Kaan inspects his makeshift blade from all angles, loose hair hanging around his face. His black tunic is rolled to the elbows exposing slash marks up and down his corded forearms, half the buttons popped, offering peeks of dense chest muscles that tense with each strong clamp of his tool. Another thumbnail-sized crescent of scale chips off and flicks into the large clay bowl he’s working over.
I avert my gaze toward the pot of bubbling soup, steam escaping from around the rim of the waggling lid …
Killing him is looking harder by the hour.
I thought it strange that he had no beaded soldiers with him. No powerful entourage. At least not for the part of his journey he’s sharing with me. Though I’m beginning to wonder if he simply doesn’t require the protection. Perhaps so confident in his own abilities that any extra bodies are unwanted baggage he can’t be bothered to cart around.
My stare drifts to his satchel …
Or perhaps he just wanted to travel incognito because he doesn’t want folk to know he’s hunting moonshards.
Either way, he knows how to shape a damn fine blade.
I flick another glance at it, jealousy rippling through me as he places the pretty weapon in the bowl with the excess shards and sets it all on a back bench, far from my reach.
Clever tyrant king.
He moves toward the stove and lifts the lid on our meal, releasing an eruption of steam he bats away, stirring the fragrant concoction with a wooden spoon before scooping some of the broth to blow on it. He sets the edge against his lips, sipping—
My stomach gurgles, and I cough in an effort to smother the sound, though not before Kaan raises a brow and flicks me a look I ignore.
Wish I wasn’t so hungry. Feels wrong accepting a meal from somebody I eventually intend to kill. And behead. Just to be safe.
He ladles two clay bowls full of the soup, hearty curls of steam wafting off the top of each lumpy pour. My gut makes another one of those gurgling sounds, my cheeks burning as he settles a copper spoon in the bowl and slides the meal in my direction. He places another on my right, lowers himself onto the stool beside me, and begins spooning the meal into his mouth.
My gaze bounces between his profile … my bowl … my spoon … my rope-bound wrists …
Right.
I maneuver the spoon’s handle into my incompetent grip, discovering that if I tip my arms to the right, I can actually scoop the soup at an angle that should be accessible to my mouth.
Should.
I lift a small serving from the bowl, leaning forward—
My fingers fumble, sloshing it everywhere.
Teeth gritted, I try again, this time bringing it halfway to my wide-open mouth, tongue lolling, before the utensil wobbles from my grip, splatting my arms and chest with soup.
My spoon clatters to the ground, along with the remaining drabs of my patience.
I make to move off the stool, but Kaan grips my shoulder, as if to keep me in place. “I’ll get—”
I whip my head around and sink my teeth into his forearm so fast I barely register it happening until it’s done. Until the taste of his blood is in my mouth and he has me on my feet, backed against a wall with his thigh shoved between mine. With my hands pinned above my head and his hand clutched around my jaw.
Our bodies are flush, breaths sawing through our bared teeth.
Our noses and foreheads collide as the remaining light is wicked from the room, the only source now spilling from the stove’s kindled belly—making Kaan look like an angry shadow poured over me, his eyes crackling embers glinting in the gloom.
“You want to play rough, Moonbeam? We can play rough. But only after you eat.”
“Is that a command, Sire?”
I swear the ruddy specks in his eyes flare, his body a strong, resonant force pressed against me. Too hot.
Not hot enough.
“There’s a difference between being cared for and being commanded. Know it.”
I chuff a humorless laugh, notching my chin forward. “You give me a bowl of soup and expect me to eat it with bound hands? Your perception of caring is warped.”
Can’t believe I’m thinking this, but I miss my shackles. Or more to the point, the chain draped between them. At least I could do things, like stretch. And scratch. My wrists are bound so close together that wiping my ass is going to be an experience when I finally make it to the privy.
“Try being open to accepting aid, Raeve. You’d be amazed at how the grain no longer chafes. A simple request for my help doesn’t make you weak. It makes you real.”
I open my mouth to tell him I don’t want the help of a tyrant Vaegor King, when my stomach gurgles again, casting its unwanted vote.