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“Unfortunately, people in the mortal realm taught me not to trust them early on.”
Cy’s face sobered. He tucked a bit of hair behind my ear. “Then they are fools.”
“That’s what I mean.” I narrowed my gaze. “I do not know you, yet I have just spent the last three dances feeling entirely at ease.” A thought struck me and I sharpened my glare. “Did you cast a spell on me?”
Cy barked a laugh. “I am without my spell pouch, and have no skill on manipulating your emotions.” He paused. “If you wish for an honest word, I do not know what brought me to you. I simply saw you standing there, and knew at once you would laugh if we danced.”
There was a tenderness in his admission. Not the same dark growl of the man from Swindler’s Alley. In this moment, Cy was atoss up between that man and the playful one who’d threatened to gouge my eyes in Kage’s bedroom.
“I wish I understood why,” I said.
“You will find your way,” Cy said. “I feel it. Keep searching for familiarities. It has always aided me.”
“Because you can’t remember your past either?”
“Very little of it around the war and after. I’ve learned to trust what my instincts and heart say. And in this moment, my heart is telling me my delicious prince is considering severing our seasons’ long friendship if I take you for another dance and do not leave him the opportunity.”
Cy shifted and I locked eyes with Kage. Dark and beautiful and dangerous. If Destin was a prince of hope, Kage was a prince of darkness. Clad in black from head to foot save for the silver arm ring on his wrist. His chestnut hair was braided in a ridge down his head, showing off the runes inked on his neck.
Heat pooled in my belly when he approached, ignoring the summons of others, unlike his brother.
“Hello, my glorious majesty,” Cy said, lazily flourishing his hand. “We were just speaking of you.”
“Were you?” Kage didn’t look at his friend.
“That we were. I was telling our darling Adira how you look as though you might devour her from across?—”
“Dance with me.” Kage bit out his words before Cy could carry on into something scandalous.
“Since you asked so nicely.” I scoffed, willing my hand to keep still, but failing. My fingers curled around Kage’s as though I had no say in the matter.
“Behave.” Cy winked and faded back into the revelry.
Kage swept me to a far corner of the revel. I hated myself a little for how safe, how delighted I was to be wrapped in his arms. A prince. My thief. He was lithe and moved as a phantom from the star tent, it was no wonder he would know how to dance.
For too many beats of the drums, Kage steered us to the tune. My heart raced and sweat beaded under my gown despite its many slits and thin fabric.
“Any nightmares recently?” I asked, desperate to slice through the crushing silence.
“You would know.”
I looked away. “Why ask me to dance, Thief?”
“Perhaps I simply do it to irritate my brother.”
For some reason, his words struck a bit of fury in my blood. “Then you are nothing like your brother. He’s a good man. Unselfish, helpful, he is teaching me?—”
“He’s coddling you.” I tried to pull back, but Kage tightened his grip on my waist. “You do not need to study books, Wildling. You need to trust the blood in your veins. You need to be able to defend yourself.”
“Defend myself?” I shook my head. “The only one who’s ever posed a threat to me currently has me in his arms.”
Kage’s eyes flashed, but the corner of his mouth twisted into a sneer. “I might say the same.”
All at once I was too aware of my skin, the slide of my thighs under my gown, the curl of my fingernails over his shoulder. I was too conscious of the warmth of his bare flesh on the back of his neck where my palm rested, and the way his thumb rolled small circles over the small of my back.
I pulled away. “I’m tired. I think I’ll be done for the night. Tell your brother I will give him the dance he is owed another time.”
The burn of his gaze followed me from the gardens. I didn’t look back; I could not leave fast enough. The pull, the draw, the intoxication that bubbled in my chest around Prince Kage was too overwhelming. As though the whole of my being could combust should he touch me longer, harder, in different ways.
