“All thanks to you,” said Abraxas, bowing.
The entire hall followed suit. Abraxas then quickly instructed the music and serving to begin.
“Emerie,” said Mal, stepping down from the dais towards her. “Anything else?”
“No, my King,” she said, adjusting easily to the title change Abraxas had just announced. “It would appear the stone you have been searching for was split into three parts.”
Abraxas, a drink already in hand, offered one to Alphard. He took it without question, a hand still wrapped around Maeve. “Alright there, Em,” asked Abraxas, sipping his drink. “Ruined my speech a little.”
Emerie smiled in apology.
Maeve wanted to thank Emerie for upstaging her own episode, but held her tongue as Mal’s attention shifted to her. They stared at one another in aching silence. His face was stone cold. Maeve felt each step that his new queen took down the dais towards them. Mal’s expression never changed as she drew closer.
“And you are?” she asked as she arrived at Mal’s side, one arm snaking around his, down until their fingers joined.
Maeve swallowed. Alphard’s hand rested against her back. Sweat pooled at the base of her neck.
Abraxas pulled his drink from his lips quickly and introduced Alphard.
Magic raced down Maeve’s spine as the queen’s blue eyes rested on her. They were so familiar.
So very. . . Sinclair.
Maeve’s mouth fell open as Mal’s words rang clear across her mind.
Such pretty eyes, even if they aren’t yours,he had said.
The pale queen laughed. “I know all about our beloved fighter. I meant the stunning little thing hiding in his shadow.”
She was suddenly so grateful for every lesson Agatha and her father taught her. “Class and cleverness” was always the lesson for the children of the Sacred.
Regardless, those titles didn’t matter in Mal’s world.
“This is my wife, Maeve,” Alphard’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
The queen’s eyes never left Maeve. “A pleasure,” she said, as she rested her head against Mal. Long, white fingers slithered across his chest, resting possessively.
Maeve did not bow. She smiled, her Magic buzzing beneath her skin in challenge.
Maeve knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that she had met this woman before. She remembered her.
Shadow.
And she knew with even more certainty that in the eyes of the pale queen with striking eyes that didn’t belong, Maeve wasn’t meant to be there.
She had vowed not to be there.
Chapter 16
Mal’s fingers traced across the Dread Crown, slowly dipping down the curves of the intertwining serpents as he held it in his lap at the foot of his bed. Even as Judyth ran her fingers down his bare chest, draped over him from behind, the thought of another’s warm lips lingered.
“The Dread Stone,” said Shadow. “And you’d nearly given up on that idea.”
Mal didn’t reply.
“Can you still sense its Magic?” she asked, her fingers dipping around the curve of his ab muscles.
“I can,” he replied. “Or. . .I suppose all three of them now.”
