To even understand.
I force my fingers to loosen their hold on the weapon I promised I wouldn’t use, pull my hand from my pocket, and fist the fabric of my skirt instead.
“Apologies, Sire.” I dip lower, willing my heart to ease up on the white-knuckled blows to my ribs. “I overslept. Won’t happen again.”
My breath snags as his fingers pinch my chin, forcing me to look into his cruel, cutthroat eyes. One green, like Mah’s apparently were. One pitch black, just like the pit of his septic soul.
His black hair is half pulled up, the rest hanging loose around his shoulders, tumbling all the way to his elbows. His beard is, as always, adorned with a trio of beads.
Clear.
Brown.
Red.
He’s bigger than I remember—two heads taller than me and almost as wide as Kaan in the shoulders—his presence one of scarcely veiled chaos that contrasts his impeccable silver garb.
“Well. Nice of you to finally show up,” he says with that cutting sort of serenity that always makes me picture myself bleeding out with a stab wound I didn’t realize he’d stuck me with. “Tell me, Ayda. Do you think that carrying my bastard brings you certain … privileges?”
My mind empties so fast I’m certain the ground tips beneath my feet. Like the entire palace just dislodged from the toothy mountainscape and is now swaying side to side, trying to decide which direction it wants to fall.
What do I say to that?
“I have a child. An heir—disobedient as she is,” he grits out, like there’s a fireball of frustration welling on his tongue. “I don’t need another, and my tolerance of your condition dissolves the moment you no longer prove useful to me.”
My guts knot, words choking past my swollen throat. “I … Of course, Sire. Apologies. And thank you.”
“For?”
“Your tolerance.”
Definitely picked the wrong maid to prick.
A line forms between his brows, though it smooths when a parchment lark flutters close, quickly returning again when the damn thing dips between us and nudges against my chest.
My heart drops so fast it almost falls out my ass.
“This is unusual,” he says in that chilling way he speaks, snatching the thing, keeping his eyes on me as he unfolds it while my pulse pounds in rhythm with my slashing thoughts.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“I—”
He waves it at me, both brows bumping toward his hairline. “It’s blank.”
Internally, I smile. Because it’s not blank.
Not at all.
Whenever either of us are beyond the safety of Dhomm, Kaan and I write our notes in invisible ink illuminated only by dragonflame we both carry a weald of.
Precautions. Never came in handy until now.
“A dud, perhaps.” He’s swift to rip the wings off the thing and toss its nonfluttering corpse to the floor—a visceral reminder of my brother’s brutality I didn’t need.
“I have business to attend to, but I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Go inside, get on your knees with a polish cloth, and make yourself useful until I return.” He turns and stalks toward the stairs. “Keep me waiting again and I’ll have your head.”
The tips of my fingers tingle with the sudden, violent urge to spray his blood across the perfectly polished floor, my upper lip twitching to pull back from my canines.
My foot kicks forward, hand digging into my pocket as if to grip my blade so I can leap and slash—
No.
I tug my hand free and fist it at my side, trying to squeeze the tingles away.
One, I said I wouldn’t kill him and start an impromptu war Kaan’s not yet fully prepared for.
Two, not like this. Not coming at him from behind, wearing the skin of another. I want to look him in the eye. Make him bleed the way I’ve bled. Hurt the way I’ve hurt. I want to spit the words that have been festering in my mouth for far too long, bruising my gums every time I stand paralyzed in his presence.
Anything less will be like a sip of water that turns to lava in my throat.
I tell myself that over and over as I watch Tyroth move down the stairs, relieved I spent a few hours folded over an ice boulder on the city’s outskirts, vomiting from this dagger of dread lodged in my gut. If I’d had anything left in there, it would be on the floor at my feet right now. Or splattered against Tyroth’s silver boots.
Can’t believe I knocked out his pregnant mistress. How horrible, when the poor thing is already living a slumber-terror.
I make a mental note to pad her pockets with enough bloodstone to buy her a better life before I wake her from her forced sleep and go on my way.