I hadn’t had time to fully comprehend Aren’s words, not with the thin panic leaking into my blood at the way Hadrian was now staring at us. Kye caught the question in Hadrian’s expression as well. He swiveled into me, slowly pressing his warm body into mine.
The scent of hard leather, sweat, mint, and rain enveloped me as he wrapped a toned arm around my back and pulled me in. A purple bruise was already swelling in the hollow of his cheek where Aren’s sword pommel had hit him, but all I saw was his eyes as they dropped in front of my own, smokey and twinkling.His free hand enclosed around my chin, and he tilted my jaw up to his, brushing the softest stroke of his lips against mine.
My heart seized.
The arms and legs attached to my body weren’t mine. All feeling in them vanished. I wobbled without them, my balance sent somewhere across the churning sea. I forgot how to stand. I forgot how to speak.
I forgot how to breathe.
“You don’t have to stay and listen to these two,” he purred, though the real message lay bare in his raging eyes.
Leave. Now.
His breath was warm and sweet across my mouth, and my pulse suddenly returned, throbbing in my lips with madness and curiosity and a brilliant, wild boldness I was certain I’d never had before.
Behind him, Aren snickered.
I was still staring wide-eyed at Kye when he spun me slowly, pushing me to the door. “Dinner tonight?” he asked, his hand sliding to the small of my back.
“I—yes.” Was this part of our act? I wasn’t sure. My brain had abandoned me in the compact dirt of the training yard, staying behind to chortle with Hadrian and Aren at how utterly foolish I was as my traitorous heart clung to his words in hope.
Stop it, Maren, you blithering idiot.
Kye’s hand landed on the door latch. “See you at sunset.” His brows tightened, and disappointment struck me where I stood. There was no dinner. There was no sunset.
“See you then,” I conceded.
He began to open the door, and only then did I remember the royal family etiquette Selena had been drilling into me these past few weeks. I was not to excuse myself from any member of the crown’s presence without bowing first.
Slipping out of Kye’s grasp, grabbing my skirt somewhere over my thighs, I began to curtsy as shouts came from across the training yard.
Whatever it was, it caught our attention, and the four of us swung our eyes to the source of the noise. Across the grounds, two men fought over a crossbow. One shook the other off, and as he regained his footing, the bow aimed errantly in our direction.
A hard click. The snap of cord. A whistling twang ripped the air. All too fast for me to grasp as a hand fisted into the fabric at my back, yanking me down. A shadow engulfed me, covering me with itself, crushing me between leather and wood. The back of my skull raked down the door as I landed hard on my tailbone, the man above me ducking into all the alcoves of my body. A knee on either side of my hips, an forearm crunched against my ear, a square jaw in the hollow side of my neck, dark gold hair flying across my eyes.
By the time I realized I should be shocked, it was over.
A dull thud hit the door, it’s impact reverberating against my shoulder blades.
Kye’s breath hitched. “Fuck.”
More shouting, running feet, muttered curses.
“Can you move, Your Highness?” asked an unfamiliar voice.
Kye hissed through his teeth. “’Rather not.”
A warm drop of liquid slipped onto my cheek, and I swiveled my head enough to see Kye’s hand above me, stuck fast in the door by an arrow through his muscled arm.
Directly where my heart had been the moment before.
39
Aren led the trainee guard who had misfired a shot in our direction to the guard houses. What happened to him after, I wasn’t told. Was he arrested? Charged? Sentenced to death? Let off with a warning?
I didn’t know.
All thought abandoned me as I gazed up at Kye, his eyes inches from my own. He’d crumpled me up into a ball so tight, I could hardly move. His long legs straddled my waist, abdomen hard against my ribs. His body heat sent a scarlet flush through my skin as his weight pinned me down, and I was thankful for the encased leather armor he wore. Without it, there would’ve been nothing to stop him from feeling my heartbeat in my chest like butterfly wings against a glass jar.
