She smirks. “This is the precise definition of a game.”
The callback to our heated conversation from before the Crucible began—our first real exchange of words, in fact—is not lost on me, but I won’t fall for the deflection. No matter how much my heart warms at how well she remembers it.
I gather both her wrists in onehand, holding them still with gentle pressure.
“Please,” I say. “I need to?—”
She goes completely still, her eyes lingering on my neck. “You don’t want this?”
What in the quartered hell is happening? Of course Iwantthis. I’ve never wanted anything more. I smother the instinct to laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion. “That’s not it, I just?—”
Something flashes across her face—vulnerability, inexplicable hurt. It’s gone so fast, though, that I’m left questioning whether I even saw it. I know what I see next though. The moment that whatever thought she’s glommed onto settles in her mind. That cool, detached mask sliding back into place, painting her face with stony indifference even as her cheeks still bear the flush of pleasure.
“Your loss, Sir Knight,” she says. Then, she steps into a shadow and is gone.
26
MARKED
ELYRIA
“Quartered hell, Ellie!”Kit’s voice was full of alarm as Elyria stepped out from behind the curtains. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
Shit. She was in Kit’s room. She had not meant to shadowstep to Kit.
She had not meant to shadowstep at all.
“Well, it’s about time.” Tenebris Nox’s smooth, dulcet voice drifted into Elyria’s pink-tinged ears. “Finally figured it out, have you?”
“What are you going on about?” Kit asked, thwacking the nocterrian’s dark forearm with the scroll in her hands. The two of them were perched on opposite sides of a small table, laden with maps and papers, in front of the fireplace.
Nox arched a brow. “She’s finally unlocked the abilityto walk through the shadows.” Elyria bristled at the condescension oozing from them as they turned back to her with a fang-laced smirk. “You’ve certainly had a busy morning, haven’t you?”
The back of Elyria’s neck felt hot. There’s no way that they could possibly know what just occurred between Cedric and her, could they?
“Shadows talk,”they’d said during the Crucible.“You’ll see.”
She hadn’t had the faintest idea what they’d meant at the time, but now...“Wh—I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she stammered.
Nox’s mouth curved into a feline smirk as they leaned forward in their chair, their crimson eyes pointedly darting to the bed on the other side of the room.
Because that smirk wasn’t the only feline thing present.
“What are you—” Elyria’s eyes narrowed on the small bundle of shadow curled up in a ball at the foot of Kit’s bed. “Noctis take me. Sid!”
“Sid?” Kit barked a laugh. “That’s what you named the poor thing?”
The shadowcat lifted its head, looked Elyria up and down with a yawn, and promptly went back to sleep.
“What is she doing here?”
Kit blinked her blue and green eyes. Slowly. “Shouldn’t you be the one telling us?”
“Sheisyours, isn’t she?” Nox added.
Elyria made a face at the snoozing kitten’s form before slinking over to an empty armchair and falling into it. “She’s notmine. I just sort of...made her? Accidentally?”
Nox let out a long breath, a haughty expression flashing across their face that made Elyria suddenly very sure there was an “I knew it” lingering on their tongue.
