He kissed the mark he’d left on my shoulder. “Sorry.”
“I think I scratched up your back.”
A breathy chuckle. “Good.”
That’s how I felt, too. Good. Let us leave something on each other’s corpses.
He drew back enough to look at me, tracing my face. He had little beads of water in his lashes, which glittered as his eyes crinkled in an almost-smile.
It occurred to me that this might be the only time I got to be alone with Raihn before we threw ourselves into a mission that would probably kill one or both of us. The thought made a lump of unspoken words rise in my throat.
Instead, I kissed him—hard enough that there was no use for words, anyway.
I felt him start to harden again within me, my thighs tightening around him.
I whispered against his lips, “We might not get privacy again.”
Because the moment we left this bath, we would be leaders again. We would be reclaimers of a lost kingdom. We would need to think about the future. There would be no time for the present.
I wasn’t ready to leave.
He smiled softly. “Mm. Probably not.”
My hips rolled against him, breath hitching at the now-rigid length inside me.
Goddess fucking help me. How did he do that?
“Might as well take advantage,” I murmured.
“Just practical,” he said, swallowing the words in his next kiss, and that was the last we spoke.
53
RAIHN
I was glad that Oraya and I had made the most of our time alone, because we didn’t get any more of it after that. Everyone understood that time was of the essence. The faster we struck, the better our chances at seizing Sivrinaj while Simon’s hold over it was still shaky. Jesmine and Vale clearly hated each other, but they made surprisingly effective allies. Both now understood what it was like to be the underdog, and both understood the mindset of the upper class. They emphatically believed that now was not the time to try something risky and sneaky—this was the time for a dramatic show of strength. The only language, they insisted, that Simon and those who followed him would understand.
I hated having to speak that language. But I wasn’t too obsessed with the moral high ground to not stoop to their level. No point in thinking about the chances. Oraya and I had defeated worse odds before—seven times, in fact, in seven trials. How much harder could this possibly be?
The answer, it turned out, was much harder.
I was a good fighter, but before these last few months I’d had virtually no experience in battles—not fighting them, and certainly not leading them. Jesmine and Vale, however, excelled at the ruthless strategy of warfare. The moment Oraya and I had given the commands, they leapt into action. Immediately, we were swept into a whirlwind of preparations—plans, maps, strategies, weapons, inventories, rosters of soldiers and diagrams of loyal forces. Letters were sent. Maps were drawn. Tactics were plotted.
We would prepare for a week, and then we would march, the forces that Jesmine and Vale had summoned joining us along the way. We’d move quick, before Simon’s army would have the time to head us off. It was a convenient incidental benefit that we wouldn’t have time to doubt ourselves, either.
Hell, Oraya and I had been throwing ourselves against impossible odds for close to a year now. Why stop now? And in a way, it was oddly invigorating—to do something that felt right and earned again. To do it beside Oraya. It made a lot of things seem easier.
Both of us were grateful for the distraction of work. Maybe we wanted to avoid thinking too hard about what might happen after the battle—about how the Rishan and the Hiaj and the other kingdoms and hell, even Nyaxia herself, might react to the prospect of the Rishan and Hiaj Heirs ruling together. It sounded ridiculous. I know everyone thought it was. Strangely enough, only Vale seemed to take the alliance as settled law. Everyone else tip-toed around it, accepting it but not hiding their skepticism. Even Ketura pulled me aside at one point, asking—ever blunt—“Do you really think she’s not going to bury a blade in your back the minute she has that throne?”
Maybe I was a fool for it, but no, I didn’t. Oraya had passed up so many opportunities to kill me. If she was going to do it, she’d have done it by now.
And if she did… fuck, maybe I deserved it.
That would be a problem for future Raihn. Present Raihn had more than enough to deal with. Everyone wanted to talk to us. Everyone needed something.
The one person I tried hardest to pin down, though, was the one person who was the best at evading me.
I finally caught her near dawn one day, as she was crawling back to her little tent. I flicked her on the back of the head through bronze curls.