stubborn wraiths.
“We know who took her,” Keir says with more gentleness than I’d expect. “We know the horn is in the maze. We just have to find the both of them.”
“What happens if the horn’s the easiest object to find?” And there it is. The question I’ve been trying not to think about.
Our eyes meet.
“I’m fairly certain if you find the horn first,” he drawls, “I’m not going to know about it until after you’ve rescued your sister.”
I can’t stop myself from wrapping my arms around me. Guilty. I shrug. “I’m the only one she has to watch her back.”
His voice roughens. “Would she do the same?”
I hate the fact I don’t have an answer to that question.
Keir sighs. “I’m trying to decide if I care. She did try to kill me.”
“If Soraya truly wanted to kill you, then you would be dead,” I point out.
“Not unless she knew what I was.” Keir captures a handful of my skirt, glancing down as he fingers the fine silk, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger.
“I’m not so easy to kill Mira. And if someone didn’t know what I was and caught me by surprise well…
they’d only do it once.” He takes another step, his thighs pressing against my skirts.
Slowly, his gaze lifts to mine. His voice is a dangerous thing.
It whispers inside me, like the velvet stroke of a glove beneath my skin.
“The only way someone gets a shot at me is if you told them the truth.”
Little lightning sparks shiver down my spine.
The wall of the folly is against my back.
Nearly seven foot of repressed dragon is staring down at me, his eyes gleaming like a shark’s.
There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere that won’t out me as surely as if I suddenly flashed into being right in the middle of the lawn.
Even from here, I can tell there are eyes upon us.
Somehow, we’ve become the talk of the court, which was precisely what I’d hoped to avoid, and no doubt half the party is dying to know what he’s saying to me.
The dress clasps around my ribs. It was one of the few I could wriggle into without assistance, but it’s so tight that every breath betrays me. He notices too, his attention drawn down to the deep dip of the bodice in an utterly male fashion.
Stalemate.
“I haven’t told anyone you’re a dragon.” I hate the way he looks at me like that. “I wouldn’t.”
Instantly, the sounds from the garden vanish as if he’s warded us within an impenetrable bubble. All the better to keep our secrets. “I have to admit that I wondered whether you would or not.”
That earns him a glare. But to do so means I have to look up into his eyes. He’s so close I could touch him. So close I could kiss him. But fury itches through me. Is this truly what he thinks of me? That I would betray him like this?
“Is that why you didn’t insist I keep my mouth shut about our pact? You were testing me?” It never made sense.
Heat flares to life in his eyes. “Maybe.”
If he’s thrown down the gauntlet, then I don’t hesitate to pick it up.
I poke a sharp nail into his chest. “I may have a sliding scale of morals in regards to the ownership of certain items, but I wouldn’t tell someone such an important secret.
If the fae of these lands knew the truth, you would have no rest. Regardless of your intentions, all they would see would be war. ”
The dragon kings were too powerful. Ancient spirits who were blessed into being by the goddess. In this world, where every fae prince measures his importance by the size of his dick, knowing there was a dragon out there would be so humbling they wouldn’t be able to abide by his sheer existence.
“You were protecting me,” he says.
“War is bad for business….”
“Horseshit. It’s the perfect time for a thief to reign.
And your king would like nothing better than to cast the Blessed courts into chaos.
” There’s a dangerous light in his eyes as he leans down.
“You were protecting me. All you had to do was reveal the truth, and this year and a day of loyalty that so chafes at you would be gone. You know it. I know it.” He bares his teeth in a reckless smile. “So tell me, Mira, why didn’t you?”
“Is it so impossible to understand I don’t want to see you dead?”
“You could have cut my heart from my chest and used it to—”
That’s enough. I dart beneath his arm, spinning in a flourish of skirts. Keir whirls, every inch of him poised like a cat prepared to pounce.
“The fae are watching,” I point out.
“Let them watch.” He graces them with half a glance. Not to be distracted, not by something so inconsequential as a half dozen fae lords and their princes. “If I threw you over my shoulder and hauled you away to our rooms, nobody would think anything of it.”
“But if I drove my knee into your balls,” I reply sweetly, “then maybe they’d have something to talk about.”
Impossibly, he laughs. “You’re so fucking stubborn. Why can’t you just admit you care about me?”
The words catch behind my teeth. I liked him, of course. There was a part of me that could even imagine falling for him. Dreaming of him. Wishing there could be something between us….
But I never realized until this moment that I’d taken it quite that far just yet.
The heat steals from my cheeks.
It leaves me breathless, and a little off-balance.
No. Absolutely… no.
The smile slips from his face, his eyes widening just a fraction. “You didn’t know.”
“I didn’t…. I don’t….”
“Stop lying to yourself.” It’s like my words steal all his hard-won control.
Hunger stares back at me, naked and demanding.
He wants me. The dragon wants me. “It took me a long time to realize what you came to my court for. You knew the truth of what I was, the power in my heart…. All you had to do was breathe a word of it to your king, and I would be looking over my shoulder for wraith assassins. I was angry, Mira.” He prowls toward me.
“So angry, when I realized your deception. Until the day I wondered why I hadn’t seen you again.
What were you waiting for? What was holding you back from betraying me?
” He stares down at me, an indecipherable look on his face.
“And there is only one truth that can explain it: You couldn’t bring yourself to do it. ”
It takes everything I have to tilt my chin defiantly. “I’m not an entirely wretched creature. Yes, I care. Sometimes I care too much. It’s always been my downfall. But the truth, Keir, is that it doesn’t change a cursed thing.”
“It changes everything.”
I snatch my hand back into a fist as he reaches for me, and if there’s a quiver in my voice, then so be it. “It changes nothing.” I shake my head. “You’re a dragon prince. You rule your own court. And I’m a wraith born bastard with a murderous… king who will never let me go. It wouldn’t—”
“What do you mean he won’t let you go?”
Shit. I knew I shouldn’t have said it. I wave the words away.
“My oath of fealty is as heavy as a chain around my throat.” I give him a cruel smile.
“You know what I can do, Keir. He’s never going to let me go free.
He’s never going to give me up. I’m too important a tool for him to wield.
” Pushing my hand against his chest, I head for the exit of the folly, desperately needing to fill my lungs with oxygen.
I can’t breathe here, with him demanding more of me than I dare give.
“Not even you can gainsay the whims of my king. So thank you. I’m flattered that you still find me intriguing enough to pursue, but we are done here.
” I pause at the edge of the folly, hand resting against one of the stone columns as I glance back.
One more time. “Business partners make bad bedfellows they say, and we both have our parts to play. I want to get my sister back. And you need the horn. So let me do my job and forget this foolishness.”