Bergamot and Citrus #2
His hand tightened slightly at my waist as he drew me into the last steps of the dance. We moved in near silence, steps synchronized without effort. Too easy, as if we had done this a hundred times.
I snuck a glance to my left. The prince had settled at a table, talking to someone. Still not going anywhere.
“So, what are you here for?” he said. “Because it isn't the party.”
“Who said it wasn't?”
“You seem occupied.” His eyes moved briefly past my shoulder. “With something.”
“Maybe a little,” I admitted.
“If you weren't occupied,” he said, “what would you be doing?”
I thought about that honestly. No job. No prince to murder. Just this room, this music, this very charming man. If this were any other night, I would have dragged him somewhere. Or let him drag me.
“I’d be somewhere quiet,” I said honestly. “With good company.”
He leaned closer.
“And am I good company?”
I considered him for a moment. “Perhaps.”
He smiled slowly. One corner first, before the rest of his face agreed.
The music ended on a low note.
He didn't release me, and I didn't step back. We ignored the applause that rose around us.
His thumb brushed against my waist before he finally stepped away.
A guard materialized at his shoulder and leaned close. Said the one thing that turned my stomach over completely.
“Your Highness.”
The prince—the actual one, not the man I had spent the evening watching from across the room—turned, listened to what the guard whispered, and nodded once.
He took my hand and pressed a soft kiss to my knuckles. Then he said something in a Primorian dialect that sounded like it was meant to charm. His smile suggested that it usually did. Unfortunately, he could’ve asked me about vegetables and I wouldn’t have known the difference.
“Thank you for the dance,” he said. “I know somewhere quiet, if you're no longer occupied.”
I pretended to consider it for approximately five seconds.
“Lead the way.”
He didn't release my hand. Just turned and walked us through the crowd like he owned the room.
Because he very much did own the room. I knew that now.
He led us through the estate, still holding my hand. I moved through it like someone memorizing a map she should have had before arriving.
The halls stretched long, lined with the same polished marble.
Paintings hung on the walls in heavy frames that looked expensive enough to fund a small army.
There was a door at the intersection where two guards stood.
A servant emerged from it holding a glass vial of silversap for the lanterns. A service entrance, I presumed.
I didn't realize I had slowed until he gave my hand a gentle tug.
“Still with me?” He looked back with a teasing smile that would have made me sin if I didn't have to kill him.
I mirrored his smile and kept pace.
We passed a large arched window at the end of the corridor. Another possible exit. If I were desperate and the drop wasn't what I thought it was. I hoped I didn't have to find out.
He opened a door and stood back.
Floor-to-ceiling glass on the far wall, the city spread below like shaken embers.
Books on every wall, arranged in a way that looked read rather than displayed.
A large desk sat at one end with stacks of parchment that seemingly ran the kingdom.
A low table and a dark velvet couch occupied the center of the room.
Candles burned down to their last quarter, throwing the room into a soft, uneven gold. It smelled of wood smoke and old paper.
He moved to a glass cabinet beside the desk and opened it.
“Wine,” he said, reaching for a bottle. “Not whiskey. In the interest of your dignity.”
“My dignity is fine,” I said.
He poured two glasses and held one out.
I took it, crossed to the window, and looked straight down.
A very long way down and definitely fatal.
“You have an interesting estate,” I said.
“I like it.” He leaned against the cabinet. “Cliffside. Most people find it impractical.”
“Most people would be right.”
He smiled. “Probably.” His eyes moved over me. “You keep looking at the window.”
“Good view.”
“It is,” he agreed.
He studied me with the careful attention I had seen on Xander when he looked for gaps in wards.
“So tell me,” he said. “What made you come to my masquerade?”
I leaned my hip against the desk. “Isn't it obvious?”
He sipped from the glass and waited.
“A man who built a kingdom from wasteland and forced the world to take notice.” I cocked my head. “I'd be foolish not to be interested.”
He made an amused sound and reached behind his head to remove his mask.
I was about to say something clever, but forgot what it was entirely.
“Careful.” One corner of his lip tugged up. “You keep looking at me like that, and I'll have to do something about it.”
I quirked a brow at him, a challenge.
He watched me as I set the glass on the edge of the desk and closed the distance between us.
His eyes stayed on me the entire time, smile still on his face. My heart was doing something unhelpful behind my ribs. He had his back half-turned to the cabinet, reaching to set down his own glass.
I lunged.
He moved.
Not fast the way humans moved when they were startled. He was simply elsewhere, and my momentum carried me past where he'd been. I caught myself on the desk with my palm and spun.
He blocked the first strike, deflected the second, and we moved around the desk like a dance if you didn't notice the dagger in my hand. He was excellent in hand-to-hand combat, which I hadn’t expected from a prince who wielded magic. I aimed for the gaps, found none, found one, and took it.
My mask went somewhere in the third exchange and hit the floor.
He caught my wrist. A hum sparked where our skin made contact.
My back hit the desk with enough force to knock the breath out of me. His other hand braced beside me, exactly where it needed to be to make sure I wasn't going anywhere.
His eyes flickered over my features, breath warm against my cheek. He made a thoughtful sound, as if he'd found something he hadn't been looking for.
With a flick of my wrist, I transferred the dagger to my other hand in the half-second his attention drifted. I drew it across his neck, missed, and caught his forearm instead.
It wasn't deep. But it was deep enough to make him let go.
He stepped back, looked at the cut, then looked at me and laughed. “You're actually competent,” he said, amused.
I was already repositioning when his smile dropped with his gaze. There was something moving along my wrist.
I looked down.
The dagger was still in my hand. But the hilt was missing the twin serpents.
One of them was gone, and the other uncoiled from the gold with a faint sound of scraping metal.
It crossed onto my skin as if it were alive.
The dagger fell with a loud clang. There were limits to what a person could hold on to gracefully, and a living metal snake was past mine.
“What the fuck,” I said.
The snake finished its movement and settled into ink. Black and precise, wrapping up my forearm in a pattern that would’ve been beautiful if I had consented.
I gaped at it.
The prince’s eyes fixed on my wrist, then he pulled up his sleeve.
The other snake was there. Wrapped around his forearm, darkening into the same black ink, the same pattern, the same finished quality of something that had decided it wasn’t going anywhere.
He looked at me, still unreasonably composed. “What did you just do?”
“I—I don't know,” I said as I rubbed at my arm frantically.
The door flung open hard enough to rattle the hinges.
Three guards stormed in, blades already raised. I had the desk between me and two of them and bought myself enough space to work with. The first went down fast. The second took longer than I wanted. I was going for the third when another person came through the door.
Dark hair. Darker eyes. They held the vacant look of someone who did not find this situation interesting.
He crossed the room in the time it took me to register him. Then the floor was somewhere unexpected and my arm was behind my back at an angle it didn't prefer.
I tried to get out of it. He hit me hard enough that the room went white at the edges.
“Riven,” the prince interjected, “stop.”
Riven straightened and stepped back.
The prince was looking at him with something in his face that might have been annoyance. He pressed his fingers to his own jaw briefly.
Then he looked at me, calculation in his eyes. “Take her,” he said. “Lock her up.”
Cold iron clicked around my wrists as I blinked away the stars.
Riven walked me out of the study without a word, and I went. The alternative was another conversation with the floor, and I'd had enough of that.