“Damn,” muttered Ornella, sounding impressed by our surroundings while I tried to watch multiple arched exits for anyone trying to flee the room. I knew there were people here who were waiting to see if Rian would make an appearance. They wanted to confirm that he survived the fight with the Sylvan, and I would not allow them to carry such news back to King Riordan in the Vale.
“Ciaran has all the exits covered,” Rian reassured me, effortlessly reading the tension in my body, and I eased.
“Your Highness!” someone cried, and the crowd began to part for a tall woman. “Please continue!” she shouted at the band of scantily clad fey clenching their instruments. Theyshook themselves free from their shock and began to play a sensual tune that seemed to encourage the fey closest to them to continue their… activities.
My cheeks flushed as I looked away, focusing on the fey who was striding quickly toward us. She had a similar appearance to Geera with skin that was a warmer tone than I had seen before and fair eyes lined with charcoal. Her dense curls were short and cropped very close on one side of her head, which exposed a pale tattoo on the right side of her neck and jaw. Her ears were longer and more pointed than Rian’s slightly tipped ones. She wore a blue wrap that was similar to what Geera wore the day before, and she was barefoot like everyone else. I was the only one who ever seemed to wear shoes in the faerie realm.
“How kind of you to join us! We were beginning to worry you were not coming,” she called out ecstatically, but her claims tasted of soured milk to me.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
My hand tightened slightly on Rian’s bicep, and then my long nails dragged over his muscled arm in a seamless caress. We had not discussed a signal, but I felt him tilt his head toward me in acknowledgment of my warning.
I did not take my eyes off the fey female whose smile appeared bright even as I watched another visage flicker beneath her mask. One of loathing and disappointment.
“Please accept my apologies, Chancellor Aujaara, but I had pressing matters to attend to first,” said Rian with the same saccharine charm she used. Like they pretended to be friendly when violence could break out any moment.
And it would before the night was through.
Chapter twenty-three
GODDESS OF DEATH
Nuala
“Where is your lover? The dryad prince,” the Chancellor clarified with feigned concern and a glance at Ornella.
Aodhan.She was talking about Aodhan. I had meant to ask Rian about him after the way he dealt with the dryad prisoners. But I’d become too distracted by Geera and the prospect of this party. It had been very obvious from the brutal way he took the men apart, with his pain exposed like a raw wound, that he had cared greatly for Aodhan. But a lover? That possibility hadn’t occurred to me since I’d had no idea mencouldtake other men as lovers.
“Aodhan is gone,” said Rian. He sounded unaffected, as if the dryad had simply moved away, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was more complicated than that. Aodhan was dead, probably killed by the dryads, but Rian did not want any of these fey to know that.
“Oh, I am sorry to hear that!” the Chancellor lamented while the ghostly visage of her true face smirked at him. “Aodhan was always such a treat whenever you deigned to bring him here. Even if you were too greedy to allow us anything more than to watch you with him,” she added. Her tongue slid over her teeth as she grinned licentiously, and my cheeks flushed in a confusingmedley of arousal and anger at her insinuation. “But I did not know it was possible for you to simply leave the Wild Hunt.”
“There is much you do not know,” Rian assured her with a hint of sharpness in his tone to let her know that he would not indulge her questions on the subject further.
The Chancellor pouted at him in a way that was meant to seem like playful chagrin, but I could see the truth of her mounting frustration behind her facade.
“Well, what of your gorgeous cousin? That dark-haired male with thebeautifulpurple eyes,” she crooned.
Ornella stiffened on Rian’s other side, her ears pinning back as she levelled a deadly glare on the Chancellor who did not seem to notice.
“Sage has rarely attended these events,” Rian replied, sounding confused when I could sense he was not.
“And I suggest you put Sage out of your vile thoughts. Before I decide to take away your ability to think at all,” Ornella added with such barely contained contempt that it made the Chancellor flinch.
“Ornella is our first female rider. And Sage’sanam,” Rian explained calmly when Aujaara looked at him as if she were scandalized by the dryad.
“So she is a new rider?” the Chancellor verified with a forced astonishment, but her true face appeared to panic. “She must have replaced Aodhan?”
“As I said, there is much you do not know about us,” Rian stated evasively, which made her true self scowl in an absolute rage of frustration.
A murmur from the crowd drew my eyes toward them, and I saw the way they eyed Ornella in a dangerous mix of envy and desire and resentment.
“True mates are so wonderfully rare,” the Chancellor said once she recovered from her shock at the revelation of a new rider. “Although I am surprised that yours would allow you to come here when he did not wish to join us. What a spectacle thetwo of you might have—”
I heard Rian kiss his teeth and pull me closer to him a second before something exploded behind the Chancellor. Everyone screamed and covered their heads as debris hit the ceiling and then broken rafters and chandeliers began clattering to the floor.
I peered around Rian and saw that the marble fountain in the middle of the room had been torn apart, and chunks of it were embedded in the walls. Rian had shielded me from being hurt, but I still felt water splatter on my cheek in a hot gust that smelled of summer rainstorms.
