by Bec McMaster
“I should never have confronted Rhea the first time.” I grind my thumbs up under the hollow sockets of my eyes. “I knew she’d return the favor. I just didn’t know how.” Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. “I failed the Third Rule of Thieves Code: Don’t ever get involved.”
There’s a long moment of silence.
“You rescued a servant from a fate over which she had no control,” he says quietly. “I don’t consider that a failure, Mira. I consider it an act of courage.”
I drag my hands lower. He knows about that? “How did you—?”
Keir’s lashes shield his eyes. “I heard talk of it. The ladies of the court think you jealous. But in the serving halls, they whisper of your bravery.” He looks up. “I like the fact you fought for someone who didn’t have the means to fight her own battles. You can call yourself an honorless thief, Mira, but I see your heart.”
Grabbing the pillow, I try and smother my face with it. “That’s not a compliment. Someone like me cannot afford to have a heart.”
Keir tugs the pillow down. “If you don’t care about others, then what’s the point of living?”
It makes me grit my teeth. He has no idea what it’s like to be powerless and forced to obey the whims of others. “How kind of you to say so…. You, who stands at the top of the rule of order. You, who could crush this entire court into pieces if you will it….”
“You think it’s any easier to wield such power and keep yourself in check?” A hot flush of anger brightens his cheekbones. “You’re right. I could destroy this court and every fae in it. I could obliterate this entire kingdom with a mere thought. Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind at times. But I’m the one who has to look myself in the mirror every morning. I’m the one who looks at Malechus and sees what I could become if I were to lose the very core of what makes me honorable. The choice to care—to have a heart—is the only thing that restrains me.”
I’m too tired to argue with him.
And maybe the arguments I’m voicing are only echoes of my father’s voice.
There is no kindness in the Court of the Forbidden.
But nobody’s managed to quite beat it out of me yet.
“Fine. You win.” I toss the blankets back. “I need to… wash my face.”
He lets me stagger toward the wash chambers. “I had to take your dress off. It was soaked. But that’s all, Mira. I promise.”
Cheeks burning, I duck inside the wash chamber. I’m still wearing my undergarments from last night. It’s a little bit of a relief, despite the fact it’s all seen better days.
Until I see my reflection in the mirror.
“Well, if that’s not going to chase him away….”
I take care of the necessities, then wash my entire body of its cold sweat. The last to go is the remnants of last night’s powder from my face, including the thick kohl that seems to have migrated down to my cheeks. I can’t get it all off. My face looks like some sort of weird frog that has eyes painted in the middle of its back to warn off predators. It will have to do.
Slipping into my dressing gown, I tie it around my waist and venture back out.
“Here.” Keir moves away from the bed on cat-silent feet, crossing toward a small cart I hadn’t noticed. “Breakfast. Or lunch. I assume you’re ravenous.”
Oddly enough, I’m not. Me. Who’s spent every gathering so far at this court perusing the banquet table. I know he’s noticed my love affair with honeyed breads and lemon cakes—every time I’ve licked the icing from my fingers, I’ve looked up to see him watching.
But food is a privilege.
You never know when you’re going to get another mouthful. And if there’s one thing I enjoy about these missions my father sends me on, it’s that I get to eat and drink whatever I can steal.
Zemira Ashburn. The White Wraith. The Greatest Thief in the Blessed lands.
And the best heist I’ve ever pulled off was one that saw me forced to hide in a chocolatier’s shop.
I can still taste the caramels.
He sets a tray on the bed as I climb back into it, lifting the silver cloche as he sinks onto the mattress.
I try not to think about the muscles shifting in those powerful thighs. He’s wearing his riding leathers again—evidently there’s another hunt on the cards for today—and while I’m sure they’re exquisitely useful in avoiding saddle chafe, they stir remnants of the rapture within me.
Too large. Too close. Too… male.
I try to breathe through it.
“I’m…. Is that pie?” I inhale the scent, and my mouth waters. Distraction. Please. “Venison pie?”
Keir’s smile is wicked as he wafts the steam toward me with the lid. “Venison and onion with a red wine gravy.”
“Are you trying to seduce me with your pie?” I challenge.
“My very delicious pie.”
I swear I’m drooling. “Sir, I shall have you know I am a lady of very refined tastes.” I reach for the fork. “I shall eat your pie—your uncouth pie—but never let it be said that I was tempted.”
“You can eat as much of my pie as you want.”
I arch a brow at him. Are we still talking about the pie?
He tries to steal my plate at the last second, and I threaten to stab him with the fork.
Keir laughs, and then pushes the plate back toward me with one finger. “All yours.”
“I swear I’m not going to fit in any of your lovely dresses if you keep feeding me.” I tear off a piece of pastry and stuff it in my mouth. Oh my… gods. I think this sauce is the best thing I’ve ever eaten. I was wrong. I’m ravenous.
“You’ll have to go naked then, and that would be such a shame.”
I peel off another piece of pastry. “Excellent response.”
“The only response.”
My eyes narrow. I suppose, when you’ve lived three thousand or so years, you become adept at avoiding certain traps. Holding out the pastry, I offer it to him as a reward.
