“Have you been here all night?” Emilius asked as the musicians started again.
I took thevolarehe offered me, though my blood had long since hummed to life under the buzz of the drink. “I ran out of ways to pass the time.”
He leaned in, his mouth hovering over my ear to evade the volume of music surrounding us. “I haven’t seen you in the palace lately.”
I nodded, doing the same to him. “I’ve been away.”
“Doing what?”
Glass tilting toward my mouth, I smiled coyly at him. “Dancing with kings at other courts.”
His eyes darkened. He snaked his fingers between us and under the slit in my skirt, splaying them across my thigh.
“She’s watching,” I warned, keeping the proud woman who sat over on the dais in the corner of my eye.
A flash of teeth. “She’s waiting for me to leave.”
Thevolareeffervesced across my tongue, warming my stomach. “Why is that?”
Emilius licked his lips, letting his gaze drop down the sheer lace of my bodice. “So that she can play ruler without me.”
“Well.” I pressed into him, encouraging the slide of his thumb along the indent of my inner thigh. The scent of him wafted in the air, rising like the heat waves of an open oven. Not his human scent. The heady, musky odor of his arousal. “Should we give her what she wants?”
From my periphery, still gazing toward the opposite wall, a tendon in Pheolix’s curved neck twitched.
“Usually, what she wants is last on my list of priorities.” He tested the thin barrier of fabric between us with his roaming hand. “But I don’t mind making one exception.”
I felt their eyes. The collective patrons of the palace. When I scanned the room, they shifted, birds scattering when you stepped too close. But I felt them return as soon as I looked away, flocking heavily over us again.
All except Pheolix, who stood a stone’s throw away. Close enough to hear our words.
I indicated the sweeping staircase with the small slant of my head. “Shall we?”
Emilius stepped away, allowing me to cross in front of him, letting his knuckles graze sensitive skin as I passed. I breezed around the side of the grand room, ignoring that the women all looked away before our eyes met. Their men stared twice as hard, holding my gaze when I crossed the sea of them. Judgment idled in both, vacillating in the whirlpool of each set of eyes.
But I lifted my chin, straightened my back. Let my hips direct the current of my long skirt behind me. And ignored them all.
Had the King cared for discretion, he would have waited before following me up the staircase. He didn’t. His steps echoed in the vibrations under my feet as I climbed, not far behind me. The Queen watched us go, face hidden under her jeweled mask, and I had the profound sense that I was a chess piece between them. Some part of a game I didn’t quite understand.
At the final few steps, hand still on the railing, I glanced back before passing beyond a wall that would shield me from view. Pheolix watched from where I’d left him. He was no longer leaning casually against the wall. He’d straightened over his feet in a way that seemed too tight for his body. Too rigid. Too heated. From this distance, I couldn’t see the gray in his eyes past his lace blindfold. But something in themboiledas he tilted up to look at me. My feet slowed, and I stalled at the top of the stairs, surprise forcing a double-take from where I stood.
Emilius made his way around me, fingers running down my arm. Tearing my gaze from Pheolix, I rounded the corner and found myself pushed against the wall.
The King sealed his mouth over mine. The embellished edges of our masks scratched together. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, the words humming through my open lips.
Boiling. Pheolix’s gaze had beenboiling.
I thrust myself into the King, grinding my stomach against his, watching heat swirl in his brown eyes. “Good.”
He gave a throaty laugh. “The drinks always get the better of me before the end of the night. I take you to my bed, but I never remember you there in the morning.”
“No?” I gave a false pout, twirling a lock of his brown hair around my finger. I tried to count how many times I’d accompanied Emilius to his chambers only to sing him into a stupor and either interrogate him or steal something from his desk. “Am I so forgettable?”
The King grinned. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I’m a fool for drinking on the nights I plan to spend with you, so I’ve sworn off them for the night.”
“Well, that’s no fun.” I fingered the buttons of his shirt, thumb dipping under the hem to pop the top one loose, then stroked across the dust of chest hair underneath.
I’m sure the palace was full of women who’d leap at the chance to find themselves pressed between a wall and his body, even among the cruel gazes of the nobles in the ballroom. The King was tall. He was smooth. Confident. Graceful and aristocratic, the lines of his cheeks sharp and strong. I could have had him, if I wanted. Thaan made no secret that was what he intended eventually. To remove the Queen, to seat me in her place, to further embed himself within the royal family by sending me to a human marriage with the crown.
