Chapter 26
Nyx
I’d been wrong. Cain didn’t look bored. He looked hungry under that relaxed facade.
My throat bobbed. My fingers tightened on the charcoal stick, laying a dark slash across the fae prince’s shoulder where he lounged on his throne, jewel-studded crown tilted, shark tattoo curling up the side of his throat, hands resting on the worked-silver arms.
I rubbed the slash with my fingertip, softening the edges, then deepened the crescents beneath his eyes, making them darker. Less glamour, more danger. The kind that would never fade, that lived in the bone.
“Maybe I’ve already met her. Maybe I’m waiting for her to catch up.”
The way Cain had said that, low and raw. Like he meant it clear to his soul.
I swallowed hard and switched to a pencil, adding embroidered leaves to the prince’s velvet sleeve.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be caught,” I said when the silence had gone on too long.
Cain leaned in, elbows braced on his thighs, gaze locked on my face. “Maybe I can change her mind.”
I stilled, the pencil loose in my fingers. For a moment, neither of us moved, the air between us charged, expectant.
He drew an audible inhale. “Nyx?”
I shook my head. “You can’t. I’m done, Cain.”
The spell broke. His eyes shuttered and he sat back, resuming the first pose.
I started the embroidery on the prince’s other sleeve.
Cain watched me draw, jiggling his knee. He wasn’t upset, though. It was a measured, thinking-it-over bounce.
Several minutes passed. “Whatever names you’re calling me, I’m calling myself those and more.”
That got under my guard. My lips twitched despite myself. “I don’t think so.”
“That bad?” he asked, so deadpan I couldn’t help grinning.
“Don’t ask.”
His gaze moved over my face, settling on my mouth like he was drinking in my smile. “You know I have to ask now.”
I added a pair of horns to the prince’s platinum-blond head. “I can insult you in two languages. Gives me an edge.”
His eyes crinkled, and my breath caught in my throat. Unfair, how he could still do that—slip beneath my defenses and jab me right in my soft, unprotected parts.
He studied me while I pretended I didn’t notice.
“You’re not what I expected,” he said finally.
“I figured you were vampire royalty—a princess. You don’t walk into a party, you arrive—like it’s your stage and the rest of us are only there to admire you.
But I was wrong. You play a good game, but that’s all it is to you, isn’t it?
A game. And if you didn’t have to play, it wouldn’t bother you at all. ”
“Because I don’t give a damn about the game.”
“So it was all for your father.”
I went still. “We’re not talking about him.”
“You’re right.” His voice softened. “I’m sorry.”
I picked up the charcoal stick again and added a shadowy tiger curled at the prince’s feet. “You’re not what I expected, either,” I admitted.
“What did you expect?”
“An entitled lieutenant.”
“Meet a lot of those, do you?”
“Oh, yeah.” I gave a humorless chuckle. “But if anyone’s vampire royalty, it’s you, Mr. Maritime Syndicate Lieutenant. You and Talon are next in line to be primus.”
“So? Brien’s not going anywhere. The man will probably be primus for the next few hundred centuries at least.”
I glanced up. “Does that bother you?”
He shook his head. “I like my place in the hierarchy just fine—me and Talon both. Brien respects our opinion, treats us like brothers.”
“Vampire royalty.”
“Nah. I’m so far from being a prince it’s funny.” His laugh rasped out of him, like it was scraped from somewhere old. “I was the island fuckup.”
I stopped drawing. “Seriously?”
Cain, a fuckup? I couldn’t make the pieces line up. All I saw was the man in front of me, all coiled control and lethal competence.
“Baker sure thought I was.” Something flickered across Cain’s face, quick and raw. “Kept telling me I’d end up in prison. He wouldn’t have lifted a finger to help me, either.”
“He sounds like an ass.”
I didn’t say cruel. I didn’t say the kind of man who leaves marks you can’t see. But Cain’s jaw tightened like he heard it anyway.
“He was, but he wasn’t wrong. Me and Talon were one bad decision from doing something that would’ve gotten us permanently banished from the island when we got lucky. Prima Lenore offered us a shot—bodyguard detail for Brien.”
“Lucky?” I frowned. Didn’t he see it? The distance between that kid and the man he was now?
The power he’d accrued, the respect—and not because of his bloodline, but because he’d earned it.
“Luck’s only half it. You took that shot and made something of it.
You couldn’t have done that if you were such a fuckup. ”
He shook his head. Then a slow smile spread over his face.
“Brien was only sixteen himself, then. But I think that’s why we hit it off—we were both just twenty ourselves. We were supposed to be protecting him, but we were nearly as wild as him.”
I resumed drawing. “Maybe his mother knew he needed that. Because he’s still here, isn’t he? He survived until he got old enough to take care of himself.”
“He was born with a lot of power, but yeah. We were damned if he was gonna get hurt on our watch. And now we’re like brothers.”
Something lodged in my throat. I swallowed over it. “You’re…that’s good. Having people like that.”
His gaze met mine, and his face softened. Somehow I knew he was thinking of my family—or lack of one. Of how I had no one like Brien and Talon in my life. No one who’d bleed for me, no questions asked.
“I am,” he said quietly.