Keir’s eyes heat as he leans forward to take it. He calls my bluff, and what began as an incongruous move ends in a lengthy stalemate as he carefully closes his teeth over the golden pastry without touching me.
Curse it.
“Is it my imagination, or are you always trying to feed me?” I murmur, withdrawing my fingers before his lips can graze them.
Keir licks the crumbs from his mouth, and I force myself to focus on the pie again, but the sound of his low voice is doing dangerous things to me. “Shadow Walkers tend to burn a lot of energy when they use their magic.”
I pause, a scalding piece of meat in my mouth. “They roo?”
He pours me a glass of water and offers it to me. “All the transfiguration magics do. Shapeshifting is a demanding process. You’re shifting levels of your body on a minute level. In your case, you’re not just shifting your body, you’re changing states of matter. A state of being.”
I have never, ever realized that what I can do has anything to do with shapeshifting.
“There were also some that said that Shadow Walkers could manipulate light too,” he says. “And not just the absence of it.”
I swallow down my lump of meat and take a sip of water. Long ago, one of my father’s ancestors could walk the shadows. I’ve always thought my gifts a throwback to him, but there’s only been two other wraiths in the last two hundred years who could Sift—and neither of them survived long enough to master the gift.
I know virtually nothing about my talents.
“Manipulate light?” I ask, popping another pie of pie in my mouth. Light burns when I’m Sifting. Stay to the shadows and you’ll be safe, but if there’s one weakness I own….
“It’s not advisable,” Keir points out. “Light is a Shadow Walker’s weakness, except for the very rare few who learned to bend it, and they were true masters. Kings and queens of their courts. They transcended their gifts.”
“How do you know all of this?”
He smiles. “I may have known a Shadow Walker or two in m
y time.”
“Hmm.” I eye him. “Just how long does a dragon live?”
“Why do you want to know?” There’s a challenging note to his voice. “A great deal of the lore of dragonkind has been lost to the ages and maybe that’s the way I like it.”
“You’re already trusting me with your secret.” I’ve never truly thought about what a rare gift that is—to be the only person in possession of information that might be able to destroy him.
I look at him anew.
He’s never once threatened me to hold my tongue. He may have locked me into a year and a day of service, but it’s almost as if he gave me the key to his demise and then dared me to do something about it.
A chill runs through me.
He’s testing me. He has to be testing me.
Does he want to know if I can be trusted?
Or is it… something else?
“A dragon lives for many thousands of years,” he replies, his fingers stirring over the blankets as if he sees and feels something else. “We were the goddess’s favored children, torn from the stars themselves and forged into beasts who ruled the skies. But it is one thing to own the possibility of living for eons, and quite another to live it. The toll of time comes to a dragon, not so much in the weight of his bones, but in the weight of all he has lived and lost. Mated pairs follow each other swiftly into the grave. But others who lose children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren sometimes make the choice to slowly turn to stone. And others still, return to the stars, using their power in one last defiant surge to shoot through the night skies like a comet. We call it ‘chasing the stars.’”
“And how long have you lived for?” I whisper.
Our eyes meet.
“Long enough for me to begin to feel the burden of my loneliness.” He looks away suddenly, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “Long enough to feel my heart start to slow, and my blood to thicken in my veins. Long enough to drift in dreams for centuries, barely caring of what events transpired around me.”
I have to ask it. “What changed?”
He closes his eyes and tilts his face to the ceiling. “When I dream, I dream of the skies. Of chasing those very stars. I was very close, perhaps, to igniting. But one night a new star appeared. One that sparkled and winked on the edge of my consciousness. One that called to me.” He releases a harsh breath and looks at me. “Twenty-four years ago, I think. I’ve been searching for that star ever since.”
I don’t know what to say.
He sent out a Summons because he said the right constellations were in the sky, but I thought that was only a fae thing.
And when his astrologers consulted their lists, they narrowed down a list of princesses and ladies who fit their timeframe.
Twenty-four years ago.
I am twenty-four.
It’s impossible. My name wasn’t on that list. It was pure chance that saw me take a tilt at the Dragon’s Heart during that precise moment. I don’t even know the time of my birth. Sometime in the winter. Sometime when the snows kissed the ground.
It can’t be—
Keir reaches out with a sudden smile and bops me on the nose. “Stop thinking so hard. You don’t believe in fate, remember?”
“I know.” But I can’t help thinking that he does.
He’ll never let you go. Not if he thinks you’re truly his.
My heart is suddenly racing.
“What do you believe in?” he asks.
“Myself,” I blurt.
He laughs.
Keir crashes onto the mattress beside me, lacing his hands behind his head. It’s an innocuous move—his attention is on the ceiling—but the second I see his shirt cling to the thick muscle in his biceps, a pulse of heat goes through my lower abdomen.
Want. Need.
Maybe the rapture’s not entirely out of my system. Or maybe I’m still panicking.
“I like this,” he says.
“What?” I force myself to lick the gravy from my thumb, even though I can barely taste it anymore. I’m too busy trying to control myself.
Keir tilts his head to look at me. Hot, amber eyes flare like a dragon’s. I can’t breathe. I can’t look away. And I imagine that it felt a little like this to blunder into a dragon’s den all those years ago and come face to face with the great beast itself—knowing that you were prey.
“This,” he repeats, his voice like rough gravel. “I like it when you relax, when you talk to me. It’s what I liked about you from the beginning. You never looked at me as if I was an object to be hunted down. You looked at me as if you saw me. Me.” He looks away abruptly, staring at the ceiling. “Sometimes I hate that the most…. That it was all pretense for you.”
The breath bursts out of me. Panic sets in. It’s exactly what I needed—an icy bucket of emotions thrown all over my lust.
I can’t tear my gaze away from him as he stubbornly refuses to look at me.
Instead, all I can see is the Court of Dreams.
And his smile.
The way he teased me.
The way I smiled back and felt it, deep in my heart.
But I can’t say it. I can’t say any of it.
Keir pushes upright, slinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “Malechus wants to take another tilt at the white hart. You should stay here. Rest.”
I drag the blankets around my shoulder as he heads for the door.
Say something….
Common sense tells me to let it lie.
This is a good thing. I can’t afford to encourage him. I don’t want to hurt him when it’s all over.
But….
“It wasn’t… all pretend,” I blurt out as his hand hits the doorknob.
Keir pauses with the door half open, throwing a hot-lashed look over his shoulder.
Our eyes meet, and there’s something in that silent duel that makes my heart skip a beat.
I can’t stop my mouth. “It doesn’t change anything. This…. Between us…. It will never last. There is no future. And I know it. I know it every time I look at you. Being with you is like a guilty pleasure I can never give myself over to wholly…. But I wanted you to know that. It wasn’t all pretend.” Drawing my knees up to my chest I rest my chin on them and close my eyes for a brief second before summoning the courage to look at him. “And I wish it was. I wish it hadn’t felt real.”
Keir’s shoulders still.
Tension fights within him.
My fists curl into the sheets.
I want to take those words back.
Even as some part of me rages to set them free.
Turn around. Turn around. Turn around.
Look at me….
Maybe I’m not the only one who can hear his voice in my head. Because the door clicks shut. He slowly turns around. And looks at me.
“Say something.” Once again, my tongue takes control of my scattered wits.
Heat blazes to life in his eyes. “One chance, Mira. One chance. Say no. Tell me to go on the hunt and I will. I will walk out of here. I will go. I will leave you alone. But if you say yes, Mira…. I won’t stop. Not today. This is your choice. This is always your choice.” His voice roughens. “But if you give me even one hint….”
The seconds tick out.
I can barely say it.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
It’s a yes.
It’s always been a yes, hurtling toward me with the slow inevitability of a carriage wreck. From the moment I met him, I’ve wanted him.
A growl echoes in his throat. “Good.”
Three strides and then he’s upon me.
The kiss takes me by surprise.
One moment I’m sitting there in bed, daring a dragon to kiss me, and the next second his mouth is upon mine, his hand sliding through my hair to cup my nape. The warmth of his touch explodes through me. It’s like there’s some kind of furnace burning within that enormous chest and the lash of his tongue goes right through me.
Hunger.
Fierce need.
I’m drowning in it. In his kiss. In his touch.
“Mira.” His hands tremble as he goes to his knees on the mattress and captures my face in both hands. “Mira.”
We stare at each other for a single, shocked second, both too breathless to speak. And then his mouth claims mine.
Tumbling onto my back I drag him down, gasping as the heat of his body slams over me. Every inch of him grinds between my thighs, and my legs part like wantons, capturing his narrow hips between them.
All of that delicious weight, driving me into the mattress…. The firm claim of his mouth…. Whatever restraint he’d been using to shackle himself into a semblance of control, it’s gone now, breaking apart with a single spoken command.
Kiss me.
Kiss me forever. Make me forget. Make me feel. Make me dream.
I moan into his mouth, fingers twining in the thick luxuriousness of his hair. A hand slides down my side in response, fingers digging into the soft flesh of my ass. Hauling my thigh up higher, he thrusts against me, licking into my mouth.
“Mine,” he growls, and then he’s biting at my lower lip, his golden eyes flashing.
I get a hand under his shirt, searching urgently for bare skin. Lust ignites within me. Last night was nothing as compared to this. That was all chemical, all haze, all mindless desperation to rut.
This is fire in my veins. A hollow ache between my thighs, slick and restless. The urgent need to have his mouth on mine, until we’re eating at each other, desperate to merge.
Keir must sense my need.
He rears up on his knees, reaching over his shoulder to haul his shirt over his head. A scowl emerges, but I’m too astonished by the cut of his body to truly notice it. I throw my arms around him and kiss him. The assault is too much for his balance. He goes down on his back, and then I’m splayed over 280 pounds—give or take—of furious muscle.
“Oh, gods,” I breathe, licking my way up his throat. “Tell me again why I was resisting this for so long?”
“Some apparent need to torture me,” he breathes, his teeth flashing and a wild look in his eyes. “I think you exist to torture me.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I purr, kissing along the line of his jaw and finding his ear. I rock against the steel fist behind his trousers. “Because I might take that as a challenge.”
